Follow the fun An Article by Dave Rupert daverupert.com Another great dissertation from Mark Brown of Game Maker’s Toolkit: The Games that Designed Themselves. It’s the radical idea that designers should ignore their preconceived notions and look to the game itself to find out where the development should lead. How does something design itself? Well… the answer is: Prototypes. A lot of great indie game masterpieces are the result of experimentation and early gameplay demos that changed the course of game’s development. As Brown points out, there’s a whole history of groundbreaking games that were developed “almost by accident” where bugs and glitches were turned into features. The game discovering itselfBuilding is never a straight lineGame feel gamesfun
Game feel An Article by Dave Rupert daverupert.com How do you make a game that’s fun? ...You have to focus on gameplay. In order for the final product to be fun and exciting, the core game play needs to be fun and exciting. The creator of Mario calls this 手応え (tegotae), which is often translated as “game feel”. To find this game feel, you need to build small prototypes around a single idea, play test them, and then follow the fun. Nintendo does this, indie game devs do this; this is the not-so-secret of the gaming industry. Follow the funFollow the brush prototypesmakinggames
Technical debt as a lack of understanding An Article by Dave Rupert daverupert.com "If you develop a program for a long period of time by only adding features but never reorganizing it to reflect your understanding of those features, then eventually that program simply does not contain any understanding and all efforts to work on it take longer and longer.” — Ward Cunningham softwareprocesscode
The Web is Industrialized and I Helped Industrialize It An Article by Dave Rupert daverupert.com In our cultural obsession with billionaire entrepreneurs we laud new features more than the maintenance and incrementalism work of making old features better and more accessible. Maintenance looks like red minus signs in the spreadsheet. New features look like green plus signs. New features look better on our LinkedIn profiles. New features have that pizzazz, baby. When gardening, the building of planters and initial planting is a very short process. The majority of your time is spent nurturing and monitoring growth. I personally feel the struggle between maintainer work and new shiny feature work. I enjoy that new feature smell but I know that my day-to-day is more like a janitor on a boat mopping up someone else’s barf. In terms of metaphors, the gardening metaphor is certainly better, and it acknowledges that design and development still tend to be more creative endeavors. featuresnoveltywww
Upstream Color A Film by Shane Carruth www.imdb.com The same material as the sunWhen it goes wrongUpstream Color Original Soundtrack WaldenExtract (n)Authorisation vs. Consent connectioncycleslove
The same material as the sun I have to apologize. I was born with a disfigurement where my head is made of the same material as the sun. It makes it impossible for you to look directly at me. It has always been this way. bodysurrealism
Upstream Color Original Soundtrack Leaves Expanded May Be Prevailing Blue Mixed With Yellow Of The Sand I Used To Wonder At The Halo Of Light Around My Shadow And Would Fancy Myself One Of The Elect Fearing That They Would Be Light-headed For Want Of Food And Also Sleep Stirring Them Up As The Keeper Of A Menagerie His Wild Beasts The Finest Qualities Of Our Nature Like The Bloom On Fruits Can Be Preserved Perhaps The Wildest Sound That Is Ever Heard Here Making The Woods Ring Far And Wide I Love To Be Alone A Young Forest Growing Up Under Your Meadows Their Roots Reaching Quite Under The House The Rays Which Stream Through The Shutter Will Be No Longer Remembered When The Shutter Is Wholly Removed After Soaking Two Years And Then Lying High Six Months It Was Perfectly Sound Though Waterlogged Past Drying The Sun Is But A Morning Star A Low And Distant Sound Gradually Swelling And Increasing As If It Would Have A Universal And Memorable Ending A Sullen Rush And Roar WaldenI love to be alone euphonynaturelonelinessmelancholysoundending