When you guys got a really good idea do you write it down on paper or just right to it?
does perfect planning really make a good game?
definitely- especially those cool ideas that pop up as you’re falling asleep - if you don’t write em down they’re gone!
I actually develop my greatest ideas and remember them when I act them out with action figures.
That super-awesome fully-physics-based universal-gravity-enabled rigidbody character controller with support for everything you could ever hope for in an action game character? Came from the mind of an adult chick who still plays with Sonic the Hedgehog action figures.
Oddly enough, it’s the only thing I seem to do -better- with when I don’t write it down. Physics, to me, are like poetry.
Fine! I’ll be tails and you be sonic, but you’ll lose because I can fly!
I don’t write down “big generalized” ideas, I generally remember those.
When I want to generate ideas for all the DETAILS of the “big idea”, then I put something down, but I don’t use pen and paper much anymore, just occasionally if it’s all that is convenient at the time. Mostly I just type things into a word processor or make a spreadsheet. Some people go so far as to jump right into Gantt charts, but I mostly work alone so there’s very little need for that for me (plus I don’t much like Gantt charts 
). I do plan things out considerably though. Just sitting down and creating stuff works ok for small tasks, but it’s a recipe for disaster with bigger projects IMHO, particularly if you plan to optimize things and/or make things that are fairly reusable for future projects.
At the very least I think people should make lists of all the things that need to be made, either graphics, sound, and code, then you can just work on one thing at a time until the whole project is done. There’s definitely some personal satisfaction with checking things off t that are complete, so I see this as organization and a psychological motivator.
I use a couple note books for capturing ideas on the fly, then document them if I think they’ve got meat.
Planning won’t guarantee a game is good, but it does tend to product better results than the “hack and slash” approach.
Cheers,
Galen