Game Design Process 101: Part II (Creative Thinking) For many people who want to be Game Designers, the most difficult thing about the process, aside from the actual work, follows soon after the initial spark of inspiration strikes. More often than not, the first mistake a budding developer makes is to get inspired and immediate start the execution of the game’s design, usually after slapping together a whole lot of hype to get other people interested in his or her project. Screenshots, like an actual plan, are optional. A great example would be GamerJoe21 taking a shower, thinking about the ‘kick-ass war movie’ he saw last night where ‘that dude did that awesome thing with that minigun’. Don’t laugh, it’s probably happened numerous times… Unfortunately, for a game to be the best it can be, there must be some amount of planning and preparation. “But wait! So the question is not what your game will be about, for you’ve already satisfied that in the first part of the Game Design Process, namely inspiration. Whew.
How to Change the Reputation of Your Business A business’s reputation often dictates its sales. A bad reputation leads to a lack of willingness on the part of the consumer to purchase a product or service from the business. You don’t need to trash your business and start a new one to rebuild your reputation; confronting the problem that has led to your company’s poor reputation will result in people returning to your business. As long as you’re prepared to make changes to the way your business operates, a positive reputation will follow. Step 1 Determine the cause of your business’s poor reputation. Step 2 Announce any changes that you’ve made. Related Reading: 10-Step Process of Business Change Step 3 Focus on the customer. Step 4 Volunteer in the community. Step 5 Ask customers for their opinion about your business. Step 6 Train your staff. About the Author Located in Pittsburgh, Chris Miksen has been writing instructional articles on a wide range of topics for online publications since 2007. Have Feedback?
Visualizing the Creative Process As I coach new developers, I've taken to scribbling out the same useful diagram for visualizing the creative process again and again on coffee-ringed napkins. In order to limit my future abuse of culinary paper wares, I've reproduced my images in a more formal fashion in this essay. The conversation usually starts with the following statement: "Creativity is like a snake swallowing a series of tennis balls." And when confused looks inevitably result, I sketch some variant of this odd little picture: Using this as a starting point, we start chatting about joys and pitfalls of creativity.The Brainstorming PhaseFailures in brainstormingThe Culling PhaseFailures in cullingCyclingFailures in cycling The Brainstorming Phase We all start with an idea. Brainstorming starts out small and expands over time There are several activities that occur during this phase:Ideas: Generate new ideas related to your initial insight. A multitude of experiments arise during brainstorming Problems with brainstorming
Social Networking Risks for Corporations By Carl Timm The rapid explosion of social networking is starting to affect corporations. Believe it or not, employee use of social networking sites while at work isn’t the only reason corporations are running into problems; corporations themselves have started using social networking sites for a multitude of reasons, such as marketing, employee communications, and emergency response services, just to name a few. The reliance on social networking use has introduced some serious vulnerability issues for these corporations. Below is a list of some of the vulnerabilities corporations are now facing: Identity Theft Data Leakage Legal Cyber Bullying Discrimination Reputation Damage Internet Threats Attackers love using social networking sites to steal people’s identities. Data leakage introduces a serious risk for companies. Legal ramifications are an often overlooked risk that corporations face when employees post to their social networking sites while at work.
Risk and Reward Deluxe « #AltDevBlogADay I recently came across a quote from Cliff Bleszinski (source forgotten) where he contemplated that he’d rather have other game designers ripping off Gears of War’s “active reload” mechanic than its cover-based shooting. Reading that, I was reminded of an observation that my friend and colleague Peter once had while we were playing Wii Tennis together. We were pretty good players, having played that game daily during our lunch break for months. And we finally understood the finesse, the genius, of the service in Wii Tennis. The service in Wii Tennis works like this: First, you waggle the Wii Remote to throw the ball into the air. Then you make a racket swing-like gesture with the remote in order to hit the ball. While the power serve is played by throwing the ball into the air and hitting it with the bat when it has reached its peak, the lulu-service needs the player to hit the ball moments before the Mii catches the ball again with his hand.
