Man, playtesting always seemed like a brute force way of fixing designs... it is necessary, but mainly because designs are allowed to drift. Once they do that, no-one is responsible for proving that a mechanic is well formed.
If you look at aerospace systems, or any safety critical systems, they're rigourously proven before they're even coded. This doesn't guarantee that there are no bugs, but it certainly reduces them, and makes each person culpable for their contribution - none of this "wouldn't it be nice if..." producer crap... you get that sort of organic design in aerospace, and planes start falling out of the sky.
But yeah, applying this to games doesn't make total sense unless the person with the vision is autistically accurate. There almost always needs to be wiggle room, and that undetermined area (where you're designing by the seat of your pants) is where play testing helps most, picking up the holes in the systems via practice, rather than theory.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2006-06-08 08:16 pm (UTC)If you look at aerospace systems, or any safety critical systems, they're rigourously proven before they're even coded. This doesn't guarantee that there are no bugs, but it certainly reduces them, and makes each person culpable for their contribution - none of this "wouldn't it be nice if..." producer crap... you get that sort of organic design in aerospace, and planes start falling out of the sky.
But yeah, applying this to games doesn't make total sense unless the person with the vision is autistically accurate. There almost always needs to be wiggle room, and that undetermined area (where you're designing by the seat of your pants) is where play testing helps most, picking up the holes in the systems via practice, rather than theory.