“Some things we plan; We sit and we invent; And we plot and cook up; Others are works of inspiration, of poetry…” N. Cave

Making video games was always my dream job. It is a dream job for so many people. Just like movies or TV, or even more so, everyone has an idea for a new video game. Having ideas is great. It’s fun. It’s getting that idea materialized in the form of a fully-fledged piece of software that it’s hard. In this sense video games are not different than any other type of invention. …

Retention 101

Designing for player retention is one of the cornerstones of free-to-play game design. Retention is a metric (or a family of metrics) that is defined as a percentage of players that installed a game who are still playing it after a particular number of days.

For example, Day 3 retention (also known as D3) is defined as the percentage of players that will still play the game 3 days after they installed it on their devices. …

“What we’ve got here is failure to communicate. Some men, you just can’t reach. So you get what we had here last week — which is the way he wants it. Well, he gets it. And I don’t like it any more than you men.” — The Captain.

This text comes hot on the heels of my recent rant about my own work-from-home experiences. I deliberately used the word rant, because although I tried to do a detailed breakdown of the problem I did not provide any ideas for a possible way forward. The idea for this text sparked from…

There are many ways one can think about games. In his popular book on game design “The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses” Jess Schell offers a multitude of lenses through which you can examine your designs. However, when you are designing a mobile game or any game that would run as a service, you are designing for player retention. A very useful way of thinking, when faced with such a task, is to think in terms of time. Essentially what you are doing is structuring the player’s time.

Long-term engagement and player retention are often described as…

I have been working from home since March 2020. At the time of writing this text, the end of this arrangement is nowhere near in sight. Looking back at this year and a half I can say that this was all in all a dismal experience. This is a brief breakdown of my observations.

• Blurred lines between working and non-working hours — Having no physical separation between your workspace and your normal living space naturally encourages the pattern of behavior in which you jump off into the kitchen to do a quick meal, perhaps empty the dishwasher or put clothes…

“Your feedback is very valuable to us!” — Random Comunity Manager

I still remember the launch of the first big feature that I designed. I haven’t slept much the night before. I was tossing and turning in my bed worrying about all the possible and impossible ways that things could go wrong. Most of all I was worried about players’ reactions. Will they understand my design? Will they find it fun? Will they play it?

Six and a half years later, and I still don’t sleep before each update. For a game designer, the launch day is a bit like…

“Don’t sit so close to the TV! You gonna lose your eyesight!” — My grandma, ~1987.

Disclaimer

Full disclosure, I am a Game Designer. I work for a major company in the games industry. My specialty is designing free-to-play games for mobile devices. I am also a father of a 9-year-old child with a vivid imagination and a healthy dose of curiosity. I do my best to balance my career with my parental duties. This is not always easy. I do not succeed 100%, but I try. My position between the two worlds gives me a somewhat unique perspective. This is…

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” — A. C. Clarke