The Change Game: Engaging Exercises to Teach Change J. DeLayne Stroud February 26, 2010 Successful initial implementation and ongoing maintenance of process improvements requires overcoming the resistance to change. Green Belts are change agents who need to recognize, understand and interpret resistance to change and develop skills to manage it effectively. Managing change resistance is often covered in training, yet a primary learning issue facing most organizations is the lack of engagement and motivation in lecture-based training. By using simulations, exercises or games, practitioners can enliven their learning environments and improve knowledge retention, skills and applications. Games are a great way to illustrate teaching concepts for several reasons. The following exercises and games were designed to increase participant understanding of the emotional barriers that are part of resistance and how to deal with them. Change Game 1: Cross Your Arms Duration: 5 minutes Number of participants: unlimited Materials required: none
4 Powerful Game Development Tools | Gameplay Passion September 20th, 2012 When making a game, you want to : Work efficiently and quicklyEasily organize and keep track of your ideasSee your game in action as soon as possibleEasily test if the final product matches to your Game Design In this article, I present 4 powerful game development tools that you can use to achieve the 4 goals stated above. 1) Game Design document (GDD) Update 23/03/2013 : some of my ideas here about game design documents may be outdated, check this article for more up-to-date ideas. When a game is born, it comes to the world in the form of a piece of paper or a word document called Game Design Document A Game Design Document describes EVERY feature of your game in a precise, clear and detailed way. Every detail should be there, no exception. When I started game development a few years ago, I made very incomplete or no GDDs at all. By neglecting to maintain a GDD, I was off-topic most of the time. The quickest way to develop a game is to imagine it first. 2) Dev Journal
How to Change the Reputation of Your Business A business’s reputation often dictates its sales. A bad reputation leads to a lack of willingness on the part of the consumer to purchase a product or service from the business. You don’t need to trash your business and start a new one to rebuild your reputation; confronting the problem that has led to your company’s poor reputation will result in people returning to your business. Step 1 Determine the cause of your business’s poor reputation. Step 2 Announce any changes that you’ve made. Related Reading: 10-Step Process of Business Change Step 3 Focus on the customer. Step 4 Volunteer in the community. Step 5 Ask customers for their opinion about your business. Step 6 Train your staff. About the Author Located in Pittsburgh, Chris Miksen has been writing instructional articles on a wide range of topics for online publications since 2007. Have Feedback? Thank you for providing feedback to our Editorial staff on this article.
Game Design Resources Inside The Mysterious World Of Online Reputation Management In the Whack-a-Mole game of online reputation management, it’s not so much about completely erasing all the bad things that are being said about you on the Internet: it’s about replacing the stuff you don’t want people to see with things that you do want them to notice. The Internet has a memory, and anything of note that happens to anyone is bound to find its way onto sites where everyone can see who you are and what you’ve been doing with yourself. All of it: the good, the bad and especially the really ugly. It could be incidents that at the time, seemed funny or cool, but upon later examination turn out to a source of embarrassment. Companies have similar issues, where their online presence can be marred by misdeeds or other issues, or could even be “hijacked” by outsiders or competitors with different agendas. But there’s a growing cottage industry of reputation management firms devoted to “fixing” these kinds of problems. The Reputation Management Process How much better? 1. 2. 3.
DC On Using Math Not too long ago, a friend told me about an experience she had at a local game store. The topic of Privateer Press came up, and she mentioned my name in conjunction with some development topic. Much to her amusement, the guy’s response was something along the lines of: “Oh, yeah; I’ve heard of DC. He’s the guy who does math.” I guess my interest in mathematics shows through a bit in my blogs or in projects I’ve worked on, but my actual day-to-day work usually involves a whole lot more writing, editing, planning, proofing, and discussing than it involves hardcore mathematical calculations and analysis. What little math I get to indulge in on a frequent basis is pretty simple stuff, from basic computation to numerical distributions to some probabilistic and statistical analysis. There are, however, times I can really dig into the mathematics behind a particular project, and one of my current projects ideally fits the bill. The Guy who does Math, -DC
Journal of Business Research - The role of brand logos in firm performance Volume 66, Issue 2, February 2013, Pages 180–187 Thought leadership in brand management II Edited By Bill Merrilees, Elaine Wallace, Isabel Buil, Leslie de Chernatony and Duncan Guest Abstract This research demonstrates that the positive effects of brand logos on customer brand commitment and firm performance derive not from enabling brand identification, as is currently understood, but primarily from facilitating customer self-identity/expressiveness, representing a brand's functional benefits, and offering aesthetic appeal. Keywords Brand logos; Brand management; Aesthetics; Commitment; Brand extensions; Firm performance Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Inc.