To all you modders out there!

[Adrianis]

Dear Esther was an experiment in gameplay, yet they didn't start to build the core experience without a story which is what the guide says, though they would have started designing and refining the core gameplay of the mod long before they started work, but the gameplay is not the game, the gameplay could be an idea, there is a lot of theory behind it. They would show up with the core design of the game, the setting plan and the narrative. Narrative is designed and created alongside the design of the game, it is not shoved in after the core features of the game, as she implies, at least not for a well crafted story in a game.

Before you start to work on the assets and programming of a game there will be months, or possibly even years of design and planning, as well as a narrative being crafted in amongst these times. Call of Duty has a terrible story, though it's design is nearly eight years old now, and they do not have that long period of planning and design as other games do.

Agreed with most of it, but not that sentence. For all the planning you do, if you end up not being able to execute on it properly then it doesn't matter - spending months or years designing around a core principle that ends up not working means an awful lot of lost time. You should be able to have a decent prototype of ideas in a shortish space of time - programming gameplay features in an existing engine doesn't take long, neither does modelling very basic assets. You're designs get improved once you actually get a feel for the system as it would be in game, and that gives you a basis to iterate from.