I do love a know-it-all ****** when they come along 
You have no hope of getting anywhere in the games industry and no one in their right mind will offer you any more advice, other than the poor staff at Epic because it’s their job, goodbye idiot!
I’ve been working with games for nearly a decade now, and I can tell you there are no conventions in how design documents are structured - some studios will even forgo an actual document entirely in favour of specialist software, or will produce a large number of individual documents for specific foci. There are however some nice templates for documents available on places like GameDev.net.
Don’t confuse design and development, they are two different parts of the same process (concept and implementation). Where design may have more in common with art forms like music and have a bewildering array of different approaches suited to different individuals or teams, there are a lot of common development practices in the industry, from several schools of thinking. Many of these are focused on particular processes or disciplines, but one you see crop up most often would be Agile Development and Scrum. There are entire books dedicated to these two topics.
“Unworthy of help,” lol. What is it with 'spergs? Some people just need a pulpit 24/7, I guess. Funny how there’s never a corresponding need to be helpful or ****** off if they can’t.
Yeah, a template would be great, I’ll look at gamedev site, thanks.
That’s what I went in thinking, and what I’ve been saying, but apparently a lot of folks think game design does not exist, or is a synonym for game dev, or something.
Hmm, interesting, but probably way above my pay grade. 
Thanks for the useful replies, folks. Elynole, thanks very much. Didn’t expect anyone to write me a primer!
Ah, JHighsmith I made a mistake.
The links I posted before won’t be much help to you until you’ve read this one: http://goo.gl/RT7UuT
I hope you don’t, like NoobCube suggested, look for a primer on game development, including things like modeling etc. If you do and don’t want to “waste your time reading a book”, it’s hopeless 
As for Game Design, Jesse Schell’s “The Art of Game Design: A book of lenses” is pretty interesting, because it gives you 100 “lenses” through which you can look at Game Design. You might wanna check it out.
Also, watch the UE4 videos on youtube. Most of them are really well done, and show you best practice for the Unreal engine.
Ive actually found rulebooks for other games to be invaluable tools when designing my own games, these come in various forms, some are actually more guides to playing the games, some are how to play (not how to win) and others can be almost direct design documents. The trick Ive found is seperate structure from the actual data, its the structure you can manipulate to fit your own systems and then develop on your own data sets. Even simple things like looking at the rules for poker, chess or many other games, such as the original concepts of capture the flag can help.
My best suggestion is do what works for you, dont ever strictly follow a guide because game design is an art and sometimes the illogical will be just the thing you need to push an idea through that hits it big. If you strictly follow a guide my fear is you would end up in clone territory rather quickly and I really do promote individuality and creativity of design and design process. Ofcoarse design process, design patterns and design theories (like iterative design) are all well documented if thats something you want to look into. I personally find its all the technical documentation and team management thats the difficult part 
This thread is fascinating! Here’s my two bit(coin)s worth.
TL/DR: UE4 IS the shortcut you’re looking for, so jump in!
Cliff’s Quick & Dirty Digest:
- Design docs: TL/DR
- Jargon: flow, scrum, finaling, meta-critic, bug count, engagement, aw f*ck just SHIP IT!
- Way it Works for Pros: buy proven franchise, maximize revenue, lay-off team after gamers get fed-up, absorb assets, repeat
- etc.: etc.
in disbelief What? You must be one of those people who skip right to the last page!
TRUE! And like other vocational skills, often learned by apprenticeship, whereby the apprentice works for little or nothing while the master takes all credit until the apprentice gets fed up, strikes out on their own, makes a huge success doing roughly the same thing, sells it back to the master for millions of dollars and abandons their studio to go build robots and rocket ships (see Way it Works for Pros).
Well, ok, so you could read too. At least the last page.
TRUE! Sometimes with the sole intent to AVOID said practice.
Cheeky…
but NAILED IT! (emphasis mine)
If you really enjoy finding the shortcuts then do it. Richard Bartle would probably call you an Explorer and give you a spade. Or ignore the path altogether and blaze your own if that’s what will keep you engaged long enough to make something awesome.
You’ve got the tool to do it. Unreal has worked wonders across the industry: the last version alone powered hundreds of different titles, propelling dozens of them to platinum status (1 million+ unit sales).
