How the Zeptolab Game Designer Challenge was created
About the author: Sergey Maslennikov, leading game designer at Zeptolab.
The idea to create a contest of game designers appeared about three months ago. At that time no one knew how we would do it, but there was a desire to collect all the game and design minds on one platform and invite them to measure themselves. We understood that the idea was risky - it was not a competition in mathematics with the only correct answer, but the more difficult the task seemed, the more attractive the attempt to implement it seemed.
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We began by developing questions in order to understand whether we have material on which to evaluate participants. We turned to fellow game designers and asked to recall the most difficult work tasks that they had to face. The work went quickly (the colleagues had more difficult tasks than we thought), and soon we collected the first set of questions. Then the first problem appeared - among them there was not a single simple question with an unequivocal answer that was needed for the first round! But the nontrivial tasks, throwing a call to the participants, was enough. In a game design, it's hard to come up with a question without a free answer - who would have thought?
The solution was found unexpectedly - in the plot of the competition, which was invented in parallel.
The story was written in a sarcastic style and told about a young game designer working in an unknown gaming company. Colleagues characters asked crazy questions, and analysts collected data on the size of the shoes of their employees. The goal of this company is chaos and hell, but not the development of cool games. In the subtitle of the plot there was a phrase: “Attention! All coincidences with real personal and professions are random! ”. It was the frivolity of what was happening that allowed us to ask the same frivolous questions. On the brainstorming, we started to come up with crazy options, not worrying that they might seem simple or naive to the participants of the competition.
As a result, we got exactly what we wanted - a non-standard and funny contest that combines a frivolous story with some very serious tasks.
The first round is of course the easiest. Any participant can try to answer questions and get acquainted with the “main actors”, and then decide whether to register and try to go to the next round or not. And if you missed the first round? So, missed the whole contest: (
Yes, about the main prize: we didn’t think too long about it and almost immediately decided that it would be a trip to GDC - it seemed logical to us that the winner would be able to talk with his colleagues, attend performances and exchange experiences. Maybe some of the winners even wish to join our company? Why not?
Registration at the Zeptolab Game Designer Challange is possible until February 7, the address of the competition gd.zeptolab.com/ru .
The idea to create a contest of game designers appeared about three months ago. At that time no one knew how we would do it, but there was a desire to collect all the game and design minds on one platform and invite them to measure themselves. We understood that the idea was risky - it was not a competition in mathematics with the only correct answer, but the more difficult the task seemed, the more attractive the attempt to implement it seemed.
')
We began by developing questions in order to understand whether we have material on which to evaluate participants. We turned to fellow game designers and asked to recall the most difficult work tasks that they had to face. The work went quickly (the colleagues had more difficult tasks than we thought), and soon we collected the first set of questions. Then the first problem appeared - among them there was not a single simple question with an unequivocal answer that was needed for the first round! But the nontrivial tasks, throwing a call to the participants, was enough. In a game design, it's hard to come up with a question without a free answer - who would have thought?
The solution was found unexpectedly - in the plot of the competition, which was invented in parallel.
The story was written in a sarcastic style and told about a young game designer working in an unknown gaming company. Colleagues characters asked crazy questions, and analysts collected data on the size of the shoes of their employees. The goal of this company is chaos and hell, but not the development of cool games. In the subtitle of the plot there was a phrase: “Attention! All coincidences with real personal and professions are random! ”. It was the frivolity of what was happening that allowed us to ask the same frivolous questions. On the brainstorming, we started to come up with crazy options, not worrying that they might seem simple or naive to the participants of the competition.
As a result, we got exactly what we wanted - a non-standard and funny contest that combines a frivolous story with some very serious tasks.
The first round is of course the easiest. Any participant can try to answer questions and get acquainted with the “main actors”, and then decide whether to register and try to go to the next round or not. And if you missed the first round? So, missed the whole contest: (
Yes, about the main prize: we didn’t think too long about it and almost immediately decided that it would be a trip to GDC - it seemed logical to us that the winner would be able to talk with his colleagues, attend performances and exchange experiences. Maybe some of the winners even wish to join our company? Why not?
Registration at the Zeptolab Game Designer Challange is possible until February 7, the address of the competition gd.zeptolab.com/ru .
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/276365/
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