two & a half gamers session #8 - Game design fundamentals & AMA. When to kill a game?

[Music] hello everyone and welcome we are back uh this week so we had a small break last week we are here with The Usual Suspects Felix and theob and you are listening to two and a half Gamers podcast we're discussing the latest news fun stuff and dropping Sunol at the end so so um you know stay with us uh Hey guys uh how are you it's been a while since we talked been a while it felt weird yeah one week without you guys I didn't feel complete yeah a lot of stuff happening in the world actually this time really not not much activ Acquisitions but lots of lots of you know stuffs moving around just today I read that Google post the billing uh store thing in Russia yeah well that happened so for apple and and everything

else so you know that's how it's going to look like in the very near future sad times yeah but let's not go there nope let's not go there uh yeah we are discussing the latest news I think well the news you already heard but you know let's uh let's uh hear our take as well and then if you remember we had this like Q&A about user acquisition and then we teased there is going to be a Q&A about the game design so this is the game design session I'm very much looking forward it's going to be so so much fun and I'm going to look like absolutely stupid idiot that's that's for sure that's for sure get in line I can't wait let's see I can't wait okay let's start let's start with the news so there's the the Netflix bought next games for 65 mil I mean you already heard about it from what I I see it's just uh it's a very funny move I mean it

makes sense because next games started to produce The Stranger Things game but ah well the next games uh as a company I mean I'm not sure like if they had a lot of success honestly they had the the z um what was it the the zombie game what is it a Walking Dead Walking Dead yeah Walking Dead but it was a a geolocation game AR as well but they got a bit screwed on that title because there's like IP rights both to The Walking Dead like TV show from AMC but also the cartoon so then like someone else was making a Walking Dead game that was you know from the cartoon IP and yeah they got a bit screwed over on that yeah yeah I think this movie is kind of expected when the studio is mostly based on IP uh based games so it makes sense for like it seems like an aqua hire to be honest where Netflix want to push into games they already as mat said they already did their latest title which is pretty much kind of similar game to Empires and

puzzles just with Str with the stranger thing IP yeah that's yeah which to be honest is for me a little bit of a product mismatch because Empires and pu why would you think so Empires and puzzles is a midcore RPG where the stranger things uh you really need to dig deep to come up with the same uh unit pool into that extent like you're pretty much pushing if I understand you you end up with this situation that there's like multiple instances of characters in the pool like you know the guy from left the guy from right the guy in Epic version and Mythic version but it's the same guy because you run out of stuff to put in the okay I know I see what you mean yeah what do we what do we think of the price like 65 million in cash no shares two a share yeah that seems to me like an aqua hire I can't believe we're saying Aqua hire when it's like 60 mil acquisition don't know like I'm I'm guessing Netflix is still kind of um I

don't want to say clueless but still I don't think so their strategy in like games at all especially mobile games is is that finished yet or at least like have a specific direction that they're following I think they're just kind of let's try like using our IPS in any way possible meaning we need people that will make games with our IPS like let's say I don't know next games or like Riot currently is using their own IPS but I'm guessing that maybe some games they will even like R their own licenses there in some kind of form of cooperation but still it seems like we're just throwing stuff on the wall and wait which one of those will stick there yeah their strategy is definitely not finished but it's definitely more finish but like the thing the thing about Netflix is is quite interesting cuz they have to do this gaming moves because they're really feeling the squeeze they're up against like Amazon HBO Disney and they're bundling everything together like and apple like

Apple TV as well like they need to have more services cuz suddenly you know Netflix is looking that the most expensive options because with Amazon like TV you also get Amazon Prime like yeah it's yeah yeah and they also like increased the the subscription fee uh recently as well so look why not why not to add the growth is stalling yeah but but one thing like I I've tried to play a Netflix game cuz I have a Netflix subscription but like I I think they're kind of breaking rule number one because it's really hard to find a Netflix mobile game like if you open the Netflix mobile app there's no hyperlink to games so basically you're supposed to go into the App Store download the game put in the Netflix like login I don't know my password for my Netflix login you never use it it's always on the TV it's really hard to download a game compared to a normal game on the App Store like it's they're kind of going against the grain there yeah sounds like a blockchain a little bit so it's it's it's fine you

