In videogames there are different types of design documents. There can be one for the Ui, there can be a purely technical document that deals just with the solutions that the programmers need to work with, but before all these other, more specialized forms come into play, there is your master document. When you pitch a game concept to your
producer, whether you be already embedded in the industry or not, you’re going to be asked “do you have a design doc for that?” It’s the death question. If your answer is no, you’re dead on the water. Even if you put one together and come back in a week, that
moment of interest, that spark is GONE. If you do have one, likely it is full of your hopes and dreams for this game. It has every cool trick, puzzle and visual dynamic you
want to see in your game. It’s probably so big that the game, as written will take years to develop and a team of hundreds to produce.
That’s okay. In fact, that’s GOOD, and I’ll tell you why.
It’s easier to kill than create. Every creative type has been exposed to this at some point or another. It’s easier to put in too much, then edit out the unnecesary fluff than it is to try and add more content, to fill in the gaps and extend a product. Realizing you’re
three levels short and having to figure out how to slot them in when you hit Alpha is a frakkin’ nightmare on SO many levels.
So this is where I am right now with our game. To borrow a term from the literary, I am killing my babies. Going through each and every level and figuring out what is essential, what is almost necesary and what is just going to bloat the thing like a week old corpse in the sea.
I have a whole a gameplay mechanic I had outlined in here that is, well, it’s useless. It gets used in one place to solve one puzzle and will suck up a ton of coding that could be better put to use elsewhere. It would be cool, but it will cripple something else that is far more important to the overall game. So I’m killing it, searching through the document and cutting it free like a wart gone bad. Finding any reference, any place it pops up and changing the pieces to more solidly support the “core” game mechanic.
It hurts, believe it or not. Taking that cool thing out feels like cutting off a toe. But I can already see how the rest of the game is going to be stronger for it, how this pruning and butchery will make the center stronger, tighter. The blossom that will result is going
to be a solid, robust thing, rather than the weedy puffs of “cool” factor that they were headed to grow into before.
Now I just need to find the Bactine… and perhaps a roll of gauze.
