Session: Designing For Billions: Crafting A Distinct Visual Identity For A Hit Global Game. H. Shin.

Heat. Heat. The next talk we have up. So we have Howard Shin from Scopeley uh doing a talk designing for billions crafting a distinct visual identity for a hit global game. So please if you want to make to the stage make your way to the stage that'd be great. Round of applause.
All right. Well thank you everyone for uh coming to this talk.

I'll be talking about Monopoly Go and the the journey um that we took um to finding the vision the creative uh direction for this project. Yeah. So when I joined this uh project uh this was 2020 April soon after the covid lockdown uh we were immediately hit with a couple of challenges. Uh one was that this project was going to be a pivot. Uh there was a previous Monopoly project for two and a half years that was in development that just did not connect with the audience. Uh the game itself was great. It was a real-time strategy game, but the the level of um focus that's needed and the uh decision-m that's needed, it just did not connect uh with the identity that is uh Monopoly um as we know it as a board game. And so again, the challenge was okay, we had

two and a half years of this development, it did not connect. How do we develop a project that does connect uh with the right audience? And then there was another challenge which is when you play games like you know from Riot from Blizzard Nintendo you know Street Fighter um there's a certain level of passion and fandom you bring with you and although Monopoly is well recognized and really really you know uh uh global which we'll talk more later the depth of knowledge of where Monopoly comes from the history the story of Mr. Monopoly, all of that just wasn't there. As uh if you would have joined one of these teams, you know, there's a good chance that you are a super fan of these projects and you join uh a WoW or or League of Legends because you yourself are a fan and you know what your target demo is. It's you cuz you love this stuff and you've been drawing this all

your life and you wanted to sort of, you know, be part of that team. Again, for Monopoly, we just did not have uh that type of deep knowledge of lore, story, history, you know, all of those things. So, you know, ultimately the question becomes, and maybe some of you are experiencing this with your projects, how do you set a vision for a game that you don't feel like you were born to make? Right? I I grew up watching anime, Disney, you name it. and you know even dreaming one day that maybe I will make Lion King 2 cuz I was so inspired by that film. I did not have to be quite honest the same passion for Monopoly. It wasn't a dream of mine to one day work on a you know Monopoly uh uh mobile uh game. And so how do we make this into reality was the ultimate uh challenge for Monopoly. And so like many teams, there was already a few explorations done by the time I had joined the team. And it was

this idea that we're creating a casual game. And so they wanted to really bring the casual look and feel of the game to the Monopoly world. And so they started exploring uh you can kind of see the inspirations here uh from other maybe casual mobile games that uh uh you know. There was further uh exploration where they decided what if we go more of a graphic direction on the left. Uh on the right was when they started to flirt with what if we make a full-on 3D game uh but you know with a very minimal direction. This is more or less uh where where the team was when I had joined the team and the direction that they felt was good um which is sort of a casual 3D space uh if you will. uh they still hadn't made a decision if it's going to be actual 3D or a render that looks like a 3D but generally speaking this is where the team was uh when I had joined the project

and this was some of the UI explorations that was done um all the work that you're seeing here is just tip of the iceberg there is a whole Google drive worth of images uh that I just did not could not fit into this slide and Out of all of this, I think what I began to feel when I joined the team was that um it was lacking a clear vision. Uh it seems like we had a sort of a general idea of what we wanted to do. We kind of had a general idea what Monopoly is and we tried to we tried to just basically start creating art and not necessarily just kind of throwing it on the wall to see what sticks but it was just a lot of explorations um without again uh setting a very clear sort of a vision direction or maybe even a very clear concept. And so one of the very first things I'm sure again this might be not too

different from some of you was asking who is the target audience for this game? If the first game uh uh it was called Boardwalk uh did not connect with the audience, who is that audience and what do we need to learn about them? And what I found out was it's for everyone, right? Uh I don't think there's anyone in here who does not know Monopoly. Well, maybe maybe there is. Maybe I'm speaking too, but generally speaking, everyone has played some version of Monopoly as a child uh with friends. Uh maybe they still do as a as a a ritual with their families or when they get together with their friends. But the idea here was that in terms of target audience, unlike Riot, unlike Blizzard, unlike some of these other very specific games, Monopoly's audience was rather wide. And then what was even more confusing was that um this game was localized. So

you'll see that a lot of countries think that this is their game, right? Um and then in some countries like Denmark and Korea, they have taken this game and made their own version of it. And so they truly believe that this is now their board game. And so in a world where everyone has played this and everyone in the world feels like it is their game, you know, how do we how do we make a game um and not fall into the trap of building something for everyone that is for no one? Um, I love pizza and sushi, but I will not eat here, right? Um, this this restaurant is not for me as a sushi lover or a pizza lover. And so the the question was, how do we how do we avoid doing something like this, trying to please everyone and ending up not pleasing, you know, anybody? And so as we were so gung-ho and so focused on trying to find the answer and

