[arg_discuss] ARG SIG Chat Feb. 3 - Goals and Sharing Info/Techniques/Ideas

[despain at quantumcontent.com]

Adam said...

> I would like to make "encouraging much more sharing of advice and

> ideas" one of our aims, but this is a personal thing (feel free to

> shoot it down :)). I feel we need to kickstart more sharing of

> sensitive materials - NOT the mid-game "shall I do this with the plot,

> or that?" that was mentioned in the logs, but the other part, the

> post-mortem thoughts/improvements/ideas etc.


I still think we need to formalize this as making "developer community"
part of our explicit goals. Frankly, it's the most important thing about
the SIG for me, not just a nice add-on.



> If you look at the post-mortems regularly published on

> gamasutra.com/Game Developer Magazine (and even collated into books!),


The thing is, we're trying to conduct this conversation in the same medium
where we play our games - the wide open internet. Books are outside that
context and even most gamasutra articles require registration to read.
Sure, it's free registration, so you wouldn't think it was much of a
barrier, but it works to set that material apart from the rest of the
Internet.

I think we need some similar boundaries for a sense of privacy before
we'll open up and start building community.

I couldn't tell from your post if you were supporting this or not.

Wendy Despain
quantumcontent.com



> they are stuffed full of commercially sensitive info: facts, figures,

> references to and explanations of corporate strategies, slamming of

> partners/publishers for screwing up, etc. I've pulled some stuff out

> of them that the authors would have been in trouble for saying in any

> other context.They were officially the most popular article, I think

> according to reader surveys, always interesting, and generally the

> most useful for professional development, I suspect. For a genre based

> so much on communication and the use of media, I think we are too

> quiet. I totally understand that client relationships put brakes on

> what people can say, but we need to help people convince their clients

> to allow much more open sharing. Perhaps post mortems are the way to

> achieve this? Colin's right: "<colin> you can talk about coding

> without compromising the contents of your game", BUT ... 90% of the GS

> post mortems wasn't coding, usually there was lots of politics and corp

> strategy, and project mgmt info.