As well as a form of art and entertainment, games are about business. Whether you want to work at a game studio, start your own business or make games as a hobby, recognizing the dynamic landscape of the videogame industry is critical to finding your place. This course will introduce you to game production, project management, teamwork skills, and how to position your game ideas and yourself in the broader marketplace. By the end of the course, you will be able to develop an impactful portfolio of game work to get noticed and/or develop an effective business plan to bring your game to market.
Public Speaking - What Works?
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Del curso dictado por Michigan State University
Business of Games and Entrepreneurship
632 calificaciones
Michigan State University
632 calificaciones
Curso 3 de 5 en SpecializationGame Design and Development
De la lección
Pitching Your Game and Yourself
It may seem a bit cliché, but the idea that perception is reality is perhaps doubly important in games. This doesn't mean that style rules over substance, but that they ultimately both have to exist. That can be a hard thing to hear, that how you present something (including yourself) is as important as what you are saying. This is why in this module we want you to think about presenting yourself or your game and how to best position it or you to get a job or interest people in your project. We're not asking you to write this time, so get ready to pitch!
Conoce a los instructores
Casey O'DonnellAssociate Professor
Media and Information
[MUSIC]
Welcome back.
We're talking about demoing.
And a big part of demoing is public speaking.
Right? Getting up in front of people and talking.
Right?
And the reality is, that's hard.
Right? It's hard to get up in front of people and
be confident and
be excited and talk about something that you're passionate about, right?
Because hopefully you're passionate about something that you're working on.
So we've linked to a few talks that we think do a really nice example of
talking about games or talking about a game, in ways that are compelling.
Right, these are things that get people excited.
You know, when I was first learning public speaking, TED didn't exist.
But now you have a plethora of examples of great public speaking
moments where people are excited and engaged, and that's awesome.
Like, what a resource.
We've linked to Jane McGonigal's talk here, right, and go watch it, right.
I mean, hopefully you'll be inspired, but the reality is, what a resource for
you as somebody who is being asked to talk about something that you're excited about.
As you watch those videos, ask yourself right, what worked?
What didn't work?
Were there parts of the presentation that went well?
Parts that didn't go so well?
Because the reality is, I've watched Jane talk many times at many different
conferences and some talks are like that one, they go beautifully, they go well.
But sometimes we all have talks that don't go so well.
Okay, so what parts do?
What doesn't work, right.
These are the questions that we ask of games,
right, that we've already talked about, right.
What was cool about it, what was interesting, what went well?
And so there are lots of different formats.
First, public speaking, right?
So we've got that TED format, but
you also have formats like the Ignite format, right?
Or others, right?
So, an example.
The Ignite format, right,
is that each speaker is given 5 minutes, which is a really short period of time.
I should know, right?
These Coursera videos, they're all a very particular time length and so
you've gotta be excited and engaged for those moments.
But one of the things that's cool about Excite is that
you have these slides that move whether you're ready or not.
Thank goodness mine don't do that, right?
But the slide advances without you, whether or
not you've gone off on that tangent or not.
And so there are different ways that you can talk about your material,
and get excited.
That's part of what's going on here.
Is the learning how to deliver information to people in a way that's engaging,
and fun, and interesting.
So let's talk about issues, right.
Things that go wrong because the reality is lots go wrong.
And, I'll be honest, the first reason it goes wrong is lack of preparation.
The time that I mentioned that I cratered,
it was because I was busy submitting job applications
the morning before the presentation and I totally didn't prepare, I wasn't ready.
Yeah, that happens.
Maybe you're late.
Right? You show up late.
You don't have time to make sure everything's ready.
And so that's related to preparation.
But, I don't know about you, but I'm either late or I'm early.
I'm never exactly on time.
And so if I'm on time, it means I got there early.
And I waited outside.
Another reason that presentations fail is not knowing your audience.
Who are you talking to?
Giving a talk to
an enthusiast audience versus giving a talk to maybe a lay audience.
