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On another page, it came up that Ralph Betza, Charles Gilman, and Mats Winther are the three CV inventors who have invented the greatest number of games. Within this context, Mats Winther wrote, “Fergus, it's not so many variants, really. Most of my variants are variations on a theme, often in the 'modest' category. In many cases the variants are very similar, but with a different extra piece. However, this makes a great difference in practical play. In nearly every variant a new piece is introduced. So I am really prolific in the creation of new pieces, introduced into variants that are guaranteed to be playable, close to standard chess. But I have not been particularly creative when it comes to variants of great originality.”

This is noteworthy, because it helps answer the question, what do the most prolific CV inventors share in common? These three all share a strong interest in pieces. Ralph Betza is perhaps best known for his Betza notation for pieces and his game Chess with Different Armies, which introduces a host of different pieces to the chessboard. Charles Gilman has shown strong interest in pieces through his many articles attempting to categorize and name pieces. And, as Mats Winther has confessed, he is primarily a piece-maker.

It is also noteworthy that the approach to creating CVs described by Mats Winther is the opposite of my approach. He begins by creating pieces and then makes a game to put them into, whereas I focus on creating games and invent new pieces only as my games require them. This difference is like the difference between focusing on the trees or focusing on the forest. My approach is like focusing on the forest, while Winther's, and maybe Gilman and Betza's too, is like focusing on the trees.

So my hypothesis is that a greater interest in pieces over games leads to more games, because the piece inventor wants to use each of his new pieces in a game, and since the game serves mainly as a vehicle for using the piece, development time is reduced by not putting a lot of craftsmanship into the game. In contrast, my method of crafting games around themes or ideas produces fewer games, because (1) carefully crafting a game takes more time, and (2) ideas for new games come less frequently than ideas for new pieces come to those whose focus is on pieces.