I thought the article was insightful and easy to follow. The entire process was broken down into 6 steps which very much focused on design methodologies.
- Setup: Rapid is a State of Mind
- Embrace the Possibility of Failure – it Encourages Creative Risk Taking
- Enforce Short Development Cycles (More Time != More Quality)
- Constrain Creativity to Make You Want it Even More
- Gather a Kickass Team and an Objective Advisor – Mindset is as Important as Talent
- Develop in Parallel for Maximum Splatter
The restrictions in which the team put themselves under (i.e. – not sharing code, interacting primarily at the beginning and end of the week, etc.) really surprised me. I would have expected constant collaboration to lead to great games, but often it seemed that constant collaboration led to distraction and cluttering of ideas. Additionally, the fact that they advocated for spending the least amount of time possible on the game’s system surprised me. It seems that too much time can also lead to a cluttering of ideas and inhibits for simple, sleek ideas to develop.
I thought the biggest take-away was to constantly prototype new systems and games. Worrying about the details of characters can wait for later, but developing a simple, system that works well is priority over anything – especially when it comes to developing experimental systems.