As games become more complex or teams become larger it helps to work out the design on paper. These days on paper doesn't necessarily mean on actual paper, but this phase of game development is still known as the Paper Design Phase.
Believe it or not, some of these processes that we are about to discuss sometimes meet resistance by industry professionals (even though they are industry standards). They do take time. However, paper design work (and documentation in general), when done correctly, can solve a lot of problems ahead of time. They also are helpful because, let’s face it, we’re forgetful. It is useful to have the intent of your game written down in case you need to review it again in the future.
The reason for documentation seems reasonable enough in large-team productions. In order to successfully plan a major game production with many people involved, you must properly plan ahead of time. But what about solo or small-team indie projects? It is just as valuable to perform the paper design step. Suppose you set aside your personal project for weeks or even months, then suddenly gain the time and inspiration to work on it again. Are you going to remember all the important details of your game? If you documented it, you don’t have to!
That said, it is true that sometimes documentation demands can be overly demanding. Game design documents can easily span hundreds of pages. Realistically, this is not a document that is going to be particularly useful to anyone. A balance must be struck. Documentation should always serve the developer. The developer shouldn’t serve the documents.
Let's take a look at the different types of documents you may need to create as a game designer.
Game Design Documents (GDD) - These are large, all-encompassing documents that cover everything about how a game works. Controls, game systems, the game’s story, the target platforms, everything. These can be very large.
Art Bibles/ Style Guides - These are documents that define the look of a game. For example, a game might need to have an enemy faction that wears hats that are a certain shape. Artists working for that company would consult the art guide (sometimes called an “art bible”) to understand what the hats should look like. These guides also define all kinds of components of a game’s look: fonts, concept art, color palettes, etc.
Technical Design Documents (TDD) - These documents (specific to video games) explore the technical components of a game. For instance, a style guide for coding practices, or details about how certain game systems are to be implemented. It may lay out details about network game systems if the game is multiplayer. They are written most typically by software engineers and not game designers.
Production Documentation - Team game projects often have producers. These are much like project managers in other fields. Their job is to make sure the game’s production rolls along as smoothly as possible. These documents include schedules that break down the game into discrete tasks (i.e., “create a goblin character model,” or “create an introductory start screen”).
Narrative Documents - For story-heavy games, sometimes there is documentation only pertaining to the game’s story. Much like an art style guide, these documents help ensure that all the various developers who might be implementing a game’s story stay consistent. For example, if a game has goblins and all of the goblins hate the sun, a designer should not create a scenario where the goblins are on the beach.
Level Design Documents (LDD) - These are like game design documents, but focusing on a single game level or portion of the game instead of on the entire game. These documents don’t need to focus on nearly as many aspects of the game: only what is going on in the portion of the game being developed. These can still become quite large documents, however. Sometimes these documents are called “mission design documents” or similar titles.
We won’t be using any of these documents. They are simply too long and take too much time to create! We are going to use another type of document. This is a kind of game design document, but greatly truncated. It is called the “pitch document.”
The pitch document’s main purpose is to “pitch” a game idea to an interested party, such as a publisher. For us it is a useful way to think about game ideas and get feedback without going into too much granularity. It still contains enough details to understand the intent and scope of a game project.
The pitch document template we will be using can be used to pitch a real game to a developer or publisher. You will also use it for your thesis project if you are a Game Development major.
Start brainstorming for your next game! Over the course of this course you will be designing a game. The first step will be to fill out this Pitch Document. You will be adding more details as we cover more topics. Start now to make the process easier and more efficient.
You can fill out this template with the ideas for your game. If you want to see an example go to the next page.