know people will figure it out as soon as you don't need to put your wallet in then you're fine has anyone played any Netflix Games N well it's like all H hyper casual um stuff for now right so if I get that right that stranger things games is not even on their account next it won't be because it's uh you know in a it's a free to play like real freeo playay game yeah yeah would be nice to to watch um how they transformed is to like uh not free to play oh well free to play but without any monetization inside so what do we think do we think Netflix will be a force to be reckoned with in the gaming space or do you think it's going to be a big fat nothing Burger well currently it sounds like big fat nutting burger if you if you put it like that but let's see I guess there's more and more people coming into Netflix they have like lot of open position and pretty much scouting for gaming people and I guess it's just a matter of time

when somebody come up comes up like with a like valid strategy how to actually connect the whole Netflix thing with games yeah okay let's uh let's move on so sky and journey maker Dead game company raised 160 mil I think this was one of the biggest raises lately uh if you remember those games those are pretty much really really artistic titles like that's definitely like some kind of a could be said like especially Journey it's an artistic experience rather than like our usual bread and butter mobile free to play Kow so that's really interesting uh one of the interesting bits in the article that there's Ed catm one of the co-founders of pixer which yeah because the games are so artistic this makes so much more sense but it's uh yeah in in the wake of all the like big Acquisitions and all the mergers where there's all about

money uh this is some kind of a nice nice uh exception to the crowd where I would say still games with artistic like mainly based on artistic expression still has big value so we'll see good for them I mean I haven't played it but I've seen pictures and videos from the game it's absolutely gorgeous like yeah I might even start playing it it looks actually I don't I don't buy that you w yeah you want to start playing it I can see it on your face is it that are you tan or you're blushing a little bit because no I'm really like and dude I'm a bit sick I'm a bit sick so I'm a bit warm so it's like actually a fever oh fever okay yeah amazing dancing fever what no I more he a real person not an anime character you cannot translate it into that yeah okay yeah it's a cold

all right so also moving on to the next news uh plka is looking for a buyer to take over the company just one year after going public uh basically the mobile games designer said its board has initiated a process to evaluate its strategic Alternatives including the sale of the company so plti went public at 11 billion valuation but currently it's being traded around 7.3 billion and I guess this kind of is just a bit of financial engineering they're looking to do I guess I would say pla I think they even Sumer stated it that they are not really good at creating games rather than operating games which I think they're excellent at and this this is maybe one of the problems that the growth has stopped and usually their growth has been fueled by Acquisitions mainly not by creating their own titles like Sim

models like I supercell has where you just create like a bunch of games throughout the year and kill most of them and one of them one of them became a success PL would usually just acquire different Studios with the success is already in their hands so can you remember like any any new game that was made by pla recently no they've been living on slotter Mania for so long like it's just number one and it's bigger than all the other pretty much they have Sol Harvest but it was acquired the latest acquisition was the reworks redor if I remember correctly for 600 mil yeah but a game made by the play Team by internal Studio I don't think so yeah me neither so it's just okay so that's not only I think I was checking earlier today it's quite a clever move by them actually cuz like the market cap I checked this morning was about 8.1 billion after the news but like looking consider profitable gaming company they might actually get something like 10 Mill 10 billion for like the sale because you're then you're looking at the financials so actually could be

quite bit bit of clever Financial engineering if they managed to pull it off okay and then the question is like who would buy them like they have really good Tech I would say and all the like liveop systems and pretty much the squeeze machine works there pretty well so I would guess maybe they could be a target for someone that actually wants to enter into the mobile gaming industry and don't like don't have these means on their side yeah I wouldn't even don't know like EA is too too too low to buy them is it do you want to do you actually think EA would want to move into Social Casino like it's kind of you know oh they don't way that that wasp no way like you know that would be that's the thing that I forgot that like a lot big parts of their portfolio are Social Casino which is not that super popular to acquire yeah yeah but but keep in mind that they have other companies there like like vuga or the ricor guys

yeah and then there's the the Sol Harvest game I'm not sure what company was lots of casual games still on their portfolio even outside the Social Casino genre yeah so I was I was listening to to the game makers um podcast recently about m&as and you know they um started talking about the pla deal as well it's like most probably appla would be one of the possible buyers why not but it's uh you know pretty pretty hard to say yeah that would make sense have you ever done any UA for Socia Casino I hear it's like the most elbow out thing you can do UA for yeah it's a creatives are well definitely way different from everything else uh the cpis are really high I've done it for one game which was like long long time ago in soft lounge and the game was anyway so I've heard someone say like cpis go to like 110 or something yeah

