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Jul 7, 2023 · The Software Development Plan (SDP) develops in the contractor's preferred format and documents all processes applicable to the system to be acquired. It should provide detailed guidance to developers and reference specific standards, methods, tools, actions, reuse strategies, and responsibilities.
- Waterfall vs. Agile Development For Games
- Why Use Game Design Documents?
- Common Issues of Game Design Documents
- How to Write Good Game Design Documents
- Examples of Game Design Documents
Back in the day when software production employed a waterfall type model, Game Design Documents were considered something that you created and then executed. In a classical waterfall model each step of the workflow is considered to be more or less completely separate. You spent time crafting the perfect GDD and then “threw it over the wall” to get ...
Helps you think about what you’re trying to build
If you’re like me, you’re probably constantly coming up with new rough game ideas. Articulating your loose thoughts into a written text forces you to think through the basic structure and helps you define your game vision, which can give you confidence in pursuing your idea further. In the best case scenario it helps you fix some issues already in the paper phase of your project (see some advantages of the waterfall model above, but don’t count on it).
Acts as a guiding light
Sometimes games move into a lot of different creative directions at the same time. This is often important and useful as games tend to find their own way. Sometimes some or all parts of your game might slowly drift apart from each other resulting in something which feels less coherent for its own good though. Having a document with a list of the core pillars of your game vision can help the team to refer back to it when there is disagreement about ideas and can act as guiding light. It is not...
Brings new team members up to speed
There are often a lot of implicit ideas and feelings related to your game, which seem very obvious and clear to you. They are also probably clear to any member of the team that has been around for a long time and has been part of many conversations that strengthened the game vision. Yet to a newcomer these can be not as obvious. Having written your shared team goals and vision is a great help for onboarding new team members. This can even be important after big sections of the game are alread...
Having pointed out these advantages, let’s talk about issues with GDDs. After all even though writing a document might be cheaper than putting a feature through the whole code & art pipeline, it is still nowhere free and needs to yield benefits to be worth the time expense for creating it. 1. One thing that is great about creating something digital...
The answer on how to deal with the idea of GDDs today, lies in a pragmatic wasteless approach. Using it where it makes sense and dismissing the parts of it which have become outdated by our increased understanding of successful game productions. Here are three tips for creating a modern game design document: 1. Keep it minimal. Focus on outlining t...
Still looking to learn more about game design documents? How about checking out some classical game design document examples? Here are some of my favorite historic game design documents for famous games for you to get inspired by. Just keep in mind that most of these are a bit older and not representative of everything we learned about team product...
Jan 9, 2024 · A software development plan (SDP) is a strategic roadmap that outlines the entire software development life cycle (SDLC), including goals, resources, budget, and timeline. It helps ensure...
Knowing how to write a game design document is a common job requirement for game designers, and for good reason. It helps make sure everyone on the team has a clear vision of the game. When you have a good GDD, it helps establish a shared understanding of the game’s vision among team members.
- ClickUp Software Development Plan Template. Download This Template. Manage your entire software development process in ClickUp. Look no further if you’re searching for a single template to solve many needs.
- ClickUp Impact Effort Matrix Template. Download This Template. Using an impact effort matrix lets you create a visual representation of the effort required for each feature.
- ClickUp Product Roadmap Template. Download This Template. ClickUp’s ready-made template simplifies building and managing your product roadmap. The software you build needs a roadmap showing how you go from ideation to the final product.
- ClickUp Software Change Log Template. Download This Template. This template offers a convenient way to keep track of all the processes to incorporate a change into a project.
Artwork credit. A great solution for managing your game development project is Nuclino. It's a unified workspace for collaborative game design documentation, worldbuilding, and project planning. Nuclino allows you to create long-form documents and organize them in a variety of visual ways.
What is project management in game development? Let’s first analyze what typical goals are associated with project management in video games: Tracking development tasks. Tracking milestone deliveries (e.g. game launches or publisher deliverables) Facilitate collaboration and efficient communication between team mates.
