Making games is good for you (free PDF!)

Details about that new "help starting to teach independently" option (available before the end of 2024, or until I reach capacity):

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Practical content to help people everywhere make games

10 million views :: 370,000 students :: 160,000 podcast downloads

For more than ten years I've consistently delivered free and accessible quality information at scale. This includes freely sharing career stories from hundreds of professional contacts in my network and discussing more about game development than how to write code.Although I mostly post on my own channels, several years ago I guest wrote for a few episodes of Extra Credits. The first was about why I believe game development is worth doing even when entirely non-commercial). The others were about de-gamification, stress, and teamwork.

• GameDev interviews podcast (since 2015)

• YouTube - 100K subs Silver Playbutton

• Productivity audiobooks/ebooks bundle

• Video course on finishing side projects

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"As seen on EPSN" 😉

In 2011 I was working on Kinect full-body gesture recognition at Georgia Tech, on the software side of a team doing AI research based on the thinking process used by improv actors (video 1, video 2, video 3). ESPN was on campus to cover a football game, and the crew wanted to get a few clips they could run to show things happening off the field at GT. We had zero heads up or preparation time, and were told there was no promise that they'd use any given clip. I assume mine got used because I move like a muppet, which as research projects go shows well as a few second clip without sound.A friend from my hometown recognized me and messaged immediately when it aired ("I looked at my coworkers and said 'that's my friend...' they gave me guff saying that you were just a stranger, but I know the truth."), which is my main memory of it.

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An asteroid in the main belt was named after me in 2003

I've had a bizarre and fortunate life. In high school I placed 4th in an international science fair (ISEF, the same one AOC was in 4 years later), in the Computer Science division. I made a program that looked like The Sims, but worse since it was made by a teenager. dEveryone ranked had our name assigned by NASA JPL to celestial objects that were previously designated only by numbers

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Why I do things the way that I do

Teaching and business philosophy

My unique approach as an independent educator originates from organizations I founded at Carnegie Mellon and Georgia Tech. Embracing this as my full-time profession in 2015 gave me the freedom to experiment with educational philosophies beyond traditional boundaries.Many people misunderstand our structure. It's not a class, meetup, or simulated job. Instead, participants collaborate on remote teams making freeware games, meeting with me periodically for personalized lessons tailored around the projects and tasks they choose. My training specializations are in gameplay programming, small team production (planning, scheduling, coordinating), and general gameplay design, although members can also schedule help sessions with our specialists in other domains (audio, 2D and 3D art, UI, UX, level design).Here are some excerpts that have influenced my unconventional training format:

Why instead of giving lectures I have students choose their projects and tasks, then meet with them up to every week or two"In the newer universities in England and America there is a regrettable tendency to insist upon attendance at innumerable lectures... When I was an undergraduate, my feeling, and that of most of my friends, was that lectures were a pure waste of time. No doubt we exaggerated, but not much. The real reason for lectures is that they are obvious work, and therefore businessmen are willing to pay for them. If university teachers adopted the best methods, businessmen would think them idle, and insist upon cutting down the staff. He should see the pupils individually when they have done their papers. About once a week or once a fortnight, he should see such as care to come in the evening, and have desultory conversation about matters more or less connected with their work. All this is not very different from the practice at the older universities. If a pupil chooses to set himself a paper, different from that of the teacher but equally difficult, he shall be at liberty to do so."-Bertrand Russell
Education and the Good LifeWhy instead of exercises or quizzes I emphasize solving problems in the context of real team projects"In a word, learning is decontextualized. We break ideas down into tiny pieces that bear no relation to the whole. We give students a brick of information, followed by another brick, followed by another brick, until they are graduated, at which point we assume they have a house. What they have is a pile of bricks, and they don't have it for long… More and more teachers are coming to recognize that excellence is most likely to result from well functioning teams, in which resources are shared, skills and knowledge are exchanged, and each participant is encouraged and helped to do their best."-Alfie Kohn
Two parts from Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A's, Praise and Other BribesWhy my approach to education focuses on peer community and hands-on practical learning"...Expense of getting an education would in a great measure vanish... Those conveniences which the student requires at Cambridge or elsewhere cost him or somebody else ten times as great a sacrifice of life... Those things for which the most money is demanded are never the things which the student most wants. Tuition, for instance, is an important item in the term bill, while for the far more valuable education which he gets by associating with the most cultivated of his contemporaries no charge is made...""...Says one, 'you do not mean that the students should go to work with their hands instead of their heads?' I do not mean that exactly, but I mean something which he might think a good deal like that... Which would have advanced the most at the end of a month--the boy who had made his own jackknife from the ore which he had dug and smelted, reading as much as would be necessary for this--or the boy who had attended the lectures on metallurgy at the Institute in the meanwhile, and had received a Rodgers' penknife from his father? Which would be most likely to cut his fingers?"-Henry David Thoreau
WaldenWhy I structure training as sustainable weekly practice, rather than packing it into a shorter, high intensity full-time class"Learning is deeper and more durable when it’s effortful... Periodic practice arrests forgetting, strengthens retrieval routes, and is essential for hanging onto the knowledge you want to gain. When you space out practice at a task and get a little rusty between sessions, or you interleave the practice of two or more subjects, retrieval is harder and feels less productive, but the effort produces longer lasting learning and enables more versatile application of it in later settings."-Henry L. Roediger III and Mark A. McDaniel
Cognitive scientists, from Make It Stick, written with Peter BrownWhy I do not offer grading or contests, instead encouraging students to pursue what most interests and challenges them"To overcome the anxieties and depressions of contemporary life, individuals must become independent of the social environment to the degree that they no longer respond exclusively in terms of its rewards or punishments. To achieve such autonomy, a person has to learn to provide rewards to herself. She has to develop the ability to find enjoyment and purpose regardless of external circumstances… The best moments usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile… When we act freely, for the sake of the action rather than for ulterior motives, we learn to become more than what we were."-Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Flow: The Psychology of Optimal ExperienceWhy I use computer game development to teach people about programming, creativity, planning, teamwork, group speaking, etc."Not amusement nor distraction, but the desire to effect some cherished purpose is the strongest motive that can move the learner."-John William Adamson
In his introduction for The Educational Writings of John Locke

I see the purpose of my work as to use the skills, experience and connections I gained to help others who haven't had the head start and opportunities I did, especially people who found existing options (ex. jams, university, static online resources) didn't fit their needs well.I work on continually improving how well my business helps people in the following ways:

I don’t just see my work as fixing code, design, or project logistics issues. If people I work with hit a roadblock, I’m there looking for ways to help them get past it.I realized that a lot of people I worked with had the tools, knew the basics, and even had the time, but still weren’t using them to do what they wanted to do.Jobs and schools make people do things by paying them or grading them. I wanted to get people ready to do things on their own, without someone else managing, measuring, punishing, or rewarding them. This way, they'd be able to tackle projects beyond what someone else tells them to do.After thousands of hours in one-on-one calls, I spotted patterns and came up with solutions that helped many of our people figure out why they weren’t moving forward. Now, people who weren’t making games before joining us are releasing games, sticking to every project they start, and consistently meeting deadlines.This issue—knowing what we want to do and technically being able to, but not doing it—affects game developers a lot. But it’s a much wider problem. The same solutions helped me develop my video courses, ebooks, and grow my small business.Wanting to help more people outside my immediate area, I turned these ideas into two audiobooks and ebooks, Self-Command and Self-Doubt. They’ve now reached over 5,000 people. They're also part of my new video course, Complete Every Project, and available to all members of HomeTeamGameDev.

© Chris DeLeon 2024. All rights reserved.