All of the design principles we have discussed thus far in this chapter will help you to create meaningful, engaging interactive applications. However, they are not enough. As you proceed with designing and building your game, you get to know the game deeply and lose your ability to be an unbiased judge of it. In addition, what you find fun and meaningful, could be confusing to others. You have to realize that if you have created a game with sufficient complexity, you will not be able to predict game play.

The only way to give your application the best chance of success, is to develop it using the interactive entertainment iterative development method shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3: This is the interactive entertainment iterative development process

Next, we will talk about having an initial idea for a game and some upfront work you need to do to make an effective game pitch. In the gaming industry, game developers have to pitch their...