It's interesting to contrast this culture with game design. Sure, OK, most game designers don't write like DanC, but there's a culture of giving *extremely* depthy talks on work (including work in progress!) at GDC and other venues.
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Great points! I’ll likely try writing a few threads here just to see how it goes. The contrast with game design is what convinces me our side of design has such a large problem, I find it verrrrry concerning.
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Why is it concerning?
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I'm sad we lack that kind of academic community, but I just always assumed it's because we have a norm of caring most about shipping impactful work. (i.e. where you started in the thread)
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A charitable take would be that it reflects the incommensurability of the work: cultural accretion isn't a priority because every project is unique. But more realistically, I think it often reflects a mix of unseriousness, anti-intellectualism, and cynicism.
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Consider: game designers are arguably much scrappier than software designers; they certainly prize shipping. They produce cultural knowledge at a much higher rate.
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I guess I'm not sold that seriousness and intellectualism will result in a better field. Agreed on cynicism though. Would there really be growth proportional to organization overhead of cultivating journals, conferences, etc. ?
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I was always jealous of Architects' seriousness though because it seemed more fun and meaningful, so I'd be happy if we could adopt that kind of culture / practice.
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I also wonder what game designers would say if we asked them what they think of app designers / developers. Do we just have rose tinted glasses about this? For example, the people at apple and google take their work tremendously seriously and publish/patent work regularly
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I've asked this of many game designers; I've never gotten an admiring response.
You don't necessarily need journals and conferences. Game designers' blogs and Twitter feeds are better too.
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And of course I know many Apple/Google designers. They take their work seriously, but (usually) not their field.
They don't write the patents; lawyers come chat with them and ghostwrite them. And I can think of almost none who publish on their own.
I feel inspired to write something good to my blog now and share earnestly on twitter
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be the change you etc
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