really getting to the art and and just really doing the exploration, I want to take a one step back and kind of think about what is the game vision. Uh what is it that we're trying to create? Because this is audience is massive. maybe we need to really double down on what Monopoly is and we need to really stay true to Monopoly and what our game needs to be. And so the idea was if on the left the the Monopoly board game that was inspiring some of the art visual explorations, you know, art deco, etc., etc., Why don't we take a take a step back and think about this in a much more abstract terms and see if that can lead us um to the direction that feels appropriate. And so uh our GM Mossimo actually coined this phrase timeless and it came from a discussion of you know this game was invented in 1905

or very early was then stolen mass marketed in the 1930s and it continues to today. And the idea is that we want to bring this game into a mobile device as the next jump and it has to look fresh, feel fresh, play fresh, but at the same time needs to pay homage to its history and its roots. So the idea that it's a very circular, timeless experience was sort of this abstract idea that um yeah, the the GM and I sort of aligned on. And so from that point on, we kind of took that idea and I was looking into what else was happening in the 1930s when Monopoly was being mass marketed and uh being played by very very wide audience. What else were the wide audience into at that time? And so one of them was Charlie Chaplan. Uh he was performing at that time. And I think some of the things that he was able to

establish is timeless because it is still being uh applied to animations today. This overexaggerated snappy uh movement uh so that no words are needed. Uh again feel very very relevant uh in a lot of the um creative works that are coming from like I said some of these animation studios. So that felt pretty timeless uh to me. And the next was looking at these vintage 1930s posters. Um the way they play with shapes and color uh where it's you know because of the limited uh technology at the time these are a lot of prints uh and so they had to be very clever and you know uh uh design uh with color if you will and then you know this type of graphic nature of the um F1 posters still continues today. uh as you see on the right and then in some sense as the planer paintings uh they really

also are really studying the the the shapes and how to create volume out of color and so this also became sort of a pillar where I felt this thing that happened in the 30s is still very much relevant today. Uh thus sort of really solidifying it as a timeless um uh uh work that we should be inspired by. And then finally, Lego. Um, believe it or not, Lego also started in the 1930s. And as you all know, it still uh uh works today. And the beautiful thing about Lego is that they collaborate with everybody and anybody. And at the end of the day, it doesn't matter if you're Harry Potter, if you're Marvel, if you are fill in the blank, they end up looking like Lego. And we wanted to make sure that you know was as soon as we start to explore the different realms and different areas of Monopoly, we wanted to make sure that no matter where we go in time in in places that it

should all be consistently Monopoly go. And so Lego became sort of a big uh a pillar in terms of the general sort of a design language. And so the initial three pillars that we kind of put together and the slogan that came from it was, you know, Charlie Chaplain racing in Legopoly. And if we can get this slogan to feel uh through our art, we thought we're going to go in the right direction. But then there was one extra challenge, which is this is supposed to be a casual fun game for everybody. How do you make capitalism fun, right? How do you make making money for the pure sake of making money fun? Um, and so for humor, uh, we look to, uh, DuctTales. Uh, this is a popular sort of after school cartoon that was playing in the United States. Uh, I'm not sure if they still play, but it's about this character who loves

being rich and has lots of fun uh, with it. Uh, swimming, diving, riding the waves. Um, you know, he has this ridiculous bank, as you can see there, uh, to store all his coins. Uh, and this type of sort of over-the-top sort of cheeky, own it all, uh, uh, type of humor felt it was appropriate uh, for the mobile game that we're going to uh, try to create. So, ultimately, the final sort of vision became Scrooge Chaplain racing in Legopoly. And if we can somehow capture this spirit visually, uh, we were convinced that we're going to go somewhere, that we're going to stay true to both Monopoly and what this game ultimately needed to be. So, this is the hard part. Now, we have this crazy abstract idea, timelessness, that became a slogan. You know, how do you uh make this into actual art? And for our

art team, the the 13 artists that I was working with at the time, basically we took this idea and everyone took it home with them and start to analyze what this means for them. And then they started to really start explore different concepts and ideas based on these pillars and we will constantly ask is this meeting those pillars and a good example of that was when we created Mr. Monopoly, we're looking at, okay, this is the one character that we have in this uh game. And typically in the past, I would try to save the main character to the very last in the development cycle because you just naturally learn so much uh throughout the the development that you want to pour all your knowledge into the main character at the end. But we had no choice. We had to get this character right to sort of understand what the mood of our game was going to be. And so you know the the exaggerated po uh uh pose uh the dotted eyes you know they

were all being dissected and the question constantly was is this aligning with the ultimate you know vision that we are trying to uh establish in the game. Same thing with our illustrations. Uh I think on the surface it could look like a cell shade animation inspired but for us it didn't really matter what it looked like on the surface. We knew as a as a team that we were being inspired by some of these uh uh um what is it? The vintage posters and even maybe some of the the planer paintings uh that felt like uh they were playing with colors and shapes uh in a very uh whimsical and fun way. And then all of our buildings um are rather simple uh very much on purpose um and uh became a simple 3D language. It's not too far from the very first image

