Courtesy of the GDC Vault is this free lecture by Jonathan Blow from the Game Developers Conference Europe 2011. Here he looks at Conway's Game of Life and his own games, Braid and the upcoming The Witness, to explore a different way to approach game design.
More ideas came out of the development process and ended up in Braid than what was put into it, says Blow. By leaving it up to the system of the game to answer the questions behind Braid, starting with what happens when the player can reverse time, he was able to observe what interesting things could happen rather than force predetermined things to happen.
Overview:We illustrate that games, being algorithmic systems implemented on computers, are biased toward revealing truth, so long as we do not quash the truth in order to force our own high-level wishes into the design. We can use games as instruments, like telescopes or elec-tron microscopes, to observe aspects of the universe that we would not normally have access to.
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The beginning reminded me of Stephen Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eC14GonZnU
Jon Blow here helps to give insight I think into why iterative design/development works... why it can result in a better game compared to those that are born of a thick design document.
This can work well for a single developer or small team, but is it practical with very large teams making very large games? Content development can stall or result in alot of wasted effort with even modest changes in direction. The answer there could be to start with iterative prototyping rather than overly long design document writing.
Anyways, his philosophy reminds me of the inventors philosphy with a bit of the painter and sculptor thrown in. Keep an open mind and you might just stumble upon something that was waiting to be discovered.
The beginning reminded me of Stephen Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eC14GonZnU
Jon Blow here helps to give insight I think into why iterative design/development works... why it can result in a better game compared to those that are born of a thick design document.
This can work well for a single developer or small team, but is it practical with very large teams making very large games? Content development can stall or result in alot of wasted effort with even modest changes in direction. The answer there could be to start with iterative prototyping rather than overly long design document writing.
Anyways, his philosophy reminds me of the inventors philosphy with a bit of the painter and sculptor thrown in. Keep an open mind and you might just stumble upon something that was waiting to be discovered.