Spreadsheets in Game Design?

Posted by Joey Green on Game Development See other posts from Game Development or by Joey Green
Published on 2012-10-21T13:51:50Z Indexed on 2012/10/21 17:20 UTC
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game-mechanics

There have been two instances from the past two weeks that I've heard from well known successful game developers that they use spreadsheets when designing games.

The first being David Whatley in this GDCVault video: http://gdcvault.com/play/1012372/From-Zero-to-Time-Magazine

The second being the guys that do Walled Garden Weekly: http://walledgardenweekly.com/

David said he models everything out and uses excel models to see how everything plays out. What on earth is he talking about? Is it seeing how the game mechanics react to each other?

Is there somewhere where I can learn more about how to do this?

Thanks

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