So, it’s great that Agile can improve software development, but what the hell does that have to do with games?

To my mind, quite a lot, and on several different vectors.

First, there is *direct* overlap between games and agile as numerous people have been creating games to illustrate and teach the principles of agility.  There are games like Cards for Agility that use existing game models to teach these ideas.  There are learning games like the ones that you can find at Tasty Cupcake.  Books like Gamestorming and Innovation Games take game ideas and apply them to solving business problems.  There is a whole school of thought surrounding “Serious Games” (games with a purpose other than entertainment) and most of the conversations I hear out of that space have a lot of room for improvement on the game side.  it’s a conversation we should be enthusiastically engaged in.

Second, Game Design is as much a discipline (and a business) as software design, and there are lessons that we can learn from the process.  This may not be as relevant to the lone auteur, producing work in isolation, but if you are producing work with collaborators (editors, artists, other designers) and incorporating user feedback (play testing and actual play reports) then the patterns of your work may echo those of software development, and by extension, may benefit from the same agile tricks that help in those environs.

Third, the actual *act* of gaming is often collaborative, iterative and continuously improving.   if that doesn’t suggest a highly permeable membrane between these ideas, I’m not sure what would.