it's easily easily even even more so I I ran one RPG game and the the CPI in the US was 300 so no problem no problem it can be pretty pretty high and all the creatives with all the explosions of coins the more the better exactly yeah circus yeah maybe one of the things to kind of consider is in in this is that the whole genre is pretty much currently undergoing a transformation Main spearheaded by coin Master where you pretty much go into this let's say casual casino and I don't think so PL has currently an answer for that on their portfolio so that could be also one one of the things here in in play yeah everybody say that the at and the whole idfa situation affected them the most because of the Social Casino portfolio I guess like 90% true because of the all the retargeting they are definitely doing because of the Social Casino it's

not like the the the usual UA you do for these type of games you definitely doing all the CRM stuff and you know VIP programs for all the whales you have there yeah back in my retargeting days like always the biggest clients were on the gaming side were always like even spending more than some of the e-commerce people were always the Social Casino like yeah and they're quite sophisticated as well when it comes to retargeting yeah yeah so that that makes much more sense to exit now and not wait until Google follows suit through idfa stuff ah but that's going to be like two years two years easy easy but yeah but the valuation in those two years we're going to plummet even more so why wait now and sell well you can't say that there still a profitable gaming company that you know prints billions every year so yeah y let's yeah yeah let's uh let's try to to add one more news

which was actually pretty hilarious yeah I don't I don't think so people were talking that much about this one but for me actually this was really hilarious so there's was this whole Pixelmon Scandal or Fiasco I would say where it was one of those really really big NFD projects I don't know even if it was the biggest one as for like the initial sale of tokens all I know is the First videos that they brought out looked amazing yes yeah so so uh all in all this was all built on a premise that there will be some kind of Pokemon like wle based RPG open world game where people could pre pre- the nfts of course and the game raised something in vicinity of 70 million if I understood correctly through through the sales of the nfts and they were doing this really really

nice promotional video where literally it seems like Jurassic Park where you would have different dragons and Pokemons and whatnot and you could battle through them uh in the in the whole world it works really really nice gorgeous and like like they pretty much hired someone to do the video for them and then uh later down the line I guess few months later uh they actually showed first batch of those uh supposed to be pi silmons and they look completely horrible like so it was so funny oh man man but they also like they also did this nft drop with like a Dutch auction which just adds so much more pressure where they start like at a higher L like value and then basically everything was sold out in 2 hours they started I think around like 4 eth per nft and then it went down like gradually and then basically you could buy in they were all gone within 2 hours and then people got them a few days later and like the the tweets and the videos it's like oh it's

beautiful yeah in in it turned basically into a mem Fest if I understood correctly the memes themselves were then sold as an NFD collection and they make some money also that's aming what do we think was this a scam or was it just really big incompetence like which one as I read through the whole like there was this kind of detective detective threat posted on Twitter through one guy because you know it's on chain so you can see some of the transactions and he pretty much Tracked Down how the money flow there and then they talk with the actual artist of those six dragons that they did for the video and then they track down some of the assets which were pretty much as Unity assets to $150 assets like come on you raised 70 billion use assets for $150 really outstanding move yeah but the but he pretty much much point out that the guy behind the project was responsible

for two failed Kickstarter projects that already uh failed okay so this seems like a yeah seems like a continuation just in bigger scale of that whole thing if I understood that correctly but of course the Creator still promised that it will be all rain Bowes and unicorns and they will make everything right yeah but of course seems to me that this is just turning into a glorified scam but like they they they pulled on all the heart for people like our age like Piximon close to Pokémon and Digimon like yeah you can have these little creatures in a world and it's going to be great but you can finally own them like honestly and then I saw him tweeting the guy uh he was just like yeah we're going to spend 2 million on fixing up the nfts and make them look better you're like dude just do do right and do all over again like there's no fixing these they look horrible like EAD this like the the game team that he or they like the creators of this heart they pretty much also want to kind of back out of this because yet it's not

really a good press so and and seems to me that this whole thing was just you know no road map no game design no nothing no assets and Bam 70 million what do we do now that's it so a bit of both and bit of incompetence and a bit of scammy scamm yeah it's not scam it's rackpull and this word rackpull so bad if it's a fraud call it a fraud that's it yeah it's a it's a classic rackpull what do you think happens to the money now is he just you know going on holiday or like what's gonna happen this is this is the interesting part like can you actually do something about these things I don't think so you can return because you have the wallet you can return it but you lose all the the gas fees but why would you return them it's your money you have 70 million on your account why do you want toart with them move to Bahamas immediately and C your drink all day

