Always ask “what else?”

There is an easy way to immediately start finding better solutions to problems and coming up with more good ideas. It involves breaking a habit of laziness that most of us have acquired through the years.

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.

Joining the IGDA GD SIG and other fun abbreviations

I just had an amazing synchronicity.

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.