[diminish]

At first I was thinking that the methodology described appears to be waterfall approach to innovation with bing bang brainstorming and selection.

All 3 games I have seen are quite innovative pieces which took the author years to implement and perfect. The games are quite impressive, and are equivalent to innovating "chess".

On the other side one can argue, an incremental evolutionary approach to innovative games, or an agile approach would fit the current times, better, due to the rapid rate platforms maturing and disappearing. For example, I could take "chess", or mahjong and create variations to it in quick iterations with a focus on process.

[reklawnos]

Just because a particular approach can be characterized as waterfall-esque doesn't mean it's necessarily bad, just as a agile approach isn't necessarily good. Part of what makes chess great is the fact that it has remained the same for ages, and evolution has come through the way the game is played and not through the game itself.

[eru]

Actually, chess rules have changed quite a lot through the ages..

[huherto]

> At first I was thinking that the methodology described appears to be waterfall approach

In waterfall, he will do big upfront design for every game. Nothing will be implemented until the design documents were very detailed.

[sleepychu]

Man, if only we could come up with a good "fun to play" metric for board games, I'd love to play a board game that were produced by a genetic algorithm.

[vkazanov]

You should probably check out the "Evolutionary Game Design" book, which does exactly that. The resulting game, Yavalath, was actually published and is indeed quite nice.

[hellbanner]

See the history of https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamefamily/13434/shibumi - rules designed in collaboration with AI & human designers.