Studio Philosophy

The principles that guide Lurie Game Studio.

One Studio. Two Projects. One Spine.

This is not two separate courses. It is one unified studio where two developers share a technical foundation and build two different games. The lessons are the same. The applications are different. The discipline is shared.

Studio Rules

1. Shipping is greater than Perfect. A finished game that works beats an unfinished game that could have been amazing.
2. Systems thinking first. Understand the system before building the feature. Every mechanic is part of a larger loop.
3. Version discipline is non-negotiable. Know what is in Version 1. Know what is NOT. Say "No" to scope creep.
4. One signature feature. Not ten. One. The thing that makes your game YOUR game.
5. State is truth. The gameState object is the single source of truth. Everything reads from it. Everything writes to it.
6. Risk must be real. If the player can't lose, there is no tension. If there's no tension, there's no game.
7. Space is state. Where you are determines what can happen. Zones define mechanics.
8. Playtest before polish. If the loop doesn't work with text, graphics won't fix it.
9. Remove before you add. When confused, simplify. Every line of code is a potential bug.
10. Celebrate shipping. You built a game. That matters.

Technical Constraints

• Browser-based only
• Static hosting (no backend)
• No multiplayer
• No accounts or login
• No cloud infrastructure
• Three.js for 3D rendering
• LocalStorage for persistence
• HTML / CSS / JavaScript only

Why Constraints Matter

Constraints are not limitations — they are creative accelerators. When you can't use a backend, you have to design for local-first. When you can't add multiplayer, you focus on single-player depth. When you limit to 3 tiers, you make each tier count.

Professional game studios ship under constraints. Budget, timeline, team size, hardware. Learning to work within constraints is learning to ship.

The Shipping Philosophy

Version 1 is not the game you dream of. It is the game you can finish. The gap between "dream" and "done" is where scope discipline lives.

Every feature you add is time taken from polishing existing features. Every "just one more thing" is a risk to shipping. The goal is not to build everything — it's to build something complete.

A game that ships at 80% quality teaches more than a game that never ships at 100% ambition.

The Two Projects