Gamestorming

Chapter 3. Core Gamestorming Skills

AT THIS POINT, IF YOU FEEL READY, YOU MIGHT WANT TO FLIP to the games section of the book and read a few of the games, or maybe try a few with some friends or colleagues. If not, and you’d like to learn more about gamestorming skills, keep reading. In this chapter, we will take a closer look at some of the essentials and how they work, namely:

Questions:

The core fire-starting skill that ignites the initial spark

Artifacts and meaningful space:

The boards and playing pieces that form the backbone of most games

Visual language:

The ability to make your imagination and ideas more tangible and sharable

Improvisation:

The ability to explore experiences with your whole self; your heart and body as well as your mind

If you’re ready, let’s dive in.

Asking Questions

Perhaps nothing is more important to exploration and discovery than the art of asking good questions. Questions are fire-starters: they ignite people’s passions and energy; they create heat; and they illuminate things that were previously obscure.

In life and in business, we are often in a position where we want to go from point A to point B. When the path from A to B is clear, we can draw a straight line and be done with it. Whether that path is easy or difficult is beside the point.

A question is one half of an equation, where the other half is usually unknown. If the question is “How do we get ...