Mzo has plans for learngamedesign.org

@jspringfield211: What are your plans for Learngamedesign.org? May I ask a couple questions and blog about your plans?

@mzo: I have kind of a 3 phase plan for the learngamedesign wiki at the moment. 1) Collect resources, mostly in the form of urls.

2) Organize everything in a very step by step format to act as an alternative to books/schools for everyone to learn freely

3) Turn the entire thing into a game itself. Still brainstorming but ill use the wiki itself for a design doc!

Last but not least I'm looking to add a chat/forum to the site to increase involvement, trying this: convore.com

Do you have an inspiration about that you want to base the site on?

gameful.org has been a big inspiration. I like some parts of Khan Academy. This online hypnosis course.

Do you consider learngamedesign.org to be a 'project'?

Absolutely, one in which I hope to engage others to contribute and mold. It was created to empower. An iterative approach.

Do you have any kind of strategy laid out, or timeline to implement your ideas?

In doing the most recent Exploring Design podcast I realized I should make a good resource as a school alternative.  I'm taking the same approach I take with game design. Focusing on the core mechanic and iterating. Timeline is "ASAP".  The core mechanic is providing the resources and guidance for dreamers who don't know how. Game design is for everyone!

I plan on getting at least the core wiki stuff "finished" by the end of the month. That means collecting and organizing.  I'd like to use the wiki itself and chat/forum to keep everything I'm doing as transparent as possible to elicit feedback.  Part of me would like to take the "Would you guys like to see from this?" but that often leads to a lot of nothing. Vision!

Right! Avoid a 'design by committee'. There is no reason to think of this project as a 'fire and forget'.  Curate the resource after 'launch'.

that was supposed to be the "What would you guys like to see from this?" approach lol ;)

Exactly. I'm a big fan of the "release early, update fast" approach. The wiki is the prototype. Gamejamhq is a similar idea.  Twitter itself is a good example of a community helping steer a minimal product. RT's, hashtags, etc.  A wiki offers enough flexibility to act as a minimal way to flesh things out. I'm a web dev so I can build custom later.

I could have spent a lot of time "pondering" what to build. Instead I used my iPhone at a bbq to setup the domain & wiki!  Which speaks to how I feel about game design. STOP HESITATING, JUST MAKE THINGS! Can't steer a docked boat! Rather than worry about "competing" with similar sites I'm simply incorporating what they have. Pixelprospector for example.

'Pretotyping' fits really well to that philosophy, because you can just jump in and do it no matter your experience level.

Yeah! Keep index cards in your back pocket like I do. I'm considering creating a "pretotyping" kit for EveryGame for iPhone

Who out there in game design land would you love to have input from on this project?

Self taught indies, educators ( http://q2l.org/team ), consultants, gamejam vets to name a few groups that could help.

Thank you so much for chatting with me! I'm really excited to see learngamedesign.org get up and running!  I'll make sure to plug it with the Boston Indies crowd.

Thanks for being interested and excited! Don't think I haven't seen your contributions to the wiki, you rock! :D  Fantastic! Boston seems to have a great scene especially for jams. Keep up the good work on your blog as well.

Ha!  I certainly wasn't trying to be sneaky about it!  I've already written up a blog post about it 101 Game Design Resources.  It's scheduled for next Monday and we can certainly add more to the wiki then.