Game Design Document state report 09...

Hi!

Finally some good news!

I’ve implemented 20 fully functional gameplay segments – each segment has some or all elements: dialogue, dialogue choices, global variables, camera movement, player movement, NPC movement, items gained/removed.

Game isn’t small so there are still twice as much of gameplay elements to implement.  Having a well written GDD helps me a lot. This is something I often try to emphasize because it makes entire process easy and clean. Even some mistakes and new ideas while working are so much easier to implement.

In my professional work as a game developer production of a game of any genre is often an tremendous stress, not only for me personally but for everyone – workers, bosses, clients… and it all stems from inability to comprehend the importance of well written GDD – which can only be a result of truthful goals by a client and truthful willingness of contractor/dev firm boss to organize and spend received money in order to achieve client’s goals/fulfill the contract.

Many clients like to add features during the production. Often too late from development point of view, which means developers must go few steps back to change some element of already implemented mechanics.

Also many bosses like to sign a contract without real effort to understand or fulfill all of client’s goals. Faking some results and trying to get more money for less of the work. This often leads to crunching and stress for developers – people that actually do all the work.

Will this ever be avoided? Is there a hope that “professional” game dev will ever change?

I don’t know, but I know that the same kind of job – game development – in one case creates so much stress for me and makes me go nuts, and in the other this same job makes me incredibly happy and fulfilled!

This shouldn’t happen…

Stay tuned!