Week 4 - Game Design - Escape Game

An early concept picture of our space based escape game.

Thoughts on brainstorming and this week's workshop

During the week 4 workshop the class was segregated into groups of three, tasked with the design of a game built around the escape exploration concept. 

This task is to take place over the next couple of weeks with week 4 focusing on the setting and story, the theme, objects / keys and some of the initial rules and constraints utilising brainstorming techniques in order to design the prototype of the game.

Whilst I have done some brainstorming in the past and did indeed (at least to some extent) realise the importance of not criticising the the ideas brought forth by others, and to encourage differing views and approaches this became even more apparent as my team's brainstorming session continued. 

I felt that although we spent the better part of two hours working on a prototype our progress was artificial hindered due to constant interruptions, objections and complaints to every idea that was raised. Quite often the person raising the objection would be objecting to something that was already thought of with a solution literally only a sentence or two away but such solutions were never conveyed due to constant interruption.

One especially frustrating and discouraging point was that quite often when objections were raised and ideas and thoughts were interrupted the person doing the interrupting would only comment on the negatives but not on the positives and would be focusing only on the problem and not on the solution. Whilst it is frustrating to be interrupted mid sentence during the delivery of an idea it is even more frustrating when the person interrupting offers no solution / advice or support only a complaint.

Thinking of the experience above it was still a valuable experience as it further reinforced that during a brainstorming session you must not interrupt, discourage and criticise the ideas of others but instead encourage and build upon ideas offered. In some ways today's brainstorming session reminded me of work meetings as the exact same situation can be a frequent occurrence...