Game Design Documents

When creating a design document, you want to ask the following questions:

• What are the goals?
• What are the questions this document should answer?
• How complex can this system be?

Design documents are very important to have. The main goal of a design document  it to communicate to potential companies. Design documents work as a communication tool between companies and game developers. However, you find that game design documents are not as famous as the actually game itself. The thing is with design documents is that the systems are very complex. Not much people think they are very beneficial. Those people are wrong. Design documents allow people to understand how your game system. If you don't understand the game system you basically have a bunch of elements that does nothing. 

You want to have a design document where you can iterate on it. It's not really a good idea to have one person writing the entire document. Include everyone in your document by using programs which can include updates from each individual in your team. An example of this is Google Docs. 

How to create a good design document?

1. Know the target

When creating a design document you have to acknowledge whose going to be reading the document. Programmers are the most important target because they know how the game is made. 

2. Keep it short & accurate

Simple designs make a great document. You do not need to write paragraphs about straight forward things. For example, if you have buttons. you don't have to write what the play button does. Obviously, it plays the game. Things like that you can pretty much keep to a minimal. Excluding backstories is another thing you have to try avoid in your document. It makes things less confusing and on a side note, no one really cares.

3. Prioritize the Design

In your documents try not to write everything in one huge chunk. Break up your topics in phases. This brings quality assurance.

4. Illustration

Use picture, diagrams, and other small art features when necessary. Illustration is worth a thousands.

5. Separate Code from Content

It is always good to use tables where necessary. Give information with clarity. 

7. Invest into a good format

Make sure and have a professional format to your design document. Use bullet lists and keep everything in order. 

8. Use clear terminology

Don't assume that your readers will know what you are talking about. Keep your explanations simple and precise. 

9. Kill redundancy

In your document you also want to refer to other pages that explain certain things in more detail. You have to explain everything at once in that page. You can refer to another page that explains something more in depth. 

10. No Weak Language

Use strong declarative language. Avoid repeating words over and over and over again. It's just annoying and unprofessional.

Conclusion

After this class, I said to my team, "Guys we gotta work on our design document". We did a design document since the beginning of the semester, but apparently, our design document currently looks like all the bad examples that were shown in class. Yikes. But thanks to this class we now know what to do and how to fix our design document.