This think-tank piece from the world of digital gaming is more than worth reading for a perspective on the tabletop-gaming industry. It is no surprise to me that I am hearing about “cowboy culture” – the tendency of game producers to be driven by that ever-lovin’ focus group of one, namely themselves – as a problem, and my noticing that shouldn’t surprise anyone else either. But also of keen interest is the analysis of the game development process as being closer to that of new consumer products than to that of (most) forms of consumable media… yet the product selection process draws on none of the time-tested methods for choosing which consumer products to develop. The outline of the “stage gate” process at article’s end is an eye-opener.
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These people may or may not have something intelligent to say later on, but I stopped reading at this sentence of complete idiocy:
Anyone with a few spare moments can write a novel or record a CD.
Um, yeah. A few spare moments.
Self-absorbed idiots.
One moment of rhetorical excess is not a good reason to write off the whole piece. Besides which, I honestly think that in true techie-guy form, they think it’s assumed that they aren’t talking about a good novel or CD, in which case they are quite (technically) right.
Hell, I myself recorded a CD over the course of probably ten hours last May. It’s awful, but I did in fact do it.