Table Of Content
As Jim Highsmith, one of the 17 original signatories of the Agile Manifesto, said, "We embrace documentation, but not hundreds of pages of never-maintained and rarely-used tomes." Here, you must describe the features and limitations relevant to every platform you want to launch your game on. Remember to include concepts and infographics to visualize your ideas to others. The point is that you work on your game documentation all the time.
Nuclino: Your team's collective brain
When everyone is on the same page, it’s easier to coordinate efforts and avoid time-wasting (and frustrating) confusion and miscommunications. In this article, we’ll dive into why a GDD is essential, who writes it and who reads it, the key sections in a GDD, and the steps you can take to get started writing the GDD for your game. Matthew "Queso" Niederberger does not find them helpful to the design process. In a Cohost comment, they noted that they feel a static document simply communicates the wrong information most of the time, and that so much of the GDD writing process can be a waste of time in itself. In my studio work, living docs and wikis are paramount, and the classic "here's just a literal document that tells you what the game is" is very outdated at this point.
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Nuclino preserves the previous versions of your document so you can easily undo the changes you made without losing any of your work. Traditional GDDs – those lengthy, rigid Word documents, attempting to needlessly explain every detail of the game only to never be updated or read by anyone – are obsolete. Repeat this process for each level and you'll start to see how the whole game fits together. Level design is not only a great framework for you to invent something new. It's also a handy tool to help your team understand the size and scope of your game. Now that your moodboard is complete, you have a powerful visual reference for your game.
Page 1: Introduction to the TeamPage
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. 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).
Character profile
The game design document acts as a comprehensive guide, not only in terms of the technical and creative aspects of the game but also in the management and coordination of the team. By thoroughly documenting the project's requirements and the estimated resources and time needed, the game design document becomes an invaluable tool for planning and executing the game development process efficiently. For those seeking to delve deeper into the nuances of UI design in games, our article on how to make game UI effective offers a wealth of information. This resource is part of the comprehensive game design document, a key tool for any game developer.
Gameplay
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The characters and settings in the story section should exhibit depth and clarity, supported by detailed information that contributes to the game’s storyline and their significance within the game world. Treating it as a rigid blueprint kills creativity in the team and builds a wall between the ideas and their implementation. Being afraid of deleting and trimming content is just as bad and will lead to your GDD becoming so bloated and outdated that it's impossible to navigate. It's important not to fall into the trap of giving just one character too much responsibility for the dramatic functions of your game. It's better to create additional characters that compliment and contrast the traits of your main character. You can repeat the above process to develop a whole cast of characters that help bring your game to life.
Open the Game Design Document template
To help you get rid of this, here’s a helpful design document example you can refer to while working on your own. Here you need to list all your ideas about how you intend to market your game, which is the targeted user or location, where to get funds from and more. It is important to have all these details in hand before starting to design a game. Knowing the location of the game would allow you to use regional language within the game, like, French, Spanish, English, Italian and more. And most importantly, you must specify how you plan to monetize on the game, whether it is through in-game ads, or by offering a paid full version of the game. As you put this into practice, keep sticking to these principles of clear communication and focus on specific goals.
How Much Does a GDD Cost?
Deciding exactly what it is you’re trying to design can be difficult however, to make it a little easier, try to think specifically about the problem you’re trying to solve. Using only a single page to communicate your design can work well for a few reasons. A blueprint works because it’s easy to understand, easy to modify and troubleshoot and is the most appropriate method of communication for that type of information. For example, Trello can be great for managing multiple tasks at different stages of development, where each task’s description is detailed on a card that can be assigned to one or more people.
In this guide you'll learn how to create a modern game design document...
It is utilized when the game concept becomes too complex to be mentally retained and when there is a need to communicate intricate aspects of the game to others effectively. You’ll find the first character profile board on the Game Design Plan board. Is your game set in a dystopian war-torn city with only soldiers and robots? This is where you set some rules to be used later when designing your characters.
While the GDD provides a structured plan, it is also a living document that can adapt and evolve as the game development progresses. This flexibility allows the game to grow organically, incorporating new ideas and feedback while still staying true to its core vision. Contact us for professional consultation and assistance based on years of firsthand experience working on video game projects of all scopes.
However, with sufficient planning and thoughtfulness, you can make your game accessible to the nearly half billion gamers with disabilities in the world today. Planning a Go To Market (GTM) is also critically important, even for free games. You should have a crystal clear idea about who the game is for, how to reach those players to share your game, and how to build a community around your game. In the included template at the end of this, I include more in-depth notes around how to devleop your game's GTM. The core mechanics and the mechanical loop section should go into detail about what your game's core mechanics are and how they work with or against each other.
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