Joe Danger Studio Says Design Documents "Insane"

[Tom Goldman]

Joe Danger Studio Says Design Documents "Insane"

Design documents are often required in game creation, but the studio that created Joe Danger doesn't believe in them.

A videogame's design document is often considered its "bible." Along the development process, designers can look to the document to know where they can and can't go. Though this is somewhat of a standard in game development, Hello Games of Joe Danger [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/editorials/reviews/7716-Review-Joe-Danger] fame thinks documentation in game creation is useless.

Sean Murray of Hello Games recently said at the Eurogamer Expo: "You can't have design documents." He thinks: "Writing what a game is going to be is just an insane idea."

"It's like sitting down to write a recipe and never actually cooking something," Murray added. He justifies his position by referring to classic Japanese games that were designed though experimentation and iteration, rather than typing thousands of words and following along an outline. "I don't think you could design Street Fighter II on paper," he said. "You wouldn't know if it was fun or not. Everything I've read about those developers is that everything was iterative, everything was 'cooked'."

Hello Games was able to free itself from the design document by remaining an independent developer and self-publishing though the PlayStation Network. "We had the benefit of not having a publisher, we had time to develop things, we weren't driven by milestones," he reveals. Murray says that because of this, Hello Games can make better products: "We don't have a publisher, we have gamers. And gamers tell us what they want."

If the method of creating a videogame is to truly approach that of art, Murray is right that it probably shouldn't be overly documented. Would Picasso have written down exactly where he was going to paint on a canvas? Being locked into a document would seem to eliminate some of the freedom needed to the include cool new features that a studio comes up with on the fly.

Source: Eurogamer [http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2010-10-02-hello-games-design-docs-are-insane]

Permalink

 

[Lost In The Void]

Ya I'm going to have to disagree with this man. When working on a game, especially a big buget title design documents play a huge part in the game making process. One, they allow the investor, or publisher to see what the game is going to be about, this can make or break the funding you need to get the game off the ground. Two it gives you and the rest of your team a clear idea on the direction the game is going. You can't have 20 different people working on 20 different ideas of what the game should be like.

Maybe with smaller independent studios you can make due without these design sheets, but I'd like to play this Joe Danger first and see how that works out before commenting on whether this ideal even works for that.

 

[Mehall]

Good for him. Now where's my PC or XBLA Joe Danger fix?

 

[Anarchemitis]

It's debatable.
Small groups of people, like less than 50, can easily work by wire.

But large groups, teams of hundreds or more, it becomes very difficult if not impossible for everyone to share the same vision- such a possibility is instantly retracted when anyone in the company simply works for a paycheck and feels little for their work.

 

[Blind Sight]

Interesting idea, I want to see a couple more of Hello Games' products and see how this tactic works out. For larger companies design documents are a must just to keep everything organized, but I see how not having them could benefit a small developer focusing on experimentation.

 

[TerribleAssassin]

I think he has an idea to a certain extent.


You need to know what the point of the game is going to be, and how it it going to work, but then you can use just the examples given and add your own things into the mix.

 

[DrakeLake]

Like a couple of others have said, it's fine if it's a smaller team per game.

I wonder, though, how much better design documents would be if they were more visual. They certainly help with cooking recipes .

 

[Tom Goldman]

What a load of crap.

Would Picasso have written down exactly where he was going to paint on a canvas?

If he had 100 different personalities each working on a different part of his painting, then YES. YES HE WOULD.

In other news, banana salesman says spoons are useless for eating fruit.

You've got an entirely valid point, but do you think that design documents on larger projects limit creativity at all? Could that be part of the reason why we see big-budget games that have absolutely terrible mechanics in them, despite millions of dollars spent?

 

[Therumancer]

It depends on the game. Something like an epic RPG (Fallout, etc...) needs careful planning and scripting to be done correctly. Simpler, and somewhat shallower/less story driven games are something else.

I can see where you can wing it with a game like Joe Danger, where the plot is pretty much "do cool stuff in a car" or "Street Fighter 2" where the game comes down to two dudes beating on each other as the core element.

However when you build a franchise and need to work towards consistincy and quality, a solid plan is needed. I wouldn't be surprised if with "Street Fighter 2" they winged it at first, but one of the things that sold the game was the personalities and the storylines (as simple as many of them were) and that needed to be kept consistant and watched, especially as the roster increased. On top of that as people played the game more and more, and things got competitive, even just in the arcades, careful attention had to be paid to game balance. When people start playing a game like that seriously, giving a character some kind of abillity simply because they can, and think it would be cool isn't going to work. Every character has to be fairly balanced, and viable against every other character in the game. This means that the moves, countermoves, defenses, even frames of animation have to be carefully planned and tested. With "Street Fighter 2" nowadays you couldn't just give say Zangief laser beams that shoot out of his eyes with a single button push and are spammable "because it's cool". That would ruin game balance. If you do something like that, you also have to give something to every other character, as well as aways to counter with laser-Zangief spam strategies. Especially when you consider that Zangief having no ranged attacks has been a crucial part
of the game balance for a very long time.

