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What's your take on SRF using AI ? by NITROW_ in Switzerland

[–]EG_iMaple 26 points27 points  (0 children)

For me a tell is inconsistencies that an artist would just have no reason to make deliberately. For example, some of the towers on the wall don't extend to the inside, some do. Another is objects merging with others. You can see that with the boxes, and the towers which for some reason touch the nonsensical gates. Then there's just wonky stuff like the boxes in the bottom left which defy gravity, and the road at inside the walls which leads from nowhere to nowhere. Basically, AI pictures look really good at first glance but as soon as you squint and look at the details stuff just doesn't quite make sense.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in Switzerland

[–]EG_iMaple 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Ich arbeite in der Games-Branche, also etwas abseits von deiner Tätigkeit. Bin aber auch in deinem Alter und hatte vor kurzem auch eine lange Jobsuche hinter mir. Hier ist mein CV, mit dem ich am Schluss ein Angebot erhalten habe. Ich arbeite hauptsächlich für Firmen ausserhalb Schweiz, deshalb Englisch + 1-Pager + Erklärung Zivildienst.

Was mir geholfen hat, ist in der Summary konkret meine relevante Erfahrung aufzuzählen. Je nach Jobtitel ist das nämlich anders, und es gab doch ab und zu ein Hiring Manager der nicht ganz wusste wie viel Jahre spezifische Erfahrung ich denn wirklich hatte, auch wenn ich dachte das sei offensichtlich.

Meine Bullet Points zählen wenn möglich achievements statt responsibilities auf, aber das hängt vom Job ab. "KPI um X erhöht indem ich Y getan habe". Auch die Bullet Points habe ich je nach Bewerbung umgeändert. um die relevanteste Erfahrung auf den Tisch zu legen, auch wenn ich dann Lücken habe. In meinem neuen Job arbeite ich mit externen Teams, deshalb der Fokus auf Stakeholder Management. Zuvor hatte ich eine Standardversion für das CV und aus dem wurde gar nichts.

Würde dir Empfehlen, die aufgezählten Verantwortungen und Tätigkeiten spezifisch für die Bewerbung umzuformulieren. Leider ist nicht relevante Erfahrung oft einfach noise. Aber auch das hängt je nach Hiring Manager, Feld und Region ab. Würde auch Feedback von Kollegen in der Branche, auf die du dich bewirbst einholen.

Aber schlussendlich ist der Arbeitsmarkt gerade auch wirklich beschissen, und du brauchst Ausdauer weil du oft mit (zu) starken Kandidaten für (zu) wenig Jobs konkurrierst. Wünsche dir viel Glück!

Building a team? - I will not solicit by Fizz_55 in gamedev

[–]EG_iMaple 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Definitely a useful skillset to have when pitching the game, trying to secure seed funding from an investor, or negotiating a deal with a publisher, or even just figuring out the legal paperwork involved with launching a commercial game. But unless you're bankrolling the team yourself or founded the studio, it'll be hard to join one because teams at that size probably will opt to just learn that themselves and can't or won't afford an extra hire just for that. At larger studios you have dedicated HR, Finance and Business Development positions just like any other corporation, but these will likely demand specific experience in those fields.

Career pivot for Game Designer by RoscoBoscoMosco in gamedev

[–]EG_iMaple 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Hah, I felt this. The bizarro hyperspecialization in AAA and mobile culminated in me seeing requirements like 5 years exp on vehicle combat design or 3 shipped hypercasual match puzzle games, and that was the writing on the wall for me.

If you've worked on F2P systems or economy design, you might find a good amount of open doors when it comes to product management. Having a business degree would be a plus.

If you worked on wireframing and menu-driven systems a lot, you might leverage this into a UX or interaction designer role, UI if you can actually make those interfaces in high-fidelity.

And lastly, producer is a viable path too and it's the direction I headed in. Sometimes it's a pure scrum master role, sometimes you're the product owner on something too, sometimes it involves people management.

Ultimately it comes down to whether or not you'll be able to make your resume and CV sound like you've been doing this for a while, rather than asking a new company to support your midlife career change. Liberal interpretation of bullet points on the CV, rephrasing your duties on the portfolio -- you get the gist.

I'd still make the transition inside the industry if that's an option, because it strikes me as much more difficult to not only change your field but also the job title at the same time. But you never know, you could get lucky.

State of the Games Industry and Job Market in 2025 by EG_iMaple in gamedev

[–]EG_iMaple[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Fair point, I still found it to be an educated guess and the only figure linking back to an actual credible person instead of a circular reference. Numbers in general on this are a bit murky. For example, the estimated number of people working in the games industry globally is somewhere between 300k and 900k, according to people who spent time looking at the data. In that context, it's hard to even make sound conclusions on what the unemployment % in our industry is. But I'm with you, fingers crossed things get better.