Swedish honest is just coming out in me I'm like why would you do that well you know this is how how we roll in Slovakia so we are used to it we are used to it yeah I think this this is like one of the main reasons why people like uh Gabe new will or team Sweeney are currently talking about the whole Space being just riddled with scams and fraud which just proves the point here so until we get rid of these things eventually it will be just like that and the whole nftd public picture will look like like this pretty much like the Kevin mean that's actually a pretty good meme but the sad thing is like this thing will encourage you know 10 more others because there' be so many people them and like they raised 70 million like in a like halfy year doing this like I can do that as well yeah next mon whatever mon just add mon to end end of anything and it's money yeah money scammon

man uh you you can do it as well Felix because you are the admon manager there we go I should have my own nft yep Jesus is it is it time to move on to the topic that we're dreading the most we're going to look really stupid yeah because we're doing it because we want to prevent these things from happening to actually educate people a little bit yeah yeah yeah yeah of course so we didn't prepare anything in advance so this is just you know Remo asking questions okay so let's start so uh last time we were doing the same setup for UA this time we're doing the same setup for game design so uh the discussion will go as follows I'll ask few questions Felix and Ma will try to answer as best as they can we'll try to answer not we will answer but we will try to answer I'll have you know I worked in I worked in the game industry for multiple years I know everything about game design okay okay so let's start first question

how to start with game design what do you mean how to start so if you if you if you're like a person entering the industry or some kind of promising wannabe game designer what would you do in order to start with game design surely you must start with like economics degree because I'm thinking like having a good understanding of macro and microeconomics is like the bed rock when it comes to Mobile gaming and then you know you get an internship at you know blizzard I don't know well I would say QA first as an entering into the industry into any any gaming company and then as soon as I understand how the games work then um I might try to just uh you know fall in love with the game design as well because that's like for some game designers a natural way from promoting from QA person uh to game design afterwards after some time of like uh being in the industry if

you're like very new person or you just go and study uh psychology and then uh there you go you can you can be hired by uh by pixel Federation yeah I would say there's a really really big difference between the current mobile industry and premium industry especially indie games where pretty much with IND games everybody can start right now as as they if they have like a passion for games or games are their hobby they love making games and they can start creating games the question is what to do if you actually want to make a living out of it because that needs to be set outright that making a living out of it and doing it as a hobby project are two really big different things uh then going from the notion that premium and indie games are more focused on the actual experience and the game play itself and they are kind of and really specific because if you take some let's say some big games uh let's say Assassin's Creed or God of

War cyber punk you have very very very specific set of game designers or even level designers working on those games that would have completely different skill set as someone sitting behind Clash of Clans or Clash explain the skill set quick question sorry Felix quick question what's the difference between level designer and game designer yeah that's uh yeah that's a really good point there's a really really big difference game designer create systems mechanics and gameplay level designers use the environment to communicate ideas wait w I didn't understand anything yeah sound sound like a bit which we don't have on our podcast yeah this is no podcast don't don't forget about that yeah let let let me just give you an example so level designer is someone that is creating content through some kind of system and structure of things that that somebody created for him uh in order to

create the environment for himself so you know you're doing a level somewhere so you put there traps mops spawn points whatever puzzles something that you can and usually you start with an idea that let's say I want the player to solve this puzzle in this level I want the player to fight this boss so I need to create environment in order to like POS a challenge for him or something like that so and then in between somebody create created the combat system of that whole thing somebody created the HP scaling of the boss getting stronger you know in the next level your HP getting stronger when you leveled up and some like you know the numbers part and whole mechanics part and how we interact with the environment that's the work of a game designer but level designer doesn't do these things he just does the content and communicates the environment like the ideas through the environment so those are two two things pretty much so basically if I say that to a real world example I'm playing GTA 5 and level designer does the missions and then

basically the game designer does the combat like shooting like shooting and how you hide behind the the pillars and stuff like that how you enter the car how you exit the car how much seconds it takes you know just to kick someone out of the car and like that can you know falling damage how much damage you will get if you fall from somewhere level designer is actually the one that builds the missions the city the quests the content of itself pretty much one one builds the box and then the other one fills the box that that was good that was good perfect and who who is more important for the for the let's say mobile game company yeah yeah for mobile game company you are not that dependent on level design that much usually usually but some genres are are really are like stuff like I don't know Candy Crush for instance it's or like the recent dream games uh Royale Match Game they have really really excellent level design there they push it really like up Notch there so that game is definitely

