This is a great read man! Thanks! So much to learn here.

"This might sound controversial, but I believe that our game rules should have been hard-coded from the start, instead of wasting time on trying out all kinds of hand-made semi-scripting tools. "

Controversial my ass. This is one of the most interesting points of the article for it points towards the difference between indie and industry... Industry can make a game AND and editor... indies have to choose one or the other to start off with.

And actually, this trancends entertainment games. For example, when designing edu software, I constantly get asked if I will be making an editor, to let the teacher create her own worlds. And I say "No." and hardwire the educational content to the game. It's easier to develop, maintain, and ultimitely get your message across in a hard wired game than an open editor IMO.

Great article, but GameDev.net is full of such material. If it's not already in your bookmarks or RSS feed, you are missing out on the single most useful info source for indie game devs IMO.

The more time is spend on an early prototype,
the less gamerules have to be "dynamic" to be defined
later.

Its important to define early on what has to be static
content and funtionality, and what should be dynamically
imported.
This defines what a potential editor must include.

Making a game fully dynamic sounds tempting to the developers
selfesteem, but can potentially blow up development time
without adding much value to the product.

Defining functionality very static can prohibit
fixing obvious flaws in the gameplay laster on.

Thats where the prototype must sort out these questions early on.

@Fastlane, Democles, those are some great points, though I'm just a writer I do voice my opinions to the developers I work with.

Check out the writer's site too. He has some fantastic articles on there. This guy has solutions to things I never thought of...