There’s also a wealth of information to be found in many different forums like this one. Some are focused on previous versions of UnrealEngine, such as
- forums.epicgames.com](http://forums.epicgames.com)
- beyondunreal.com](http://beyondunreal.com)
- unrealoldfriends.activeboard.com](http://unrealoldfriends.activeboard.com/)
Even if they are for older versions, much of it is very applicable to UE4, and design wisdom is still design. On more general topics, check out forums like
If learning with tangible examples is your thing, download free meshes and materials from great content creators like Nobiax, and import them directly into UE4 or study the raw OBJ files in Maya. You can find a ton on his DeviantArt page at
Or other free models on sites like
The best part is that UE4 represents a total seismic shift in focus: it is a minimalist, standalone engine built on a transparent code-base, supplementing its intuitive tools that have always been among the best in the world with an interface that can finally do them justice. UE4 IS the best practice that allows us to figure out what game design means for ourselves.
I’d say it’s more like psychology. Mixed with business. But wait… When did NoobCube say anything about liberal arts? Are you sure you don’t like to read…?
looks at you suspiciously That sounds like something that a liberal arts major would say…
Ah, that’s more like it Anyone who actually looks at a design brief probably dislikes reading more than you do. Especially producers. It’s like their ADD gets the best of them and–squirrel!
TRUE WITH TEH LULZ ON TOP!
Traditional roles have confused themselves. Design has simultaneously become more technical and more player focused, which means the best designers must be both tech and market savvy.
Design, Prototype, Test, repeat. And do it fast. Don’t release: launch. Call it pre-alpha. Call it a prototype. And watch what people do with it while you make it better.
To paraphrase a dev at Zynga: “If a player is on the street of an old western town, we don’t build the whole town. We just build a facade of the bank on one side, the saloon on the other. What we build next depends on which way they start walking.”
Design, marketing, and dev all at once, or cycling so fast it happens before the player reaches the door. We could call it… Game Designopmentarketing?
YES and YES
WoLD is the closest thing you will find right now to a comprehensive guide on development of 3D games, in a variety of game engines, spanning the entire pipeline, with videos, pictures and OPTIONAL reading that provide everything from technical tutorials to abstract theory backed by solid screenshots from real games. And it’s free.
Gamasutra is the closest thing you will find right now to a comprehensive guide on the game industry at large, with articles on everything from industry salaries, game post-mortems, personal designer diaries, industry news, analysis, jobs, wisdom, theory, and even pictures!*
*
may require some reading
SOLID. GOLD. THANK YOU!
The game industry is most disruptive part of the tech sector, which itself has been the most disruptive force of this century and probably the last one too. Best practices can become worst practices faster than you can say Sega Saturn.
WISDOM! Let us attend.
Go local, sharpen focus. Stay small enough that your rules stay true enough long enough to matter.
I knew you were all crazy.
YES. Add to that Lean Development.
http://lean.st/images/startup-feedback-loop1.png
aka Designopmentarketing
Intriguing! I want to know more.
Or become a Pro (see Way it Works for Pros).
Well theres a this saying about imitation being the greatest form of flattery, basically if I think something like active reload is a really cool idea I can take the underlying concept behind it and attach it to say a modern war shooter I dont have to make a clone of GoW to use that feature and being less strictly bound to GoW means I can play with the idea and introduce other mechanics along side like gun jamming. I find this type of process lends itself better to iterative methodologies which are a pretty common problem solving technique, you take an idea that works and refine on it, if it doesnt work you go back to the start take another idea that might work and refine on that, it really does end up being like a tree with branches and the failed branches still exist they just dont get branched further into refinement. The data attached to GoW becomes less meaningful so the game still has to undergo its own testing and new numbers will be refined to suit the specific game.
I think the idea of what I learnt from formal Graphics Design training is similar to the fail faster mentality because I find myself rapidly iterating on ideas even before they get to the computer, I run the simulations of features in my head and see what works and try to think up possible scenarios that would break an idea. The guides are helpful but you need to develop your own design practices and if you follow guides all the time you wont iterate on your own processes and thats pretty important since there is not a single one size fits all approach to making entertainment and I dont think there will ever be because of the underlying creative process. Its alot more organic to something like manufacturing where everything is pin point precise and needs to be narrowed to begin with, you do want to keep yourself open to the possibility of change but ofcoarse you will have to lock down at some point you dont want to do it too early because your eye is on the prize not the product 