Polytechnicast - Teaching Interactive Design and Word Turtle Island Arcade Machine

Sharing some work in progress and what led me to this point - getting back into teaching interactive design and how I've begun making a physical arcade machine for my game Word Turtle Island. In a nutshell I have a few months of ambitious work and this is my planning and thinking about it all.

Outline:

• Starts with how I focused on making WTI for 2.5 years, summary of why and how that came about.
• Learning from 6 months of further iteration, marketing, and being published as an early access game.
• Big take away is: thankful for the time to learn enough to make enough to discover the strong version of WTI, wishing that space for other folks and projects.
• Current situation:
  • improving the instant visual/story/promise of WTI via
  • feeling the urge to teach again
  • feeling my overall social connections are too small of a bubble both online and in person
  • inspired by projects like Springboard for the Arts' Rural Urban Solidarity
• Then the ambitious plan: a combination of projects to grow my online and in person connections, teach interactive design with an advocacy focus, and increase sales of my games and teaching. In short: make games and teach interactive design. More specific:
  • WTI Arcade Machine + Regional touring show/tell this game and teaching indie game creating
  • Build WTI to full 1.0
  • Teach interactive design for free on TikTok and soon also YouTube
  • Publish new paid classes, starting with Paper Prototyping for Interactive Design

Know of any places and people to connect with who'd like a visit from me on my Word Turtle Island Indie Game Dev Tour? Send me a message!

Related Links and Resources

• Jerzy's free workshops mentioned as inspiration but are currently happening - act fast since they're being offerred now until all sessions are taken

• Teaching Interactive Design on TikTok

• Word Turtle Island on Google Play

• Word Turtle Island on Steam

• Word Turtle Island on Itch (free demo available)

• Ask Me Anything — Blog of an Interactive Storyteller

• Sign up for my newsletter

Games and Classes Rob offers and Ways to Support What I Make

• Buy or wishlist Word Turtle Island on Steam.
• Take one of my classes about collaboration, creativity, and UX design: Skillshare
• Get the game Guitar Fretter, an action puzzle that makes a game of memorizing the note positions on a guitar. Now with Lefty Flip in the full version and a free demo version with 9 levels. NOW ON STEAM
• Join Skillshare via my referral link which gets you 1 month of Skillshare Premium for free.
• You can buy me a coffee with an option to send a note along.

• Subscribe to the Polytechnicast RSS feed in your podcast app

Polytechnicast - Teaching Interactive Design and Word Turtle Island Arcade Machine Rob Stenzinger