The Craft of Gamemaking

I presented this evening at the ACC. I think it went well. I’m definitely out of practice. The slides probably won’t be interesting without the talking, but in case anyone is curious: The Craft of Gamemaking.

If you saw the presentation, I’d love to hear from you in the comment section.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 3rd, 2008 at 1223am and is filed under AS3 & Flash, Game Dev, Indie Game Dev, Mockingbird, Programming, Web Dev. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.

  • Patrick

    Nice, I was talking with Jason Roher and Mark Johns at The Art Of Play about replay, they seem to concede it’s mythic and not a requisite.

  • http://troygilbert.com/ Troy

    It’s not exactly mythic… it’s a very necessary concern if you’re making “products,” which virtually all video games are today. If the consumer is spending $60 to purchase a piece of software, they want the experience to have some replay, and its a critical design objective.

    If you’re building games as consumable/disposable entertainment, or as art, or as a form of expression/communication, then replay is not necessary. I don’t write e-mails with a consideration for how they’ll read the second, third and fourth times through.

  • http://wearsch.net Wearsch

    Troy–Obviously I wasn’t at the presentation but I had to post a comment to tell you how much I appreciate seeing a presentation that isn’t a transcript of all the content. Probably, just the frustrations of someone stuck in a cubicle, but I wanted to appreciate you for doing it the right way.

  • http://troygilbert.com/ Troy

    Thanks for noticing. It was a conscious effort. I hope the audience appreciated it as well.

    You know, I was thinking about it right before I gave the presentation… it’s basically a cheat. Instead of providing a deck that stands on its own as a brief or outline of the presentation (you know something people could digest afterwards, like notes from a class), I have a list of memory queues that I use to pace myself, keep me on track, and remind me of clever jokes to make. ;)

  • http://arrabi.blogspot.com muhammad arrabi

    Heey Troy,
    good to see a new post on your blog :-)
    I’ll check the presentation. What do you think about Luis Von Ahn’s games (prof at CMU)?
    I have his lecture on my blog:
    http://arrabi.blogspot.com/2008/03/amazing-lecture-combined-human-computer.html

    this is his homepage: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~biglou/

    his games ideas are AMAZING. What I can’t get is, what makes his games addictive? is there research or books written on what makes a game “good” versus “dull”?

  • Cheryl

    Hi Troy,

    I enjoyed your talk at ACC. Bob McGoldrick just gave out a survey (about a month before your talk) and in the comments section I asked for a casual games class where we create web browser based games. :) I really think you should teach such a class if you’re interested in teaching. I think casual games are poised to receive a lot more attention (investment dollars) in the near future, plus it gives programmers a way to create a portfolio.

    Looking forward to the release of your Mockingbird project.

    -Cheryl

  • http://troygilbert.com/2008/10/05/games-and-themes/ Games and Themes – Troy Gilbert

    [...] have a presentation I’ve given a few times recently that has as its climax the declaration, “replay is a [...]