Prototyping

I read a phenomenal article about prototyping recently.

The article was written by four grad students at Carnegie Mellon.  In one semester these four students created more than 50 games!

Their rules:

1. Each game must be made in less than seven days.
2. Each game must be made by exactly one person.
3. Each game must be based around a common theme, i.e., "gravity", "vegetation", "swarms", etc.

Their results were truly unbelievable.

A good rapid prototyper would realize that failure is ok!  That's what prototyping is for...
Cut your losses and "learn when to shoot your baby in the crib"
Without a gameplay goal, a prototype is just a toy - not a game.

If reading's not your thing though, I also recently listened to a great podcast about prototyping.  Hearing these guys talk about their prototyping processes made me want to start carrying lots of little dice around with me in my pockets.  You never know when you'll need to test a gameplay mechanic!

In other news: Warioware: D.I.Y. arrived in the mail yesterday.

1-1 update: Writing is hard.

Cheers,

Danny