Daily Game Design Practice: Week of 01/01/2018

Happy New Year’s! Hope your year is off to a great start. If you’re starting a daily game design practice this year, I’m excited to have you join me in the journey.

Here’s how you can get started with #gamedesigndaily.

Daily practice prompts for this week:

• Start tackling a big project. Is there something you put off finishing last year? Now is the perfect time for a fresh start. Commit to spending five minutes on your project — no more. Teach yourself that every little action counts and is worth doing.
• Share your reflections. Last week we reflected on the past year. Today, share some of those reflections with the world. It can be as broad as a social media post or as narrow as discussing the ups and downs of the year with a close friend. Things often become clearer when we talk about them with others. Sharing will help you put things in a new light!
• Set a goal. Writing about the things you want to achieve is exciting as you imagine a brighter future — but can be scary as well when you consider the potential for failure. If you’re new to goal setting and goal getting, choose a goal that’s easily attainable — something that you’ve already done a lot of work towards, or something that doesn’t require a bunch of complex actions to achieve. If you’re more experienced when it comes to working towards goals, feel free to stretch a little. Practice striking the right balance between aspiration and reality.
• Choose your intentions. Goals are visible, targetable, detailed milestones that you can steer your ship towards. Intentions are equally valuable. They don’t tell you where to head your ship — they tell you how to navigate through your journey. Do you want to be friendlier? Braver? More relaxed? Do you want to fill your days with activity or step back and assess? Deciding on the style in which you will work towards your goals can give a huge boost to overall satisfaction, which makes it easier to keep going when the going gets tough.
• Track your game design development. How do you structure your work to make sure you achieve the things you want to achieve? Is that system still working for you? Does it need tweaking? Make some notes on the tools and systems you have in place (Trello, Google Docs, Agile, GTD) and think about where they could be improved.
• Clean house. If you’re working on any sort of creative project, it’s easy to build up a stash of supplies, prototypes, notebooks, and materials of all sorts. Get a fresh start on your game designing for the year by organizing and decluttering your game design space.
• Start a habit. Maybe that habit is #gamedesigndaily — today’s practice can do double duty! Even if a daily game design practice isn’t a good fit for you right now, or if you’re looking for something new, there are plenty of great, simple habits you can choose from that will help improve your game design skills. Reading a page a day from a game design book, for example, or working on your design sketching chops. Pick something and commit to doing it daily today.

Here’s to a year of fantastic game design progress! I’ll be working alongside you during your practice — follow on Twitter or Instagram. And hit me up if you have questions or want to share your progress!