opyate

I asked someone on Twitter about this the other day [0], and I'm genuinely curious: what is it about C# that makes game development serious?

0. https://twitter.com/LegatXyotic/status/1552219744723402756

It's also especially annoying when searching for jobs in games, and these ruddy e-gambling companies keep popping up on searches, because "gaming".

I'm lucky to have had a very balanced life. I had the geeky friends at school, and a whole mixture of friends via church. My dad was very sporty, so that rubbed off a bit on me: I participated in everything school had to offer (rugby, cricket, athletics); never any good, mind you, but there was always a C or D team that would me. My folks love caravan holidays, so we were away with the caravan club every second weekend, and the cherry on top were those 6+ weeks summer holidays by the riverside. We made plenty of friends this way, and had a variety of activities to occupy us (fishing, swimming, games, and the lone Double Dragon arcade machine in the canteen). But, when back home, I was very happy to switch on the old 486DX4 and tinker with Slackware and code Pascal or dual boot into DOS/Windows3.11 and tweak bat files so I can play Lemmings or something.

Perhaps it boils down to offering our own kids as many opportunities as possible. Not forcing it on them, but participating with them and showing a genuine interest. E.g. we've turned our 5 and 9 year olds into avid hikers by not forcing the walking on them, but by calling it "treasure hunting" and incorporating geo-caching into the walking. (Their friends, when coming along, ask me to carry them after a while, haha). When we go camping, we pick car-free campsites where they can roam free, and we can trust them because we've done all the tricky stuff with them a few times before. Those are their favourite holidays.

That said, being glued to a computer today is a whole different ball game, what with the various algorithms that keep folks engaged on social media and possibly in games. I don't know if I have an answer for this. (For our little ones, their tablets are managed by Google Family link, so no Youtube, and websites on Chrome and Play Store installs are approve-only.)

I agree, if there's a big "sprint 0" idea push that needs to happen, I'm all for get-togethers. But once that's out of the way, I prefer remote work for various reasons, as the task list is known, and I can crack on without interruptions.

Then there are all sorts of things we can do for the smaller ideation instances that pop over over the product development lifecycle, like setting meeting agendas, having folks send their notes ahead of time, and using the actual meeting to finalise the previously-disseminated information, and have a final round of questions/clarifications.

Not all meetings need to be people sitting in a room doing random talking.

I mostly come up with better ideas asynchronously anyway, after having some time to mull it over.

My gut is that for any ideation activity, individuals will have an initial set of ideas, and communicate this (whether spoken, or as jotted notes in the conferencing tool's chat). Those will have the earlier timestamps.

Then there are "spin-off" ideas, which you usually have more of in a face-to-face context, which will have the later timestamps.

I'd would have also liked to see if idea A inspired idea B, so a tree of ideas.

What I'm getting at: I'd like to check which of the "initial" or "spin-off" ideas were the "best" ideas. From experience, the initial ideas folks come up with usually spring from their prior experience, which means it's usually based on tried-and-trusted ideas which came before.

Also, I think it depends on the group: maturity, experience, etc. I generally hate big group discussions, and you inevitably have some in the group who dominate discussions. What I prefer is getting a meeting agenda ahead of time so I can come in prepared. Bonus if attendees can send their preliminary thoughts via email ahead of time. That will ensure that any verbal discussion is to the point, summarised, and leave room for any last-minute questions.

E.g. I would love more meetings to be like this one (involving Richard Feynman; he uses the phrase "great men", but I prefer "great people"):

https://juanuys.com/blog/2017/02/26/great-men-or-how-to-cond...

Personally, I'm learning mostly about marketing and market research at this stage of my career, so I'm currently on:

- https://gamediscover.co/ (paid membership)

- https://howtomarketagame.com/

In addition to the above, I subscribe to a bunch of newsletters too, like Derek Lieu, SuperJoost, ICO Steam, etc.

I use Godot, so I'm also on the Godot Discord, and I would post on there once every 2 weeks or so when I'm stuck on something in the engine, but not for much else.

I also use Twitter for gamedev-only (thank goodness), and there are some good discussions happening there too every now and then (e.g. this last night: https://twitter.com/ConorMODonovan/status/151362942886108774...)

You can also join IGDA and seek out a SIG (e.g. I'm on the climate SIG) where you talk about the overlap of gamedev with your special interest.

I feel like I need the standard "about, blog, etc" menu at the top. Will get to it one day ;-)

Meanwhile, text is so much more easily consumable. (Youtube Premium junkie here, BTW.)