Read more here at the conference website.

http://www.agilegames2012.com/index.php/8-news/36-callforgames

1. In Session 1, we of course kicked things off with a game and then introduced our five step approach and shared some guidelines. The five steps are Problem, Lead objectives, Aspects, Invent, Debrief – PLAID (pronounced PLAYED ). We ended the first session by forming teams around the most popular Problems, who then presented their Lead objectives to the rest of the group.
2. Session 2 was all about Invention. While keeping in mind the principles of Inspiration, KISS, and Courage, teams collaborated and innovated until the beginnings of a game emerged.
3. The main goal of Session 3 was to provide a safe environment for teams to present and play their games with the other participants and receive feedback.

When the dust settled, we had 4 great games:

- Don’t Blow It – Lead Objective: Trust is important, yet hard to earn and easy to lose.
- The Big Payoff – Lead Objective: Maximize portfolio value by finishing smaller projects earlier to gain value sooner.
- Timebox Box – Lead Objective: The value of timeboxing.
- Pizza Portfolio – Lead Objective: Prioritize your portfolio to optimize the business’ ROI.

The next day, each incubator game was entered in the AgileGames Game Tournament. And out of all the excellent games played that day, ‘The Big Payoff’, conceived just the day before, won ‘Most Creative Game’! Congratulations to the creators, Alex Boutin and Erwin Van Der Koog!

Mike and I will be facilitating another Game Incubator at Agile 2011. Hope to see you there!

There is more that we want to do to improve search but wanted to make sure that everyone can benefit from what is already there.

Please feel free to share any feedback or suggestions via comments.

Prune the Product Tree

Since this was a last-minute deep-dive session to cover off a medical emergency, we had very little time for prep. As a result, we played Prune the Product tree in open-ended exploration mode where there were initially the tree was empty of items – it was up to the players to decide what was important for game designers and game seekers at various time horizons.

After a quick demo of this website, Luke Hohmann (who did a wonderful job facilitating) had everyone form groups where they would act as customers and decide what they wanted to see. Here are the trees and features that the teams came up with:

As the session was going on, we noticed the teams were really cooking. Luke said “I thought we were just doing a demo, but there is some really valuable product information.” I (the smart alec) said: “Innovation Games works! Who knew?” IMHO, it is just so cool that it is like magic. It was at that moment that we realized and lamented that we did not ask for volunteers to be observers.

Important lesson: use and train observers! Happilly, I was able to benefit from this lesson the very next day when I ran a surprise session on Innovation Games with Brian Bozzutto and Johnny Scarborough, but that’s another story and will be told at another time.

Creating a Feature List

During the morning session, I identified features and sized them (S, M, L). Over lunch, Luke and I (actually mostly Luke) created and printed features lists and descriptions. Of course, this was done in excel so we could upload directly into buy-a-feature online game. Check out this PDF of the Tasty Cupcakes Feature Buying Guide.

Caveat: in a real Innovation Game, it would take time to unpack all the observations and create a list of features. We did it over lunch as a demonstration. If you are doing real work, take the time to get the feature list right.

Buy A Feature

We played three in-person buy a feature games and one online game. The results of all the games are show below.

What does this show us? It shows us that there is a strong consensus for the top features – these were selected by all groups: photo/video, powerful search, and improve usability. One would need to unpack obeservers’ notes to understand other features. For example, one group assumed that user tagging would have to be included in powerful search and did not buy it.

Does these features make sense to you in terms of TastyCupcakes priorities? Please let us know.

To reflect our new vision and focus on community we have moved our site to a .org domain. Although a small and perhaps unnoticable change it does reflect to those of us in the community the real purpose of this site – to connect and enable professionals who are passionate about using games and experiential techniques and want to learn and share with others.

Another subtle change is our new tagline – Fuel for Invention and Learning. As the community grows we have recognized that there are a wide range of leading edge and forward thinking individuals and companies, leveraging game and experiential techniques to drive innovation, creativity and learning.

Other changes include the site itself, we have re-engineered the site to improve usability, appearance and performance . Our work is of course not done and we will continue to look for ways to improve the site for all of us.

As we continue to work on improving the site we also are focussed on building the community. We are looking for passionate and committed people to join us to  help grow and support the community.  If this is you please send us a note and let us know how you would like to help.

This deal will only last until January 24th so visit www.AgileGames2011.com for more details and register right away.

I look forward to seeing you all there!

Are you a Game Designer?

Share your games on TastyCupakes.com (http://blog.tastycupcakes.com/game/) and get recognition and feedback from other users.

Are you a Game User?

Check if your favourite games are on TastyCupcakes and if they are not, add a reference to the game that has already been published elsewhere (http://blog.tastycupcakes.com/submit-game-reference/) so that you can help others can benefit.

Want to Help our Community?

If you are knowledgeable about WordPress, help make the site more functional for you and others.

If you are interested in editing and improving the content, consider volunteering your time as curator so that the content is clearer and more accessible to you and others.

Send us an email at mmccullough@me.com

Vision