davidjaffe.biz: Feb 6, 2007

Back when I first started as a game designer, I assumed that game design docs were like screenplays. You wrote one- usually a meaty fucker coming in at around 200 pages- had it bound all nice and neat, then passed it out to what I assumed would be an eager as hell team who were dying to know what MY vision was! Man, what a fucking joke!

Making games is NOT like that...not at all. And over the years, I've seen my game design docs drop from 200 pages to 5-10 page pamphlets. Sure, if you add up all the additional docs that get written as production rolls on (and other team members have added ideas and mechanics and assets that make YOUR original vision a MUCH IMPROVED TEAM vision, then you prob. surpass the 200 page count). But initial docs, anything beyond 10 pages and you are just writing to hear yourself write...get a fucking blog for that, yeah?

And even with just 10 pages, you still end up changing around 80% of the gameplay once you actually get into the game making process.

So as you examine this, the CALLING ALL CARS design doc/pamphlet, that we wrote some 9 months ago, keep in mind that the game you will play next month (if you are so kind as to give our l'll title a shot),that this doc is NOT the game you will play. A good 50-80% has been changed, cut, or adjusted during the game making process. And hell, reading back over this myself, my knee jerk on some of these ideas (ex: different criminals affect player car in different ways) was: fuck, that's a great idea! Why did we cut that?!?

But there is always a reason...and often times, some of the stuff that reads great on paper does NOT turn out great in execution. Better game designers prob. have a higher paper-to-game ratio, but I ain't one of them (as I keep telling you ass holes who accuse me of being arrogant, even when I fucking TELL you I'm still learning the craft!!!)...

Anyway, so here's the doc...hope you get a kick out of it...