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How I Built an RPG In A Week From Scratch With No Budget

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Re: How I Built an RPG In A Week From Scratch With No Budget

#51
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

40 manhours is HUGE if you have a day job.

the average american watches 4 hours of tv a day. if you're average in that respect, you could churn out one of these projects every week and a half.

I'm not American, I don't watch more than 40 minutes TV per day.

Also, I can't imagine how anyone with a full-time day job (40 hours, nothing spectacular) can even manage 4 hours of free time. I don't think I have 4 hours a day.

Re: How I Built an RPG In A Week From Scratch With No Budget

#52
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you read about small-scale game development, this is a common practice. Danc ( http://www.lostgarden.com/ ) talks a lot about rapid prototyping. Since games have a clear but poorly-defined goal (they have to be "fun"), it's easy to make a limited product around a proposed method of finding that fun, and then either going along with it or throwing it out if it doesn't seem promising. Thus, you can (and probably wil…

I agree with your points, though I keep coming across variants of rapid prototyping in different fields; and as Fred Brooks told us "build one to throw away". Is it possible to have a "clear but poorly-defined goal", or are you having a joke? "Fun" is an emergent property - recognizable, measurable but the creation isn't formalizable (though BTW your link mentioned something about game grammars ...)

Clear, meaning: we want our games to be fun. Startups also have pretty clear goals: make something of value and make tons of money while doing it.

Poorly-defined, meaning: one man's fun is another man's boredom, it's hard to pin down what exactly "fun" is. Thankfully, though, there are many good educated guesses, so we can't act like "fun" is impossible to define.

Re: How I Built an RPG In A Week From Scratch With No Budget

#53
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with your points, though I keep coming across variants of rapid prototyping in different fields; and as Fred Brooks told us "build one to throw away". Is it possible to have a "clear but poorly-defined goal", or are you having a joke? "Fun" is an emergent property - recognizable, measurable but the creation isn't formalizable (though BTW your link mentioned something about game grammars ...)

Clear, meaning: we want our games to be fun. Startups also have pretty clear goals: make something of value and make tons of money while doing it. Poorly-defined, meaning: one man's fun is another man's boredom, it's hard to pin down what exactly "fun" is. Thankfully, though, there are many good educated guesses, so we can't act like "fun" is impossible to define.

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