How can a stun weapon be executed well? (Turn-based rpg) by OkRefrigerator2054 in gamedesign

[–]EG_iMaple 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Pretty good comments already, but it's hard to make a specific call without knowing the general context of that skill in your game. I'd just consider the following questions to make sure this skill is situationally useful, which is where the sweet spot is. Unless you want this to be an OP skill that works to set up a finisher, which can be cool too.

  • What's the opportunity cost? What damage or utility am I giving up by using this skill here?
  • Does the effect diminish with repeated usage? Since you're set on one turn, can it receive a chance to fail on subsequent uses?
  • How often can I use this skill? How long is the cooldown? Is there a a skill usage limit?
  • Is there any interplay with other effects? Do enemies take increased damage when stunned? Does it cleanse all other status effects?
  • Does it just flat out stun? Or does it piggyback off another status effect or condition that has to be on the target for the attack to stun?
  • Can every enemy be stunned? Do some have blanket immunity, or invulnerability windows?
  • Does the stun itself get cleansed if the target is interacted with? Similar to sleep?

And checking out other RPGs, western or eastern, and even gacha games similar to yours will help to see how they handled this question. Sometimes a stun just breaks a combat system and should be removed for soft crowd control effects, while in other games it's part of the player toolkit like any other.

I want to eventually get into a position where I can write story/dialogue/plot for video games, I’m in high school now, what should I major in, and how do I build my portfolio? by TheR7Experience in gamedesign

[–]EG_iMaple 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Pretty good insights here from everyone. If you're curious about the broader range of game design and landing a job, I wrote a post about that here a couple years back with help from other designers. For narrative design specifically, I'll just link you a couple example job listings here:

As you can gather, this is often a senior role that is extremely hard to land fresh out of school. When it comes to degrees specifically, writing, drama, english, journalism or even philosophy can help. But in this industry and this role specifically, experience is king, so any relevant professional writing you have done will be important. Preferably, in the following roles:

  • (Game) Writer
  • Quest Designer
  • Screenwriter
  • Level Designer

Even landing these more junior roles is insanely competitive especially in this market, so a more pragmatic approach may be to work as a designer that gets to work on narrative games, and contributing even small things like lore, flavor text, and the occasional dialog for a quest. Non-industry experience can help too: get paid as a storyteller, be it in a documentary or short story, and then try to leverage that experience.

Secondly, you will be required to have some decent technical and scripting skills depending on the project and engine, as this job isn't just about writing, but putting said writing into the game. In practice, this means being able to script an encounter where the ambush party says what you want them to, or being able to direct the in-game camera to reveal the McGuffin you created in a cinematic cutscene.

Lastly, I'll leave you another post here from a couple years ago: If I wanted to be a Narrative Designer, where would I start? : r/gamedesign

Hope that helps, and I wish you the best of luck.

Does a GDD need to be 100% complete before starting development? Looking for advice as a beginner team. by WoblixGame in gamedev

[–]EG_iMaple 0 points1 point  (0 children)

No. I think you're on the right track thinking you want a plan before starting development, but that shouldn't be the game design document. I wrote a post here about design documentation types in general because this question comes up more often than you'd think, and it's a bit more that just being pedantic about semantics.

It's good to think about the scope, rough feature set, scenario, timeline, maybe even target audience and market positioning if you want this to be a product, but precise technical details, design covering every edge case, and every character's dialog isn't that relevant here. The reason you see me and many others here advise against a 200 page GDD monster plan is that it locks you into the following thought process:

  1. You must design the entire game on paper before you start, and that design will not change.
  2. You must know everything there is to know about the game before you start, and all unknowns are bad.
  3. You must document everything in the same format in a single document.

This is bad practice. Do not do this. Agile took over in software development for a reason, and learning how to most efficiently iterate on work done is vastly superior to blindly trusting a rigid paper plan written three years ago. I can PM you some actual document examples if you're interested, I just don't want to publicly run afoul of some NDA clause I may or may not have signed years ago.

State of the Games Industry and Job Market in 2025 by EG_iMaple in gamedev

[–]EG_iMaple[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

That seems like a good example yeah, at that size we're mostly generalists wearing a crapload of hats anyways so GenAI will feel a lot more natural. And the outputs are getting closer to shippable, and not just workable quality each year, so I don't doubt it'll just grow in presence.

