[nihilocrat]

If you read about small-scale game development, this is a common practice. Danc (http://www.lostgarden.com/) talks a lot about rapid prototyping. Since games have a clear but poorly-defined goal (they have to be "fun"), it's easy to make a limited product around a proposed method of finding that fun, and then either going along with it or throwing it out if it doesn't seem promising. Thus, you can (and probably will) start over several times before making a complete, polished game.

[11ren]

I agree with your points, though I keep coming across variants of rapid prototyping in different fields; and as Fred Brooks told us "build one to throw away".

Is it possible to have a "clear but poorly-defined goal", or are you having a joke? "Fun" is an emergent property - recognizable, measurable but the creation isn't formalizable (though BTW your link mentioned something about game grammars...)

[nihilocrat]

Clear, meaning: we want our games to be fun. Startups also have pretty clear goals: make something of value and make tons of money while doing it.

Poorly-defined, meaning: one man's fun is another man's boredom, it's hard to pin down what exactly "fun" is. Thankfully, though, there are many good educated guesses, so we can't act like "fun" is impossible to define.