Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
and open the conversation to a creative spirit. Blank walls inspire blank minds. Your environment has a
direct impact on your creative energies, and the inclusion of art, toys, and other kinds of objects that represent
your group's accomplishments, ideas, and sense of identity will enhance the collective imagination of the
group. This collection of stuff should be curated as well so it stays in constant rotation, and the environment
is always changing.
Now, before you go on to make your Ideagora into a curio shop, remember that the surroundings should
be interesting and comfortable but not distracting. This is a ine balance and may take a bit of iddling to
get it right, but the richness these kinds of objects bring to the group experience is worth the time it takes to
arrange them in your meeting spaces.
In his classic topic and ilm
Social Life of Small Urban Places
, William H. Whyte, who worked with the
New York City Planning Commission, lists the basic essentials of a shared public space [16, 17]. He and his
staff ilmed behavior in public meeting spaces all around the United States in the early 1980s. They observed
that popular public spaces have the following elements in common:
1. There are lots of steps and places for people to sit and watch other people.
2. The area is not too sunken, too raised, or too large so that line of sight is lost.
3. There are water features such as fountains that can be accessed and played in.
4. There is food available.
5. There are shops nearby and an open-market feeling.
6. There is a sort of cave-like or slightly protected feeling to the area due to overhead trees or hanging,
awning-like elements.
If you look at the ancient agora in Athens, Greece, on Google Earth, you see the remnants of just such
a place. Here is the essence of it: If you provide an area where people can meet, mingle, communicate, and
feel safe and yet are not trapped, great ideas will be fostered, just as the idea of democracy was fostered in
the agora of Athens.
9.5 DESIGNING FOR THE FUTURE AND MOBILITY
Virtual meetings are just beginning to gain popularity. What is now a 2D webcast event will no doubt
become an almost universal 3D experience that you access from your ofice on a daily basis. It will be driven
by the need to pull together globally situated talent-diverse individuals for time-delimited projects within a
user-friendly environment that is cost effective and can be accessed from any device.
9.5.1 i
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rends
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oBile
p
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In her 2012 report on Internet trends [18], Mary Meeker, a partner at Kleiner, Perkins, Cauield & Byers,
raised some interesting points for discussion regarding how business will use the Internet in the future. The
use of tablets, smartphones, and other mobile devices is rising rapidly worldwide, while the use of desktop
computers is dropping. This clearly points to a need for “lightweight” viewers that will allow access to virtual
worlds on a mobile device, and there are several in the early development stages. Web viewers like Pixieviewer
(http://pixieviewer.com/) and Radegast's 3D viewer (http://radegast.org/wiki/Radegast) are competing with
the more established Unity-based web viewers such as Jibe. Lumiya (http://www.lumiyaviewer.com/) has
