No, it’s true. It’s not that you can’t guess at all about what’s going to be fun or not, it’s just much harder than it seems.

I think you can get better at it but it’s a hard thing to practice because you don’t know if you’re right or not until you actually make the game.

However, I’ve gotten a bit of resistance from some people I’ve shared it with, so I thought I’d clarify my perspective on it here.

I see the position that you present in the article as one extreme, and my own perspective is more neutral – I do believe that it is possible to gain skill in coming up with good ideas, just like expert chess players are simply better at seeing good moves.

I also think the comparison to drawing is completely valid, as different as drawing and game development are, for the kind of point you are trying to make. However, given that one can learn to draw better with practice, it would seem that this contradicts your earlier point about that being mostly impossible with games.

To me, the main point is that coming up with good game ideas, and knowing whether those ideas are any good a priori, is much harder than people generally believe it to me, though it may be possible to get better with practice. Still, given how much I see experienced game designers (Danc) go through the same process of inventing ideas and prototyping them for months only to find that they fall short of expectations, I am certainly inclined to believe that this is a very common situation and difficult to fundamentally change.

So, I like the article because it provides a contrasting view to the assumptions that many beginning game developers carry, and may open their minds in a useful way. But I do not mean to put it up as absolute truth.

:)