Wallow

Some of the time, wallowing around doing nothing in particular, can be the most productive thing you can do. Learn from it; grow. Become all that you can be - through inaction - as opposed to striving to become all you want to be - through action.

And don't worry, the world will still be here when you return from this hiatus.

Nasal Naval Combat Games Designer

A clear exposition of how a games designer - when inverted - can be employed in almost any fictional naval engagement as a battering ram - holing your adversaries beneath the water line and rapidly spreading terror through the ranks of any opposing fleet.

Although most games designers will do, this tactic will be most effective when the pointy-nosed variety are employed.

Screwed

This happens to all of us at some time or other. The important thing is not to be bitter about it.

Inscrutable Squares

When your games design mojo is at it's lowest ebb, and you can't think of anything particular to do on the development, even while despairing at how far from complete the game still is, I find it useful to draw small, square-shaped diagrams - whether of non-linear level progression pathways, super efficient rendering strategies or simply of how I plan to eat at lunchtime.

The point is to make them as intriguing and cryptic as possible. By creating such a square and filling it with inscrutable squiggles, you will soon emerge with a fresh sense of purpose and direction, ready to forge ahead with a production that will undoubtedly exceed the very boundaries of gaming avant garde.

Newtonian Voracity

There are many things worse than being smacked on the noggin by falling fruit while dozing under an apple tree - no matter how apocryphally. An infestation of small, round, overly voracious bipedal mouth-creatures is just one of them.


By analogy, this diagram shows everything that is wrong with the burgeoning casual games market sector - scribbly, unclear, demanding of nothing but mediocrity and threatening to swallow up all that we hold dear.

Clear out of my orchard, you lousy varmints!

Argh! Trigonometry, Alison & Accident Book

Whenever you find yourself doing anything involved with trigonometry during the development of a 3d game, a little alarm bell should sound at the back of your mind - could you accomplish your aims more elegantly and efficiently by the application of a few vector cross and dot products? usually the answer is yes, and you should dump all those mouldy old atan2()s like a hot air balloon dropping sand bags.


Make sure your inappropriate over-reliance on trigonometry is properly recorded in the office accident book, and then move on. Don't look back - a nasty little trig fairy is lurking back there, just waiting for an opportunity to trepan your canoodle with a rusty old funnel-cap.

Slings and Arrows of Financial misfortune

Today we will be looking at safeguarding your company's future in these uncertain times:



This diagram clearly shews a small dev studio admirably prepared to cope with the worst the Credit Crunch can throw at it. Provided you are able to rope the staff together tightly, you should be able to construct an overarching defensive shell - large and tough enough to shield the whole organisation from even the worst slings and arrows of outrageous financial fortune, whilst remaining sufficiently agile to cope with the most tortuous of your clients' caprices.