completely uh depending on level design but if you take games like Clash Royale for instance there's minimum level design level design is basically just the Arenas that you change somehow or like do some stuff with it but it's all about systems and the interaction between the units that you need to follow in order to beat the meta game so what skill set do you need for like premium AAA games compared to mobile games uh I usually used to say that you need for mobile games you need to have the whole skill set of premium and indie game plus the whole analytics monetization at stuff yeah I would say I would say that as well because you know with free to play you need to know the business side of things and you need to understand that that you are not making the game just for the The Gamers that love playing games but you also want to make a living and you want to also like pay your bills and uh you know make the the company profitable as well the the problem with the the premium design is

that you are only caring about that one single purchase which is the business model so after that single purchase sometimes even just hyping up the game works of course but in the end you don't care if players even complete the game like if you look at these I know that this will sound crru but Indian mobile games have much better retention than actual premium games that you buy like imagine how many people actually will play through this whole whole you know big journey of Wier 3 and then compare it to retention with is a bad example because it's a very boring game it's the best RPG last 10 years now I just I just didn't get you get my point pretty much retention is better at mobile games like people play more Clash of Clans than they will ever play Witcher 3 yeah okay cuz I don't have my computer with me at all times and I don't have my you can you can buy a steam deck you can buy Ste again and play each or

three there all right we're distracting Remo from asking us the questions yeah yeah sorry yeah yeah but but I would say a good answer would be get e either a conventional background uh like something that's close to game design which should be something mathematically based economically based psychology is also good but I would say even programming is good so you understand how the things Works lose the Illusions and don't think that you can create everything immediately like that's like I think really one of the important step when you're starting that you need to understand how things work and after that start building games that that's okay and what are programming economics or no economics uh economics is okay I don't I don't see a problem with it I think uh Toco like one of the main uh game designers in supercell the one between hey behind Heyday and brawl Stars he has like uh theoretical physics if I understand correctly why didn't you say psychology psychology is okay also you can do

whatever then pretty much it sounds like yeah exactly Lial whatever it's it's within all of these degrees you understand systems what kind of systems you're all how systems work but universally okay universally okay Mr systems all right next question REM next question this is actually a really good session cuz I'm learning a lot already uh what is hard and challenging about game design can everybody do it everybody already does it easy easy easy everything is easy same thing as with with UA like everybody thinks like okay so you know if I put this in the game it's going to increase the retention if I put there you know we will make more money yeah no same thing with UI like okay so you know you should start that campaign you know that uh test that channel okay thank you very much but no this is not how it works so basically I don't um I don't think everybody can do it um and a

lot of uh people don't understand if you change one thing there is a you know um a net of other things that change with that one thing which is in the in the background and that's uh you know that's not visible for for a lot of people they don't understand that so yeah I don't think everybody can do it no how would you how would you convince someone that let's say your producer on your team that no it's not a good idea to pretty much do game design on your side and rather let's let the game designer do it the one with three years experience rather than zero experience yeah that's the thing because uh even the producer is the owner of the of the pnl yeah of the p&l and the project uh obviously so he it should be in his or her uh interest to actually give you all the means or not you but all the G to the game designer to actually make all the changes because the same thing with with

covid so everybody now is a you know expert in yeah expert in in Co environment virology and whatever but nobody knows about it well that's that's how it is and the same same with the game design so you know but it's not about the producer and game design it's all about like the ego of the producer so you know you need to have the communication skills actually as a game designer to be able to convince the producer like okay so you dude this is my competence and I know what I'm doing because I've done it for three years already how much experience do you have I think this is one of those crafts that is really really hard hard suffering from the cring dner effect where the less you know the more kind of the more you are sure you're doing the right thing and the more you know the more you start doubt your decisions and actually you enter this kind of critical mass after some time that okay maybe I I I think I know now what I'm doing but

from the first like surface level it could seem like really easy but it is not and I think this is the the biggest uh difference between like a senior game designer and Junior game designer that senior game designers think like 10 steps forward and Junior game designers think two steps forward so that and these decisions can sometime really destroy the project completely because you make one bad decision in the beginning and it just it just drags you with you until you hit the day one retention wall you have an example from your personal career when you did something like that uh when I didn't think that much from the beginning yeah uh I would say depends on some genres are easier than the others some some are more complicated I know especially when we were making the match three game that I would say yeah we should have done it a little bit differently because we were never in that position we were actually running a match three game rather than building

and building a match three game and running the match three game are two really different things where you need to think about the RAS and the revenue and like all those kpis then you don't really need to think when you were just building the stuff and trying to make do you think now you would be in a better position to build the match three game rather than years ago I would have shot down some of the features that we were considering or building along the way in a way that I would say they wouldn't have an impact on kpis that we were targeting but you wouldn't because you know uh you were working with very different people and those producers with all those egos yeah well they would never listen to you I know but it's hard it's hard it is it is yeah everything is hard uh what do you think are the main skills that Define a game designer I said actable skills that you can write into like CV or you know job requirements just experience right it sounds like the more you're talking it's just like how much how long you've been doing it how many times you screwed up that sounds like number one thing for game designers from what you're saying

