Iterative cycles won't necessarily converge in a non-deterministic space, sure - and that's kind of what I am getting at.

If two engineers set out independently to determine the acceleration due to gravity, they will eventually converge right around 9.8 m/s. If you and I both set out independently to create "fun", chances are that we won't ever converge on the same definition thereof.

That's a ridiculous comparison. A better one would be whether two teams of engineers architects electricians and plumbers would come to an identical conclusion about the optimal way to construct a cheap housing unit. Which they would not. The two results would never be the same.

That's a ridiculous comparison

Intentionally. One is an emergent property of physics, and one is, well... something. We aren't really sure what, though.

To suggest that an abstract psychological/philosophical construct is amenable to the same sort of treatment as a physical property - that seems insane to me.

You can't universally quantify 'fun'. At best you might be able to build a probabilistic model across a limited segment of the population, but even that is going to be subject to local extremes.

Well one major problem is how little entertainment success has to do with the product itself. So much of it is tied up in name recognition, popularity, marketing, and other such nonsense.

You really only need a baseline quality in a product and then its all about perception and marketing.

Design is really not the same kind of activity as development. There are many people who enjoy one activity and not the other, in both directions.

I don't know... maybe... but still I find it suspicious, this whole division to design and development. I think I could agree to some people liking only development without design (like coders who like to code, whatever it is), but someone who likes designing and not liking developing? That does not make sense to me...

There are lots of things that don't make sense to me (like how anyone could like sandbox games, lol) that evidently make sense to people who are different from me. I think of design and development as different types of activities, but they're not wholly separate in that both are essential to artistic creation. A successful creator is by definition able to do both, so perhaps the reason why you have difficulty picturing a designer who does not like developing is that they are set up to fail at actually creating anything. But that doesn't mean they don't exist, and a few succeed by either forcing themselves to do the development like it's exercise or homework, or by using money as leverage to get others to do the development. I don't know if you've ever glanced at my developer journal, but both my recent guide to designing a pet game and my old writings are all primarily about design; the only development I talk about is writing documentation and creating concept art. It seemed quite natural to me to separate design and development when I wanted to write educational materials aimed at walking people through designing a game. I don't hate development, and I've done some, but design interests me far more as a subject to theorize and teach about. Probably the reason I gravitated toward writing fiction as my first vocation is that it's the art form with the highest ratio of design to development. But even there, I find coming up with story ideas a lot of fun, while writing them down is not as fun.

Personally I think the process of creating a sculpture or painting is much more similar to game development than architecture. They are more iterative, though that iteration usually only involves the artist. Like game design they can start in multiple places, such as the artist envisioning an audience member's visceral reaction to the finished piece of art, or something less tangible like an artist deciding to make a piece representing an abstract theme (e.g. transcendence), or something more functional like an artist being commissioned to make a replacement carousel horse which will be durable and fit in visually with the existing horses. Like game development the craftsman may create the work in layers or pieces, with experimentation necessary in either approach, and some of those layers or pieces may be redone when they don't pass a beta evaluation.

Notice the difference between design as art and development as craft, just like a painter or sculptor would talk about the difference between artistic goals and craftsmanship. That's how I see design and development as different but working together. It would be an oversimplification to say that they are separated chronologically, because even in an iterative process you don't have pure design phases and pure development phases. Development inspires (re)design, and design doesn't exist in the world outside the artist's head unless you at least develop it with some documentation and/or sketches. Architecture is actually an extreme example of chronological separation between design and development, and it only is that way because economics and safety concerns force it to be, somewhat against human nature. In the realm of fiction writers there's actually a big 'political' divide between those who chronologically separate design from development (outliners) and those who try to integrate the two as much as possible (spontaneous writers or pantsers, meaning people who write by the seat of their pants). Screenplay writers, like architects, are pretty much forced into a development process that separates design from development. And I think this is where some people entering the field of game design get the erroneous idea that they can write a game design document or game script and sell it to a game studio; because that is how it would work if game studios were more like movie studios.

That's a ridiculous comparison. A better one would be whether two teams of engineers architects electricians and plumbers would come to an identical conclusion about the optimal way to construct a cheap housing unit. Which they would not. The two results would never be the same.

I don't think anybody is talking about an 'optimum' for a fairly broad concept such as 'a cheap housing unit'. It's more about one organisation's preference for a fairly specific product - in that case, it is certainly reasonable to expect that they would converge on pretty much exactly what they want, whichever way they approached it, given enough time/knowledge/resources.

To suggest that an abstract psychological/philosophical construct is amenable to the same sort of treatment as a physical property - that seems insane to me.

You can't universally quantify 'fun'. At best you might be able to build a probabilistic model across a limited segment of the population, but even that is going to be subject to local extremes.

That is sort of moving the goalposts to be something deliberately fluffy however. The fact is, people do try and understand fun (eg. Raph Koster's A Theory of Fun for Game Design), they classify fun (eg. Nicole Lazzaro's 4 types of fun), and consider the reasons why people enjoy games (eg. the Bartle player types). These are known, they have some empirical and theoretical support. And as a result you can deliberately design towards them. You don't need to try and find some universally fun mechanic - you just need to find a way to make your game enjoyable to the people you are aiming it at, and there are tools and research to facilitate that.

But even if you ignore all that, the fact that you think that iteration and testing can 'find' the fun shows that you're measuring it somehow, even if it's just a case of knowing it when you see it. And when you see it, you can usually understand why it is fun. And someone with that information can replicate that in future.

That's a ridiculous comparison. A better one would be whether two teams of engineers architects electricians and plumbers would come to an identical conclusion about the optimal way to construct a cheap housing unit. Which they would not. The two results would never be the same.

I don't think anybody is talking about an 'optimum' for a fairly broad concept such as 'a cheap housing unit'. It's more about one organisation's preference for a fairly specific product - in that case, it is certainly reasonable to expect that they would converge on pretty much exactly what they want, whichever way they approached it, given enough time/knowledge/resources.

Just the same as each game design team eventually converges on their preference for a fairly specific product. They will look at it and say: "This is what we wanted." But just like the game design there will be consequences they didn't anticipate and they won't be able to say with assurance that that is the proper way to do it.

Hence why its a good comparison.

I meant to say that design (thoughts, organizational aspects, iteration) is more cerebral, artistic and creative than Legendre was painting it out to be.

This is a common misconception that the "ideas guy" has. Design is far more cerebral, artistic and creative than mere daydreaming. However, daydreaming is far easier and "lazy" than design, which is why ideas are a dime a dozen. On the other hand, good design is very hard work, and is worth a lot more.

While development (programming, 3D modeling, and such) is more logical, adheres to more rigid constraints leaving little room for artistry and there is often no way around certain things.

On the contrary: creativity and artistry is about skillful, innovative use of the available tools, materials or techniques or the ability to invent/create new ones. Well designed games are those that are able to tell a compelling story or craft amazing gameplay within the given constraints.

Take for example, the combat in your "Project: Alter Ego". Given the constraints of the PS3/Xbox controller, you try to design a fun combat experience for your user. You also need to consider the constraint of how this combat control system fit in your overall game, and how feasible it is to implement vs a simpler system. You also should prototype, test and iterate. You might have to come up with creative ways to pull off certain features given the limitations of the controller. This is design.

What isn't design: ignore all the constraints and assume that you can motion capture all user actions in-game and somehow allow your users to perform difficult moves like somersaults and fencing moves. Then proceed to daydream a game where users participate in epic medieval battles in a virtual reality with life-like detail. Takes zero effort, zero creativity and is completely worthless.