You know, this is a good distinction not enough games make. You can tell just from playing a game when the designers spent "Foundational Idea" type development time on what should have been "gimmicks".

Thanks for the tip! I know that in the initial stages of development, (I know these stages well, been through them dozens of times, but never any further! *sigh*) when someone comes up w/ a cool-sounding idea, its easy to invest *way* too much time on it, and never work on the really fundamental ideas of the game. Then you get games like "Nox", that wear thin quickly because the fundamentals are really no different than a host of other titles, or on the other end of the spectrum, as I''ve mentioned, you get these gimmicky features that flop because they somehow became fundamental, in an extreme attempt to differentiate the game. Alot of amateur games fit this end of the spectrum, since even executives can see this sort of design just won''t work. I won''t cite any titles because most of them are bargain bin specials no-one has heard of.

Basically, if designers got this distinction out of the way to start with, it would be easy to tell in the early stages of design work whether the game will work or not, (i.e. if the only thing different on your game is the gimmicks, maybe you should be making MOD packs, not games) thereby saving alot of programmer/artist time and making it clear which ideas can be done away with, w/out sacrificing the game itself.

The only problem I see is that, in practical terms, you get *alot* of the hybrids you mentioned. Sometimes the anchors hinge on the gimmicks in your design, and if you do away w/ the gimmicks, you don''t have much of a game. Maybe this would be indicative of a "bad" design, though, making the distinction that much more worthwhile.

That''s fine w/ me. . .but. . .they. . .must not. . .find out. . .my secret. . .identity! *heh* My name''s Daniel Branciforte and my company''s called Dandy Frog, if you wanted that info, too. (company of three, very cozy ;]. . .)

Oh wait, you''re not copy-hunting. . .8P Anyway, I''d be happy to look it over, and contribute whatever quote you were looking for. What''s the article about,BTW?

Hunting for ad copy, a la FreakFish. Just a joke, kind of rude I guess, since he''s not around to tear me a new one, but oh well.

I''d like to co-author a piece. I''m kind of new at game development, but I am semi-established as a local author, so I should be able to provide some input there. I just checked out the developer resources- WOW! All I''d seen before were the listings for the four latest articles. There''s alot of good material there, but not too much GDNet original on the kind of thing you''re going for, so it should be a good addition. Why don''t you e-mail me to continue this discussion? (address in my profile)

More on topic: Are there any other worthwhile distinctions to be made? Possibly subdivisions? Does anybody have anecdotes, either positive or negative, related to making/not making these distinctions early in the design cycle? What to do about special cases? Can we get a system w/ as few as possible special cases? What percentage of time would you spend on each? Does 70-20-10 sound right? How about some examples of specific games'' Foundational, Anchor, and Gimmick ideas? Is there a standard set of questions you could ask about an idea to test which category it belongs to? Something along the lines of: Is your game playable w/out this feature? If not, then its either an anchor or a foundational idea. (actually, if you can think of it as a feature, its probably not a foundational idea)
I wouldn''t want to go too far w/ that line of inquiry, but maybe even a simple flowchart could make it clear & simple. . .thoughts?