at least to me well I would say the communication skill right there but it's it's not a hard skill uh one one of The Usual Suspects is of course the communication but the other one is to be able to pretty much communicate Your Design carefully which means writing specific documentation because one of the bigger problems is that the the documentation needs to be clear enough even if you're not there and somebody is reading it they don't need you for for them to explain it that's that's the problem usually game design documentation if it's done wrong you need the game designer then for you to explain what he's even talking about that's the problem so you need to make it idiot proof yeah to make it idiot proof because usually what happens that you write the documentation even after that you still get ping pong with the programmer if you omit some edge cases or if cases yeah okay and and and you need to think about these edge cases

already and just think like if I'm a programmer I'm programming it and if you didn't cover some of the Ed cases programmer cannot design the thing for you they will try to make it work of course but then it means they're designing it and you're doing it wrong because you have you had to thought about this before okay but you won't write in the CV that okay so I'm good in communication I'm good in writing and you know I'm the game designer woohoo so what else yeah what do you right like thought of a new construct in a game that improved retention by 2% on day seven or like Problem Solver other things would be yeah experience definitely counts I I guess what most counts is shaped games with successful commercial results that's that's the biggest one there's of course this kind of a problem that hiding in big teams can make it look good on paper yeah I worked with uh five different gaming companies uh we shipped 10 games with multi-million revenue and

you know you were just there like uh getting coffee for everyone yeah yeah and and this this brings me to my pretty much other question that if we are doing this whole like recruitment thing I don't really that care much about the whole CV I would rather care about the design test that you take when you are applying Des test what does it look like what is it yeah it's a really really specific test um for game designers where you pretty pretty much get an assignment that you need to do like a homework or whatever you want to call it and you have limited time for it usually goes from like I don't know a week or two weeks or three days depends and then after it you submit it and people in the company that you applying for review it and then you have another round uh there was some like really really good lectures about this already that I've seen especially on GDC uh I think there was the game director from Ubisoft which had this session then there was this other guy don't remember

what was his name but he was pretty much even showing the actual assignments that he got uh those are sometimes really really long but I think this is the best proof that people can can work on on what you want you have one handy um you it's for instance it could be a deconstruction of a game and you you need to really really care detailly word out what what's behind your thinking so like why let's say this mechanic work how how these two games compare for instance and and depending on on your way of thought then people will see how can you to approach this like even if you see the systems Behind these games if you see the structure on what they are bu St with the systems already I mean you said systems like million you had an assignment that you done you could read out and just so I know exactly what it sounds like like well I think uh there's this question about the rock paper scissors that's

definitely we have an yeah that's definitely from the assignment I I remember Remo talking about it but obviously I didn't remember was the solution for it [Laughter] so yeah uh yeah this this is like one of my favorites not the rock papers is this next one but let's talk about this one so you get into this situation really really often uh your producer is pretty much saying or founder let's clone this game what can go wrong it is making so much money on the charts we can make at least one third of that I hear this all the time yeah of course but it's that's the fundamental problem of the producer who doesn't know how the game work or games work because the same thing with the Roy match and the toune blast I mean look so obviously the the dream games guys uh they know exactly what's uh what needs to be done on the back end and how the levels are are or how the levels needs to be need to be structured and everything so all

the level design you mentioned uh and this is something that you don't see from the charts I mean or from the surface level or from the surface yeah you can see how um how the game looks like what you you can assume what's in the game uh what kind of mechanics and everything and how you know the visuals but everything that uh that's happening under um the ground then uh you can't see it so so then you start building the game and suddenly you don't not even like the yeah you don't even earn like third of what they earn you don't earn anything because the you know the game is dead because you don't have the expertise plus also you're fighting in like a uphill battle already because the game you're cloning has been out for so much longer that basically have better rankings than the Google and App Store so like it'll rank better and then get more Organics yeah but but people still do this like do you remember let's say 2016 how many Clash Royale clones came out that that that after that year yeah and

