A blog post by Simon Carless on 'game discovery'.
Monday, August 31, 2020
Tuesday, August 11, 2020
UNITY3D - Pointers
About Unity
<start quote>
Always wanted to learn to code, but never had the time? We’re supporting our community of students and educators during this time of school closures and remote learning by offering Create with Code Live.
* Create with Code is one of our most popular courses that makes learning to code fun and engaging through game development, and is aligned to ISTE Standards for computer science education. Starting on Monday, March 23, the Unity Education team will be hosting free, interactive Create with Code Live virtual classes open to students, teachers, and anyone else interested in learning to code.
* Learn more about Create with Code Live and see the full schedule here: https://learn.unity.com/course/create-with-code-live
- No need to log in to access this page
- Register for each Zoom webinar-based class on this page
- User will be directed to register here: https://create.unity3d.com/create-with-code-live
- Live Q&A through Zoom chat
- Class recordings with transcripts will be shared on this page
* Each weekday through May 8, a Unity Certified Instructor will host an hour-long virtual class at 9am PT and 5pm PT to accommodate different time zones. The content covered in both classes will be the same, so learners should attend the class that fits their schedule. Between classes, learners can expect to do up to 30 minutes of independent work. Live Q&A and community support will be available.
* Classes will be recorded, so you learners can catch-up on any classes they miss.
* Learners can attend all or some of the classes, depending on their availability and interests.
* By the end of this course, you will have foundational skills in Unity, C# computer programming, game design, and development. You’ll also be prepared to take the Unity Certified User certification exam.
* For students, we recommend applying for the Unity Student plan (https://store.unity.com/academic/unity-student) to make the most of Unity, but this is not required for participation in Create with Code Live. To get set up for the course, please install Unity (https://store.unity.com/download-nuo).
<end quote>
Extras:
New Unity course available including Educator resources! Real-Time Animated Storytelling is a course for artists to help them build the technical skills required for a career in animation. This course serves as a gentle introduction to the core concepts that animation studios use in their pipelines.Not only will you learn about real-time 3D animation concepts and workflows, you’ll become acquainted with a wide range of Unity tools and techniques for content creation of all kinds. This is the foundational knowledge that may set students on a path to becoming an animation layout artist, programmer, technical artist, or VR developer. More information here: https://blogs.unity3d.com/…/learn-how-to-tell-your-stories…/
Unity for Educators:
A Beginner’s Guide is a four-week live course starting July 14th created by teachers (including those found in this group!) who will introduce you to creating and teaching with Unity, best practices for bringing 3D interactive technology into the classroom and learning alongside your students.
Register for the live course: https://create.unity3d.com/unity-for-educators-jul20…
And read more about the course here: https://learn.unity.com/…/unity-for-educators-a-beginner-s-…
Thursday, June 18, 2020
Disabilities and Gaming
From the Boardgame Geek...
This BGG user shares their disability and how gaming has been a great outlet for them. Come read about their and others' experiences.
Read on...
Wednesday, June 10, 2020
Exercise: Game Café
Game Café - Quick-Learn-Play Some Casual Games
Use the following casual games as combination icebreakers to get teams to gel and as research and reflection objects for players to discuss and form opinions on the Essence of Games and Play.
Games for two people.
Games for groups.
Arrange three tables (breakout rooms).
Play games for 5+ people each.
Skull.games. (3-6) Just enter room, no sign up involved.
https://skull.games/ (and add a room name, something like "GameThinkingGroup1" etc.)
Tips for the host:
Enter a unique room name to generate a url and share the url with the other players.
It is not necessary to have visual connections with your players but you will need either a group video or audio call to synchronise and interact, and you will need a shared message board to announce the urls.
This is an 'orthodox' version of Skull, no house rules are really possible when the card selection mechanic is controlled by software.
Codenames. Share link, no sign up involved. No cheating possible (can’t peak at key card).
Dixit. (3-16) Register and sign up, then share room code.
Simplest site for Resistance, share room code. No extra roles featured, and mission leaders are randomly assigned.
Netgames.i0 is a simple site, no sign up involved. Share game code or link. Has 6 deduction games. Easy mobile access.
After one or two plays, mix the groups up: half stay, half move table.
Games for larger groups of people at-a-distance online
Scatagories is available at ScattergoriesOnline.net. (can host from 2-34 players). Share link. Sign up for extra categories.
Quiplash at QwiqWit.com. (3-12) Virtually just Quiplash from Jackbox. It’s free, and can have more players than Quiplash. Share room code.
