GCAP 2021: Raising The Bar

This is a two-part talk with short, sharp lessons from Leigh Harris and Ally McLean about the ways we can all improve ourselves in invisible ways across game design and production.

In part one, Leigh (Senior Game Designer, Team head, Wargaming Sydney) will explain a framework he uses to help define abstractions. It applies whether you’re a game designer, producer or developer of any kind – sitting somewhere in between a communication tool and a game design methodology.

Whether you’re creating a game system that should work nicely in a variety of circumstances, or trying to figure out what on Earth your client actually wants from your game, this method should help illustrate (by example) how you can apply it in a variety of circumstances to help improve the likelihood of reaching your goal.

In part two, Ally (Senior Producer, Mighty Kingdom) will demonstrate how to create a visualisation that can be used in any game development project to creatively problem solve and plan - a Risk Roadmap.

This will be a practical demonstration of how any senior team member can create a “risk roadmap” for a project, and use that visualisation to facilitate development decisions. Ally will build a risk roadmap in real time for a hypothetical project, and explain how team members from different disciplines can create and use this visualisation for their own purposes. This will be built without the need for any specialised production tools.