you know still has there ever been a clone that earned more money than the game they were cloning yeah only the hyper casual right okay hyper casuals works on this of course that's because that's more of a function of a marketing formula I would say yeah yeah yeah and creative formula but uh I think some of the games actually were better than the Clones no well the ricore right uh it's not direct clone but it's an iteration I would say rather yeah yeah but I think uh what was it uh this is not a clone but when we got into this really awkward situation where Guardians Scapes and homecapes pretty much play was copying the mington mansion creatives and they pretty much outspend them on UA yeah that's true but it's not cloning the game directly so it's cloning the marketing strategy well you know if player then you know you're doing something right you know yeah exct they they only

steal from the very best period yeah but usually these games don't like clone I don't I don't I don't think so there's like a really really successful clones that like out out paste or outspend the original usually it's done in a way that clones always make less than the original or you can see Kink the Candy Crush you can see each subsequent Candy Crush less yeah less money so that's how it works yeah oh this one's important how ideas for new games are born o that's wild one but I would say from my game designer perspective no i j the side so um a lot of people actually focus on what's Happening Now and they are starting to produce games that are trending at the moment and not a lot of people just just looking ahead of things and try to assume what's going to happen

in the future so you know unfortunately uh that's how new games ideas are born but I would say what needs to be done is a proper um market analysis and then what kind of game combination or like genre combinations are are well not working the best but at least like trending upwards or you know trying to see where the the market is going to be in like one one year or two years and then uh that's something that you should build but it's easier said than done of course it's very very hard to be done yeah I'm assuming there's discussions around just like oh yeah I like this feature from this game and then I want to mix it with another feature and then basically you like combine something new and then like at the intersection of the things then basically that becomes a new game design yeah that's one way of to us if we come from the worst to the best it's um let's clone this game that it's

making a lot of money that's the worst yeah then second one is I like this mechanic let's build this game when you don't even know from who you are building it because you just like building a game for yourself then uh as we are getting better uh let's build this new genre even though we don't have any expertise in it that's still not that that good and then uh as we're getting better and better it's let's do a market research first and see how's the audience of this whole genre currently Fairing and where it's heading and was the you know latest disruptors or like the the genre defining games that were done there some like a good example would be let's say coin Master like if if you if you saw what coin Master did but actually what coin Master did is also they took the mechanic from Pirate Kings which I think was even sooner and then just iterated on the spinning wheel and turn it into slot machine and then really took it off

but it was again an iteration on the whole Casino genre where they wanted to bring in new audience through casualization of the Social Casino so so that was like an excellent ideation thing but it's more of a you need to have this kind of a market fit in in mind that you're going afterward because then it will determine the mechanics and the whole feature set of the game because you base those on the audience that you are aiming for and the audience is pretty much you have this kind of a limit around the audience that it is expecting some kind of feature set you cannot just throw you know RPG gachas at house fives in Candy Crash that yeah you know it's not going to work won't be attractive for them but what can you do is of course you can throw renovation meta game around this destroyed Villas and mansions and ditch the whole Saga map and actually we're backit Garden Scapes because Guardian sces also is a great example of iteration of the whole genre because before uh there's this like excellent article done on by Adam

Telfer on how Guardians could pretty much morphed from hidden object game into match three game Reinventing the whole thing in the process and pretty much turning this into this narrative meta game because they kept some of the features from The Hidden Object uh game and then did because they know that the hidden object game core gameplay is much more content demanding because you need to create so much stuff there than the match tree game which you don't so actually it's economically a much better solution so this is like an excellent iteration on market and product fit yeah okay uh we have like we have more questions yeah even like N9 minutes yeah let's let's move on let's do the rock paper scissor no let's come on rock paper scissor come on okay okay okay we still want to look stupid Ma I just wanted to you know like uh uh actually share something useful for uh for the audience as well you know like

what's the the best um effect you've seen on the day one retention uh let's ask that now and then if we have time left we can do the the question yeah let's let's do like a AMA and then we can uh we can leave the rock paper scissors for you know part two because I don't definitely want to have like UA part two as well okay let's do that so yeah what was the the most um well like the biggest effect you've seen on day one retention uh with any game features you know you put in the game so you you are in the soft loue you have a game and then you put I don't know like a spinning wheel and you saw 10% uplift on day one retention most probably not but yeah but you know what would be day one retention day one retention is a reflection of your core gameplay meaning that if your core gameplay works it's actually enjoyable to play the core gameplay meaning that really smallest granular part of your game that people kind of repeat throughout playing your game that's could be like matching

