Friday, March 11, 2011

MDC invites the experts over


Yesterday was a very exciting day at MDC. We invited a group of awesome people from Stellar Learning Academy over to our office. We had the pleasure of giving them a tour and explain what we do here the cow's abode.

They were very excited to use our equipment and ask us lots of really interesting and smart questions about how we make our apps, sell them and my personal favorite "how do you feel about jailbroken phones?".

It was great listening to what they had to say about what we do and seeing how excited they were about it. It easy to forget how cool our job is and this awesome group of kids helped us put in perspective why we do what we do.

So much of their lives revolves around virtual games. Some of them play games on their iDevices more than any other platform and have even evolved slang from what they've picked up in these artificial worlds.

As developers we have a tremendous responsibility to really see what effect we are causing out there and work towards creating a good one. I'm not talking about creating games where you kiss, hug and plant flowers in order to create a positive effect. I'm talking about looking at their faces and really communicating with them to see how these games are affecting the other games they play in life.

I encourage fellow developers to communicate with their public and listen to what it has to say. Don't base your agreements or decisions on what some "expert" with a PhD has to say about games. It's easy to come up with theories about why man is the way he is without any real life observation and much harder to pay attention and understand what somebody is saying and really care for what they have to say. I encourage you to take the high road and pay attention for yourself. It's much more rewarding and a lot more accurate.

Thanks guys, you were awesome. We learned a lot from you.

Signing out.
-La Presidenta!