Looking for good reads on design docs and concepts

Slayerjerman

Curious if anyone has any links or documentation in regards to writing a game design document and/or concept pitch.

Ive got a billion+1 ideas and would like to put them to paper <font color="green"> digital paper even </font>

Bort

This is more implementation than design/concept but this guy is openly going through the process of creating a small game. He's a week in and has already got quite a few doc's in place.

Canne be arsed to get specific links at the mo.

AstroZombie

Yea, some guy named Chris Taylor wrote up a design doc template and published it to the internet. He's suppose to be a big name in the industry. Maybe you have heard of him?

http://www.peachpit.com/content/images/0735713677/downloads/MasterDesignDocument.doc

KDR_11k

Man, AZ, that gave me a good laugh.

Why are you creating this game? Do you love 3D shooters? Do you think there is a hole in the market for Jell-O tossing midgets?

The world needs more games about Jell-O tossing midgets!

lkraan

gamasutra.com has a couple of good reads on game design documents.

Slayerjerman

ironic that im looking to learn design doc writing for pitching to Taylor. ROFL - I should totally fill out his doc like a worksheet and hand it in.

AHAHAH

AstroZombie

haha, if you do Slayer you should intentionally leave parts of the doc as is. Enough so that Chris recognizes where you got the template from. Maybe leave the "something funny here" part or the "Written by Chris Taylor"

KDR_11k

You mean kinda like those model submissions where they leave in entries like "Name: Author name goes here"?

killingpeople

while attending GDC'05, i attended a presentation by Michael Fitch (Creative Manager, THQ, Inc.) that was titled "Pitfalls of the Working Lead Designer" and felt it presented rather valuable topics; brain fodder for the game designer.

Michael Fitch's website (at the office):
http://www.micrysweb.com/office/officeindex.html

here is a link to the Powerpoint presentation he used during his GDC talk:
http://www.micrysweb.com/office/gdc_2005_michael_fitch.ppt


gamedev.net has some old resources that may be worth your time (has Chris Taylor's outline):
http://www.gamedev.net/reference/list.asp?categoryid=23#21