[casual_games] Res: Game design document

[Adam Martin]

On 20/03/07, oscar oscar <oscar.oscar.oscar at gmail.com> wrote:

> Will NO ONE sacrifice one of their actual, completed design docs? ^_^

>

> On 3/20/07, Jose Marin <jose_marin2 at yahoo.com.br > wrote:

> >

> http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20060516/carless_01.shtml

> >


http://www.gamasutra.com/features/19991019/ryan_pfv.htm is what I
point people to when they want to know how to get going with their
design docs, and/or when they've submitted stuff to me that is just
not good enough as a commercial pitch.

My general advice is to write a concept first, ideally 2-3 pages, as
per the article, and then expand that into a small GDD (no more than
20-30 pages max - I prefer around 10-15 for smaller games) and
eventually a large GDD (non-casual games generally need something
which is > 75 pages, in some cases >> 75 pages ).

I would also strongly advise people to read the slides from Damion's
game-design-docs talk at GDC a couple of weeks ago :

http://www.zenofdesign.com/Writing_Great_Design_Docs.ppt

As has been pointed out, just arbitrarily giving out design docs is
not generally allowed. However, I feel strongly that it's also not
that useful, if you have a rough template (like in Ryan's article):
IME if you cannot follow a basic standard template and organize your
own thoughts well enough to create your own sets of sub-headings
appropriate to each major heading, then you probably aren't ready to
write a design doc yet. Either you need to think more about your game,
or learn generally how to compose your ideas into clearer forms.

YMMV, of course.

Adam