The Illinois of Art, Chicago	Introduction to Game Development
	Instructor: Lindsay Grace

 

Game Design Document Samples: Good Samples, Produced Games

The game design document is a tool to help guide the development of a game. It is often called a "living document" because it may be subject to change as game aspects are evaluated. One of your responsibilities in this course is to create a student game design document.

Here are a few design documents to help you understand what elements are required. The style, size, and content of a design document does vary by project scope, size, company, author(s) and a variety of other contributing elements. Your ultimate concern should be how effectively the game design document articulates the game to be produced. Some designers feel this can be done in less than pages, while others champion much larger documents.

If you search the web you find a variety of game design documents (GDD). They are clearly not of equal quality. As the number of schools teaching game design has increased, so too have the number of student and amateur game design documents. If you are looking to understand what the industry is doing, it's best to go straight to the source. Try to find examples, like the ones that follow, that are written for games that were produced commercially.

• Calling All Cars (html): GDD and final trailer / game play
• Doom Game Design Document (PDF)
• Leisure Suit Larry 7 (PDF): Love for Sail GDD

Download a Larry game for old time sake here

You may also be interested in the following resources about game design:

• GameDev.net has a few guides to creating a game design document
• GameFiction.com has a few design documents and articles for students
• Al Lowe's Game Design Documents

 

Provided by Lindsay Grace for students of the Illinois Institute of Art, Chicago. These documents may be used by others when properly credited. Please email lgrace at aii edu for more information.