Back from NASAGA

My experience at NASAGA last week was incredible. I have never experienced such an intellectually-stimulating two and a half days, nor have I ever enjoyed meeting new people as much. Perhaps because this was one of the smaller NASAGA conferences as far as attendance numbers, I got an opportunity to have a meaningful one-on-one conversation with nearly every other attendee. This is normally difficult for me as I am very shy, but the conference is designed to enhance participation and encourage communication, both on a professional and personal level. And while at other conferences I am impressed with some sessions/people and feel others are less than impressive, every session was well worth the time. Indeed, I usually wanted to be at multiple sessions at once, so the chance to talk with others afterwards meant I got a taste of the sessions I couldn’t go to. I really can't rave about it enough.

I got a ton of ideas. A few I will share here include:

• Games are an experience more than a thing
• Games should strive to empower players
• Debriefing is CRITICAL
• Collective intelligence is infinitely better than individual intelligence
• We should strive to promote oxytocin (the cuddle hormone) in the brain, not cortisol (anger, stress hormone)
• Got some ideas for pirating other people's games for work purposes

More to come as I continue to make sense of what I learned there.