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

[Adam Martin]

On 09/02/07, despain at quantumcontent.com <despain at quantumcontent.com> wrote:

> > 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.


FYI very little requires registration these days. IIRC no new articles
have used reg for a long time (none of those I've read in the last 12
months, for instance). The change was so noticeable a year or two ago
that I took it to be a deliberate change of policy.


> 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.


I don't see the two as mutually incompatible. The privacy that a free,
open group like the SIG can provide will never be enough for some
people (for instance, MindCandy would never be able to go on there and
start talking about where they'd put the cube; or Tony's comment in
the chat). In parallel with whatever restricted comms are taking place
we need to increase the openness and sharing of information. For
instance, now the cube has been found, are MindCandy going to do a
public post mortem or similar? The trend so far has been for the
commercial companies not to do this :(. That is a trend I'd like to
change.

Look at Troy for an example of what I'd like to see more of, both
because such post-mortems are very interesting and because they are
very effective at teaching new PM's techniques and approaches in ARG
design and development.

Adam