Yes, Warsong, I understand what you''re saying, but all those same arguments and observations can be made of guys like Thomas Edison and Shakespeare, as well. I''d like to point out that, while my momentary rant was followed by an on-topic contribution to the thread, yours, which criticized me for being off-topic, did not. *raspberry*

Back on-topic, just making an addictive puzzle game will not demonstrate your greatness as a game designer. If an innovator is going to reach great heights, he has to think about long-term goals. Take, umm... Shigeru Miyamoto, for example. Designing fairly simple games, and gradually building on previous ideas, his games developed evolutionarily. A series of sequels, each trying something new, but maintaining enough of the popular tenets of past games to be successful, served as a proving ground for innovation. "Okay, Zelda II sucked, and side-scrolling isn''t the way to go. Well, let''s keep what people liked, and replace the stuff they didn''t like with either stuff they liked from the first game or else new innovations."

If you make simplistic little apps, each one possessing MAYBE a single innovative idea, you''ll probably feel like, say, Thomas Edison, who, as he said it, conducted 1000 experiments on new battery designs in order to discover "One way to store electricity reliably and 999 ways not to." Better to go balls-out and try a hundred new ideas at once. Then you can go back and cull out the crappy ones while cultivating the good ones.

Warsong, your ideas go back on themselves. The % versus # thing ''which is better?'' is your personal opinion, not factual therefore the 5 #1, 10,000 numbers etc. don''t mean anything.

I get where you''re coming from, your way of putting it across makes no sense. And by the way, I think Miyamoto is pretty ace... Who is a good game designer is opinion, you can''t back it up with any fact -- perhaps review scores (gamerankings.com) might be a way? But then tetris''s designer can''t really be compared to Miyamoto that way...

Well, this thread has really taken a turn toward philosophy. Now we''re trying to define "success", eh? Tall order. I haven''t given this much thought, but I''ll weigh in and we''ll see what everyone has to contribute.

I should start by pointing out that I disagree with all that "Success isn''t a goal, it''s a journey" crap. Success may not be a goal, but it is, as far as I can tell, synonymous with the act of achieving goals. So, I define success as the process of achieving goals.

Now, in response to your % vs. # assertion, I would suggest that no amount of failure can mitigate final success. If my goal is to shoot a bullseye with a bow and arrow, and I peg in on the first try, is my bullseye any more shot than the bullseye of the next guy, who needed two tries? How about the guy three lanes down, who''s been practicing every day for three months, and has fired thousands of arrows? Of course not. All three bullseyes have arrows in them. By my definition of success, we have all been successful once. By your definition of success, I am 100% successful, the guy next to me is 20% successful, and the guy down the way is 0.1% successful. Who, then, is the best archer?

I was very efficient, but a lot of my success was due to good fortune. I don''t really understand what made the arrow strike the bullseye, but I''m glad it did. The guy next to me Might have figured out a few things about how to aim his bow and correct for wind. The guy who''s been at it for months, though, has almost certainly developed a real understanding of how his bow, his arrows, and numerous other factors affect the point of impact, and can probably continue to hit that target in the immediate vicinity of the bullseye all day long. I, with my 100% success rate, am probably the worst archer at the archery range. My ignorance of the sport was cancelled out, in this case, by my own dumb luck. The guy with a 20% success rate is not much better off than I am, since he has only a rudimentary grasp of how to shoot a bow. The fellow down the way, the guy with a 0.1% success rate, is now so skilled that he can be precise, as well as accurate. He is the best archer, and, to bring this back to a measurement of "greatness", I would argue that he is the greatest archer.

How do I bring this archery metaphor back on-topic? How do I equate accuracy with a bow to success in publishing video games? It''s simple. The audiences that play video games are constantly shifting, their interests flow and coalesce like an oil slick. If areas of high interest are "bullseyes" of game design, then the job of a game designer is to produce a game that is targeted precisely at that point. The designer who makes a game that, by chance, lands in exactly the right time and place to be a smash hit has been successful. However, the designer that can clearly view the target audiences, and aim games precisely at the proper demographics, hitting points of peak interest time and time again has achieved a greatness that can hardly be matched by the man with the lucky shot. The master game designer can follow shifting trends, developing popular games easily, just as a master archer shoots fruits from a tree.

Regardless of talent, the development of any skill requires a huge amount of training, practice and study. To learn the bow, one must practice and practice. To learn to design games, one must practice and practice. A game designer will put out bad or mediocre games just as an archer strikes the outer rings of the bullseye, sometimes entirely missing the target. However, the "good shots" will come more frequently as the skill grows.

Now, that''s one game designer, in a vaccuum. If you want to look at other aspects, then you have to consider the impact they have on the field. The first guy to make a side-scrolling shoot-em-up was a great game designer. That innovation has structured game designe for decades. The first guy to use the first-person perspective gets his name on the wall, next to the first guy to let the player rescue a princess, and the guy who can up with the idea of a boss at the end of every level. These are great game designers, even though I don''t know their names.

So, in conclusion, success is achieving goals (in this case production of a good game) and greatness is measured by overall contribution to the world of gaming.

That was a big one. Did it make sense?