[Hansi]

> "No prototypes. Just make the game. Polish as you go. Don’t depend on polish happening later. Always maintain constantly shippable code."

I disagree with this so much, prototypes and proof of concepts teach you so much but usually they are crap you will always write it better a second time. Throw away the prototype and re-write it as a much better implementation.

[NumberCruncher]

For every prototype / POC thrown away there are 9 other prototypes ending up in production or getting sold as business software. If you feel the urge to write a prototype to learn something new please do not show it to your manager/sales rep!

[pasquinelli]

What if you prototype a game mechanic and it's shit?

[NumberCruncher]

The article talks about similarities between common agile practices and John Romero's programming principles. There is a world beyond the gaming industry where you can sign big contracts and ship broken software and no one dares to complain.

[mattkrause]

Protoduction!

[pandaman]

In games industry nobody ships prototypes. If you manage to put one on Steam it's not going to sell much either. And yes, writing prototypes is normal, read on "Cerny method" if you are curious.

[douche]

The existence of so many half-baked and abandoned early-access games on Steam would seem to belie this claim. It's not uncommon to see a few hundred reviews for games where the developers have ghosted without finishing.

[pandaman]

How so? You think early access half-baked games sell? Or you think few hundred sales is a good number?

People making these games are not in the games industry because they are not professionals (they don't live off these games). Also, it's curious how people who have not even shipped a prototype game down-vote opinions from the insiders. Good reminder when reading comments on something outside of my expertise here.

[zmb_]

They were four people shipping multiple games a year. They couldn't afford to prototype or build proofs of concept. They had to ship.

[h1d]

Doesn't sound like a generally useful tip.

[devopsproject]

"Make something you can sell" seems like a pretty straightforward strategy.

[Negitivefrags]

> If you plan to throw one away, you will end up throwing away two.

[crdoconnor]

>you will always write it better a second time.

No. You won't:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-system_effect

[JustSomeNobody]

Exactly. I have seen several core business rewrites that didn't make it past the "We must create the one true architecture that will allow us to keep this software from turning to spaghetti like the last one" phase.

[eigenbom]

I think there's a distinction between prototypes of parts of the game and the full game.

I remember Carmack building a prototype of the texturing system for Rage to see if it would all work, so maybe the prototyping was always just an implicit part of JC's programming.

[imron]

I think the distinction lies in always building production ready code.

You can build things to try out and experiment different modes of play or modes of rendering but the code you write should always be production ready. No taking shortcuts because "it's just a prototype".

[viseztrance]

He addresses this during QA (@28:00).

[Nomentatus]

I think that rewrites happened, it's just that they were called "the next game." If you were gonna rewrite, you might as well change the costumes and sets some, and sell to everyone all over again.

[JustSomeNobody]

Disagree or not, but it very obviously worked for them.