Ultimate Game Design : Building game worlds

Building Game Worlds
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U L T I M A T E G A M E D E S I G N
FIGURE D-9
Piranesi’s Imaginary Prisons, Title Page
DESIGN DOCUMENT WRITING
There are several templates available to you at www.gamedev.net. These templates are
a useful starting point. A design document needs to present dynamic and useful information
to your development team quickly. A solid design document will leave no piece
of feature or functionality undefined. Features and functionality will change, but each
basic aspect of your game should have a reasonable starting point denoted in your design
document. Your team will not be happy wading through densely worded opuses
about general design direction, a designer’s personal thoughts on some matter extending
into paragraphs and then entire pages, a litany on every other page about what
went wrong with the last game you worked on, endless comparison to every other title
on the market, or massive and intimate backstory detailing.
Most designers format their design documents somewhat differently according to
the kind of game or game genre the document is created to support. The size of a design
document varies, too, dependent on genre, platform, and so forth. I’ve written
400-page design documents and 20-page design documents. These days, it’s not uncommon
for a document to reach over 200 pages, and a design document for an
MMOG could easily reach 500 pages. I would set up access to game design information