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Prototyping 50 Games in One Semester
StarEmperor writes "Gamasutra has a good feature about four grad students who created 50 games in one semester. The article presents their insights about game design, evaluating gameplay, and generally what makes for a fun game."
http://www.kongregate.com/
Desktop Tower Defense is pretty addictive (for a while anyway):
http://www.kongregate.com/games/preecep/desktop-tower-defense
Also liked this one:
http://www.kongregate.com/games/AlejandroG/spin-the-black-circle
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
yes, they started a site where you can make games to and learn about the process.
http://experimentalgameplay.com/
also, Kyle Gabler has expanded on the tower of goo idea and built it into a product: http://2dboy.com/games.php
I have found a lot of nice gems in that project.
You do get a lot of simple or basic functionality tests, but some do have a nice polished feel.
Crayon Physics and Tower of Goo stand out the most. Every few months I download all the new games and just kill time seeing what they can do.
Im a gamer, not a grammer major. This post is full of spelling and grammer mistakes.
"I think it would be a nice follow up to do an extended study of this kind of development cycle in a corporate environment and examine the turnover rate for developers. Will they be intrigued by working on something new every week, or will they get tired of the quick turnaround and quit?"
That's exactly what kills the creativity: trying to systematize creating, trying to find a perfect 'way' that will always work and ensure originality. No, it can't work and it never will as long people have deadlines or a fixed timetable. They need to be able to say no to a project and yes to another whenever they want. Otherwise they tend to become like the system itself, thinking in 'development cycles' and other bullshit. Some games take days to think of and years to create, others years of planning and thinking and relatively shorter development time.
ics
There is a bi-annual 48 hour solo game development competition called Ludum Dare 48h that has just finished its 11th incarnation. All the entries have to supply source so it might be interesting for you to have a look though these. This time there were over 70 final entries but you do have to realise that there is a wide range of polish and completeness.
The competition itself is actually quite fun and provides a good forum for playing at game development as at doesn't take up much time and the end results are not expected to be perfectly polished, complete games.