Prominent figures of the gaming industry such as Ken Levine, Peter Molyneux, and well-known director Steven Spielberg are gearing up to make waves at the Game Developers Conference 2008 scheduled in February at Moscone Center in San Fransisco. There will be sessions discussing topics such as storytelling in Bioshock (Xbox 360, PC), three spankin' new features added to EA LA's Fable 2, and the upcoming puzzle-video game Boom Blox for the Wii.

Gamasutra bring us more word from the ongoing Game Developers Conference (GDC), and this time it's all about prototyping as explained by Jonathan Blow.

Blow is a programmer and designer who works primarily on advanced and experimental video games. His game Braid, a meditation on loss and relationships where the player controls time to solve puzzles, the Game Design award at the Independent Games Festival in 2006.

Blow started the 45-minute session by showing what doesn't make for a good prototype. As an example, Blow used a magical gesture-based combat game he had worked on, where he heavily prototyped the gesture system. According to Blow, just testing the thing did not make a good prototype. "Even though it exercised the technical parts of the scheme, it didn't exercise the game play parts," he said.

Blow conceded that while some prototypes won't be much fun, but they can be successful. Speaking of Braid's precursor, Oracle Billiards, Blow said that while it didn't do what he wanted, he "got a feeling out of it that I never got out of any game I ever played before."

Another of Blow's more successful prototypes was one called Raspberry. Again, Blow didn't quite find the Raspberry prototype enjoyable, but what mattered was that it was successful. Raspberry went on to become a big part of what led up to his next project, Eight Dots.

In closing, Blow emphasized that just like in the strategy games he is so fond of, life is a very limited resource. Wasting it on quick games that are just "good enough" is unfortunate.