RYAREISENDER'S PROFILE

At work, we write documents. Requirement specifications that just list what should be offered. Design specifications that define exactly how it should be implemented, listing hundreds of numbered and testable requirements. These need to read and signed by all responsible people. Then the development starts. The sourcecode will be checked into a repository (SVN) daily. At the same time the test department can also start to write a test plan based on the requirements in the design specification. When development is finished, the testers work through the created test plan and verify that all requirements are met. If not, the resulting report is sent back to the developers, who fix the bugs and then the test is repeated until all is clear. The test plan gets signed again. Then the final phase is that the ones that originally decided what has to be offered in the requirement specification take a look at the product and "check off" all the listed requirements.
For continued support (fixing bugs, adding features), we use a bug tracking software where we collect all the bugs and feature requests. SVN also really helps to track changes.

In private, all my larger game projects are open source projects and we use Github for both source code managing as well as issue tracking.

For me it was never so much about "learning" it. Sure, you have probably 20 "steps" you need to take care of and remember at all times, but once you got those down, you are good. At work, we also have all the relevant work steps documented in separate document too.

Why would you copy whole town designs in the first place?

I'm all for copying concepts that work and even agree that sometimes changing even just a little thing can ruin it (like Sprinites in I Am Setsuna), however, things like town and maps in general are always better when they are new.

I think for example of Phantasy Star 1+2+4. All those games play on the same planets and the towns even have the same names, but generally the world looks completely different in each of them. I think this is a good thing because exploring the exactly same areas in each game would be boring (like for example exploration in Xillia 2 is boring because it's the same regions as in Xillia 1).

A drawback system ruins any game. Players want to feel rewarded and not punished.

author=Liberty
I don't think that's necessarily true, Rya, just that pure comedy games tend to be catered towards only one or two types of humour (usually the stupid-is-funny kind like South Park or Spongebob) and it doesn't work for everyone.

A lot of games, even serious ones, have humour sprinkled through them in parts and a lot of the time it works out fine because you've got a contrast between serious moments and lighter ones, so the lighter ones tend to shine a bit more and seem more unexpected (one aspect of comedy is how easily you can guess the 'punchline'. The more unexpected, even in stupid-is-funny comedy, the better the 'joke'). When every joke is fighting against a ton of other jokes, it tends to overdo it.

My impression is rather the opposite. Pure comedy games like South Park seem much better received than comedy in otherwise serious games.

I'm thinking of stuff like the Star Ocean games, that are always criticized for all the scenes I personally liked because they were funny (like the dialogues with Welch in Star Ocean The Last Hope) or how everybody hates on the characters in Tales of Graces even though their dialogues are pure comedy gold.

There's also the aspect of not really remembering many jokes even though they made you smile. They don't stick in your mind much during a more serious game, even if you were laughing at them at the time. Unless they're very very good and memorable, they get lost in the rest of the story/gameplay/etc.

That's also the opposite for me. I remember the jokes better if they were only in a part of the game rather than when the whole game's purpose was comedy.

I guess I can remember humour in games actually better than humour in comedy shows even (which usually end up with "I remember they were real funny but couldn't repeat any of the jokes").

I would rather say that humor is not so well received in games. The games I actually found funny were mostly criticized for their boring story and silly dialogues. Put the same stuff in an anime and everybody loves it. But I guess it's also a slightly different target group.