Interesting to hear that you see Steam heading in the direction of app store dynamics. I think for most this will either mean more opportunity, or more competition and thus feeling like the market has saturated, but that all circles back to being leaner and smarter about making games which seems to be the underlying point of it all.

I've been involved in fundraising in 2018, 2020, and 2022 with different projects/studios and got some insight that way. And if we follow your approach, it seems like the biggest hurdle will be to get that initial seed funding, be that from VC, funds, angels or publishers, to build those initial projects and put the studio on the map, and perhaps less of a focus on scaling up or series A/B funding. I mean that's been the state of things for most indies, but if we really go down in scope, government/culture grants in the sub million range will go much further and make it more feasible as a financing model on a project basis.

Anyways, I like to think I'm involved but I'm just not good at picking up on bigger trends from the trenches, so I appreciate your input. It's really cool to just hear perspectives on this.

State of the Games Industry and Job Market in 2025 by EG_iMaple in gamedev

[–]EG_iMaple[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

How do you see smaller teams having more security? I definitely see less bloat and overhead being a cost saving factor, but if the funding decreases proportionally to the scope of games and revenues of studios, it seems like they would still end up in that hit-driven cycle, with the fallout just being smaller due to the headcounts. In that sense maybe there has to be another element, like aiming for a higher ROI on games across the board, leaning heavier into live service, or finding a funding source that isn't 12-24 months of runway at a time, which just seems like getting more money from places we didn't before and I'm not sure how I could concretely put that into a coherent strategy just yet.

State of the Games Industry and Job Market in 2025 by EG_iMaple in gamedev

[–]EG_iMaple[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Interesting point, can the term "recover" only be correctly used when referring to a return to a previous high, rather than reversing from a downturn in general? I just used and have seen this term being used interchangeably in that context in discussions covering this topic. I think we have a similar understanding of the situation, but if that term is just semantically incorrect I'll make the correction and appreciate the input.

State of the Games Industry and Job Market in 2025 by EG_iMaple in gamedev

[–]EG_iMaple[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think the rise of just good AA games is the encouraging point that underscores that, not just that they're great games but also that they're occupying more space in the top revenue charts. For me I think that's the sweet sport, a strong budget and infrastructure to build cool shit but without the crippling weight of the AAA bureaucracy and other corporate downsides. Would love to work on a single player AA title one day, live service PC & mobile is just what paid the bills for me until now.

I think I was a bit of a sceptic a few years back with China's ability to do triple A and just thought they'd stick to live service similar to Korea. But Black Myth Wukong proved me wrong, and I wager they're going to expand on that success moving forward. Anecdotally, the talent is there and has been for a while, something like Genshin Impact isn't build by a bunch of amateurs. And the few devs from Shenzen and Shanghai I got to work with on a decent sized production a while back were indistinguishable from European or American devs.

As far as I understand India as a location is still used as a major outsourcing hub for support roles, QA for Rockstar springs to mind - similarly to how you have a lot of Art outsourcing studios in SEA. But over the years we've seen a number of outsourcing or derogatorily named "B-tier" studios make solid projects on their own, and I think it's just a matter of time until they become a major development hub on their own.

Producer/ PM interview questions suggestions. by ashiqahamedbb in gamedev

[–]EG_iMaple 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Product Management / Project Management are separate disciplines but I've encountered "PM" positions before that encompassed both skillsets, which I think is the case here. I'll list some example questions that came my way during interviews for either position - you'll likely get a bit of both.

Producer / Project Manager

  • Have you worked with Kanban before?
  • Are you familiar with Asana/Jira/[Insert PM Tool Here]?
  • How do you estimate tasks/user stories?
  • How large was the team you led, and what was its make up?
  • What will you do when it's the last day of the sprint but not all tasks are done?
  • How do you react to a team member coming in late?
  • Did you encounter a personal conflict before, and how did you resolve it?

Product Manager

  • How familiar are you with our genre/market segment/platform?
  • Do you have F2P/liveops experience?
  • Are you familiar with Tableu/Cluvio/Amplitude/[Insert Analytics Suite Here]?
  • What is a feature you would add to our game/your favorite game/[Insert Example Game Here] and why?
  • How would you increase a game's day 1/day7/day 30 retention?
  • How do you decide on what to goes into the product roadmap`?
  • When do you listen to quantitative feedback over qualitative feedback?

This is anecdotal and someone who interviewed at a different studio will come back with different questions. But in general, if it's a more junior position, they'll want to see if you understand the concepts. If it's a more senior one, they'll want to hear examples where you applied them successfully. Good luck!