People who know your stuff.
People who don't.
Because part of what you're doing when you're doing this communication is you're
trying to build a relationship with somebody who
you maybe can't talk to directly.
Right? You're trying to get them to buy in to
what you're saying.
So that's really hard, right?
You don't want to talk over their heads,
you don't want to talk too simplistically because people get offended by that.
Like, you have to know about who you're talking to.
Now some of this is also just about how to form a cohesive narrative.
How to make a good argument.
Or even what I mean when I say that, right?
That you're gonna have a thesis statement or you're gonna say something.
You're gonna figure out how to support that, right?
You're gonna give your reasons and your evidence.
And you give a conclusion, right?
Like a lot of us, in our daily lives we don't have to fashion those kinds of
statements, where it's constructed and setup ahead of time.
But, when you're demoing, when you're selling yourself,
you're selling you're game, you have to be able to do that.
And it's also about being centered, right,
like being confident, knowing your material.
That's really a hard thing to do and it takes time and practice.
You need to be rested and you have to have energy, right,
be excited about your stuff.
Another common thing is just poor language patterns.
I can't count how many times people say to me,
well I kinda did this thing or we were sorta gonna do it.
Are you gonna do it or not?
Did you kinda do it?
Or did you do it?
Right? And we all do that.
Right? It's easy to fall into those patterns,
particularly if we're nervous.
Right. Like
getting up in front of people is scary.
It's hard.
Right.
Another problem is not having enthusiasm.
Right. I'm going to just talk about this thing
and I'm not really excited and it's my thing.
But the truth is that person probably is excited.
Right. They were until they got up in front
of people or a camera and got scared.
And that's hard.
The other thing is being too stiff, right, not being human.
We're all human, and certainly I talk with my hands a lot, as you probably observed.
And that's okay, right?
You don't want to appear stiff as a board.
All of those things are bad.
So those are interesting things.
Hey, let's just talk about dress, right?
I'm here talking about video games, so I got my video game shirt on.
That's okay.
I'm dressed appropriately for this.
How weird would it be if I showed up with a suit on?
Be cool as if an astronaut suit though.
Anyway, the appropriateness of your dress, it matters.
Right?
And let's just be honest about this.
If you're dehydrated and faint on stage it's not going to go well.
Right?
So, or worse.
I like showing up intoxicated.
There are a million reasons things can go wrong and don't make it those easy ones.
Right?
So think about those.
Another common problem is that people focus on the negative.
Right?
Talking about how bad somebody else is.
Right? No, don't talk about other people's stuff.
Talk about why you're awesome.
Positive people are interesting.
Right? Negative people turn people off,
like they don't wanna be a part of that.
They don't wanna listen to that, especially for too long.
Maybe not having a focus.
One of the reasons that we partition all of these things that we deliver to you
is so that they have a core focus, and we can do that.
Having too much material.
Oh man, I'm sure you've been subjected to this in some classes.
Hopefully you don't feel that way about how we do this,
but yeah, too much material, I'm overwhelmed!
The reality is that people can only pay attention for so long and
absorb really complex information before they sort of dial down and turn off.
Be funny, right?
But don't be inappropriate, know your audience.
Tell jokes.
Tell stories.
People want to relate to the people that they're listening to.
Use visual aids, right?
I'm going to totally give you a separate talk about visual aids because the reality
is unfortunately, because we're trying to deliver lots of information,
it's really hard to do here.
These aren't always the best slides.
If you go and watch those TED talks, they may not have a lot of bullet points.
But when you're trying to deliver content it's a little bit different.
So I always say, it's so the hardest part about being an educator is often times I
have to say well if you look at my slides, don't make slides like that.
But that's because we're doing a different kind of activity here rather than if I was
just trying to passionately move you that video games are awesome.
Okay, with that I'll be back with some more about effective speaking soon enough.
Thanks.
>> [MUSIC]
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