Just stumbled upon this article on Gamasutra by a bunch of students from the Experimental Gameplay Project at Carnegie Mellon’s Entertainment Technology Center. It discusses the lessons they learnt from rapidly protoyping games for a whole semester (kids these days huh?). An interesting read, here’s the summary…

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

Design: Creativity and the Myth of Brainstorming

* Formal Brainstorming Has a 0% Success Rate
* Gather Concept Art and Music to Create an Emotional Target
* Simulate in Your Head – Pre-Prototype the Prototype

Development: Nobody Knows How You Made it, and Nobody Cares

* Build the Toy First
* If You Can Get Away With it, Fake it
* Cut Your Losses and “Learn When to Shoot Your Baby in the Crib”
* Heavy Theming Will Not Salvage Bad Design (or “You Can’t Polish a Turd”)
* But Overall Aesthetic Matters! Apply a Healthy Spread of Art, Sound, and Music
* Nobody Cares About Your Great Engineering

General Gameplay: Sensual Lessons in Juicy Fun

* Complexity is Not Necessary for Fun
* Create a Sense of Ownership to Keep ‘em Crawling Back for More
* “Experimental” Does Not Mean “Complex”
* Build Toward a Well Defined Goal
* Make it Juicy!

http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20051026/gabler_01.shtml