[Event] Cape Town Community Night - 29 June
This event happens monthly, is free to attend, and anyone may speak at the meetup - just comment beneath to let us know! This is for anyone and everyone interested in making games of any shape, size or type. Come join us!
Test games! Talk games! Make games!
When: 18:30 until around 21:30, Last Wednesday of the month
Where: Bandwidth Barn - 68 Albert Rd, Woodstock, Cape Town, 7925
If you have a demo you want played, bring a station on which people can play it, and set it up before the meetup begins!
Agenda
- 6:30 - 7:00 - Meet and greet
- Rapid fire intros (10 min)
- Community News (5 min)
Talks - 20 min slots:
- Theming by @EvanGreenwood
- Education in Games by @Bugbat
Focused Feedback - 10 min slots
- this could be you! (suggestions wanted)
Open Demo Floor
Facebook Event: https://www.facebook.com/events/1028110427224882/
If you'd like to give a talk or show something to get some feedback, please post below!
Test games! Talk games! Make games!
When: 18:30 until around 21:30, Last Wednesday of the month
Where: Bandwidth Barn - 68 Albert Rd, Woodstock, Cape Town, 7925
If you have a demo you want played, bring a station on which people can play it, and set it up before the meetup begins!
Agenda
- 6:30 - 7:00 - Meet and greet
- Rapid fire intros (10 min)
- Community News (5 min)
Talks - 20 min slots:
- Theming by @EvanGreenwood
- Education in Games by @Bugbat
Focused Feedback - 10 min slots
- this could be you! (suggestions wanted)
Open Demo Floor
Facebook Event: https://www.facebook.com/events/1028110427224882/
If you'd like to give a talk or show something to get some feedback, please post below!
Thanked by 1Squidcor
Comments
I will have a new build of Heart Strings at the meetup I'd like to get feedback on, but I don't think it'll be suited to a focused feedback slot, so I'll have it on a device or so :)
Edit: I would be fine with only showing it afterwards though, if anyone else wants focused feedback.
I can't wait for the next one, it was a great learning experience. :P
@Enthused_Dragon: the meetups happen on the last Wednesday of every month, so the next will be on 27 July :)
I can give more talks on similar game design / marketing subjects, but I'm not sure if attendees want to hear a lot of game design talks (and whether they'd want to hear these talks from me specifically).
I realize that asking for feedback in a post like this is likely to get biased results. And that some kind of general poll of what Cape Town MGSA attendees want to hear about might be better.
Or even better, some kind of anonymous feedback system after the meetup, kind of like after GDC talks.
(Do we know what subjects attendees of MGSA Cape Town Meetups want to hear about?)
The theming talk seems as though it would have benefited from more time, elaborating more on examples of theming used effectively, and where it detracted from the experience. A definite must talk for Amaze.
Some topics I would like to hear a talk on:
- Knowing what feedback to incorporate, when to listen to fans and when to rather ignore them.
- How to navigate legal matters like having the word "Scrolls", "Saga" or "Sky" in your game's name, or just how to handle naming conflicts in general (or the entirety of 80's action heroes).
- Finding out if/what crowd funding is right for your project. Benefits and drawbacks of using Kickstarter / Early Access.
The talk was already 25 minutes, and that's with rushing through it. I think I may have repeated myself a bit. Were there any parts that were less insightful, or that you recall me waffling on, that could have been cut? (assuming the talk included some insight and wasn't all waffle)
As I recall, both myself and @Nandrew have given talks about receiving feedback in the past. Perhaps it's time this got revisited?
(I can't personally talk with any authority about funding, nor legal matters, whatever we've been doing has worked out, but I haven't tested the alternatives. Are you thinking about getting funding?)
The bit that blew my mind, and I'm still thinking about was how the theme of your game could lend itself as a segue from topics typically discussed by potential players. It has become one of my guiding principles when thinking about game design.
I also really liked the definition you used for theming, calling it "aboutness". That just made the concept really click for me. Having a world of consistent aboutness can help the player solve problems the designer never explicitly explained to them, giving players that "I'm smart" feeling. The world behaves the way you expect it.
The one thing I would personally have liked more of is the examples (and discussion) of good and bad theming, especially examples of bad theming as I think we learn more from trying to avoid mistakes than trying to emulate success.
I did struggle to find examples of bad theming, just because it's so often a case of the game just being an all-round bad game. It'd probably be easiest in the mobile space to find games with bad themes (as clones of other games but with worse themes)... but so often these games are going to be just all-round bad, and the fact that they often follow another game and are a derivative work is also going to cause them to perform worse than the original (and unpopular games are sort of invisible).
I'll try (in future) talks to spend a bit more time discussing examples, and maybe introduce them better, particularly the examples of where things went wrong (which I'll try a bit harder to find).
@Bugbat thanks for coming forward, I hope the experience of the talk revealed the community's enthusiasm for the topic and put you in touch with some interesting conversations. ;) Sorry I didn't approach you afterwards myself, as I too am interested in these matters (I allowed myself to get distracted by @Ramperkash 's Chaingang :P )
On a related note, I'm actually working on a talk about feedback myself. I'm trying to focus on how to get it (posting the right things to the right places at the right times, asking questions, ...), interpret it, and work it into your design process. It feels like some recent talks have discussed the giving of feedback and handling difficult feedback, so I wanna focus on some other aspects. Seems like I should maybe give this some time?
At least one member of the community wants to learn more about receiving feedback, and I personally think the onus of getting good feedback is on the creator (in that when a game receives little feedback there's almost always a lot that creator could have done differently).
(Like for instance, thanking the people who offer any feedback is important, as people are usually posting feedback to receive some kind of social reward, so as a creator you want to make it clear that offering you feedback is going to be noticed... it's also just being courteous, and it should be genuine, but it is one part of the system that helps generate feedback for you)