that thing I shared uh the one that I shared about uh where the team was when I had joined the the project. Um but I think here we just had a little bit more conviction of why this feels good. Uh and it wasn't an arbitrary one. It was one that was based on sort of an alignment the team was made uh team has made. Yeah, this is the animation. Again, the very first few animations that we did, we were trying to really capture sort of a snappy, you know, uh uh movement, um exaggerated, sort of over the top, um what can really bring humor to our players without having to have any voiceover work. Um, and that was sort of the very first pass there. And then soon after we launched, we started to flirt with IP collaboration. And our very first IP collaboration was with Marvel. And from the get-go, uh, we were talking about how does this whole

slogan or the the vision apply to something like this when we, uh, uh, collaborate. And so we leaned heavily into sort of the old classic comic book era of Marvel rather than the MCU because we wanted to kind of bring out that sort of timeless sort of uh retro vibe if you will. And so uh this was our splash screen that completely changed in the way that it was rendered to really bring out the the comic book nature of this collaboration. These are some of the initial uh uh design discussions that we were having. Uh if we're going to design our own Iron Man, what type of uh design will be appropriate uh for us? And so, as you can see, we went all the way from the MCU on one end and then the super classic and we were trying to flirt with again what is that uh sort of timeless middle uh that can be neither here nor there but it is part of Marvel and uh

you can see the rest of the character lineup there. Um our stickers uh as similar to the the splash uh screen also went through some changes. We had a few stickers that again leaned heavily into the the graphic nature of of comic books. Um, and then even when we were designing our mini games, a lot of the idea was let's take some high-tech and mix it with some, you know, low tech, uh, that you would see in vintage comic books. Um, and then finally, yeah, uh, the team had a lot of fun with obviously the characters and all the all the heroic superpowers that, uh, these Marvel, uh, characters have. Yeah. And then finally, most recently, we also did something that we've never done before, which is what happens if we just take all this thing out and do an entire takeover, like a huge IP that comes over to Monopoly World and just makes the world different. And that's The

Simpsons. And uh the team went through hell for this one. Yeah. To get this thing working. But um the the idea here was this was going to be a takeover and if we're going to do an IP collaboration, let's think deeply about what is the Simpsons IP and how do we really leverage and and do that IP justice and for us the IP here was the art. U I don't think there are live action Homer out there. Maybe there is or uh I know there's a couple of 3D homers out there, but by and large I think you know players, people, the fans would connect Simpsons with the art of the Simpsons. And so um again, the team went through hell, but I think we were extremely proud of what we were able to do uh for this particular season, which is happening now. So if you want to play, you can download and play this season. Yeah.

And that's about it for me. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks so much for that. A great talk on a on a great game. Um, we are running a bit behind, but I can do a question where I have loads. Okay. See,
hi. Uh, I really like your talk. Uh the character designs are really great in Monopoly Go because they also all have their own purpose within the game play. Uh can you talk about uh whether that came from design first like we need a character in charge of cards or did you guys draw the characters first? Like what was the process for making these characters so in with the designs?
That's a really good question. Um it's hard to answer because the nature of our project and the team is that uh you know I've been part of a a team where the art is more of a central resource and you

know they they execute on what you know you want a unicorn I'll give the best unicorn you've ever seen but with uh Monopoly Go team design and art they're intertwined and so it's almost like one person will have an idea the other person will one up it and sort of a this is a mesh mesh of like idea ideas that are coming together. And so to answer that question, I think it was going to be largely the the creative team that probably makes some of those decisions. Yeah.
Okay.
Thank you very much for this amazing presentation. I have two question. So first of all uh the one question is um how many spent time to to research actually which kind of part you need which kind of animation why is Charlotte Chaplain and etc.
You mean the research of the yes to get the pillars
yes the reference
um yeah I I mean I think I was given

my gym was quite nice. I was given at least a month and a half to just focus on this. Yeah. And so yeah, I wish I can fill the pages with all the blocks that I ran into like, oh, this doesn't work. This will be great. I really want to use it, but it doesn't really fit into the So there was a lot of editing, shifting. Um, and also I didn't want to make a slogan to be a paragraph, right? It has to be one sentence snappy and sort of get the idea. But uh yeah altogether I think about a month and a half uh to two months was sort of just devoted in trying to think deeply about uh uh not as not not only the idea but um because of the the previous project and all the explorations that was already done there was a mountain of art that I needed to look at to see if there was something there that I should be utilizing or I should be inspired by. So yeah, that was sort of the the timeline when I first uh

joined the team.
And are you working with the team or you working like to be like alone to to search?
I think for me when I first started it was mainly uh uh me and my my GM Masimo kind of deeply talking about the game. I was adamant that the art al ultimately needs to serve the game which means it has to be aligned with the product vision. And so at the time product vision was a bit more clarified and established and so there was a lot of me sort of meeting with him to understand uh better knowledge if you will of what product is thinking about the the next chapter of monopoly. Yeah.
All right. Thank you. I know we have another question here but we are out of time. However, I'm sure Howard will gladly take more questions just the back or just outside the room after the talk. But thank you so much for that. It was really great. Thank you so much.
Thank you.