Panel
Paul Stephanouk - Design Director of Candy Crush. Previously EA, Zynga, Bossfight, Schell Games, Big Huge Games. 20 years experience building and running creative teams.
Kelly Tran - Co-founder and Game Designer at Evolved Play. Previously, Game Design Professor researching games and players at High Point University. PhD in learning and tech. Solo Twitch - Group Twitch - Website
Ian Schreiber - Senior Game Designer Oxide Games, previously Assistant Professor Rochester Institute of Technology.
Dave Neale - Designer of several Sherlock Holmes boardgames and 5 Minute Chase from Board & Dice. PhD Researcher and consultant in the psychology of play.
Brandon Dolinski - Level Designer Eidos Montreal. Previously Mass Effect Andromeda and Dragon Age.
Notes
As soon as you write your document, it is out of date.
Presentations instead of other forms of documents.
One page design docs is useful
Some teams incorrectly get too into the infographic
Designers love tools/toys, and so docs get strewn across different formats and places.
Big teams have to have them, because people need to communicate and be able to review things.
Collaborative is good (on PowerPoint, or wherever).
As minimal as possible is often better.
A solo designer or very small team (2 people) might not need it as much.
Don’t spend too much time on it because it goes out of date so quickly.
You might forget your own thinking- documenting your own thoughts and reasons for things can save you time later.
What is a design document?
A document for others on the team
It will be different depending on your team size, your audience (yourself or more people), etc.
What’s in the game can be better evidence for a design than any writing about it.
Experience documenting - document the experience that you want a player to have.
Make documentation at high level of what we are trying to achieve, bar none
Then designers will be empowered to make decisions in service of that
Tools - Miro, Powerpoint, Notion, Confluence.
Pen and paper- but it’s not searchable.
Word Documents and Excel Spreadsheets are still a valid way of doing it.
Companies emphasize different things.
Emphasis on security - Microsoft Office
Emphasis on collaboration- Google Docs
Tools for taking notes - Rocketbooks, tablets (such as iPad) let you upload your physical note taking and drawing.
Clear communication should be short and concise.
No one wants to read a wall of text.
Documenting is very context dependent- it will have to depend on each individual project.
A good document should:
Clearly express the experience that the user is going to have.
Clearly express the success criteria (how do we know if this was good or not)?
An appropriate amount of detail.
How can you communicate with the rest of the team? Make sure your structure and clarity is high.