All that rambling gets down to me seeing their point, but I don't think they are correct since it depends entirely on what your doing, the nature of the game, and even how big and long running a franchise is. As "other M" demonstrates, even something as "simple" as giving a character a voice "because we can do it, and it will be cool" can backfire epically which is why planning and researching is needed, even when dealing with something as simple as a run and gun platformer.

 

[BobisOnlyBob]

What a load of crap.

Would Picasso have written down exactly where he was going to paint on a canvas?

If he had 100 different personalities each working on a different part of his painting, then YES. YES HE WOULD.

In other news, banana salesman says spoons are useless for eating fruit.

It's not "a load of crap", as your final sentiment proves: design documents are useless for them. The problem is attempting to extrapolate that to larger studios and different kinds of game. It's also very poor for a game that's primarily narrative, or aesthetic. For a game focused entirely on gameplay, made by a small team, their approach is likely ideal.


Also, spoons are actually fine for bananas, provided said bananas are peeled and sliced. 8D

 

[GeneticallyModifiedDucks]

I disagree. Design documents are important, and not just for big studios. If they don't have a plan, they won't know where they're going from the beginning and by the end the game will probably be severely inconsistent. I'm not saying they have to follow it by the letter, but knowing the direction they're headed towards is necessary if you ask me. But I'm no game designer, so what do I know?

 

[dave_]

As a software engineer who has worked in the games industry, I know exactly what these guys are talking about.
Some publishers want every single aspect of the game detailed in a massive 500-1000 page document. When the game is commissioned, this document is thrown in the bin and no one looks at it, including the publisher.

This kind of up front design in software used to be commonplace. However, it is now becoming more prevalent that you dont need these. Agile methodologies suggest, "Working software over comprehensive documentation". It is a practice that is used in the entire software industry, not just in games.

Some publishers are starting to understand these practices, but most are dinosaurs.

 

[agrandstudent]

I was under the impression that design documents were consistently changed throughout the development process allowing for some creative freedom while still protecting the game from radical changes. I've always read that the first design of a game is never a good game. If the design document is never changed and followed then the end result will be a bad game. Going with their cooking analogy a chief typically writes down a new recipe they want to try and then cooks it. Afterwards they try again and update their written recipe.

 

[Ghengis John]

Would Picasso have written down exactly where he was going to paint on a canvas?

Picasso wasn't collaborating with dozens of other people or for that matter, worried about coherent or commercial design. Yes, if you want a game that plays like a Picasso, and that is to say an incoherent, disjointed mess, then you would do well to emulate him.

Not to say that a lack of a design document can't work for some people. But in many cases you wind up with a 3D realms/ion storm situation, where a game has no design document thusly, no limitations on when it's really finished. Necessary? No. Insane? Hardly.

 

[Midniqht]

While it sort of makes sense, I don't think his opinion would hold true for *every* game. For a game like Joe Danger, sure, you can just "cook" stuff together and come out with a successful project. But for much bigger games (aka the "Blockbuster" AAA titles), you really need that documentation if you want your story or gameplay to make any sort of cohesive sense.

 

[Headwuend]

Um, a game design document isn't something you just "[write] what a game is going to be" anyways.

As far as my limited experience goes, it serves the purpose of (gasp) documenting the progress of your project.

It pretty much emerges from the concept of the prototype you're planning to develop. And given that publishers usually want to see a prototype before giving you money, you can show them its design document and work out where to go from there, i.e. determine the project's scope.

Independent development and self-publishing is all nice, dandy and good for them, but come on... don't just blurt out stuff looking like you don't have a clue how things work.

As already said, publishers familiar with agile development (hint: the good ones) acknowledge the flexibility and free room you need when making games.

 

[thenumberthirteen]

I wish my University tutors thought like that. I spent ages writing and researching about what I was going to do and in the end I didn't have time left to actually make the damn thing.

 

[SamElliot'sMustache]

Wouldn't design documents be sort of like a developer's version of an outline for a book? They work in similar fashions.

A better idea would be that you shouldn't be beholden to the design document like it's scripture. After all, many writers can (and will) slip away from their outlines while writing a book, but it's always handy to have one ready as something to refer back to when you get lost. Similarly, those design documents can keep a project focused on the essential elements of a game so that it doesn't get lost in the shuffle.

Of course, some writers don't use outlines, as well, so it really comes down to personal preference and how disciplined you are as an artist. Plus, this comment from Mr. Murray:

It's like sitting down to write a recipe and never actually cooking something

is entirely wrong-headed. After all, cooks do still write down recipes.

 

[Catalyst6]

The man is right for games without any real density, such as a silly, cartoony racing game (cough, cough), but any game with complexity needs to have structure in order to become viable.