Top Ten Most Read Articles of GDAM

Happy Holidays! I've just noticed that this blog was started 10 years ago! I don't think I've ever done a retrospective, so without further ado, here is the Top Ten list of the most popular articles on Game Design Aspect (according to Google stats):

1.  Great Narrative Stories are the Answer 

This article was the culmination of a series of blog posts about how to measure social impact and effectively change a person's belief system. I summarized Christopher Graves' keynote at the 2017 Games For Change Festival. This article was also cited in the report, "The Limits and Strengths of Using Digital Games as Empathy Machines," by Matthew Farber and Karen Schrier.

2. GDC 2018: Professional Ethics For Game Designers

This article summarized IGDA GDSIG's roundtable at GDC 2018, which covered a range of topics, including government regulation, microtransactions, and gaming disorder. I was surprised by the 10000+ views, considering how lukewarm the topic seemed at the conference. Since then, Gamasutra has featured articles on ethical game design. 

3. Ethics and Game Design: Are They Like Oil and Water? Part 1

This article by Gustavo Guida is about his reactions to the above mentioned roundtable. Gustavo Guida attended the IGDA GDSIG roundtable and the IGDA GDSIG Social Meeting at GDC 2018.  In his article, he divides the various positions held by attendees as Skeptics, Pragmatists, and the Concerned.

4. The Game Designer at the Game Jam

In this article, I reflected on my first experience at the Global Game Jam (GGJ). Even though we had less than 2 days to complete a demo, my team made a crowd favorite that was featured in Microsoft NY's recap of GGJ that year.

5. Upcoming Workshop: Game Writing Portfolio Workout

This was a promotion for my most popular class at PlayCrafting and it also included a link to an interview I did with SciFi Pulse. Since I'm no longer teaching at PlayCrafting, I'm looking to put some courses online.

6. When Story Isn't Everything

In this article, I discussed ludonarrative dissonance, a topic that was touched upon by Omar Shakir in his session at the Creative Arts & Technology Conference in 2016. Omar Shakir is Game Director at Avalanche Studios.

7. How to Teach Game Writing and Other Dilemmas

Here's another one that surprised me with the amount of views. Perhaps people were searching for a review of John Yorke's master class on video game writing. Rather, this article is a reaction to a review of John Yorke's class, in which he stated that video game companies should look to hiring capable screenwriters.

8. What's Wrong with Pre-K Game Apps

This is one of my favorite articles on the blog. Several people have said to me that I was spot-on about my observations regarding this segment of educational games.

9. Building Emotional Connections with Game Design

I became very interested in the topic of creating empathy and player emotion and one of the lectures I attended was from Professor Katherine Isbister, who wrote the book, How Games Move Us: Emotion By Design.  What was interesting about this lecture is that she didn't delve upon stories but rather game design.

10. Monetization and its Effect on Design

Professor Ibrahim Yucel reported on IGDA GDSIG's roundtable at GDC 2019. I'm glad to see IGDA GDSIG hit topics of concern for both the years we were allowed to discuss game design issues at GDC. At previous GDCs, the SIG's roundtables have only been about SIG business.  Hopefully, we will have another successful roundtable next year.

Sande Chen is a writer and game designer whose work has spanned 10 years in the industry. Her credits include 1999 IGF winner Terminus, 2007 PC RPG of the Year The Witcher, and Wizard 101. She is one of the founding members of the IGDA Game Design SIG.

Feedback That Leads to Excellence

In this article, game designer Sande Chen explains why accepted norms of feedback are counterproductive and what we can do instead to help others succeed.

As game designers, we are often asked to give or receive feedback. Some of us already know that there are better ways of giving criticism than vague or general feedback or mean-spirited comments.  Even with that knowledge, some biases can creep into one's feedback. For instance, women are often victims of "benevolent sexism" whereby feedback is withheld to avoid hurting their feelings. This can lead to situations whereby women don't understand why they didn't succeed until they hear behind their backs what the person actually thought about their projects.

So how do we give feedback that encourages others to succeed?  Presumably, that is the end goal of giving feedback.

Well, it turns out that research shows that the most commonly accepted way of giving feedback, whereby we tell someone what they're doing wrong and give suggestions on how to improve it, generally backfires.  This approach is based on erroneous theories about learning. Although it's easy to focus on what you see are the negative aspects of a project, bringing attention to weaknesses triggers the "fight or flight" response in the recipient, smothering any learning that may have been intended.

Photo by Moose Photos from Pexels

Even the language you can use can provoke this reaction. Think about how you are framing the feedback.  Instead of "Here's what you should do," you can say, "Here's what I would do." When someone comes to you for advice, let them talk it out rather than simply giving them your solution. You can say, "What do you feel you are struggling with, and is there anything you've done in the past that's worked in a similar situation?"

On the flip side, recognizing the specific positive action or positive aspects is not simply praise, but a way of highlighting and reinforcing patterns or behaviors. For instance, hardly anyone criticizes toddlers for not walking correctly. Parents don't say "You could have done that without wobbling" or "Stop falling down!" Instead, they celebrate and congratulate those first few tentative steps.

In addition, humans are notoriously unfit for rating the work of other humans due to our own biases. We know how we would do things, but that might not be how someone else would do it and succeed just as well.

As a recipient of vague positive feedback, we can stop and ask for clarification. Ask "Which parts made you feel that way?" or "Which parts worked for you?"  With negative feedback, it's crucial not to place too much importance on what others think, as the negative feedback tends to reflect more on the giver than the recipient.  This is especially relevant in creative fields like game design.

Sande Chen is a writer and game designer whose work has spanned 15 years in the industry. Her credits include 1999 IGF winner Terminus, 2007 PC RPG of the Year The Witcher, and Wizard 101. She is one of the founding members of the IGDA Game Design SIG.