It is, of course, human nature to feel comfortable with ideas that are familiar. Indeed, even those who proclaim a desire to see interesting new ideas in their games can find that some interesting new ideas are actually just a bit too interesting. As a result, game design is usually an evolutionary process rather than a revolutionary one. That said, even a glacial pace of change can see some ideas that are beyond the pale today become accepted in the future and become the norm someway further down the line.
For me, game design is always an evolutionary process. No set of rules is ever truly finished, as events tend to trigger off ideas that make you think, “I wish I’d included that,” or, hopefully less often, “I wish I HADN’T included that”. Recently, I have been researching the performance of the Indian Army during the campaigns in the Far East between 1941 and 1945. It’s a big subject, that is full of Keynes’ ramified ideas.
As this. The usual questions arise – how should troops be rated? What characteristics should be emphasized as a result of the way they were trained to fight? Hopefully there’s an opportunity to challenge the theory of training with what happened in reality.
