Meeting 1 w Mike Pickton - Starting my research

As part of my masters I am required to write out a summary of the meetings I have with tutors each week; writing down feedback and setting an agenda and outcomes for the next week. This is to get an idea of my progress and hopefully course correct along the way as I need it. So this could be extremely helpful.

In my first meeting with Mike Pickton we discussed the direction of my research. At the moment I have summarised my work in the FMP, provided some thoughts on it, as well as continuing and providing some research on prototyping but more specifically to how prototyping should involving creating an engaging core game loop. But before I get to more work on that I need to answer some other questions first. Mike suggested splitting my research up into a few areas, which will allow me to add things relevant to each and saves perhaps unrelated things being jumbled up into one blog post.

The focus right now is to find out more about indie developers, their structure, how they work so I can use this information to come up with solution to what I need to be working on.

Below is a list of all the feedback I received, with the key three areas receiving a blog post each then others following on from that:

Feedback

Indie development

• What is an indie developer?
• Find games similar to ones I like and research them, break them down
• How is a indie dev team structured?
• What are the roles involved in an indie studio?
• Research people to find out more about their roles
• Dev blogs, GDC talks and Gamasutra for information on indie development relevant to the areas I find interesting

Technique

• How do indie developers create their games, kind of related to roles.
• Investigate what techniques or processes are involved
• What engines or software do these studios use?

Prototyping - More of an offshoot of technique but more specific to how I will be starting off my projects

• What is a prototype?
• Why do we prototype?
• When do you stop prototyping?

Objectives

• A blog post on each key area with my posts expanding on certain interesting points of research
• Measure some of the scope of games, density etc.. effect on team size, include some research into team roles of companies of different sizes
• Outcomes - diagrams, flowcharts of how indie companies work and some of their main processes

Next weeks agenda

• How to transition into starting the experimental prototyping stage
• Aim to begin practical work