funkybrain

Waterfall, Lean/Kanban, and Scrum « Ken Schwaber’s Blog: Telling It Like It Is.

A good analysis of why moving to Scrum is fraught with difficulties.

A great presentation that elegantly encapsulates the fundamentals of game design. You can tell it was put together by a UX designer. I was pleased to see how generously it quotes people I have a lot of respect for in the industry.

Developers should stop thinking of in-house tools as a necessary evil and start seeing the opportunities that come with making your own tools.

Eskil Steenberg is not just another desk-bound developer. He is a one-man army of talent, sharing his Love with those that are receptive to his, quite frankly, mind-blowing intellect and refreshing sensitivity. I’m a fan.

Raph’s Website » What core gamers should know about social games.

A great article on social games by thoughtful Raph Koster.

For the non-gamers amongst you, Raph is a bit of a legend in our circles. He’s been around since the early days of game design, and is a keen observer of how our medium is changing over the years. He wrote what I consider to be the best (of those that I’ve read) book on games, gamers and game-designers: a theory of fun. Very insightful, and of interest even to non-gamers. I highly highly recommend it.

Back to this article: in the current trench-warfare between core and social game-designers, Raph’s voice surfaces and tells us that, hey, drop your weapons and embrace each other in this brave new world. Nobody knows where we’re heading, except that games is an ever evolving medium that has a lot of opportunities for game designers to express themselves and find an audience.

Amen.

Bookmarked – will come back latter and talk about it, because Jane is someone that may be about to pull off a small miracle.

I came across this video today (via Clinton Keith’s Gamasutra article) that is worth your ten minutes.

Ken, as you probably know, is one of the founders of Scrum, the methodology. In recent months we have seen an exponential increase in articles (or, blog entries I should say) that criticize Scrum in a big way, and hold it responsible for the woes of the world.

First, let me say, dear reader, in case you’ve never worked outside of the game/software industry: there hasn’t been a management process in history that hasn’t been torn down and spat on. Every new idea ends up being seen as a management fad or consultant’s slot machine. What is presented as an evolutionary business idea – and usually backed up by a great success story – tends to spread like wildfire, and every company and their dogs rush to implement it with little thought to the consequences. Because they too want to see the benefits nudge their bottom line (up, preferably). Because, if it worked for them, surely it will work for us, right?

Er… no. A process is a process. It’s not a magic spell or a wish granted by the tooth-fairy. Every new process that you implement will face the reality of every organisation: that it is made of people. People are complex, and the way they interact are even more complex. And when that interaction needs to be funnelled to successfully meet complex challenges (and game development certainly fits that category), you need to seriously address the whole system, and not the process.

One of the important points that Ken makes (and has made time and again in the past) is that Scrum is, just like a photographic developer, great at revealing the things that are broken or inefficient in an organization. And folks, let’s not kid ourselves: most organizations are dysfunctional.

Which brings me back to the key problem here. Nobody, and especially a company’s management, likes to hear the bad news. And like any system where you try to introduce change, its first response is usually to oppose that change. This we know from the study of system dynamics. And system dynamics also tells us that in many cases, if you want to make a lasting and positive change to a system, a worse-before-better behaviour is to be expected. Do you know many organizations that are willing to accept that cost? I don’t.

So there you have it: very few organizations have what it takes to withstand the pressure of moving from the old ways to scrum. Those that are willing to make the necessary and often painful adjustments will reap the benefits. The others will stumble along, unable to tap into the greater potential that is available.

Whilst on the subject of scrum, there’s another important idea that needs to be driven home to organizations that take on the scrum challenge: it is that there is no end state when transitioning to agile.

Bon vent, et bonne route.

PS: in case you’re wondering, I’m not suggesting that scrum is the only path to enlightenment. There is no only way. And if what works for you (including waterfall) enables you to successfully run your business, don’t mess with it. What I mentioned above about organizations still holds true, irrespective of what process you’re using.

PPS: What, sometimes I switch from British English to American English? Yep, I sure do, I hope you can forgive me ^_^

Although I’m not much of a graphic artist, I do enjoy putting together simple identities for non-professional-grade branding. A couple of months ago I designed this little piece for the first GameCamp ever to be held in Paris:

Whenever I do this kind of work, I mostly focus on mashing up existing work and then add a little twist. In the previous example, I started off from the official BarCamp identity, which is not only customary but highly encouraged to keep with the spirit of the event.

I then did my little twist. I retraced the green flame with a gradient and inserted some (bogus) binary code. I picked Synchro LET, one of my favorite fonts, as a tribute to the good old green monitors (space invaders on Apple II anyone?). To top it all off I swapped the A of game with a drawing of a world-renowned gaming icon. I actually had to draw it myself since I couldn’t find one with any decent quality off the net. And that’s that.

Over he last few days I have been working on a design for my new non-business business cards. Again, the idea was to keep it simple. I knew I wanted to play around with colors (in a Warholesque way) and include my faithful space invader figure since that is what I use for this site (and yes, the header is my own work). Well, this is what the front-side of my card will look like:

I actually have more color combinations, which I will mix and match in the box of 100 cards I’ve just ordered. Can’t wait to see the results.

The one glitch in all this is that I don’t know if either pac-man or space-invader characters are free of rights. It’s just that they are so big you end up thinking that their in the public domain. Mmm, somehow I don’t think I will appear on Namco’s radar screen…

Smashing Magazine – Beautiful motion graphics.

An amazing collection of resources (tools and tutorials) for people interested in code-based art. Thank you Smashing Mag.

Tale of Tales » Interview with Jenova Chen.

This is a c. 2008 interview of someone that no longer needs to be introduced (to the gaming community that is). Both interviewee and interviewer are bright stars slash meteorites in the gaming world, people whose ideas make you uncomfortable in a good way. A better read than all the other interviews I’ve seen.

I had no idea that Kongregate offered a nifty flash tutorials for game programmers. On my to-do list (overflow!).

Kongregate Labs.

edit: spurred by a class we just had on ActionScript programming, I’ve started the tutorial. It turns out the whole tutorial is based on ActionScript 2.0. Therefore I decided to follow along but code in AS 3.0. A perfect exercise to hone my skills ^_^