Crawford On Making Balance Of Power

Thanks to an anonymous reader for pointing to GameDev.net's excerpt from the new Chris Crawford On Game Design book, in which the famed strategy game creator and writer of The Art of Computer Game Design discusses the development of his classic '80s cold-war strategy game Balance Of Power, from initial concepts ("A game, like a story, must have a conflict") through execution ("Polish, polish, polish! Take a minimum of six months after alpha for polishing.")

Comments

6 months of improvement?

[ObviousGuy]

And risk running out of funds? That's a bad way to go about it.

Here's the short, fun way:

1) Come up with great game idea
2) Draw ideas up in PowerPoint
3) Present ideas with any working demos or mockups to investors
4) Get money (PROFIT!)
5) Develop game to Alpha stage
6) Release and gauge market response
7) Continue improving game if market likes it, drop development like a hot potato if the market thinks your idea sucks
8) ???