Icarus Studios News

Writing a Great Game Design Document

(Continued from Part 2)

Part 3: Okay, But How Do I Make My Game Design Document Full of Win?

If you want to write a really great design document, you should cover the basics (detailed in Part 1), but also get into the world-building features. Briefly—and here’s a word I’m going to use often in these posts without actually accomplishing brevity—describe how your game engine will address things. These topics include conversations between users; the creation of both NPCs and PCs; the plan for cool features particular to various factions, classes, and races; suggested items in players’ inventories; and proposals for interesting locations, creatures, and objects. You might also include information about puzzles and mini-games, which may or may not be consequential to the main quest game-play, but are intriguing additions to the entire game experience.

Tip: Be concise with words. Use pictures to convey details. (They’re worth 1,000 words, after all)

Executives typically won’t read 20-50 pages of pure prose text about the technical aspects of game design. Unless you are a hardcore gamer or a Game Designer, a 50-page document about virtual design just might just put you into a coma. Now, I’m not saying you should use big bright colors and crazy fonts in your game design documents simply because executives have an attention span suited best for giant pop-up books. Quite the contrary.

These people are executives because they are smart, experienced, and knowledgeable about their product. Don’t assume they’re ignorant, but don’t take it for granted that they know what “MMO RPG FPS with UGC and Web 2.0 streaming Flash instances” means. Use common terminology. Keep the words you need; excise the ones you don’t. Don’t make up words in an attempt to be clever. Your goal isn’t to be Bill Shakespeare, here. The flowery descriptions about characters and visual effects you should save for your graphic designers and level artists—they’ll appreciate that extra effort (and any inspiring photos you can dig up to give them a better sense of world-building).

If asked by your client, include production, marketing, and monetization options. You’ll have a basic understanding of these things, but other people in the Production, Marketing, and Finance departments will have to give you the numbers involved for each tiered option. You might need to address specific concerns about programming, scheduling, QA testing, and integrating the ideas or help of outside partners. In such cases, you have to communicate with (and then edit and incorporate the responses of) programmers, beta testers, and other industry professionals.

Also, if you know that your client has a keen interest in your tool sets, briefly cover each suite as best you can, using the least amount of words; then, direct them to another document or tutorial video on your company’s website, and let them navigate through the things that excite them the most. Bar graphs, charts, and screen shots are your friend, because your client wants to know about your superior technology—but your client doesn’t really want to know every detail.*

Tip: If it’s not absolutely necessary to understanding the game, detailed description of it is not a priority.

Example: Bad Designer! No Biscuit!

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How Players Get and Keep Unique Equipment

Using the inventory screen, referred to as a “pack” in this game, players can click on the text box for whatever item they wish, and this will automatically equip them with that object.

Once a player is equipped with a weapon, their combat meter (statistics concerning how well they’d do in battle) will change to reflect the new equipment.

When a player’s weapon is in “equipped mode,” that means it is visible on the player’s avatar, usually in one or both of their hands.

Particle and sound effects can be used to customize equipment with unique aspects, such as glowing, flaming, cracking, slamming, etc.

It will be possible for players to customize some of their inventory equipment, such as drawing their faction’s insignia on their shields or wearing colors specific to their guild houses.

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Redundancy, wishy-washy passive language, and huge chucks of detail are all mistakes. You do not want your client’s eyes to glaze over, look up from the page, or squint in confusion at any time while they read your game design document.

State things once—clearly and concisely. Make sure the subject is labeled and hyperlinked to your table of contents, so the client doesn’t have to hunt for the info they want. Avoid using terms such as “might,” “could,” and “seems.” Instead, favor strong, confident, active-voice word choices like “will,” “can,” and “simulates.”

Example: Good, Designer. Goooood.

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Inventory

Basic

Players use their inventory screen to equip their avatars.

Equipped weapons change a player’s combat stats.

Advanced

Enhancing player equipment with special effects is possible.

Customized

Placing faction insignia on some inventory items is allowed.

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Most important, break down anything more than two sentences into compartmentalized units. In the text above, it is immediately obvious that there are three categories of inventory equipment. These three options are in ascending order; they show that as the player’s level increases, the player is endowed with extra, desirable qualities.

These possibilities for inventory are not mentioned as mere suggestions, but stated as definitive components of game-play that will reward a player’s progress. All of this information is immediate apparently because of concise wording, compartmentalizing, and visual formatting—not lengthy description.

Tip: In short: Keep it short.

It may be that your client has specific questions, preferred formatted templates, and a clear game plan; or, you client could be totally new to virtual worlds and MMOs. The external game design document is about what you can specifically offer your client after hearing all initial ideas and aspirations.

You can expect this document to change—often. And the internal game design document will change so much, it merits the adjective “organic.” Often, it will be so voluminous, it might put Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past to shame. However, in the end, of all possible documents a game designer can help to create, game design documents are the most crucial to a company’s success.

-Kara Stambach, Virtual Worlds Team

* Some executives get squeamish when you explain in graphic detail exactly how you slay the unicorns to make the magic of a 3D virtual reality appear on the computer screen. Don’t hold this against them. Unicorn slaying is truly an art form, but few people are true artists; most people just want to see the finished product, not the butchering techniques.