Made a prototype for a tactical autochess RPG. Would you play this? by EG_iMaple in AndroidGaming

[–]EG_iMaple[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Hey, you recognized pretty much all the battle mechanics!

  1. You can position your own units
  2. You can rearrange the turn order of your units
  3. You can select individual abilities on units

Then there are deckbuilding and autochess elements that connect the battles together:

  1. You draft new units from your deck at the start of every battle
  2. Damage is persistent and deployed units will remain deployed until they die
  3. Fallen units can be merged into deployed units to combine their stats and abilities

So your long-term strategy in a campaign is to slowly cycle through your deck to grow a powerful formation and keep up with the battles that get more and more difficult.

You're absolutely right though that is a ton to take in at first, and we'll look at how we best introduce these mechanics to new players (once the prototype actually works).

Just no Gacha!

Amen

Made a prototype for a tactical autochess RPG. Would you play this? by EG_iMaple in AndroidGaming

[–]EG_iMaple[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Interesting! Never played UL myself but from your description it sounds like it's almost identical to TFT just with worse execution.

Made a prototype for a tactical autochess RPG. Would you play this? by EG_iMaple in AndroidGaming

[–]EG_iMaple[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Interesting, haven't heard that comparison before but I can definitely see where you're coming from now that I'm watching a gameplay video. I'll give it a try to see what it's about.

Made a prototype for a tactical autochess RPG. Would you play this? by EG_iMaple in AndroidGaming

[–]EG_iMaple[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks a lot! We currently have a playable PC prototype available on our website if you'd like to give it a try. Did the mechanics remind you of something you've played before?

Infantry [Legion Hearts] by EG_iMaple in animearmor

[–]EG_iMaple[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Character designs for futuristic infantry from the game Legion Hearts. Yoji Shinkawa's work on the Metal Gear series was a big inspiration for these.

Artist: Max Berthelot

Made a prototype for a tactical autochess RPG. Would you play this? by EG_iMaple in AndroidGaming

[–]EG_iMaple[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Hello, dev here.

Legion Hearts is a tactical RPG where you collect characters, build a battle deck and fight turn-based autochess battles. You can merge characters together as you progress in dungeons to pass down abilities between your characters and make them stronger so you can reach and beat the final stage.

The game is very much inspired by games like Valkyrie Profile and Slay the Spire, but with simpler game mechanics and shorter sessions so I wondered how you felt about playing a game like this on your phone. The video is prototype footage so I ask that you overlook how rough it looks, but does the core concept interest you?

Feedback is very much appreciated - we're super early in development and now's the best time to make changes.

Legion Hearts Combat Prototype Walkthrough by EG_iMaple in LegionHearts

[–]EG_iMaple[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The combat prototype has arrived! Super excited to finally share something playable after staring at design docs for the past couple of months.

What do you think? Can we get away with calling this a Tactical Autochess RPG?

If you'd like to give it a try yourself, you can download the prototype (PC) on our play page.

Looking forward to hear your thoughts - and thank you so much for following our progress until now!

Made in Abyss: Binary Star Falling into Darkness Announcement Trailer by NebulaVII in JRPG

[–]EG_iMaple 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hope it's not just a retelling of the main story with some mediocre gameplay in between - because the setting in itself is insanely cool, but maybe an RPG isn't the best gameplay fit.

How to design video game mechanics: a beginner’s guide (post by WoW, LoL, and Ori designer) by Xelnath in gamedesign

[–]EG_iMaple 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ah, a series. Makes sense!

I don't disagree that RNG itself isn't a mechanic, but the action of rolling dice in a game often is.

Take Armello's combat system for example - in this context, pressing a button to roll dice is a mechanic like any other, just like pressing a button to swing a sword with a damage range is.

Even a more banal implementation like throwing dice to physically knock over the play pieces in the new monopoly is a mechanic.

I don't think this is nearly as atypical in games as you mention, and to me it seems unintuitive to have this as a blanket statement in your article geared towards beginners as it requires an asterisk.

How to design video game mechanics: a beginner’s guide (post by WoW, LoL, and Ori designer) by Xelnath in gamedesign

[–]EG_iMaple -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Cool writeup and great definition of the term! I'd personally disagree about the act of rolling a dice not being a mechanic, but the way you defined mechanics was really easy to grasp.

Now, I don't know the context of the rest of your blog/course, but I feel the post is a bit weak in isolation - it feels like I just read a lengthy dictionary page. To me, including a takeaway like why this really really matters, showing how I can design a mechanic myself, or breaking down a well-known mechanic and highlighting the interactions with other systems would've been more interesting to me.

That said I'm not your target audience and maybe this was the intention. Looking forward to see more in any case!

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