{"id":38267,"date":"2011-05-05T21:36:00","date_gmt":"2011-05-05T21:36:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/if-you-still-practice-or-encourage-the-outdated\/"},"modified":"2018-12-06T14:45:33","modified_gmt":"2018-12-06T21:45:33","slug":"if-you-still-practice-or-encourage-the-outdated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/if-you-still-practice-or-encourage-the-outdated\/","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"<div id='gallery-1' class='gallery galleryid-38267 gallery-columns-3 gallery-size-thumbnail'><figure class='gallery-item'>\n\t\t\t<div class='gallery-icon landscape'>\n\t\t\t\t<a href='https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/if-you-still-practice-or-encourage-the-outdated\/attachment\/38268\/'><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"100\" height=\"100\" src=\"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-content\/uploads\/tumblr_lkqs0r1Aya1qene28o1_400-2-100x100.png\" class=\"attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div><\/figure>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n<p>If you still practice or encourage the outdated practice of writing long design documents, you are doing your team and your business a grave disfavor. Long design docs embody and promote an insidious world view: They make the false claim that the most effective way to make a game is to create a fixed engineering specification and then hand that off to developers to implement feature by bullet-pointed feature. <\/p>\n<p>Great game development is actively harmed by this assumption. Pre-allocating resources at an early stage interrupts the exploratory iteration needed to find the fun in a game. A written plan that stretches months into the future is like a stake through the heart of a good game process. Instead of quickly pivoting to amplify a delightful opportunity found during play testing, you end up blindly barreling towards completion on a some ineffectual paper fantasy. Yet, there is still a need for documentation. Why? <\/p>\n<p>* We need a persistent repository of decisions: Teams include many people and conversation occurs asynchronously. Without centralized documents, you end up with a fragmented conversation where many decisions made in one-on-one conversations are lost to the broader team forever. <\/p>\n<p>* We need a shared vision: Documents also helps forge a common vision of the next iteration. In a situation where everyone has strong and varied opinions, it is essential that someone can lead the team to by unambiguously stating what comes next. Apparently even God needed documentation. <\/p>\n<p>Design logs <\/p>\n<p>What I do now is write a little something I call a &lsquo;design log.&rsquo; Game design is a process of informed iteration, not a fixed engineering plan that you implement. The form of your design documentation should flow from this philosophy&hellip;&hellip; (via <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lostgarden.com\/2011\/05\/game-design-logs.html\">Lost Garden: Game Design Logs<\/a><\/p>\n<p>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you still practice or encourage the outdated practice of writing long design documents, you are doing your team and your business a grave disfavor. Long design docs embody and promote an insidious world view: They make the false claim that the most effective way to make a game is to create a fixed engineering [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"gallery","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[],"tags":[780,781,1539],"class_list":{"0":"post-38267","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-gallery","5":"hentry","6":"tag-edp","7":"tag-emergent-digital-practices","9":"post_format-post-format-gallery"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6PWot-9Xd","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38267","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38267"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38267\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38269,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38267\/revisions\/38269"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}