Article in The Age: http://bit.ly/b4Mgce
Priceless at Amazon : http://amzn.to/9G0w0H

The fruits of Pixar’s work are clear to all, as they have forged ahead in effect creating an industry on the boundary between computer science and animated filmmaking. Works like Luxo Jr., Reds Dream, Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, and Toy Story still resonate with audiences. But at the core, is creating an environment which, by embracing play, aims to innovate and have people think differently. For me, this is the reason why Pixar create such innovative and exciting products. By providing a series of constraints to a whole lot of filmmakers and come up with interesting solutions… is the essence of design thinking. And “Innovate the Pixar Way” is filled with plenty of examples of this, along with some of strategies they use to develop creativity. If you’ve ever read any books on Disney and the way they create experiences for people, you’ll find a lot of similarities here.

The upshot of this for me is that, increasingly businesses are looking at new ways of thinking, of creating products and experiences never seen before… of doing things differently both within and external to their organization. And at the core of achieving this is embracing innovation through creative thinking and a playful attitude. Consequently, while a “work/play” dichotomy still tends to dominate corporate culture, this is changing, and play will become more important within corporate culture.

Apart from the fact it was a really cool conference, there were also some neat simulators to play with… aviation, mining, manufacturing, transport and so on. Here’s a photo of a helicopter simulator which was on display.

All in all a rewarding experience and one I am looking to repeat in 2011.

Kevin Carroll

Before I ordered them, I had never heard of Kevin Carroll, so I was interested in finding more about him, and his views on play. Carroll is a motivational speaker based in the United States, and has had enourmous success with this book Red Rubber Ball, in which the ball serves as a metaphor for your dreams and goals in life. While primarily catering to a business audience, I found synergy with his views on play and my own. He finds play something powerful and important in life, enabling people to innovate, create, problem solve and analyze. While he does not explicitly speak of mental models, visualization and conceptual thinking, I would appear to exist as an undercurrent to his work. In his DVDs he espouses to his business oriented audience, the potential and true power of play, and engages them to become more playful in life and work.

Both DVDs are mostly excerpts from a live presentation by Carroll to a largely business oriented audience. Carroll’s details the role that play and games has had on his life in quite a powerful way using the red rubber ball in both a real object and metaphor for the pursuit of dreams.

I found these DVDs both valuable and affordable (around US$20 a piece), and useful addition to my library. If you’re interested in purchasing, then contact Giant Impact directly, especially if you live outside of the continental USA so that you can arrange appropriate shipping.

Links
Kevin Carroll: http://www.kevincarrollkatalyst.com
Giant Impact: http://www.giantimpact.com

First off, I have to say that I was impressed with the diversity of games designed over such a short time frame. The standouts for me were Gnilley (yelling spelt backwards). While the gameplay was interesting, it was the interface design which was to control a character by using the speech volume which was a real blast. It was a single player game, but I wondered what it would be like to have it as an interface for a MMORPG… knowing that thousands of people around the world are keeping their neighbours up from screaming at a TV screen. Also, this was created by a design team of one… which was an awesome effort and deserving of taking out the Most Original Gameplay Award.

The other game that caught my eye was Tentacle, which really took the 80’s theme to heart (the Powerhouse Museum which hosted the event is currently holding an 1980s exhibition). This was just straight out fun… use your character (with its tentacle) to splatter ‘enemies’. It was a simple idea, executed very well. So well in fact that it was awarded Best Overall Game.

I wish I could spend more time to go through each of the other games to do them justice. All I can say is go check them out at the Global Game Jam website, download them and have a play. In the meantime, here are some other photos I took at the event.

Paul Callaghan (Freeplay) MC’s the event

The Games Panel (L-R): Nick Montfort, John Passfield and Jarrad ‘Farbs’ Woods

Dan Graf (IGDA) introduces the design teams.

(L-R) ‘Farbs’ and Malcolm Ryan (UNSW) discuss Farbs’ game Breakup

Links
Global Game Jam Games: http://www.globalgamejam.org/games