The hardest (and most critical) part of any design process is the last 10-20%. Not just because that's where a lot of the detail and polish comes in, but because that's where it's easy for things to seize up. We become increasingly aware of deadlinesWe get cautious and conservativeWe acquiesce to the temptation of "good enough"We stop looking for new…
DISCLAIMERS: I was extremely fortunate to not need to take nearly as many loans as many of my peers for university. The loans I did take I’ve paid back, and I currently work for a community college. With that out of the way… There's been a lot of talk recently around forgiving student loan debt. Hold on! Before you click…
The nature of creative work is that there are times you reach for it and it just isn't there. Sometimes, this happens for days (or even weeks) in a row. Sometimes this happens with an encroaching deadline. You camp your ass in the chair, glue your fingers on the keyboard, and there's just...nothing. It's not block. You're not stuck—it's just…
The past year and half has been a case study in how people react to unprecedented levels of uncertainty. Games, in all their forms, are fundamentally -about- reacting to uncertainty. Whether that comes from the systems of the game, information you are (or are not provided), other players, or your own skill level. One of my favorite games of all…
There's a variety of reasons I love Dungeons & Dragons. It's a shared narrative experience, its problem solving, creativity, and a social context. It's just all around great. But I never really stopped to think about just how much we as a society owe to D&D. Pretty much everything can be and is gamified these days. And the core of…
So, I’ve been struggling to stay motivated (and consequently have been writing extremely poorly) as I approach the end of my master’s program. This then translates into procrastination, as I literally see word counts shrinking from week to week as I edit, and it’s just frustrating. To the point where it’s become difficult to sit down and make myself work…
I’ve written a bit over on Model eLearning about some lessons that eLearning can learn from game design. You can read Part 1 and Part 2 if you’d like…let’s just say part 3 is in limbo until I figure out what I want to do with it. Today, I want to broaden that a bit and speak to how the experiences of…