Idea about a matter that could be addressed more (GDD)

Other Courses Talk
#1

Hello everyone,

So… I have been browsing and studying game development these past few months and I realized that there is one aspect that I felt lost about. I feel that the courses don’t cover it too much, would be nice to have a section about it and perhaps it might even deserve a course for this matter alone: Game Development Document (GDD).

I know that there is a GDD for each game in the beginning of it’s own section, but those are too simple and we get it already done instead of learning how to do our own. I`ve done some researches and it seems that a big amount of time should be spent during the GDD and Concept, before even start coding the game.

Why we should do GDD?

*It will help to know if the game that we are doing is sellable or not;
*It will help us to have a idea of how much time we will spend on the game and if it`s doable;
*It will help us to know which mechanics we should implement first and where to start;
*It will help us to stay focused on our project;
*It will help us avoid spending too much time reworking on a feature or code;
*It will help us know if our current skills are enough or at least almost enough to finish the project;
*It will allow our game to be Cohesive.
*If we want to find partners or collaboratives to our project, it will be very important to make everyone understand what we expect of our game and even discuss some new ideas;

There are plenty of others reasons into why to do a GDD. This course could cover few aspects like:

*Learning how to do the Concept Art;
*Learn how to pick up references and how our game should approach the market;
*Using diagrams;
*Working on the game’s story;
*Organize the game into stages;

and etc…

There are a few pages that describes a few things about GDD and it’s importance:
Wikipedia
How and Why to Write a GDD

I have no experience at this matter, I just felt that this is a very important thing which I’m having a hard time trying to learn and to find more information about.

Let us know what do you think about this.

Best Regards,
Johnny Dalvi

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#2

I have been reading a book regarding game development recently and it devotes a fair few pages to this topic as well as providing some templates. It outlined I believe 3 versions of the document… the 1 pager, 3 pager and 10 pager. Effectively high level to low level detail and for differing audiences, not that there’s necessarily a reason why anyone couldn’t read them all.

I would agree to some degree with regards with the Unity course not going into lots of detail, but of course the course itself is being aimed at, I would suggest, people who have no coding / game development experience. Bit of a generalisation but probably accurate for most. If the start of the course was a couple of hours on only GDD I think I would have got bored really quickly, being able to create and play something you have kind of made yourself is quite motivating.

I think where you mention about having it as perhaps a separate course that could be a good thing, it would enable the positives from the above but then more in depth coverage separately without it seeming too much as a push to sell anot her course.

I remember suggesting to @ben before about perhaps having more advanced courses, tiered if you like, giving students the ability to move on to more complex subjects that require more time, but as and when they felt ready. This could either be a separate course or perhaps a section of the next course on, reflecting back to the fairly simple GDD approach already covered, which would give a nice continuity of the learning experience.

It’s a good call @Joao_Dalvi, if you’ve not seen it already there is the Content Suggestion site also, now linked under Voting at the top of the forums, I’d be keen to add it there also. :slight_smile:

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#3

Seems to be a good book, what is the name? I’ll look for a e-book version of it :grinning:

I agree that the best option would be to create a course for this matter if it gets to be addressed by Ben`s courses, not only because stundents of both courses (unity and unreal) will get benefit from this course, but also because those two courses are not aimed for this.

Thank you for suggesting the Content voting website too, I have just browsed there and found this Suggestion, which seems to cover what the course would be. Even though I think that it’s good to have a thread about it even if there is already a suggestion to a course, since people sometimes might don’t realize how important a GDD can be and by reading this thread they might want to research a little about this matter too.

#4

Absolutely! I don’t think everyone is necessarily aware of all of the GameDev.tv sites at the moment, as they aren’t consolidated under the one site just yet, so I would definitely recommended posting here too if there is ever any doubt, and you can always share the forum post on the Facebook page(s) too to promote it further.

Regarding the book, obviously it would be a disgrace to not mention Ben and Mike’s book here too, as I have found that to be great from the perspective of learning more about Unity, it does go almost hand in hand with the course I have found, but obviously different games and so on…

So, Ben’s book.

Regarding the book I mentioned earlier with the GDD coverage, it’s called Level Up! (2nd edition) and is by Scott Rogers.

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#5

Thank you Rob, I surelly will take a look on those books :grinning:

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#6

Good stuff… I’m not on commission, honest, but I did find Ben’s book very good, I actually took a break from the Unity course last year and then had a run through the book, and then back to the course. Like the Udemy course it’s broken down into nicely sized chapters of relevant content.

#7

I didnt knew he had a book, which is very good to know actually, I have a list of books that I want to read regarding gamedev and I’ll be picking one by one, those two that you said are there now :slight_smile:

Sometimes I dont have access to neither my computer or to a good internet, its good to have books when that happens. Also, there are some other situations when books are better too

#8

I find they make me look more interesting in coffee shops :smiley:

…fully agree with you, lots of variety, different methods for different situations :slight_smile:

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