Do a mind-experiment. Imagine the system you would be prototyping as you want it in the final version of the game and “play around with it”. Is it fun? Is it useful? Is it pleasant to use?
If not, skip the prototype and the game system. To paraphrase Kyle Gabler, a participant in The Experimental Gameplay project: The prototype will never be more fun/useful then what you see in your head.

See if the game system exist in other games. Check for online flash games as well as the AAA blockbusters. It’s a lot faster and cheaper to buy a game than spend days on programming a prototype.

2. Don’t code it

If you do go ahead with the prototype, ask yourself: What is the simplest way to set up the prototype? Can you use chess pieces and a couple of dice? Excel? Or do you have to program it?

My favorite prototyping tool is a placemat that can be drawn on by markers. (old RPG tool)

Excel is second. Learn how to use it and you can simulate very complex systems in a fairly easy manner there.

3. Exactly one question

Know exactly what question the prototype is supposed to answer and make sure it’s only one question. This may seem like common sense but it’s amazing how often prototypes end up as exploratory tools with no clear goals.

4. Fail fast and often

What is most likely to cause your system to fail? Identify it and test that first. If the prototype proves that a system isn’t feasible you want to know as soon as possible. Prototypes aren’t there to show you what works, they are there to show you what doesn’t.

If all of your prototypes are resounding successes, you probably aren’t being creative enough! One of the best things about prototypes is that it allows you to test crazy ideas cheaply. Use that!

5. Cheap, fast and easy

Cheat, hack and steal. Abstract everything that doesn’t help you answer the question. Do a pass at designing the prototype, then look at it and say “What can I cut away?”. Do this again and again until you can’t cut anything more without hurting the prototype.

A prototype isn’t done when there is nothing left to add but when there is nothing left to take away.

6. Presentable

The reason you are doing a prototype is probably to convince someone (your creative lead, senior designer or anyone outside the proto dev team) that the system you are suggesting is a good idea. Make sure it is understandable and easy to play with after only minimal instruction.

7. Over-Communicate

There are two types of communication: Under-Communication and Over-Communication. The latter takes less time.

Sit down with all the stakeholders before you start working on the prototype and get them to agree what they want to see and how. Put it in print and distribute it. This way there will be no surprises (ok, a minimal amount. People still always manage to understand things differently) at the end of the prototype.

If something changes mid-way, let everyone know, even those you think might know already. Get their feedback and opinions. This saves you from a world of headaches down the line.

Probably the biggest sin I’ve commited against good prototyping is changing the goal of the prototype half-way in and not letting anyone outside the design department know about it! You can imagine how much fun we had at the wrap-up meeting. Don’t let this happen to you!

Most of the questions are intentionally a bit broad but that’s because they are essay questions.

• What is the feeling it tries to convey?
• How does it try to convey that feeling?
• Where does the game excel?
• Where does the game cut corners without it being very apparent?
• Where does the game fail?
• What other improvements could be made whose absence isn’t a failure?
• What makes this game unique?
• What challenges is the game struggling with?
• Where does the game innovate?

The notebook doesn’t only help with ideas but also tasks and errands, time and date of engagements, names, birthdays, phonenumbers…
My notebook has become an external harddrive for my brain’s volatile memory.

But of course it’s not enough to just write things down if you never look at them again. End the day (or start of the next one) go through what you wrote that day and transfer the information you need to other mediums. Put engagments on your calendar, to-dos on your tasklist and other things where they belong.

This way you never have to forget anything again. I don’t know how many hours I used to spend per month just trying to remember an idea I had or what I was going to do that day that I had promised someone. Now I’m good and organized like all the cool kids.

Get your brain upgrade today, start carrying a notebook.

We have a google group that has been quite active lately and now we have a blog as well.

We are still formalizing the structure and procedures and prioritizing the projects and initiatives that we will be starting off with.

Some things that have been discussed are: game design challenges, standard game design document templates, speakers bureau, conference tie-ins and of course the obuquitous discussion on whether game design is art.

kv
Grétar

Coffee

The king of stimulants. A lot of people drink coffee out of an intense addiction and need it just to wake up. My first advice is to break the addiction. It is a much more useful stimulant if you don’t drink copius amounts of it every day (aside from the health benefits).

It’s most useful effect is that it aside from being a mild stimulant, it reduces the amount of melatonin in the body, which is a sleep hormone. The effects of a single cup of coffee lasts for around 6 hours so don’t drink it late in the evening if you need to be at work the morning after.

Best usage: A cup or two in the late afternoon or early evening if you need to stay up late. More than two cups will have limited, if any effect.

Sugar

Candy, sweet pastries or just sucking on molasses. If you eat a lot of candy every day, the best thing you can do for your energy level is to break that habit.

Candy and other foods with a lot of simple carbohydrates have a high Glycemic Index (GI) which means it raises your blood-sugar very fast after eating. This is the sugar-rush. However, it raises the blood-sugar so fast that insulin levels spike to counteract it and as a result the blood-sugar level soon crashes below the initial level, causing that sugar crash. Of course you can eat more candy at this point but that will send your body through a very uncomfortable blood-sugar rollercoaster

Best usage: No more than an hour or two before you stop working. Sugar is the last-ditch emergency stimulant and it’s effects are very short lived.

Energy drinks

The effects of energy drinks vary a lot. Most of them use Coffein, Taurine and Guarana and minimal sugar so most of them have very similar effects to that of coffee. Some of them do include sugar though but enough slom-acting stimulants that you don’t feel the blood-sugar crash as intently.

Best usage: Depending on the ingredients, use like coffee and/or sugar

Water

Yes water! More than 50% of people in the western world are dehydrated on a daily basis, mostly due to excessive drinking of coffee, tea and soda. Dehydration reduces our energy levels and concentration. If you know you have a long day ahead of you, start the day off forcing as much water  as you can into your body. Yes, you’ll have to pee a lot more but then again 5 minute breaks every hour are good for you as well.

