Ideaplatz

15 Sep 2025

Author Cheryl Platz speaks about Opti-Pessimism at Design Matters Tokyo on the Game Development Strategy Guide book tour

Books, Talks

September 14, 2025 / Tokyo, Japan: Author of the Game Development Strategy Guide, Cheryl Platz, debuted her second new talk in two months as one of the closing keynotes at Design Matters Tokyo 2025. Entitled "Future Sight in Design: Using Process and Context to Solve the Right Problems," this talk focused on two case studies that demonstrated how the use of Cheryl's opti-pessimism framework for design ethics at scale, helped her and her teams to design around critical issues before they occured. About Opti-Pessimism The opti-pessimism design framework was first introduced by Cheryl Platz at her DEVit 360 2018 talk…

28 Aug 2025

New talk debut: Modern Motivators of Play

Books, Talks

Game Development Strategy Guide author Cheryl Platz was honored to debut her new talk, “Modern Motivators of Play,” as the kickoff to her book tour at McCaw Hall during the inauguaral SLICE (Seattle Loves Indie Creators Expo) conference on August 27, 2025. Cheryl’s talk expands on the Motivators of Play introduced in Chapter 1 of her book The Game Development Strategy Guide: Crafting Modern Video Games That Thrive, and covers some context that didn’t fit in the book. Talk Summary In the first portion of the talk, we cover more of the detail behind some of the many motivational frameworks that inform the Motivators…

27 Aug 2025

Author Cheryl Platz launches book tour for The Game Development Strategy Guide at Seattle Indies SLICE on August 27

Books, Podcasts, Press, Talks

Explore changes in player motivations backed by theory and data paired with ideas in Cheryl’s microtalk “The Modern Motivators of Play” at McCaw Hall SEATTLE, WA, UNITED STATES, August 26, 2025 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Author, game developer, and creative director Cheryl Platz is honored to be launching the book tour for her new book, The Game Development Strategy Guide: Creating Modern Video Games That Thrive, with a microtalk intended to help indie game developers recalibrate their understanding of what drives today’s demanding video game fans based on industry scholarship, research, and data - all while gamers and game developers from around the…

19 Aug 2025

New Game Development Podcast: ‘Enduring Play’ Explores Thriving Games and Studios With Industry Veterans

Podcasts, Press

Press Release: New Podcast Launched Today by Ideaplatz, LLC Level up your game development career at any stage of the game with 10 candid interviews that explore the best and the worst of modern video game development. BELLEVUE, WA, UNITED STATES, August 19, 2025 /EINPresswire.com/ -- It’s time to level up your game development career by learning from a series of engaging and candid conversations with game development veterans passionate about building a better industry in Enduring Play: A Game Development Podcast, launching today on all major podcast networks. Explore what it takes to create thriving video games and game development…

19 Aug 2025

Enduring Play: A Game Development Podcast now available on all major platforms!

Books, Podcasts, Press

It’s time to level up your game development career by learning from a series of engaging and candid conversations with game development veterans passionate about building a better industry in Enduring Play: A Game Development Podcast, launching today on all major podcast networks. Explore what it takes to create thriving video games and game development studios with host Cheryl Platz – creative director, faculty member in video gaming at Carnegie Mellon University, and author of the upcoming book The Game Development Strategy Guide: Crafting Video Games That Thrive. The first season of the Enduring Play podcast brings 10 of the…

15 Jul 2025

Ideaplatz now on YouTube and BlueSky!

Press, Talks

In preparation for the launch of Cheryl's new book The Game Development Strategy Guide, Ideaplatz is moving into new digital neighborhoods: BlueSky and YouTube. We're celebrating the move to YouTube by posting some hard-to-find archival talks from Cheryl's past. Ideaplatz on YouTube In support of our podcast, we've launched a YouTube channel. To kick things off, enjoy a selection of archival content that's hard to find elsewhere on the internet, including several talks no longer available due to the unfortunate loss of some of the Interaction Design Association's conference archives: Interaction 19: When the Void Shouts Back Topics: Livestreaming, gaming,…

26 Feb 2024

Cross-Channel Design Q&A : Feb 28 4PM PT (Free with Registration)

Talksdesign beyond devices, multimodality

Cheryl Platz, author of Design Beyond Devices, joins the community to share updates from her latest practice & facilitate discussion. By popular demand after Cheryl's successful January Q&A - we're moving to Zoom, where we can engage in more thoughtful roundtable communications as a community! Join author and designer Cheryl Platz as she provides an update on her practice - what's been working these past few years since publishing her first book - and answers community questions like how to handle difficult stakeholder discussions. We'd love to hear from the community about how your practice is going! Join us WEDNESDAY…

05 Feb 2024

New Medium Post: Lifting UX Design from the doldrums

Writingcorporate, design leadership, workshops

Ideaplatz founder Cheryl Platz's latest Medium post for the Ideaplatz Medium publication takes a step back and identifies four key themes that have helped her grow multiple UX teams of various sizes to successful, highly-integrated partnerships with product and engineering. Check out the post on Medium today and grab the reference image below to keep handy for your own practice! Four-Roads-to-improved-UX-Design-partnershipsDownload [Image Credit: Cheryl Platz via Ideaplatz] Four roads to improved UX Design partnerships — Expand your design storytelling, Align and amplify your design process, build shared understanding across disciplines and teams, and connect and share across the UX craft. Feel free to…

01 Feb 2024

LinkedIn LIVE Recording Available: Design Beyond Devices Community Q&A

Books, Talksdesign beyond devices

On January 31 2024, Ideaplatz founder Cheryl Platz ran a community Q&A for LinkedIn followers that yielded a nuanced conversation about how her book has impacted her practice as a Design Director these past three years, as well as some very thoughtful questions from attendees about navigating stakeholder relationships when working in this space. Check out the replay at the LinkedIn event page. Future community events, based on community feedback, will be hosted on Zoom via Ideaplatz - stay tuned for further details and your chance to participate! Sign up for our mailing list or follow our LinkedIn page to…

24 Jul 2023

Fail Limit Exceeded: Cheryl on the decline of Twitter

Press, Writing

Cheryl's recent post for Medium on June's rate limit "feature" release was promoted as a Staff Pick, sent out in several large-distribution Medium newsletters including Longreads, and met with some great discussion and discourse. In this piece, Cheryl breaks down the potentially unintended consequences of these restrictions and how they cut to the core of what made Twitter so special. She also uses the PICS framework from her book Design Beyond Devices to talk about how to evaluate decisions like this in the future. Read "Fail Limit Exceeded" on Medium. "Either way, Twitter has successfully pivoted from the world’s town square…