I'd not really thought about the stages idea, but I can see why it's done.

Sometimes, people have to be forced into taking a structured approach to their project.. I mean, I normally just dive in and code without too much thought to the design process (although I do design the game initially) This often leads to massive scope creep and unfinished projects. I know this, yet I still do it. So by building this into the rules, they ensure that more projects get finished because they are easier for the developers to manage.

Goal #3 might be tricky to some people who've included the second genre as an integral part of their game initially.. e.g. someone writing a Tetris based platform shooter would find it hard to include the falling tetris blocks as a seperate element if they were the platforms the player was jumping on, while shooting other platforms to move them... actually, that's not a bad idea :lol: