About
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Our Starting Harbors
Critical Thinking & Debate
Your idea is only as valid as the arguments that support it.
Any opinion is always welcome, but everyone must recognize its limits and then make an effort to support it with logical arguments. The way we work is based on people thinking rationally, not taking a hot discussion as a personal judgment, being willing to take a step back when someone recognizes their arguments are wrong, and wanting to discuss even the most obvious things to find out for themselves whether they are correct. In case of disagreement, it is crucial to discuss the merits of the arguments and never discuss the person. The ultimate goal of a discussion is always the discovery of new ideas and never the imposition of one's own.
We defend our idea and not the idea we have of ourselves.
Theory & Practice Go Hand-in-Hand
Theory v.s. Practice is a false and dangerous dichotomy.
Theory is a model that describes reality, and the more detailed that model is, the better it will represent reality. Practice is the concrete application of models defined by Theory in real-world scenarios. Since the world is constantly changing, Theory must continually be updated to keep a practical, useful representation of reality. To ignore either is to lean on mental laziness that will lead us to do without knowing what we are doing. We need both Theory and Practice because they provide us with two different aspects of a discipline that complement each other and allow us to understand how things work.
Theory and Practice are two sides of the same coin.
Meaning And Emotion Set You Apart
Our brain is a terrific and powerful generator of meaning.
We, humans, are all part of the same species, but the quantity and quality of interactions we have with the world around us make us incredibly different. One of the main differences lies in the meaning we attach to things, situations, and people. Each person possesses a magnifying glass to observe the world, identify patterns, and produce meanings that others can interpret as patterns, creating an endless chain of meanings that travels across space and time.
The most significant engine of creation is the awareness of being able to attribute meaning to something.
Our Main Routes
Make Game Design Research Thrive
Game Design research is barely alive at the moment.
Most Game Dev people focus on development, and the only little research that gets done is often on trending topics that advance little or no understanding of the Game Design field. Our goal is to contribute as much as possible to the research for new Game Design models that will help the development of meaningful game experiences and enable Game Designers to understand better what they are doing. We want to pass the message to current and future professional Game Designers that Game Design is not a discipline where intuition, heuristics, and lack of methodological standards reign. We believe in a world where Game Designers have tools and models that allow them to control the design process and empower their creative abilities to the fullest.
Keeping the balance between Game Design Research and Game Development is the key to creating better games.
Make Designers Develop Technical & Artistic Balance
There's a clear polarization in Game Design teaching.
Most of what is taught in Game Design is about how to use game engines (Unity, Unreal, etc.). The problem is that Game Design is much more than a prototype, and the most challenging part is done outside the engine itself, which is just a tiny technical aspect. The result is that current Game Designers have a hard time combining technical and artistic knowledge to create an Authorial Vision to cultivate and make concrete through meaningful game experiences. Our goal is to fill this vast educational gap by explaining how the artistic side of Game Design also works and how it ties in with the technical aspects to create a game experience that is both well-constructed and meaningful.
Never forget that Game Design is a technical discipline with an artistic purpose.
Empower Designers To Connect Others Through Meaning
The Game Industry suffers from a lack of meaningful games.
Creating meanings not only distinguishes one human being from another but allows Game Designers to inject their vision into a game experience. Through video game language, Game Designers communicate their vision of the world or part of it to others so that all people who resonate with it can connect. Our goal is to provide people with knowledge and tools to create meaningful works that generate these connections with those who play them.
The world is already connected; all we have to do now is connect people.
Our Navigational Tools
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Simplifying Without Loosing Details Depth
We make learning more accessible, but we won't learn for you.
Those who claim to simplify academic complexity so everyone can understand that teaching material effortlessly sells something that does not exist. Simplification always involves the loss of information; however, oversimplification is often done to avoid boring the audience, and people cannot truly understand because of the lack of detail. Our approach is to implement a process of packing and simplifying academic concepts, but at the same time, we require you not to be passive but to entertain yourself with the materials we provide. Reasoning with your head is crucial to internalizing concepts and practicing with intentionality.
Mindless learning leads to mindless work.
Applying The 50:50 Learning Method
We give you both theory and practice, so you know what you do while doing it.
Focusing only on theory is a wrong approach since, by never getting your hands dirty, you fail to understand its nuances and implications. Also, you cannot build a set of personal heuristics to make your work more efficient over time. Focusing only on practice is equally problematic since you don't understand what you are doing, and you structure heuristics that do not lay on any solid foundation. This makes you highly replaceable and unadaptable since you will find yourself performing steps without being aware of the consequences and how each step fits into the big picture. We call our approach the "50:50 Learning Method"; it means 50% theory and 50% practice and is the absolute best learning method for beginners as it allows them to apply what has been explained to them on the spot. It decreases frustration since you know what, how, and why you are doing it while you are doing it, and it increases experimentation since the moment you try new things on your own, you always have a solid base to lean on and reason with to understand what you are doing.
Sailing the open sea without a map is not courage, it’s madness.
Sparking And Developing Your Creative Thinking
Creativity is a powerful engine, but needs regular care and use to run at its best.
If you keep it dusty, you cannot make it run at 100% every time you need it and get creative at command. The creative process is often over-mythologized and thought to be relegated to a few people in the world. Indeed, genetic predispositions favor or disfavor the use of the "creative engine," but this does not mean that access to creativity is available only to some. Creativity is generating new meanings from other meanings to communicate to the outside world what we feel inside. The process of creative generation is much slower and more rational than a sudden light bulb turning on. Our approach is to build tools and learning paths to make idea generation available to the vast majority of aspiring Game Designers, train your Creative Engine and make it unique so you can express yourself in the games you make.
Creativity is the best tool to express what's inside you because no one is better than you at being you.
Our Team
Contact Us
If you have a question that bothers you, have suggestions, don't agree on something, need help with our materials, or just want to say hi and chat, feel free to reach us by filling out the form below.
GAME DESIGN COMPASS
The only newsletter that allows you to discover (for FREE) the secrets of how great Game Designers think and solve complex problems, without feeling overwhelmed and frustrated, even if you have zero experience.
