Document Your Game............................
As a game designer, you will be primarily concerned with what is commonly called the
design document, which I will explore in detail in Chapter 19. However, there are many
other pieces of documentation used in the creation of modern computer games. Even
though you may not work with all of these documents, it is important nonetheless to
understand what each of them is supposed to contain and how the different documents
are interrelated. So before delving into the nature of design documents, a survey of the
different types of documents is appropriate. Different people at different companies or
in different situations will invariably use a variety of different names for the documents
listed below. You should realize that the naming convention I employ here is not univer-
sal, but the types of documents used are quite common throughout the game
development industry.
Concept Document, Pitch Document, or Proposal...........
These are usually the first formal documents created for a given game. Often they are
written in order to sell the idea of a game to a publisher (if the author works for a devel-
oper that does not publish its own work) or to upper management (at a company that
publishes internally developed projects). In short, this document is shown to the
green-light committee, the money, the suits, the decision makers, or whatever one may
call them, in order to convince them to spend a lot of money on the idea, thereby fund-
ing its development. Concept documents are the seeds that have the potential to grow
into a full game but all too often never get the opportunity. Concept documents are usu-
ally short in length, customarily no longer than ten pages, and in their more snazzy
form include plenty of concept art. Often concept documents focus exclusively on
high-level design issues, exploring the unique gameplay the title will provide, detailing
the game’s story, and generally pulling out all the stops to get the reader excited about
the project. Writing a concept document can be quite a lot of fun, since the writer gets to
focus on the most exciting parts of the game and does not have to worry about all the
messy details of actually implementing the game. At the same time, it is important not
to go overboard and promise the unattainable with your pitch document, since the more
astute readers will quickly be able to pick up on the implausibility of your idea.
Concept documents can sometimes go a bit beyond the high-level ideas to become
significantly more elaborate. In this case, they are often written by committee, typically
involving the game’s producer, lead designer, lead programmer, whatever marketing
people may be on hand, and the lead artists who contribute a variety of sketches, con-
ceptual pieces, and screen mockups. Concept documents discuss all aspects of the
game idea in question, including how it might be positioned in the marketplace, budgets
and development timelines, what technology will be used, what the art style of the
game will be, mini-bios of the team members who hope to work on the game, and some
broad description of the gameplay. These documents are not much use in the game’s
actual development, though they can be a springboard for creation of other documents,
such as the design document or the art bible. Since concept documents do not apply
very much to the game’s actual development, I will not go into further detail about
them.
308 Chapter 17: Game Development Documentation