Disqus - Latest Comments for robfulop

Re: Why low-fidelity prototyping kicks butt for customer-driven design

robfulop — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 17:19:33 -0000

Great post. I've designed video games/interactive entertainment for many years and have had this particular discussion more times than I can count .. there are several points in a project's life when it makes sense to put what we have in our heads in front of other people. The question that always comes up is "how 'good' is 'good enough'" for our concept pitch or the prototype demo or the alpha test.

To me it all depends on the audience. If I'm showing something to a person experienced in looking at early stage work .. then I'm all for showing rough pencils, etc. When showing something to internal management, ESPECIALLY those with MBA's ... we' typically purposely make something look as "sketch-like" as possible. Often such resembles a blueprint with blue background and white lines ... precisely to send the unspoken message that this is nowhere near "finished" so please don't comment on our choice of font, or colors, or whatever design choices the particular executive feels is "right". What works well in this case is to actually ask the person looking at the work to help choose a font, or color palatte ... they now only feel involved this way ... as well as focus on what you want them to focus on.

But when showing something to an END USER ... I pretty much insist on a "pixel perfect" fake of the real thing because I can't afford a 'false negative' which can happen if you show unfinished stuff to somebody who doesn't typically look at unfinished work. When they give a thumbs down to a dirty/rough presentation, we as designers can always use the excuse that the 'trial' doesn't really count ... and talk ourselves into continuing what may be a bad idea. I'd much rather go into a presentation to an end user KNOWING that their "NO" really means "NO" ... and I don't leave myself the excuse of "well, they don't know how to evaluate unfinished work", etc. If I'm going to say such a thing ... why bother running the thing by the end user in the first place?

So presenting to in-house management = rough/dirty stuff is fine and often preferred so they focus on the real goods under consideration

Presenting to end users = would never dream of showing something that looks unfinished because we can't risk dismissing a thumbs down as a 'false negative'.

Re: 4 major cultural differences between Games people and Web people

robfulop — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 05:22:59 -0000

I spent over 25 years in the traditional games industry, and have been involved with social gaming for less than six months now. Social gaming occurs to me as indeed a fundamentally different medium than that ot traditional gaming. Creative mediums such as film, pop music, and interactive entertainment all share a similar evolutionary path .. the format of the creative product evolves to fit the constraints of the technologies and subsequent business models that enable the medium to exist in the first place. This sort of evolution is going on as we speak in the social gaming space .. the creative product is being shaped primarily by the emerging biz models .. this is how it should be I think.

Re: 4 major cultural differences between Games people and Web people

robfulop — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 03:50:35 -0000

A lot of what you have to say reminds me of EMPIRE, the biography of William Paley, CEO of CBS in the early days of television. His problems were not unlike those of today's web 2.0 gaming enterprise. Paley had no choice but to recruit creative staff from the world of feature films, many of whom had severe culture shock trying to ply their craft through what occurred to them as the horrid constraints of early network television. Telling a story in three 8 minute acts, where each act ended in a cliffhanger in order to motivate the viewer to sit through the commercial breaks was a truly painful learning process. Many of the writers just couldn't deal with the constraints, and returned to the 'long form' of feature films from whence they came. And those who toughed it out, and figured out how to use the new medium of television, went on to pioneer the television industry, introducing new formats like the sitcom, the game show, the soap opera, etc.

Such reminds me a lot of the state of many web 2.0 interactive entertainment companies. Often, such are populated with immigrants from the gaming world proper, who struggle with a lot of the constraints created by a business model totally unlike that of the companies they came from. Nor is the management of many of these companies, often from the web world, prepared to deal with the 'product first' mindset of the creative people they bring on board. Obviously it's the few groups who merge minds the best who will end up winning in the marketplace.

I'd recommend EMPIRE to anybody who is interested in these issues ... there are a lot of lessons to be learned from how smart people dealt with a very similar situation in a closely related industry, just a few short decades ago.