Weekly Report 2 8/27/18 - 9/2/18
It is becoming somewhat clearer what kind of beast career research will be for the next month or so. The good news is that, with the sheer number of independent game developers out there trying to make a life out of this passion, there exists a large market for (and consequently a large number of) game development resources for aspiring creators. The bad news is that these sources that come in such large quantities are often not quite as scholarly as would be needed.
In-class presentations aside (although professional dress is largely important, it is not a primary concern just yet), I spent most of my ISM class time conducting preliminary research for the first research assessment. The search for any general overviews of the industry was tougher than anticipated; it so happens that most sources on the subject are either not scholarly, not recent, not general enough, or all three. In between finding and reading the three articles which eventually found a spot in the assessment, I browsed pages and pages of auxiliary content which could not work for the summary-type information required for the assessment, but which were very insightful and very helpful nonetheless. Even after the assessment was written, those sources kept creeping into my free time, whether it was a Gamasutra article about intuitive puzzle design or an Extra Credits video about how games use of empty spaces to highlight the non-empty spaces in their worlds. This is good, because it indicates a real enthusiasm and thirst for knowledge in this subject. Time will reveal if that interest will last.
I am excited to delve deeper into these sources in the coming weeks. Hopefully, in the process, there will be improvements in my research skills, annotation skills, and work ethic, the latter of which would greatly benefit from getting less distracted by the plethora of available resources for game development and simply focusing on one article at a time.
LEVEL CLEAR.