[Day 2] Idea Brainstorm Meeting [Thursday] [Host]

1) Do /giveaway

2) Ask if the times are better spread or not. 

3) If dense choose pitches Friday, if not review fri, choose mon

🔸 Event host

🔹 Everyone else

🟢 Elected team facilitator

🥇 Goal: These will help you improvise. 
This checklist is detailed, but you can reach the goals using your judgment if you think you can achieve them faster than the checklist suggests. 

🟦🟦🟦 Headers, subheaders 1, 2, 3. 

🔄 Conditional

🔸Say: I'd like to start by talking a little about the educational side of things, especially when it comes to games, but this platform is equally useful for those who already have skills wanting to build something awesome together in the form of any digital or even physical product. 

🔸Say: You should also know that I will talk about education how its done generally but please note that there's a huge variance between educational institutions on all these points, so what's true for one is not true for others. 

🔸Say: The average person pays about $100,000 for a game development degree, but the overwhelming majority don't break into the industry. 

🔸Say: This leaves students saddled with debt and unable to use the skills they thought they had.

🔸Say: Unfortunately, Samuel when inquiring of industry insiders was told that many universities inflate their placement numbers by counting anyone who makes even a dollar selling assets on platforms like Unity's Asset Store as placed. These people aren't placed in jobs; they're struggling for survival with $100,000 in debt.

🔸Say: Recently, the IGDA, the world's largest organization advocating for game developers, released a report on these issues.

🔸Action: Paste this link https://igda.org/resources-archive/hireability-gaps-and-frictions-between-university-game-programs-and-industry-hires-2023/

🔸Say: Recently Samuel met with an IGDA board member to discuss game development education. He learned that many universities teach game development as an art form rather than a road to job placement, and the majority have little-to-no connections with industry insiders.

🔸Say: We believe there's got to be a better way. 

🔸Say: What if we could build a coalition of motivated, enthusiastic people dedicated to empowering each other to reach their own goals? That's what we've decided to pursue here at [P1]. 

🔸Say: If we all work together, we can get to our destination faster than ever before.

🔸Say: We're working on something radically different and open, empowering you from the bottom up and allowing donations to make this dream a reality.

There is one more thing you should know if you are seeking to get a job in the industry. 

🔸Say: See game development, software development, and animation projects are already tough, so companies want to know that they people they hire already understand the social side of working with a company. While not everyone here may need this—some already have industry experience—we maintain professionalism in this community to prepare those who don't. We demand the highest standard of ethics and integrity from members of the community for this reason. 

🔸Say: We are not just a community, we are creating an ideal learning environment with high standards. 

🔸Say: To maintain the highest level of professionalism, we will sometimes step in and take disciplinary action to time out, mute, or even sometimes ban members. If this happens, the person removed may feel left out. Contacting members going through the discipline process is a surefire way to create drama as such people may have an ax to grind. Instead, report those who do, and we'll solve the problem. Those who join us agree not to contact members banned from the community during the time of their discipline or ban as long as they remain members of this community. However, keep in mind that you can uproot your project from this community if you want to. 

🔸Say: The managers of this community have only one incentive: to make you guys succeed as much as possible. That's why we take no stake in your games. We are independent arbiters seeking your success.

🔸Say: Does that make sense? If you have questions, you can leave them in chat and if you agree with this, type yes in chat now.

🔸Action: Give everyone a few seconds here to type. If nobody's typing, you can keep going but don't spend more than 4 to 5 minutes on this.

🔸Say: We believe that learning by doing is far superior to just learning things in abstract and being graded on them. Instead, if you can make real stuff here and present it to the world, you can get real-world feedback and see what works and what doesn't.

🔸If no one speaks up ask one of these random questions: 

• What's one thing you guys think traditional education gets wrong that we or others could innovate on? 
• What could be the potential impact of allowing people to find others without having capital upfront, while still maintaining an intense professional environment and high standards? 
• Why does creating a professional environment help everyone here succeed? 

🟧🟧 Being Finishers

🔸Say: We don't charge anything for the service and are working hard to make this a non-profit, covering its costs through sponsorship.

🔸Say: An unfortunate reality is that no matter how much value you provide for free, as long as people don't pay for it, many tend to give up. People, when given total freedom, are drawn to the fun of starting things rather than the satisfaction of finishing.

🔸Action: Paste the link to this tweet: https://twitter.com/tracewoodgrains/status/1732831828094886020

🔸Say: Take a look at this; it's Replit's 100 Days of Code tutorial, and notice how few people actually complete it.

🔸Ask: Of those 200,000 people who started, how many of them wanted to learn code?

🔸Wait for someone to speak up.

🔄 If no one speaks up tell them: "When you have a large group of people, it's easy to defer to everybody else. I'm trying to break that habit by asking you guys questions throughout, so just whenever I pop in a question, feel free to open your mic and speak up."

🔸Say: It seems like only 20-30 finished.

🔸Say: No matter what we do here, we can't change the fact that it's more fun to start things than to finish them, and some people will always be tempted to continually start new things, even if it's not in their best interest, rather than completing projects that cause them to stand out as a candidate and impact the world for the better.  

🔸Say: However, it's the finishers who impact the world.  

🔸Say: Let's all post our motivation for finishing our projects here in the chat right now!

