Research - GDO710 - Week 9
Week 9! Almost done, not long left until the end of the first term. I was reviewing the assignment for the end of this module. It seems to be a 2000-word essay talking about the content I have learnt over the course of the module as well as my future goals.
I plan to break it up into sections and slowly work on those throughout the remainder of the weeks. Let's see how that goes.
Class notes: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Disscusson on conferences.
Communities of practices.
Ensure you engage with like-minded people.
Examples of communities of practice:
Hacker movement
Maker movement
Stack Overflow
Moderators
Governing the network
Agile movement
Agile manifesto
Agile Alliance
Institute of electrical and electronic engineers
Association for computing machinery
British computer society
Belinda Waldock
Agile on the beach
Getting involved in communities of practice
Online resources
Andy Smith
Arduino project
Raspberry pi
Github
Thingiverse
Heidi Ellis
Sahana Foundation
Sinhalese for "Relief"
Software for disaster management
Extends to education
Humanitarian Foss Project (HFOSS)
Open source software
Mozilla Foundation
Linux
Apache
The Cloud
"Scratch your own itch"
Get students involved in open source projects.
Better learning opportunities
Show what the student knows without NDA
Discussion: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXX
The discussion this week pertains to conferences. The questions up for discussion are as follows:
Is there any part of the conference experience that you love or loathe?
Have you had any success with networking at conferences, or do you prefer to use them as an opportunity to learn?
What conferences have you attended? What conferences would you like to attend?
I love the entire conference experience, from the talks to the networking and coffee breaks. I have been to a couple, but not as many as I would like! There are not many conferences in the UAE for game development/computer science so whenever there is one it's usually a big deal.
The most recent conference I attended was the "Unity developer day" in Abu Dhabi. It was identical to the infamous "Unity Unite" conferences, however, on a much smaller scale. There were talks on game design, the future of unity, VR/AR in the UAE as well as multiple different timeslots set aside specifically for networking.
(Tookey, 2022)
The UAE's game development scene is small, so everyone knows each other. Most of the time at these conferences you will see familiar faces and get to learn more about the progress of their IPs.
I tend to use these opportunities to meet as many new game developers as possible and see if they have any knowledge to part with. Due to these conventions, I have been invited to private playtests and have gotten to know multiple different developers!
It's a great experience and I would recommend that every game developer should attend conferences wherever possible.
Research: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXX
In this field, it is very important to make connections with like-minded people. With game development, as time goes on you will explore new facets and might face a roadblock. Having a network of people locally and globally can help you get out of that rut.
Alcwyn Parker discusses some important points when it comes to building communities of practice as well as the benefits:
Be proactive } Engage and seek connections with people
Establish Local & Global connections } This field is smaller than you think.
Find solutions to problems
Search or general information
Share resources
Coordinate projects
Socialize and network
Share / document ideas
Engage in general discussion (Parker, 2022)
The Hacker movement, the Maker movement & the Agile movement are all examples of communities of practice which has added more value to others who are participating. These movements can add more value to OTHER movements.
A lot of this week's lecture was related to different communities of practice, how to join communities and what to keep in mind when engaging. I have been engaging in different communities of practice for a long time, whether they be online or in person. Thanks to forums like "Reddit" and "Discord", joining these discussions and communities have never been easier.
The Maker community really appealed to me, there is a "Maker's space" in Abu Dhabi where they have workshops on basic machine skills, let you use the space and give you advice on how to complete your projects. I always found this sense of community very appealing and I have been itching to get involved for the longest time, now I have more of an excuse!
The community in game development is relatively small, even online. I have been apart of multiple different groups of platforms such on Linkedin and Facebook where developers talk about the best practices and how they want to push the game development space forward.
One of my favourite communities of practice would be the dice maker community. It is a niche area on the internet, but they are constantly striving to help other artisans improve. There are multiple big names in the space who have created online videos, forums, servers and blog posts dedicated to sharing ideas and improving the quality of custom-made dice. If you are interested you can find some of the links below:
Dice-Makers: Reddit! Hub of the community
Dice-Makerers Discord server: Popular server which does monthly competitions, and has "training" sessions to help teach different techniques. Has talks and more.
Rybonator: Most famous youtube for Dice resources
Gen con: This convention in the US is one of the largest meetups for this community. Dice makers usually make dice for tabletop games. Gencon is the biggest tabletop game convention and often dice makers will meet up, do art trades and sell their products!
This community has a big overlap with the Dungeons and Dragons community. One of the required tools for D&D is a 7 set of dice. As long as the dice are relatively balanced, anything goes. This is another facet for the dice makers to promote their business and work. Famous D&D streamers like Critical role and Dimension 20 will often get dice sent in as fan mail, or sometimes famous streamers will buy new dice and talk about them on their stream.
References: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXX
A. Parker (2022) Week 9: Researching Communities of Practice [Falmouth University teaching platform] [website] Accessed 7th August 2022.
A. Tookey (2022) Photos taken from Unity Developer day [Image] Accessed 7th August 2022.