Table Of Content
It should not be confused with Game Concept Paper, which is part of the GDD. This “document” can be a word format file or an online collaboration board, but the content is more or less the same. Give an overview of what your marketing strategy is, who your target audience is, and what kind of promotional efforts you’re planning. Include details about what you need from the game team, and when you’ll need it, to make the marketing efforts a success.
How to Write Game Design Document (with Examples)
Splash Damage has released the full game design document for Dirty Bomb - Game Developer
Splash Damage has released the full game design document for Dirty Bomb.
Posted: Sat, 11 Sep 2021 10:46:17 GMT [source]
It can be a specific problem or it can be a broad problem, but try to make it one thing, not several, by giving it a primary focus. For example, let’s say that you want to understand how the combat system is going to work in your game. While the one-page method does encourage you to present information in the most appropriate way, this is often a beneficial side effect of limiting your design to a single page. However, what you use doesn’t really matter, what’s important is that it’s a good fit for you and whoever you’re working with.
Ludo's New Game Concept Creator Makes Quickly Producing GDDs Possible - 80.lv
Ludo's New Game Concept Creator Makes Quickly Producing GDDs Possible.
Posted: Wed, 06 Apr 2022 07:00:00 GMT [source]
Marketing & Monetization
Either way, if everyone on your team has played Peggle, then everyone gets the point. Not only can referencing other games help create common terminology (or overcome the lack of it), but teammates can point to them to reference art style, music, mood, or scope. All of these things become more concrete when there's a common reference point. If you’ve ever worked on a game before, you’ll realize how little game design documents matter compare to your ability to rapid prototype and iterate. The GDD offers a clear and comprehensive overview of the game’s design and development, ensuring that all team members share a common understanding of the game’s vision, mechanics, and goals.
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Your genre of choice will also affect your team’s marketing efforts, once the game is done and ready to be marketed to an audience. The whole development team will refer to the GDD throughout the game’s development, from early pre-production through launch. That includes designers, artists, programmers, sound designers, producers, QA testers, and others.
However, whatever your research, should give you insight into your target audience. This information will help you to tailor your design according to the players’ needs. The last item on your project overview should be about the genre of your game. Each genre has different technical requirements so it’s absolutely vital to decide on the game genre before proceeding with the design.
With that said, here are 10+ sections that I like to use that may help you write a more effective GDD. Based on my experience, the most successful game designers know the power of the one-pager – a quickly parsed document which gets everyone on board for a united vision of a great game. Feature documents focus on a single aspect of the game, in just enough detail to outline the goals, the game mechanics of how it will work, and the desired player experience. These tools are just a starting point for the development process, ensuring a solid foundation for the final product. For larger game development projects, a GDD offers numerous benefits. It keeps the team aligned, ensures clear communication, and is a crucial reference point throughout game-building.
How To Write A Game Design Document?
This should be a breeze, as you should have a pretty solid idea of what you would like to develop. That’s a lot of potential time and programming wasted (this is worse than forgetting to save even once while wandering the wilds of Morrowind for three hours and having the game freeze). You might get a better sense of what’s possible from your programmers. If you’re working with a team, you’re going to want to enter the discussion phase next. Everyone will bring something different to the project, and getting together to talk about the project can bring out the best in your unique team.
This will contrast quite a bit with the language you’d see on the back of the game box in the store. This is the end of the Game development guide’s “life,” so to speak. It has gone through its chrysalis phase, and it has emerged as a butterfly, never to change again. In this phase, you don’t need too many of the logistics sorted out. A puzzle is a lot harder to put together when you have six puzzles’ worth of pieces and no picture to look at for reference.
However, as I mentioned earlier, the fundamental goals are still the same and you can learn what to do (or not to do) from them. Keep in mind, docs are a snapshot of your current thinking, not carved in stone. Include just enough information so everyone knows what is absolutely essential — and maybe a few ideas that you might want to try in the future. Jumping will be an essential part of the game, so we will need to standardize the height of all pipes and obstacles to 3 blocks high. You’re here because you have a brilliant game idea and you want to bring it into existence.
However, they may lack flexibility for updates and can be more challenging to maintain compared to other formats. This saves a lot of effort and frustration at the end of the game’s life. The plot, the characters–everything matches the information specified in the document. You and your teamwork in the same space all the time, and you’re constantly communicating any small changes to each other. Since the game is so simple, you don’t need to bring on any new help. You don’t have to explain the game to anyone because your team already knows the details as well as you.
Because as you saw with the professional GDD examples, very few games end up looking just the way they were described in the first draft design. If you’re not a highly-technical person, you’ll want to lean on your team’s game programmers and system programmers to help with this section. They will likely have a lot of preferences and opinions, and can help by doing technical diligence to figure out which tools and tech might be needed for your game. This section could also mention any third-party software, plugins, or middleware that your game will use.
A way for you to translate the ideas you have about your game for someone else in the best way possible. However, while a design wiki can be useful for managing a large database of information, separating data into categories and entries can hide the relationships between the different parts of your game. Which can be helpful if you want to build a database of information about items, weapons, pickups and locations in your game. However, there are more ways than one to manage the design of your game, and you may find that some methods work better for you and your project than others. A project that already has a degree of interest from potential customers is likely to be a more attractive proposition than an untested concept and your GDD can be used to show that.
In this part, you provide designers and artists with instructions and detailed guidelines on what kind of art you want to see in the game. Of course, you should also leave room for creativity and make sure your team’s vision aligns with your expectations. Emphasize what mood and emotions you’re looking at as well — this shouldn’t be just a strict list of requirements. The key rule here is to trust your team and allow them to unleash their full potential. Now that you understand the necessity of a GDD to ensure your project’s success, let’s find out how to write a game design document.
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