PUBLIC MARKS from bcpbcp with tags www.gamasutra.com & "game design"

Oh yeah… competitive analysis. The most boring part of any product discussion. Why talk about somebody else's market share when you could be waxing rhapsodic about your vertex shaders? Trouble is, the publisher wants to know what they'll be going up against before they invest a few million bucks in your game. So one of the first questions they're going to ask when the presentation's over is, "Who do you see as your main competition?" And the next one will be, "What makes you better than them?" And you'd better be ready with the answers, or you're wasting their time.

Three things must happen in order for there to be gameplay: * The player must get information about the state of the game. * The player must be able to affect the game, creating new game states. * New game states must be communicated to the player prompting further actions In addition in almost all types of game: * The game creates new states without the player's input.

"Why is game design often overlooked as an important factor contributing to game sales? Perhaps because when most people in development companies talk about “good game design,” they mean “game design that produced a game I really like.” This sort of subjective validation of game design is of no use in business, which thrives on repeatable methods based around capturing a target audience—the market. Unable to see the profit resulting from “good design”— especially since many allegedly well-designed games fail commercially— most businessmen ignore design entirely."