Kahoot if you want to create your own pub-quiz style game. The host signs up on Kahoot.com and streams screen, others connect with their devices to Kahoot.it. Can create your own
quizzes. Used a lot for education, but does feature general trivia. Usually multiple choice.
If you have a little money to spend you could try QuizWitz. Need to pay
$44 to play with more than 6. Host signs up and streams screen, players simply connect
with their devices to catlab.tv. Can create your own quizzes. Various question types.
MultiplayerTrivia.com . Some setup needed in advance, players need to sign up. Share link
to join private game room. Type in written answers. Simply laid out, but as of the release
of this list the site is still in beta and lacks features such as choice of categories.
There are countless multiplayer quiz/trivia sites and mobile apps, including QuizUp,
Trivia Crack and Sporcle.com.
Sources
These games and more were catalogued courtesy of Evan Leed at @Evandeel on BGG https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/2425525/list-options-online-board-games
And the poster on Drive...
Notes:
Debriefing - good questions:
How easy was it to learn?
Did you have an experienced player?
How did you feel at the end of the first game?
How did you feel at the end of the second game?
How did you feel at the end of the third game?
How quick was each to learn? 1 try? 2 tries? Didn't learn?
Describe the atmosphere?
Was the game fun?
How did you feel at the end of the first game?
How did you feel at the end of the second game?
How did you feel at the end of the third game?
How quick was each to learn? 1 try? 2 tries? Didn't learn?
Describe the atmosphere?
Was the game fun?
Exercise: Safety Shoot Video in Zoom
Make a safety shoot video in Zoom
Start with the following throwaway line.
"my idea is..."
Open Zoom and select New Meeting
The meeting video window opens.
(If you want to display your screen select the green button)
Click on Record to record your session and confirm permission to record.
Click pause/stop to control the recording session.
Your mp4 file will be stored at the location specified under Settings>Recording (either local or cloud)
Tuesday, June 9, 2020
The Kickstarter Podcast
This is the "podcast from Kickstarter featuring stories about how independent creators bring their ideas to life. Meet an engineer turning air pollution into ink, a married couple who invented a device that lets you sing like a robot, an artist touring the U.S. in a mobile tattoo shop for women, and other creative people of all kinds. You’ll hear what inspires them, scares them, and keeps them going—and how they’ve remained true to their visions, even if mainstream culture didn't buy in."
"For an honest conversation about the value of creative work and stories about bringing bold new ideas to life"
Sunday, June 7, 2020
Well Researched Writing on GAMES
Brought to you and recommended by JSTOR's writers and editors
Why we love the grind (The Cut)
by Katie Heaney
A lot of video games are less about strategy or sword fighting than finishing a to-do list. And it turns out that’s one reason people love them.
Why Netflix’s The Witcher Is a Gamble (JSTOR)
TV shows based on video games can’t capture all the little minutiae that captivate gamers, like the map in the instruction manual.
How Much Would You Pay for a Nonexistent Dress? (JSTOR)
games that thrive on players spending real money on in-game assets.
Video Game Streams Are Creating New Forms of Community (JSTOR)
Khasino, a Marvel Strike Force streamer on Twitch, makes his living playing video games for an audience.
If video games are addictive, what does addiction even mean? (The New York Times)
by Ferris Jabr
The World Health Organization now recognizes “gaming disorder” as a kind of addictive problem. People may relate to video games in much the same way they do mind-altering drugs. But addiction itself is a lot more complicated than the longstanding brain-disease model might suggest.
The real danger of video games (Wired)
by Noam Cohen
No, video games don’t cause violence. But they, like many other forms of electronic entertainment, can warp our minds in other ways.
What kind of art is the video game? (Nautilus)
by Brian Gallagher
Psychologically, video games offer emotional satisfactions that movies and other media can’t match: The chance to co-create a story, social connections, and feelings of accomplishment or guilt.
The Only Fair Job Interview (JSTOR)
By: Farah Mohammed
Could taking some of the human element out of interviewing actually make the process more just?
A Critical Theory of Binge Watching (JSTOR)
By: Jake Pitre
We didn’t know we loved to binge until Netflix made it irresistible. To understand the new model, we should look back to Theodor Adorno.
Greek Gods and Game Theory (JSTOR)
By: Farah Mohammed
Game theory is the study of mathematical models of strategic interaction. Connecting it with famous stories makes it easier for students to grasp.
Making Men Online (JSTOR)
By: Alexandra Samuel
How the internet has both reinforced and tweaked traditional gender pathologies, especially for boys and men.
