The Flip Side of Game Design

What the talk is about

Petro Liakhovetskyi explains what a game designer's job really looks like on Warface at Crytek: not just coming up with ideas, but moving through a long chain of procedures and documents. An idea is first captured as a short proposal using a simple template (title, problem, description, value), estimated for cost right away, and discussed by many people; most proposals get rejected. Then come scope, functional and technical design, a specification of the finished feature, and separate content specifications, with each stage reviewed by outside people. He also covers prioritization, planning, version control with branches, releases for different territories, and the top priority of live bugs. He advises keeping all documents in one tracker and keeping discussions as flat as possible. Useful for beginner designers and live-game teams.