Blind WP7 game development

As I have already said in my previous post, I'm going to share my own experience about developing games for Windows Phone 7. Here is my first tip:

"Do you want to create games for Windows Phone? So, get the Windows Phone device!" 

I know that it's kinda obvious, but I'm sure there are people who think that they have the emulator and it is sufficient. I'm sure because I used to think like that.

Being smart indie doesn't mean to be efficient

Not so long ago, I stumbled upon a speech given by Jonathan Blow at UC Berkeley CSUA. Jonathan is best-known for his game Braid. The speech is so unusual, interesting and full of useful advices for an indie game developer so I decided to make a synopsis of the speech.

Being a professional game developer for 16 years, Jonathan has developed a programming aesthetics. The aesthetics is different from the one which we learn during our studying. Below I outlined the main points of the aesthetics.

The game development might be slowed down due to minor things

I have just discovered for myself that game development implies many routine tasks. 

Here works the Pareto principle. According to the Pareto principle (aka 80-20 rule) you will spend about 80% of development time developing functionality which is going to be used only in 20% of game time.

The implementation of all these menus, settings, score systems and etc ... all it takes a lot of time! I've implemented a game within a week! But as for this "wrapper" for the game, I have already spent three weeks and still have not finished.

Here raised a reasonable question - why does it take so long? I encountered two major problems which I want to describe further.