Yonatan Shaham's blog
A blog on product management & game making
Latest posts
Online payments for product managers
Since I started in Duda, all the features I was involved in as a product manager were related to online payments: app store, client billing, e-commerce, and membership. I was also responsible to billing Duda users under a unique and complex billing scheme. In this post, I would like to share with product managers the knowledge I gained during this time. The following is some advice from my…
My problem with RimWorld and the game I’m trying to make
I tried to play RimWolrd a few times, and each time the same things disappointed me. So why I'm not a fan of such a successful game?
Designing basic UX for the maritime trader game
Today I worked on improving my game UX. I started with a high-level sketch. Then reusing what even assets I can to reduce delivery times.
Closing the loop and thinking about UX
Finished creating the basic game loop as a minimal working software. The next step is improving the UX.
Product management principles in practice: indie game development
Two days ago, I worked on my new game idea for 60 minutes. In those 60 minutes, I put some key product management, lean, and agile principles into work.
Taxi + Trader Roguelike = New Game
I have an idea of how to combine two of the indie game demos I developed into a new game.
Product manager resume: top 3 mistakes
As a hiring manager, I have read hundreds of product manager resumes. It is true, it takes me less than five seconds to decide if a resume is worth reading. I have noticed 3 key mistakes many product managers make and I would like to share them with you.
A difference of night and day
I did not post a lot in the last few days, partly because I was swept by work. I did have a lot of thoughts on the game, and applied many changes. The first thought that I started to run with, emerged a week ago. I realized that I've been too fixed on the notion that the game experience should be pretty much the same in all game phases. I think that the success of open world game like Minecraft…
Mouse movements, testing
Following the user-testing , I changed the movement controls from WASD to mouse. the user points with the mouse and right clicks to set a destination. Once clicked, the avatar progress to the destination without stopping. This was not my initial intention, but a result of some logic from the WASD code. By I decided to keep is as it manifests the roguelike nature that once the player makes a…
UX improvements, user testing
Today I focused on user experience (UX) improvements. The first improvement originated from quick user testing I did earlier this week: a user expected to see something on the screen around the player avatar when they buy or sell something. They offered an animation of popping coins. This type of animation is very excepted in games these days. So I created a simple animation each time the player…
Graphic UI
I created a new UI, based on icons instead of text. Drag to compare:
We have a game loop
In the last few days I did not have the chance to write something. I did complete a working game prototype with a complete game loop: The player moves around the world on a grid, and can explore it at will. Player movement advances time. The player can buy or sell cloth at villages at different prices. Buying at a low price and selling at a high price is the way to make money. With time, player…
Starting trader rougelike
I started developing the game. Currently the best way to describe it is a trader roguelike : The player moves on a grid, and time progresses only when the player moves. The player can buy and sell items, of a single type. Prices are different across the map. As time progresses, the player get hungry, and when hungry enough the health starts to diminish. The player can buy food at the food store…
Starting to post daily about game making
I decided to post more frequently on my game development journey. You can expect that these post will be somewhat fragmented and associative. Yesterday I got to think again on my want to build a game about trade rout formation. I've written about this before and even developed a prototype , but it did not go well. I decided to do some more detailed historical research to get inspiration. I started…
Product manager: be a professional, not an artist.
I think that product managers are seen too often as wizards: expected to move the needle from some internal intuition. I argue that product managers should be professionals.
Validating a game idea using a text-based adventure
Three weeks ago I published the first version of "You can establish a trade route". It was a short text adventure. The plater is presented with a short text and an image and can choose their next action. My goals in this version were: Validating decision model Validating the theme Creating some content for future versions Being stuck I've been trying to work on this game for a while now. Each time…
Part two: Product presentation and meeting tips (Brainstorming does not work)
This is the second post about presentations. You can read the first one in case you missed it. Present in a way that tells a story and gives required background When you present the goals, expectations, and subject matter in a good way, people can quickly connect and contribute. If your presentation is unorganized, people will have a hard time trying to respond. I pretty much hate the term…
Product presentation and meeting tips (Brainstorming does not work)
As a product manager, you do a lot of presentations: to your fellow product managers, your squad, customer success, sales, marketing, and others. Looking at my calendar, I do one to three presentations each week. Not all of them are called ‘Presentation’, yet all of them share the notion of me presenting some content to the other participants and them responding in some way. Over the years I’ve…
Product benchmarks
One of the challenges product managers are facing is benchmarking KPIs and metrics. When you are about to release a new feature or product, what should you expect? What would be considered a success? Would 5% adoption be a great success or a complete failure? I think the reason product managers are having a hard time here is due to the fact the product metrics are deeply related to business data…
How do I write PRDs and user stories today, and how did I get there?
The beginning I got into product management unintentionally and unofficially. As a co-founding CTO of a software startup, I practiced product management with know that it is product management: I decided what our app would look like, how it would behave, and supplied developers and designers with instructions on what to build next. At the time, while working with experienced mentors in a startup…
How and why did I work with both Scrum and Kanban at the same time?
Scrum vs Kanban When working in squads in agile methodology, many ask themselves with which framework to work: Scrum or Kanban? I worked with both at the same time for more than a year and a half, and both worked very well. Here I will try to explain how did I get to this position and why I think it was successful. What does ‘Scrum’ and ‘Kanban’ mean anyway? In the most general way, these are two…