Category: Creative Practice & Strategy

In October 2006 Pierre-Alexandre Garneau started a blog in which he shows us his attempts to train himself in game design: 

While I already have a few years of experience as a videogame designer, I’m not at a world-class level. I want to reach that level however, so I decided to train myself. A sprinter trains himself by running a lot; a game designer trains himself by designing a lot of games. This blog will hold the resulting designs.

Here’s how it works. At the beginning of each week, I choose a random theme (eg. “Space Race”) and a random platform (eg. “Nintendo DS”). I must then come up with an interesting game concept that fits the theme and is appropriate for the platform before the end of the week (eg. a game about a space race for the Nintendo DS). As the week progresses, I plan on posting some bits of informations about how things are shaping up. The end result should be a description of the main characteristics of the game, that give a good idea of the overall vision of the game — what’s called a “pitch” in the business.

It isn’t a weekly exercise anymore, more monthly, but he’s still going. I like the idea.

Check it out: http://www.gameideas.org/

In the spirit of The 400 Project (which is a growing listing of 400 game design patterns), Sean Howard has started a site that will list 300 mechanics:

Every day for three hundred days, I will post a gameplay mechanic that has (hopefully) never been seen in a commercial video game. Three hundred mechanics. No more. No less.

Not all of them seem like game mechanics, but is sure is fun. Whenever I see these sort so projects I just so want to create a cross-media design patterns project. I’ve got so many to add already!

Check it out: http://www.squidi.net/three/sorted.php

Stumbled on this ages ago (perhaps years ago? — I’m trawling through my old drafts to try and clear space): KwMap map. Here is what the keyword ‘cross media’ turns up: