I've been a game designer and producer since the early
1980s. I've designed 20 shipped games and I've produced 88
shipped games. I count only the "shipped" games because I'd
rather not talk about how many projects never got finished.
Project cancellation is one of the disasters that can result
from having a poorly written design doc, or no design doc at
all.
The team who creates the game needs a unified vision of what
the final game is going to be; a plan they can refer to
throughout the project. Think of a game design document (GDD)
as being like a blueprint, or sheet music, or a map. A
construction team who tries to erect a building without any
blueprints is going to have a rough time. How big a hole
should they dig for the foundation? How many materials need
to be bought? A band that tries to play music together,
without any sheet music, will sound terrible. Each musician
would be playing his own tune. An explorer who tries to
enter unknown territory without a map may not wind up in the
place he intended - or may encounter nasty obstacles along
the way.
It's the same with making electronic games.
A
solid game design document can be used to generate a
technical design, programming task list, art list, sound
list, and voiceover script. Experienced personnel can use
those lists to make a firm budget and schedule for the
project.
Two projects in particular suffered greatly because of this
lack.
I produced a Super Nintendo Entertainment System game,
"Alien vs. Predator," with a Japanese company. The deal was
that the Japanese company would first program the game for
release in the Japanese market. Then we would localize the
game for release in the rest of the world. The Japanese
company did not believe in game design documents. When I
demanded one, all they gave me was a 3- or 4-page outline.
Reading the outline gave very little information about what
the game would be. At the time, fighting games were popular.
So the Japanese company had decided to make a game about
Predators punching it out with Aliens, occasionally finding
weapon pickups along the way. It was a terrible idea, but I
couldn't tell from reading the outline that that's what they
had in mind. I read it as a weapon-based game, not a
punching game. As a result of this lack of a design doc, the
game was mediocre when it was finished. The licensor,
Twentieth Century Fox, wouldn't approve the game for
manufacture and distribution in North America. We had to
make substantial changes to the game in order to obtain
licensor approval, increasing the number of weapon pickups
(and the number of aliens), making the game better utilize
the licensed properties.
A bigger disaster happened the time I was assigned to
produce an Activision in-house Sega Genesis football game. I
was producing numerous games at the time, and was never a
football fan. So I could not write a design doc for the
project myself. There was nobody else on staff to write one,
either. The team believed that they could manage it with
only a basic list of features, despite my belief that a
design doc was vital. I was reassigned to Japan before this
project had progressed very far; someone else took over its
production. While I was safely on the other side of the
ocean, the project crashed and burned horribly, after much
money had been wasted. In the fallout over this failed
project, several people left the company. This kind of
catastrophic project failure is hard on everyone involved.
The company lost a lot of money, and the project didn't add
value to the resumes of the individuals who'd worked on it.
This particular catastrophe could be blamed directly on the
lack of a unifying GDD.
When can you proceed without a GDD? When money is no object,
and you have all the time in the world, and
you’re working on a new original concept in untested
territory (there is no licensed IP involved, and platform
holder approval is not a worry). But how often do you have
an unlimited budget? How often does the publisher not care
how long it takes, or if it's done in time for Christmas? If
you are on a budget and a deadline, or if the game is based
on licensed property, or if the game is for a console
requiring platform holder approval, you absolutely have to
write a solid game design document.
Give your team the blueprint it needs to build your dream
game. Give them the sheet music they need to make beautiful
music together. Map your team's journey, or you may never
get where you want to go.
