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Re:How I Built an RPG In A Week From Scratch With No Budget by 11ren on Monday January 19, 2009 @12:37PM (#440672)
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...)

Re:How I Built an RPG In A Week From Scratch With No Budget by nihilocrat on Thursday January 22, 2009 @12:23AM (#444404)
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.