Best usage: As much as you can, whenever you can

Nuts

Nuts are the best energy snack you can possibly get. (preferrably if they aren’t frosted and coated in cheese) They are very rich in fatty oils (healthy fat) and complex carbohydrates, meaning they fill you with slow burning and long-lived energy.

Best usage: As a snack throughout the day and all night if necessary

Breaks

Get up every hour for at least 5 minutes. Break your train of thought and stretch your legs. This will keep your circulation going and work against mental fatigue.

Best usage: Every hour without exception

My patent pending 24 hour max energy program:

06:00 – Any low-sugar breakfast
06:01 - Start your marathon water consumption for that day. No coffee  yet!
10:00 – A jogurt and/or some fruit (even sweet fruit is OK)
12:00 – A protein rich lunch. Chicken or tuna are optimal. Brown rice on the side or other complex carbs to avoid raising the blood-sugar
15:00 – A jogurt and/or some fruit (alternatively you could snack on nuts throughout the afternoon) This should help you avoid that afternoon slump.
Don’t forget the water!
19:00 - A protein rich dinner. If you are taking a 24 hour workday then you should limit carbs and fat similarly to the lunch.
More nuts and water. No candy or energy drinks yet!
24:00 – A jogurt and/or some fruit. You can replace this if you are sick of jogurt and fruit at this point but stay away from anything high in sugar or wheat.
01:00 – Now is the time for coffee or non-sugar energy drinks. It’s OK to have one cup up to 3 hours earlier but any sooner than that and you don’t get the full effect. Don’t drink it much later as it will affect your sleep once you finally get it.
03:00 – A bagel or other pastries. Wheat and simple carbs are ok at this point but keep anything high in sugar off for another hour or two.
04:00 - This is the first time you should even think about eating candy. Eating some now will require more in an hour though to stave off the sugar crash
05:00 – Candy time! Keep yourself going through the final hour on a sugar rush. It will effect your concentration but at least you are awake. This will also affect your sleep as your blood-sugar will be low afterwards

Of course if you can do this without coffee or candy, all the better. The better sleep you get after the crunch, the quicker you will bounce back.

Note that I did not mention nicotine. I’m an ex-smoker myself and do not consider smoking a viable way to keep your energy level up. Especially as the withdrawal pangs will chip away at your attention later on. The breaks are good but you can do these without actually smoking.

Of course jacking up on stimulants is never good for long-term productivity so I hope you rarely need to use this guide. However, when we do need to pull all-nighters it’s good to know how best to do so.

Hope this helps

There are quite a few reasons why they should be taken:

• It gives people that couldn’t make it to the meeting a chance to follow up
• It tends to make sure the meeting stays on track, especially if you have an agenda as well
• It’s easier to remember what decisions were made. (How often haven’t you been at a meeting that went round and round so much you couldn’t remember what was decided on an hour later?)

There are also quite a few reasons why you should take them:

• It shows you as an organized and responsible employee and coworker
• It can establish you as a leader as a good “minuteman” often needs to nudge the meeting back on course when to many digressions are made.
• It can get you into meetings at which you would otherwise not have been allowed
• You will have a much easier time remembering what was decided at the meeting

I will go deeper into it later how to take good meeting minutes but here are a few pointers:

• Only write down decisions. No “Danny talked about his previous experience with mods”. Of course the exceptions are any vital reasons for making the decision and if someone directly asks you to put something into the minutes. Then you should always do so.
• Be brief. Nobody wants to read the 40 page meeting minutes you write down from the 6 hours meeting. The best “minutemen” are those that can compress that meeting into 1 or 2 pages.
• Keep the meeting on track. When you are waiting to write down a decision on something for a very long time, it might be time for you to get the meeting back on track. This can be done very subtly with a “Sorry but what was our decision on X again?”

I hope I managed to convince you to take excellent meeting minutes at every important upcoming meeting. I know that every company I have worked at needs someone [else of course] like that.

At school we learned that all questions have a right answer and a number of wrong answers. When we find the right answer we are done and can move on to the next task. What most of us did not learn was that this is rarely sufficient outside of academia.

Whenever we have a question, a problem or a challenge, the first solution we come up with is rarely the best. Yet, when we have one half-decent solution to the problem at hand we tend to stop thinking and move on to the next task.

The really great solutions are at the back of the line. They are not the ones that come up first. They are the ones that pop up in the shower a week later once it’s too late to implement them. They are the ones we mention in the project retrospective as the way we really should have gone with the project. They are the ones our competitor used and we wish we had thought of first.

Finding them is easy. Next time you need to solve a problem, set out to come up with multiple solutions. Grab a piece of paper and write down every solution you can possibly think of, even the silly ones. Whenever you think of a solution that could possibly work, write it down and ask yourself “OK, what else could work?“.

Always ask “What else would work?”. It will change everything.

Had been seeking a website with proper information on professional development for game designers with no luck. Decided I had the skills and the mettle to create my own but just to make sure I wasn’t missing anything I decided to drop questions at a couple of forums.

Turns out that some guys over at IGDA (International Game Developer’s Organization) just recently started work on a SIG (Special Interest Group) within the organization, whose purpose would be exactly this: professional development for game designers, along with standardization of best practices and game analysis. (see the full SIG proposal here)

This will be a very interesting project as I believe a lot of these things are being tried for the first time in an open and commonly accessible manner. The industry needs more information sharing among designers. It needs more formalized best practices, it’s needs to give designers more guidance and it definitely needs more networking amongst them.

At the moment this SIG is just getting off the ground but I’ll be sure to keep you up to date as things develop.