🟧🟧 Voice Chat

🔸Say: Our number one discovery has been that when people see each other active in voice chat, they will also step up, be active, take part, and be finishers. That's why we ask everyone, whenever you're working on the project, to make a channel for you and your team and start working away. 

🔸Say: We require a minimum of 35 hours in voice chat, even if you're AFK some of that time, to be considered an active participant on your team and to get the bonus for the number of participants on a team.

🔸Say: Activity Watch is a free, open-source program that lets you track your number of hours in Discord over a month in a way that isn't sent to a server, and we strongly recommend it but it is not required.

🔸Action: Paste the link https://activitywatch.net/

🔸Say: Yesterday, you were told to elect somebody on your team in charge of onboarding. If you were that person and you were elected, speak up now.

🔸Say: Throughout this process, our community will be reaching out to people from around the world to bring them into this community, ensuring we have an ongoing supply of amazing, diverse skills for your teams.

🔸Say: As new people join, we can't integrate them all onto teams; instead, we reward teams for doing this. Therefore, today, set aside a bit of time to create an onboarding process for your team. Determine what tools you'll use, what newcomers need to know about your vision, and give them a roadmap to integrate into your team.

END Ignore: 

🔸Say: One way we achieve this is by building a network of mentors through something called a "co-mentorship session," which will happen later in this program.

🔸Say: One of the best ways to ensure people learn is to give them ownership over their success or failure. When you're in charge of what's happening, you become deeply engaged and learn from both success and failure.

🔸Say: And it's always better to learn from actual player feedback or a customer than from a mentor trying to abstractly grade what you're doing.

Grading Kills Creativity

🔸Say: Our first target is the abstraction that comes with a grade.

🔸Say: Ultimately, game development, software development, and animation are done with a particular goal, usually to do it full-time, either running it as a business or joining one.

🔸Say: However, in Samuel's experience, there are many paths to success. While working on Ylands, Samuel noted that their strategy was to partner with other businesses, eventually leading to a significant deal with Tencent.

🔸Say: This isn't a typical route to monetize a game, but thinking outside the box is essential with all you do. 

🔸Say: Your goal might not be to make money, and that's okay but player feedback, for example, can be a great way to learn real game design -- something most degrees really struggle with. 

🔸Say: Unfortunately, traditional grading systems confine your thinking. They need to keep you in a box to grade you.

🔸Say: Our way is to bring people together to build awesome stuff, then showcase it for real-world feedback to improve our work. This is also why we have stringent requirements on what is created, as we aim to help synergize marketing. Getting the word out is key to snagging feedback.

🔸Say: Quick aside: A lot of people think if you build a great product, it'll sell itself, but as our mentor James Mouat, with 20 years as a industry experience as game director at EA and Ubisoft, says: "90% of making games is about marketing." This is lesser-known in the indie community, but the reality doesn't hit until after you've made a game. 

The Incentive Problem

🔸Say: Unfortunately, the incentive structure for modern education means the longer you take, the better for the institution, leading to a tendency to prolong education. Plus, they're not accountable if you don't land a job.

orange say at the end of the day game development software development animation and the like are done with a particular goal in mind and for most people that goal is going to be to do it full time and to run it as a business or to join a business doing it full-time 

orange say however in Samuel's experience there are so many different ways to get to the destination period when working on Ylands Samuel noticed that their strategy was to find other businesses that could find the game useful and eventually they ended up selling their entire company in part to 10 cent through the game by offering it in part to solve problems Tencent had. 

orange say that's not a normal route to monetize the game but thinking outside the box like that is essential with everything you do 

orange say Now your goal is not likely to make money yet -- and that's ok player feedback on games for example can be a great way to learn game design. 

orange say unfortunately traditional grading systems don't allow you to think outside the box they have to strictly keep you within the box so that they can grade you 

orange say our way is to bring people together to build awesome stuff and then put it before an audience to get their real life feedback so we can improve our work. 

Educational Community

orange say unfortunately the way the incentive structure for a modern school is set up and such that the longer you take to educate yourself the better it is for the school -- this leads to a strong incentive to keep people as long as possible. Moreover they are not responsible if you don't get a job. 

orange say this link will give you some information from the biggest organization supporting game developers

orange action Paste this link https://igda.org/resources-archive/hireability-gaps-and-frictions-between-university-game-programs-and-industry-hires-2023/ 

orange say don't get me wrong there are some great educational institutions out there and there's a huge difference between some and others so don't take this as a blanket kind of nation of condemnation of the current educational establishment but we believe there's always room for innovation. 

🔸Say: When designing this system, we considered that modern education systems are incredibly expensive and incentivized to retain students as long as possible. By contrast, creating a high-level professional community of engaged people eager to get things done, we prepare a fast track for learning through doing.

🔸Say: We believe learning through doing is far superior to abstract learning where you're graded on a preset test. With our approach, you receive real-life feedback on actual products you create with other members here. While we don't guarantee marketing help, if your product is similar to others, it's easy to make connections and support each other's success—that's what this place is all about. The feedback you get through marketing will be essential to understanding who your customer is and how you can connect with them. 

🔸Say: I'll linger in chat to be a resource to you in case you need help with your pitches or if you have questions. You can start asking them now or teams that want to split off can do so now. If you want to split off use the same system as last time and make a new Discord channel.