What’s Video Game Addiction and What’s Just Leisure? (JSTOR)
By: Lindsay Grace
Just because people enjoy a recreational activity doesn’t mean they’re addicted to it, even if they spend lots of time doing it.
Why Are Video Games so Great? (JSTOR)
By: Livia Gershon
An anthropologist investigating one group of committed gamers found people attracted not to realism, but to deeply engaging cooperative projects.
Tuesday, June 2, 2020
machinations.ie The Game Design Tool (for modelling and simulation and...)
machinations.ie The Game Design Tool (emphasis on The) https://machinations.io/
This is an amazing evolving web tool for flowcharting game design, for modelling resources, resource flows, and simulating game behavioural performance.
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| A screenshot from machinations.io https://machinations.io/ |
Think of it as an Economy for your game! For modelling playability, difficulty, resource parameters. From enemy spawn rates to in-game monetisation.
Friday, May 29, 2020
Thursday, May 28, 2020
OBS Studio for recording, screencasting and streaming
OBS Studio
Free and open source software for video recording and live streaming.
Download and start streaming quickly and easily on Windows, Mac or Linux
Exercise: The GV Sprint Process
Practical Skills for Intensive Problem Solving Exploration
The Sprint process involves a progressive shift of attention, from learning about a challenge defined by people, to learning how people respond to a design prototype that tries to re-solve that challenge. The process is bracketed into 5 workshop sessions. The suggested structure and techniques are focused on how to manage time, space and people over the duration; techniques for decisions, organising, coordinating.- Session 1: Imagine the goal (sprint) - Make a map and choose a target
- Roles and Responsibilities
- Set the long-term goal
- List sprint questions
- Map the As-Is Customer Journey
- Ask the Experts
- HMW How Might We...
- Organising Notes
- Why Why Why?
- ABC Always Be Capturing
- Pick a Target Decide
- Session 2: Explore many possibilities (sprint) - Sketch competing solutions
- Lightning demos (three minute demos)
- Work Alone Together Research
- Divide, Swarm
- The Four-Step Sketch
- Crazy 8s
- Session 3: Decide the design (sprint) - Decide on the best
- Art Museum
- Speed Critique
- Heat Map Dots to Focus on Interesting
- Straw Poll Dots for Voting
- Supervote Dots
- Rumble or All-in-One
- Note-and-Vote
- Storyboard
- Session 4: Build, make, tinker, learn (sprint) - Build a realistic prototype
- Fake It
- Paper Prototype
- Wizard of Oz
- Trial Run
- Interview Script
- Session 5: Test, observe, evaluate our prototype (sprint)- test with target customers
- Makeshift Research Lab
- Magic 5
- The Five-Act Interview
- Watch Together Learn Together
Where did the GV Sprint come from?
The shift to agile - typically cast as scrum, lean, kanban and others - started in fact at the end of the 90s when extreme programming lit up software engineering discussions with the provocative mix of passion and principles presented by its creator, Kent Beck. Extreme programming provoked diverse and intense responses in its audience. From radical fervour to cynical skeptism it ignited discussions about how software is and should be designed, how programmers were and should be treated, how to treat each other and others more indirectly involved in digital production.
The GV Sprint method [Knapp et al., 2016] represents how far agile has spread beyond software engineering. The agile sprint has become a staple of venture capital driven product incubators. Organisations are experimenting with sprint style workshops for accelerated product ideation and prototyping in a 5 day workshop format. Teams generate and select ideas to further create and develop, from concepts to prototype level using storyboards, mock‐ups, paper prototyping or using digital platforms of their choice.
It is apparent that design management, product engineering, software engineering and management more broadly are mutually informing and intricately interrelated. We have observed the business world appropriate software engineering's shift to practice emphasis and experiential management. We have seen software engineering borrow design paradigms from architecture [Alexander, 1964] and product design [Kelley and Kelley, 2013]. The mutual connections between design sprints, agile software sprints and venturing sprints [Knapp et al., 2016] is obvious. More so now that digital has become integral to so much of the designed physical material world.
Tips on InVision App and the infinite whiteboard https://www.invisionapp.com/blog/design-sprints-agile-dev/
Tips on "The Design Sprint - GV" at https://www.gv.com/sprint/
Tips on design thinking shortcuts in Mural.co https://www.mural.co/blog/design-thinking-shortcuts
Source: [Knapp et al., 2016]
Alexander, C. (1964). Notes on the Synthesis of Form. Harvard University Press, Cam- bridge, Massachusetts.
Kelley, D. and Kelley, T. (2013). Creative Confidence : Unleashing the Creative Potential within Us All. HarperCollins Publishers.
