Gamasutra Expert Blogs: From Brewing Up Creativity To The Importance Of Iteration

[In highlights from Gamasutra's Expert Blogs, industry notables write about diverse topics, including comparisons between beer brewing and indie development, why Uncharted 2 succeeds with its narrative and gameplay, and the importance of project-wide iteration.] In our weekly Best of Expert Blogs column, we showcase notable pieces of writing from members of the game development community who maintain Expert Blogs on Gamasutra. Member Blogs -- also highlighted weekly -- can be maintained by any registered Gamasutra user, while the invitation-only Expert Blogs are written by development professionals with a wealth of experience to share. We hope that both sections can provide useful and interesting viewpoints on our industry. For more information about the blogs, check out the official posting guidelines. Here are the top blogs for the week: This Week's Standout Expert Blogs - Brewing Up Good Game Design (Christopher Totten) Drawing comparisons between brewing beer and independent game development, Christopher Totten encourages indies to break away from traditional game genres and strive to create truly unique experiences. - 5 Agile Lessons Worth Learning (Keith Fuller) Keith Fuller, borrowing from a recent talk by Jim Dempsey, explores several lessons learned when implementing Agile methods for game development. - Gameplay is King, Story a Distant Second (Brice Morrison) Using Uncharted 2 as an example, Brice Morrison discusses how a handful of design choices regarding the integration of story and gameplay can completely change the way players interact with a game's most important narrative events. - Understanding The Medium (Jason Bakker) Jason Bakker examines what it means to be a storyteller in games, noting the importance of not only a game's content, but also its gameplay mechanics and overall structure. - Iterating Quality (Jon Brown) Jon Brown explains the importance of iteration in game development, particularly encouraging developers to look at the project as a whole rather than focus only on the game's most important elements.