Following with the idea of the space shooter here comes another piece of concept art. A space battle scene. Again, listening to epic music in the background while painting.  I am proud of the result and this will be great inspiration when working further in the prototype.

Full size image after the break.

I am taking action into helping game designers out there with Game Design Doctor. Lots of things on the ideas box, but the first one is providing direct help. Not by typical consulting but with coaching techniques.
Five weeks ago I started to work with my first coachee and today we did some evaluation and revised the objectives. The experience is great and it really feels good to help others doing something I like to do. It's also very valuable learning since I have to make an effort into taking myself out of the equation and not giving easy and cheap advice based on my experience. I's interesting to hear, ask and lead the other to find his own questions and answers.
Now it's time to find one more coachee.

This box was a present from some friends who filled it with lots of tokens, bits, paper, cards and some different things useful to make physical prototypes for board or digital games. Since then I have added some more content on my own and it is always ready to help me represent or test a new idea. It's a great tool for every game designer!

This simple prototyping conceptual tool have served me countless times when approaching a new development in the preproduction phase. It is based in four areas of investigation: Game mechanics, Kinesthetics, Aesthetics and Technology.
The areas are nicely covered in the book Game Design Workshop: A playcentric approach to create innovative games (2nd ed) and the concept was first made public in EricTodd's presentation Spore: Preproduction through prototyping (ppt) at 2006 GDC.
Follow me while introducing this great tool. To start, let's ask: What do I need to prototype?

Toss the coins, make them slide and bounce around to collect all the 21 coins in this simple yet addictive game

A quick prototype developed in a few hours. Originally made just as a excuse to test the Unity web player and some javascript integration. But the result is a small game with a nice physical feel on the coins and a catchy, balanced, mechanic based on pure luck.

Do you want to embed Unity in a weebly post? There are other sites that explain how to do it. But I found that wasn't working for me because I was trying to embed the player in a blog post. I find that there are some limitations in how javascript is processed in weebly blog posts.

I provide a (limited) workaround to make it work. Read the whole story that explain all the details and how I got more than expected when realized I have developed an automatic Unity player multi loader.

Some controversial topics generate debates that can be seen as pendulums. For some time one position gets more attention and the opposing side tries to defend their point of view with more energy. Then during some time there may be a point of equilibrium, but the momentum of that change keep moving the attention towards the opposing side. And the cycle repeats again in a swinging motion.
I thought a concept for a game in which two players can exert a force to a pendulum by holding and releasing a button. Points will be awarded to the side that the pendulum is in.

Obviously the idea is to try to represent the situation with a metaphor. Each player only have the option to force the debate (pendulum) towards him side. The bars on the sides are the energy that is consumed when pushing the pendulum. It replenishes slowly over time.
This idea could be prototyped farily quickly. It would be interesting to see if the emergent dynamic is really a regular swinging motion and if the two players could actually collaborate together to end the "debate" and share the points keeping the pendulum in the middle.

Sometimes, the planets align and I enjoy programming long into the night.

I am not a programmer, but sometimes I like to tinker with the code and see the ideas coming to life.

The idea of Game Design Doctor is to assist and coach other game designers and game developers to achieve their professional goals. It's not the first time I am in the position of helping and teaching others about game design. It can looks similar to consultancy or teaching, but the concept is a mix of coaching and mentoring. When coaching my knowledge and experience about game design and development allow me to be able to understand better the context and situations of the coachee but I don't really need to know more, or be a better designer, than him. Then, sometimes, I can suggest some data or tools useful for the subject which I will know from my own experience and previous work with others. In the end, having a nice set of tools for a wide variety of situations in the game development process.

Selling the concept in just one sentence:

Some examples of situations can give a better idea:

1. You are stuck and need to see a situation with fresh eyes, from different perspectives.
2. You want to improve you game designing skills but are not sure what to begin with.
3. You want to improve a process or workflow in your project.
4. You want someone to look over your shoulder and suggest things to improve.
5. You want to check something you are doing in your project is ok.
6. You just need help with a game design related problem.

Not everything in that list is strictly coaching. That's why I am using the metaphor of a doctor. Sometimes is coaching, sometimes is looking at symptoms, giving a diagnostic and providing a treatment in the form of a conceptual tool or a piece of information.

The first thing to do is to start working in the idea as stated in the video above. I am looking for 2-3 people (first among my friends) to start working with to see the results and make sure I can do this and enjoy it. Then I will need to find if someone will actually pay for this service.
The other part of the project is the site www.GameDesignDoctor.com which is currently in private alpha and will be developed with the experience and knowledge adquired throughout the coaching sessions and personal research. The site aditionally supports the coachees and other users providing references to data and tools in a natural and efficient way.

Air persons is a new platform to offer live services. It's not probably going to provide me clients very soon but you can never know if you don't try and can be useful to validate the idea and try prices. I am offering the service just in spanish for the moment. You can click the banner to see the offer.