Jesus Christ people. The guy said he wanted ideas, so I posted them up. I didn't expect anyone, including him to critique them...they're just there.
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Lummox JR wrote:
Hrm. In that case I'd be interested to know what a proper brainstorming session might look like. I've lead and managed many groups and been a participant -- here are some common threads to think about. 1) Every brainstorming session starts _usually_ with a problem statement or a theme. 2) Every participant is encouraged to put out each and every idea that comes out. It's usually beneficial for everyone to have a set of sticky notes so that they can write every idea privately without public scrutiny. 3) All ideas are then categorized by higher order themes... In this particular forum, it's just about impossible to have a brainstorming environment. It takes just one person to analyze or criticize another posting to pretty much collapse the free flow of ideas. In this case, it's like IcewarriorX put his sticky notes on the big white board and then analysis began. It doesn't seem right to me that any and all ideas on the table should be just taken and run with, although at a cruder level I guess you could take a bunch of concepts and fish out the most promising few, then refine from there later on. Sure, in the planning phase of a project or project definition phase, you want to have clear focus. But that's not a brainstorming session; that's done afterwards. However in this format I'm not sure that such a session would be workable. If one person tosses out ideas and no one else does, where do you go from there? So it seems to me that in a forum or blog environment, the closest you can get to brainstorming is something like this. If you are leading a session, you should simply put something like: "Great ideas guys, let's keep them flowing!" or something campy like that. And if you see comments like, "well this idea sucks", you quell it, delete it, whatever... brainstorming is about the free flow of ideas, not the analysis of them. | |
Ah. Thanks for the clarification.
Perhaps I need a different term than brainstorming then, something more analagous to asking for ideas without being too open-form. It sounds like a proper brainstorming session has to have some sort of time structure, heck, maybe even a game structure. A non-freeform chat might be ideal for such a thing, if there'd be a way to get a good mix of people involved. But this comes back to the familiar problem of trying to get good ideas on a forum at all. It's just not conducive to the free flow of ideas and usually doesn't have the traffic to get a good variety thereof. | |
I've decided to change the name of the Draw Hard medal to Three-Hole Punch, which sounds cooler. For Dot Sniper, I've thought of Blank Terror and Undercover Killer as possible replacements, but I'm not especially happy with either of those.
I do however have a few new ideas: Indelible Champion: Win an individual game or be MVP of a winning team, surviving for the entire match Page Ranger: Visit every corner of every page during a match Penslaughter: Kill every enemy player at least once in a Free-For-All or Ink Feud match Erase This: Kill 2 enemies while invincible That last one would need a new feature. Specifically I'm revisiting the idea of getting stunned when in your own base, and I'm thinking it might be more interesting to have players wander in some kind of weird "off-book" area until they can find a way back to their base. When they came back, they would be invincible for maybe 3-5 seconds, so "Erase This" would basically be a revenge kill on any enemies lingering around the base. | |
However in this format I'm not sure that such a session would be workable. If one person tosses out ideas and no one else does, where do you go from there? So it seems to me that in a forum or blog environment, the closest you can get to brainstorming is something like this.