Games GDD

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game design document

For this weeks reading we were tasked with Communication and Game Design Documents,  How to Write a Game Design Document and  BenderWaffles video example of a GDD.

Essentially a GDD or a Game Design Document is a document that helps to unfold memory aid and communication tool. As developing a game takes a significant amount of time, designers tend to forget their original or early on designs, so they use a GDD to record early on ideas and designs. As you are most likely working with a team to generate ideas and designs a GDD is also used to communicate these ideas with the rest of the team. 

A GDD is broken down into these headings:

  1.  Game Design Overview
  2. Detailed Design Doc
  3. Story Overview
  4. Technical Design Doc
  5. Pipeline Overview
  6. System Limitations
  7. Art Bible
  8. Concept Art Overview
  9. Game Budjet
  10. Story Bible
  11. Script
  12. Game Tutorial and Manual
  13. Walkthroughs
Some of the rules in creating a good GDD include knowing your target audience, keeping the doc short, prioritising the design, illustrate ideas, not to tell others how to do their job, use users stories, separate code from content, invest in a good format, use clear terminology, kill redundancy, avoid weak language and to capture your reasoning. 

these readings go over great ways to write good design documents and the video gives a nice clear visual understanding and different approach to learning how to write one if thats your preferred method of learning. 

Comments

  1. Kyle WrightNovember 3, 2021 at 3:30 PM

    Hey Mary,

    I found the GDD reading very informative, I never thought having a game design document was necessary when making a video game but after reading I realised how important they are to have! It's interesting to see how much time and effort goes into creating one. I can only imagine how many pages a GDD would be for the likes of Grand Theft Auto!

    ReplyDelete
  2. MilenaNovember 7, 2021 at 3:03 PM

    Hey Mary, The breakdowns are great, who would have ever thought we need so many steps to design a game right? :D I never knew about game design documents and after doing one I can see how important it really is to have one. What is something you found out that you were like :0 ? I think for me its every elements that goes into real game designing and that it takes years to create one single game.......

    ReplyDelete

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