Gamelab 2014: Neil McFarland's talk
Neil McFarland's (Director of games at Ustwo - creators of "Monument Valley") talk was without a doubt the best talk that I listened to during GameLab 2014.
(After I got back home I realised that I missed the talk by Rami Ismail (Vlambeer), which turned out to be a great talk!).
McFarland had so many interesting and important things to share about their game development process.
They had a philosophy on how to create their games:
To never compromise on quality
Trust in self management
Focus on community interaction
I would say this is fairly good advice in order to create great games.
Some really imporant points that they discovered during user testing
Everyone [touches] differently
Users focus on a small area, even on iPad
One idea at a time
Architecture puzzles > Abstract puzzles
Secrets are distracting
People get fatigued
By watching and listening to his talk you can learn so much from why these points are crucial to thing about early on when developing a game.
I found this quote to be something that I will incorporate into my own games:
"Respect the players time"
Another great quote was this one:
"If trusted and talented truly believe in an idea don't change the goal because some parts of the internet said you're going to fail."
I cannot stress the importance of this quote enough.
