Panel
Paul Stephanouk - Design Director of Candy Crush. Previously EA, Zynga, Bossfight, Schell Games, Big Huge Games. 20 years experience building and running creative teams.
Kelly Tran - Co-founder and Game Designer at Evolved Play. Previously, Game Design Professor researching games and players at High Point University. PhD in learning and tech. Solo Twitch - Group Twitch - Website
Ian Schreiber - Senior Game Designer Oxide Games, previously Assistant Professor Rochester Institute of Technology.
Dan Felder - Lead Game Designer Riot Games. Previously Abrakam, Blizzard, EA.
Michael Austin - Chief Creative Officer and CTO at Hidden Path Entertainment. Previously, Xbox Advanced Technology Group
Brandon Dolinski - Level Designer Eidos Montreal. Previously Mass Effect Andromeda and Dragon Age.
Christopher Ory - Lead Designer Rec Room. Previously PerBlue, Ignited Artists, EA Maxis, The Playforge.
Mohamed Abdel Khalik - Co-Founder and Game Director on Tut at Karnak Studios. Consultant on Nightscape at Mezan Studios.
Notes
Player personas are a way to know the motivations that power our players and use it as a template to help guide our decisions.
It’s important to look at systems from different lenses.
It’s meant to model people in the real world.
They’re shorthand for complex explanations on the different motivations and creative forces in the world.
"These are not actual human beings, they're lenses for thinking about the complex components of actual human beings."
Archetypes can be imprisoning.
Designing for different personas creates a rich multi-layered experience.
What kind of player will find this experience worth having.
What kind of player are we creating the experience for.
A projection is shining a flashlight and getting a shadow on the wall.
Any projection has truth in it.
Any player archetypes will be useful to create different moods and mechanics.
Bartle is dated and geared towards MMOs.
Start with Quantic Foundry.
Sus out and go through the process of build your own archetypes for your game.
Investigate the verbs of your games and how they marry into the archetypes.
Players are elastic and some aren't.
The archetypes are not rigid.
Understand where the designer can take player behavior and encourage a change or can't.
Player experience different than player marketing.
The reason they discover your game is different than the motivations of why they stay to play your game.
Find one mechanic in one circumstance and extend it across.
Designers can also create archetypes for specific features in the game.
Archetypes are not in conflict.
People can come for an archetype and have their play enriched by another.
Archetypes are a good way of putting on another pair of glasses.
The goal is to move players into these tribes so as a designer I can make meaningful decisions.
Use it to scrutinize the verbs of your games and the different ways player can encounter them.
For RPGs, think of the experiences you want to create and turn them into a verb.
Through this exercise you can actually see where the market is not meeting the needs of the customers.
Don't look at data and create a model and turn it into prescription.
Get more sophisticated than an average player because it makes everything boring for everyone.
Push for the extremes and create memorable experiences.
How data is organized matters.
Data is important but if you have no access then seek out public studies.
Ask "Why are people playing this game?"
Use data to show interesting things you wouldn't know yourself.
But without data you can still engage with the core problem - data is a tool to help.
correlation does not equal causation.
If you just go with intuition you will be wrong because you love systems that might not go together.
Your intuition is still very good at picking up subtle details. It's a good indicator to know where to look.
If we have data let's do what the data says, if not do what I say.
Data is a tool for validation.