candies or you know finding stuff in the hidden object game or I don't know fighting battles in FK Arena or ra Shadow Legends like the core game play itself and if you change that it should have a really big impact on uh the actual day day one but it means that it's the core of the game so changing it is really hard to begin with and if you change that then it's gonna be it's gonna have an effect on other kpis as well right yes of course okay what about you you you always need to start with this day one retention gate which is just the reflection of core gameplay if you just cannot pass that it doesn't matter what comes afterwards okay if you can put whatever you want on the top of it it won't work because the the core is is yeah yeah okay but what's the most you can lift like day one retention by like having a good core like if you've already made the game like if it's so far away from day one like retention kpi is like how much can you actually increase it by normally um you

need to be radical in your iteration that's like one of the things that I would always go for because doing just small changes usually doesn't you know move anything uh depends also how how how the game went out from production in terms of Polish and like overall quality because sometimes games came out that you know just fixing it and making sure there's no bugs and like it's uxix wise pretty good you can lift it pretty high sometimes when you come out with something that just there and you do three four iteration nothing happens it's just it that that's it because some Hardcore gameplay works better than the others for different audiences of course the tricky thing is nobody knows which one will work otherwise we would not be sitting here debating this and we would be all millionaires well speak for yourself I'm already a millionaire yeah but but anyway you know it's more of a like this is the first gate that actually like a free-to-play mobile team hits measuring their day one

retention and that's usually when the fun stops and everybody needs to realize what to do now in order to make it better or you know you can be popping champagne because you have I don't know 70% day one retention like idle minor Tycoon wipes perfect yeah and then sell the company to you be sold and then buy yes after their notes okay there is also like one one um really crucial question that everybody asked like when should we kill the game and when move on because it's again really important question but they're definitely not that's not an easy end to be answered anyway right so what's the where is the point when we should just move on and you know uh if you feel your feature set is complete uh especially in a way that let's say up till day seven that you have enough content for people to play until day seven and you are kind of

comfortable with your current feature set and say like yet this is the game that I want to have and it's still not producing Rena results change it few times few times meaning like 3 to six months mhm because changing it takes a lot of time implementing it testing it you know new tutorial whatever uh and then I would say after 6 months if you were not able to Pro because usually what happens that people produce incremental increas P so retention goes from I don't know 30 to 35 to 38 to 42 and sometimes you have this like nice bumps along the way which means you're going the right direction sometimes these bumps go downwards sometimes these go upwards that's why you're testing it and you revert back if you screw something up in the process but overall if you don't see any uh meaningful change within those three to six months I think that that's it then yeah that's what I that's what I also um say uh when we're talking about like killing the game in soft Louch so as soon as you

can't see any meaningful Improvement on the game in like three months or let's say okay not three months but from three to six months and you are still like on the same basically same kpis and you don't have anything else to add into the games like okay I think this is it let's let's move to the to producing some some other games and I think uh we can uh we can like end this session with one last question what's the difference between a good game designer and a shitty one you you're the one to suppos to answer really okay so um I think you are the shitty one and we are the good ones that's how it that's how it works arrogance is the key to being a good game designer yeah and ego ego as well yeah I think that that's like the currently the biggest downfall of a game design like being kind of um not being able to convince others through normal arguments

and even get down on their level of game design knowledge to pretty much convince them because even like that's the Arrogant part where you don't want to get down to their level of understanding and pretty much oh you don't understand this because I see 10 steps ahead but that's the problem that in order to convince your producer you need to get on the same level that his game design knowledge is which of course is not that good as your supposedly that you're doing this some Friday already and you need to communicate it clearly and pretty much yeah home matter tell him that if we do this and that we'll probably won't far that far and like the whole thing will be pretty much de in some some time so as I said like these are these really really small decisions during the whole production phase that can screw up the whole project and it's on the responsibility of game designer to keep it in that straight line heading for that you know desired outcome that we're getting out of soft lunch we're getting into Global lunch and everything works because if you if you let for

instance let's let the steam stray away or lose focus you again somewhere there that that you Wen supposed to go could you say it in three bullet points like three things that make a good game designer and three things that make a bad game designer yeah you see you see a lot of steps ahead uh you can clearly understand the con consequences of implementing specific game mechanics you don't Implement them because you like them you implement them because they add value to your product and then uh I this is my personal favorite you have clear understanding of the current market trends this is really important because being able to pinpoint reference games make stuff so much easier yeah but if you don't know those reference games you cannot pinpoint them because nobody will tell you that these game solved that same issue already two years ago yeah nice well perfect I think uh I think that's it for uh for today sessions uh not sessions session the rock paper Caesar next the rock paper Caesar next

and start with that next week okay okay we can we can do [Music] that who cares let's see [Music]