Pascal Luban's Blog
Pascal Luban is a freelance creative director and game designer based in France. He has been working in the game industry as a game and level designer since 1995 and has been commissioned by major studios and publishers including Activision, SCEE, Ubisoft and DICE. In particular, he was lead level designer on the 'versus' multiplayer versions of both Splinter Cell - Pandora Tomorrow and Chaos Theory, he designed CTF-Tornado, a UT3 mod multiplayer map built to showcase the applications of physics to gameplay, he was creative director on Wanted – Weapons of Fate and lead game designer on Fighters Uncaged, the first combat game for Kinect. His first major published title as game designer was Alone In The Dark - The New Nightmare.
Leveraging his design experience on console and PC titles, Pascal is also working on Free-to-Play games for Facebook and mobile platforms. His references include Wars and Battles, Twist and Pop, a match-3 game, and Hockey Legends.
Lately, he has been working on several PC games on Steam (Of Kings and Men, The Black Death).
His first game for mobile platforms, The One Hope, was published in 2007 by the Irish publishers Gmedia and has received the Best In Gaming award at the 2009 Digital Media Awards of Dublin.
Pascal is design consultant for the Kainuu Gaming Cluster in Finland and gives master classes throughout Europe on various game design-related topics such as freemium design or level design.
His website: www.gamedesignstudio.com
LinkedIn profile: www.linkedin.com/in/pluban
Expert Blogs
In the first three parts of this chronicle, I mainly approached this subject from the angle of game and level design. But there is another angle that is gaining more importance in game design today: storytelling.
At this stage, the design team has defined the role that the open world will play in the desired game experience and has chosen one or more player progression strategies. It is time to "draw" the open world itself.
In this second part, I will cover a key need that an open world map must meet: Players’ progression.
In open world games, level design is the central feature, not the game system. Discover keys issues designers must address when planning their open world.
Most of the players who discover a free game for the first time never come back. Short-term retention has become a priority objective for game designers. This goal is often referred to as FTUE, the First Time User Experience. What are the best practices?
The mobile gaming segment has become dominant at the expense of PCs and consoles. So why advise indie developers to be cautious about those high-growth platforms?
Pascal Luban's Comments
Comment In:
[Blog - 05/07/2020 - 10:19]
Hello Alexis: r nFirst, you ...
Hello Alexis: r nFirst, you have to be aware that many people want to do that but there are far fewer positions. So, you 'll have to be tenacious. Here is what I would do: r nGet yourself a degree that will let you work in the game industry but ...
Comment In:
[Blog - 08/29/2019 - 10:58]
Glad you wrote about it. ...
Glad you wrote about it. I published a blog, over a year ago, on the same issue: Onboarding: Not only for free-to-play games anymore https://www.game-design-workshop.com/onboarding-ce-n-est-pas-que-pour-les-jeux-free-to-play .
Comment In:
[Blog - 02/05/2018 - 10:42]
Hello Daniel and thank you ...
Hello Daniel and thank you for your note.Serialized games can, indeed, create rich and deep universes with recurring characters and plots arching over several games. From this point of view, they are more effective than episodic games. However, their main weakness is the time it takes to develop one game. ...
Comment In:
[Feature - 11/22/2011 - 05:05]
Don't forget that F2P gaming ...
Don't forget that F2P gaming is drawing millions new players to our industry. As a consequence, overall revenue for our industry should grow. Furthermore, a key point I am advocating is my strong belief that F2P mechanisms will merge with other business models.
