1 responses to “Game Research from the Tiltfactor Research Lab To Help Design Games for Social Change…”

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  Abe June 14th, 2014 at 19:40

  I have been binge poding podding for about 3 months and have heard nearly evey episode. Your podcast is my favorite for a new indie dev like me. I really love it, very casual and super informative. So when you released your book I was very excited. I am taking this as a “playtest” for your book. First off congratulations on finishing your book!

  Ok. So, the books is OK, but it isn’t great. You are such a dynamic and high caliper person who has been in the industry for so long that I personally have learned a lot from you and your presentation style on your podcast, but I didn’t get that in your book. It felt a bit phoned in. These are the things I would suggest:

  1. There is a lot of basic introductions, too basic in my opinion. This may be because I have gorged myself on your info fromt the past 5 years and it feels repetitive, so your audience may not be me. I am just getting started though so I feel it should be. I like that it has some basic concepts for each genre and gameplay structure, but it needs to be reworked somehow.

  2. Your interviews are really wonderful, but I am not sure if transcribing them is the best approach to a book. I think a paraphrase of the transcript would be better.

  3. There isn’t a whole lot of meat to it, it has a lot of words, but it doesn’t go into detail on any particular thing. It needs to almost have “templates” to how to do this and that that they can use modifiers off of to becomee successful.

  As an ebook and as a game designer yourself, i feel there is a missed opportunity to make your book into a game. You could still have the introductions and game play mechanics built into minigames that highlight how they work on a real mobile device using corona. I would much rather play clips of these ideas vs read about it generally, then I could get a real feel for how they are. You could probally even get clips from your example companies that they could use for marketing in your game.

  So, it is a really good start, and you finished it, but just like your advice, you just need to re-interate it now and fix the bugs and build a better evolving product. 🙂

  PS- how did the horse game work out?

  -Abe
  Abe@ahanw.org