Transcript

Hi, I’m Phil Lakin, 

I’m enrolled in the Indie Game Design Masters course. I am now at the end of the development practice module, and this video is the personal case study portion of the assignment. 

When I applied for the course, I wanted to understand more about good game design, the steps involved in the creation of a game, and what I’d need to learn to be able to do it.

I’m very easily distracted. There are so many things I want to learn or tinker with and I wanted to gain some focus, and work towards something meaningful.

The last year or so, I’ve been feeling fairly isolated, starting a new job, moving states twice, and the covid lockdown, I have lost a sense of belonging and I’ve been looking for a way to redevelop a sense of community I had during my bachelor’s degree.

The rapid ideation sessions provided a safe place to try new ideas, in particular the freedom to fail. In the first session I took this as an opportunity to “unlearn” my old ways of doing things and try a different approach to a project Ultimately, it didn’t work, and I spent far too much time in ideation and got too caught up in my ideas to actually get anything “real” done.

However my creative and problem-solving skills have come a very long way, I’d never thought of myself as a particularly creative person before. The tools and techniques we’ve used in the rapid ideation sessions have translated really well into my day job and I’ve been surprised at how easily I’ve been able to come up with new and creative solutions to challenges.

When it comes to community engagement, I’ve been exploring more groups relating to the kinds of games I enjoy playing, particularly simulations and incremental or idle games, and am still in the early phases of participation. (Collins 2018) (Collins and Evans 2007) I think these communities will grow into a rewarding engagement, not only for inspiration and idea generation, but also as a safe space to test out my ideas and game designs.

The process of critical reflection and being more deliberate in reviewing my own progress has given me a deeper insight into what I enjoy working on, what I struggle with, and being able to focus on how I can target those struggles with practice to improve my abilities. (GIBBS 1988)

I’m also working being more forgiving of my own failures. I am my own harshest critic, and I am trying to redirect this energy into finding ways of doing things differently, and also acknowledging that practice is an important step on the path to improvement. (Dweck 2010)

Discovering the concept of proximal learning was a big eye opener for me. understanding that mimickery is an early stage of learning how to do something independently. This really shone through during the unity tutorials in the second rapid ideation session and was a significant step in my development through this module. (VYGOTSKY 1978)

I’m always looking at ways to improve, and when I think back to my original aspirations, I wanted to be part of a community. In the early weeks of the course, I was regimented in my posting and engagement with fellow students on the canvas forums but as I discovered that participation wasn’t marked, I fell into the trap of focusing my time on research and the critical journal. Thinking about this again, there is a lot more to the course than the just the marks, as I did find reading other students posts and participating very rewarding.

Another improvement I want to make is inspired by favorite author of mine, Neil Gaiman. The quote is related to writing short stories, but I think it applies more widely.

Just finish things.

(Neil Gaiman 2020)

I really want to finish the rapid ideation prototypes I developed, at the very least the pirate incremental game. I enjoyed the design phase and feel disappointed in not having a functional game at the end of it.

I’ve been building up a bank of UI designs, based on my participation in some incremental game communities, and research on Pinterest of all places. The communities have been particularly useful in highlighting games from this niche, along with providing constructive criticism to the developers. Members provide very detailed feedback on the UI, along with balancing mechanics and difficulty. (‘Broken Mouse Convention’ 2020)

I’m hoping to get a new mac in early January, and I am going to use this as motivation to build out the pirate idle incremental game, and submit it to the community for feedback. I’m going to build it as a mobile game. I also intend to sketch out the roadmap for future development and let the community vote for the new features.

I am going to develop a catalog of at least 10 game design tropes before the start of the next course at the end of January 2021 and I want to include reasons people have for playing the different game types. I found Lazzaro’s research on this very interesting, and I think will help me develop the personas of my target audience. (Lazzaro 2004)

References

  • COLLINS, Harry. 2018. ‘A Sociological/Philosophical Perspective on Expertise: The Acquisition of Expertise through Socialization’. In Robert EVANS, K. Anders ERICSSON, Robert R. HOFFMAN, and Aaron KOZBELT (eds.). Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance. Cambridge University Press.

  • COLLINS, Harry and Robert EVANS. 2007. Rethinking Expertise. Chicago, UNITED STATES: University of Chicago Press.

  • GIBBS, G. 1988. Learning by Doing: A Guide to Teaching and Learning Methods. FEU

  • DWECK, Carol S. 2010. ‘Boosting Achievement with Messages That Motivate’. Education Canada 47(2), 5.

  • VYGOTSKY, L. S. 1978. Mind in Society. Harvard University Press. Available at: http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvjf9vz4 [accessed 18 Nov 2020].

  • NEIL GAIMAN. 2020. ‘Advice to Authors’. [online]. Available at: https://www.neilgaiman.com/FAQs/Advice_to_Authors [accessed 16 Dec 2020].

  • ‘Broken Mouse Convention’. 2020. [online]. Available at: https://www.reddit.com/r/incremental_games/ [accessed 18 Dec 2020].

  • LAZZARO, Nicole. 2004. ‘Why We Play Games: Four Keys to More Emotion Without Story’ 8.