Author Archives: Warren Blyth

About Warren Blyth

Education games/media designer for Oregon State University's Extended Campus Program Development & Training team

(SPC:Day1)- The Serious Games “Market Size”

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Official Session Name: (9am)
The Serious Games Market : Segment Size (and Where Opportunity Lies)

Summary:
Marketing folks rambled about marketing crap, and I worried I was at the wrong conference (until a following session, where I confirmed I was in the right place).

Ecampus Takeaway:
The interesting thing about this conference was how it threw such a diverse group into the same room (from corporate training tool marketers to educational researchers to military contractors).

Raw Notes: Continue reading →

Serious Play Conference 2011 : notes coming soon

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Warning: I’ll be posting all my notes from the excellent 2011 Serious Play Conference (a three day event hosted at DigiPen, which I attended in August).

I’ve tried to do this for several other conferences I’ve attended over the past 2 years, and each time I end up getting distracted before I finish covering the event (usually due formatting photos, or worrying over the text summaries).

So this time, I’m going to… Continue reading →

GDC 2011:Wed.06 – Designing LIMBO’s Puzzles

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Jeppe Carlson (Playdead): 4:30pm
(official GDC brief) (note: I was 5 minutes late)

SUMMARY:

puzzle designer discusses his process for designing much-lauded physics puzzles in recent indie game hit, Limbo.

EDUCATIONAL PERSPECTIVE:

Mostly interesting to hear about the tools they used. One of their programmers created an AI element which automatically playtests the level every time you compile it (run the level, and instantly see what most players would do in it). I think this was a huge insight into why the game turned out so well. Ingenius idea (to simulate the average player). Continue reading →

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GDC 2011:Wed.05 – The Failure Workshop

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Chris Hecker (definition six, inc.), Kyle Gabler (2D Boy), Matthew Wegner (Flashbang Studios), Kyle Gray (Tomorrow Corporation), George Fan (PopCap Games) and Brad Wardell (Stardock) : 3pm -4pm
(official GDC brief) (note: I was 5 minutes late)

SUMMARY:

Each speaker described a game they’d made (or prototyped) which they considered a complete failure. They went into detail about why they exactly they thought it failed.

EDUCATIONAL PERSPECTIVE:

Some very interesting stories about their quick prototypes (much like the exercise I’d quickly whip up for various instructors at OSU’s Ecampus), and a strong theme around “get to prototype asap, and start testing it.” Continue reading →

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GDC 2011:Wed.04 – Prototype Through Production: Pro Guitar in ROCK BAND 3

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Jason Booth (Harmonix Music Systems) and Sylvain Dubrofsky (Harmonix Music Systems): 1:30am – 2:30am
(official GDC brief)

SUMMARY:

I went to this because I’m a big Rock Band fan. Was hoping they’d expose their development process, but they didn’t really go into useful detail.

EDUCATIONAL PERSPECTIVE:

Hard to say really. They have a lot of cooks. They made a lot of prototypes. They didn’t have time for a lot of careful testing. There are lessons to be learned, but this talk wasn’t as directly useful as others.
Continue reading →

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GDC 2011:Wed.03 – microtalks : Say how you play

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(many speakers) 12am – 1:00pm
(official GDC brief)

SUMMARY:
A series of respected speakers gave “5 minute/20 slides” mini-speeches, to explain “how they play.” They mostly offered personal philosophy and arty thoughts.

EDUCATIONAL PERSPECTIVE:
It is interesting to note that many of these game developers mentioned that they think the modern U.S. educational system is broken…
Continue reading →

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GDC 2011:Wed.02 – Dynamics: The State of The Art

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DynamicsClint Hocking (LucasArts): 10:30am – 11:30am
(official GDC brief)

SUMMARY:
This talk builds on Chris Hecker’s question “How Do Games Mean.” (which is a play on words. not “what do they mean,” but “how?”)

The gist of Hocking’s talk was to push for an answer to this question by studying the current dynamics that create meaning in games. He focused on the ways editing is known to create unique meaning in the medium of film, and suggested we need to find similar mechanisms for conveying meaning in gameplay.

EDUCATIONAL PERSPECTIVE: Continue reading →

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GDC 2011:Wed.01 – Iwata’s Show Opening Keynote

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Satoru Iwata (Nintendo): 9am – 10am
(official GDC brief)

(it occured to me that from OSU’s perspective: my notes and personal perspective might seem useless. So I thought I should try to explain how this relates to the Ecampus perspective – which turned into a huge rant unto itself)

EDUCATION PERSPECTIVE:
1)It is interesting to consider Nintendo’s transition from old-hardware business models into modern-online territory (sort of like education’s transition from on-campus to online?). it’s fairly widely known that Nintendo built their legacy product by product, by re-purposing existing hardware components and then creating innovative games to make the hardware look good. Their games expertly engage the player, but the key to their success is that their hardware was cheaper to manufacture (existing calculator parts, cartidges from factories they owned, etc.). Competitors tend to gamble the farm on expensive (often unstable) innovations, and hope someone else can make nice software.

The key point for online learning is really: Engage your audience with expert experience design, if you want to sell them on whatever platform.
Continue reading →

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Modern education – Learning and Teaching Disabilities (TED Talks)

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speeches you may find interesting:

* This one’s about diagnosing learning disorders based on behavioral observation
(and how crazy that is – when you can look at the brain directly)
Aditi Shankardass: A second opinion on learning disorders
mostly about diagnosis.

* This one is about alternate approaches to learning in poor countries. kinda rambling. but. curious if anyone agrees with his criticisms of modern school systems. His talk is so global i’m kinda like “uh, ok. guess I’ll take your word for it, Dude”
Charles Leadbeater: Education innovation in the slums

(…and when anyone starts talking about “throwing out the established in favor of gambling on something new,” I get very nervous that they might be overlooking old-system side effects which may be invaluable). (i’m reminded of the Philip K. Dick story Progeny, wherein we decide it’s really best that robots raise all out children, since we keep “screwing them up” with faulty parenting. sinister).