Game Documentation Guide - Professional Techniques for Video Game Writing - page 28

However, wikis take a lot more work to keep updated. They encourage redundant
information if people don't have perfect knowledge of the entire contents of the wiki.
Multiple authors can cause much chaos. There is a certain technological barrier,
where people have to learn the wiki's markup language in order to present their
information in a nicely formatted manner. Finally, it's hard to make backups of
the wiki, so older info may get lost after a certain number of iterations.
Whichever way you decide to take to keep your documentation alive, it must
be done, or you'll find yourself constantly fighting fires that a quick reference to an
updated document could have prevented in the first place.

4.2 The Evolution of the Game Design Doc

The game design doc and the other docs that accompany it are generally subject to
a series of growth periods predicated by the doc being accepted and agreed upon by
the stakeholders involved in the project. What this means is that the documentation
starts small and high-level, and when everybody involved in making the game—from
the development team, to the people supplying the money, to the console makers
who allow the game to be published on their consoles—gives their thumbs up, the
document goes back to become bigger, more focused, and granular. The document
usually goes through several of these rounds until it reaches a final, comprehensive
form. Even then, the doc may grow as changes are required, game features are cut or
added, and even more granular details about the game are exposed and (hopefully)
written down.
Below, I've outlined the evolution of game documentation, what is required in
each form, and what types of things can be found in each stage of its life.

4.3 The Game Pitch
The game pitch is the seed from which all documentation will grow. The game pitch
can contain the following information.

•

The title of the game.

• The genre of the game: shooter, RTS, MMO, adventure, etc.

• The platforms the game will be made for: Xbox 360, PC, PS3, Wii, etc.

• The audience you intend to market the game to: boys, men, girls, frogs, etc.

• The ESRB rating you are aiming at: C, E, T, M, AO.

• The core concept of the game: what the game is all about.

• A summary of what happens in the game.