Knapp, J., Zeratsky, J., and Kowitz, B. (2016). Sprint : How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days. Simon and Schuster.
Get comfortable with the controls in Zoom breakout rooms...
Review the Zoom support video for an introduction to using Zoom breakout rooms...
Zoom local recordings save location
By default, all recordings will be placed in a Zoom folder found in the following file path on these devices:- PC: C:\Users\User Name\Documents\Zoom
- Mac: /Users/User Name/Documents/Zoom
Note that "Local recording is not supported on iOS and Android."
Tuesday, May 19, 2020
Friday, May 15, 2020
Design Sprint practice session
What is a design sprint? In extreme programming they talk about design spikes, a spike of activity focused on learning about something or testing and idea or making progress towards a hard goal that is too unstructured to normal problem solving.
A design sprint is a group action. You'll need empathy to both work together and to understand your client's needs. First working alone but together (also called `together alone'), you'll go out and learn stuff. You could call this individual research exploration, some of solitary desk research, some of it going out and asking stakeholders. This is when the attention of the group is productively dispersed, each person mainly working under their own steam, everyone looking into different areas. Each researcher gathers data and information and forms ideas about what they learn. Then we put those ideas down on paper or digital, first alone, then together to share our learning and ideas. But instead of competing between sets of ideas we deliberately seek to identify the best or most plausible or radical, and combine them. To do that we need make unbiased, personally safe, largely anonymous decisions, usually with some kind of secret voting mechanic. Then, with an initial set of ideas, we set about progressively designing and revising. When we design things the approach is to make rough versions as quickly and cheaply as possible to minimise delay and maximise the learning. These rough designs aren't even really prototypes, they're rough drafts, mockups with sufficient detail to test them with people who haven't been directly involved in the initial designing. Then as they say in extreme programming, `rinse and repeat'.
We'll work on Mural.co.
We've decided on a solution we want to creat 6 steps to a solution.
Then we test with a user test flow is a prequel to the storyboard.
User test flow (say six steps) is the journey a user has taken when working through the prototype (imaginary)
Then we make the storyboard.
Use mural templates for journey maps
Each contributor to fill in one line of steps each
Use Mural voting
Use Mural timer
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| Mural voting in progress |
For more see:
Thursday, May 14, 2020
Playing tabletop games at-a-distance
Options for online board games courtesy of Evan Leed at @Evandeel on BGG https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/2425525/list-options-online-board-games
There are some awesome online adaptations of the best and most popular (not always the same thing is it?) physical world boardgames, games like Coup, The Resistance, Avalon, Secret Hitler, Mafia and Werewolf, Boggle, Banagrams, Scatagories, Skull, Liar's Dice, Dixit, Codenames, Catan, Risk, Diplomacy, Uno, Hanabi, Sushi Go!, Carcassonne, Fluxx and many more...
And the poster on Drive...
Tuesday, May 12, 2020
NetworkInPlay - Creating Diversity in Games
The goal of the Network In Play project is to create projects, events and documents that put equity, inclusion and diversity in game making and game playing cultures at the forefront.
See examples and project reports on https://gamedevelopers.ie/diversity/
Thursday, May 7, 2020
Microsoft Teams - Getting access
Navigate to Office 365 via UCD Connect - http://www.ucd.ie/connect/
Or login directly via Microsoft - https://www.office.com/?auth=2 with your ucd account.
You should use our ucdconnect.ie organisation account id/password if you haven't already logged in.
 |
| Select "Teams" |
Teams can run within browser but you should download the app/package to use the desktop app version.
Friday, May 1, 2020
6 boardgames you can play remotely...
A great way to keep those after-hours video chats lively is to play games together.
6 Board Games You Can Play Over Zoom
(Wired article) Don't let the quarantine turn you into a hermit. Video chat with some friends and play a game together. https://www.wired.com/gallery/board-games-for-remote-play/
Friday, April 17, 2020
Mural.co - for shaping and sharing and collaborating and coordinative emergence
Mural.co - for shaping and sharing and collaborating and coordinative emergence
 |
| Mural.co workflows... |
5 basic Mural skills - https://www.mural.co/blog/5-essential-skills-get-started-mural
1. Zooming and panning (it is an infinite whiteboard after all)
2. Freely add content (drag, drop, copy and paste inspiration from anywhere)
3. A web app that responds to keyboard shortcuts just like an application (CMD+C, X, Y, Del etc.)
4. Share and collaborate live, in real-time, together, synchronously, at-the-same-time!!!
5. Murals of murals - add and organise and share them in private and public rooms
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