Realising game design documents to community

[Equinox]

Hey,

I was wondering what peoples thoughts were on reelasing game design documents to the public upon their completion. We are nearing this stage in my mod and so I wanted to ask the community what they see as the advantages and disadvantages of doing this...

 

[sonofagun]

Apologies that was me above in reference to National Crisis

Forgot to change username

Apologies once again

 

[Majestic XII]

I need to go to bed right now but you know... we share the same modeler, datajesus

 

[sonofagun]

Lol, well that is interesting! ! But it doesn't help decide whether I should release the game design doc to the public!!

lol

 

[phantomdesign]

reelasing and Realising <--Sound like words, but aren't which confused people, including me.

... whether I should release the game design doc to the public!!

That makes sense now. Anyway, while I'd love to see them, I must advise you to keep the vast majority of your in-depth work a secret. For example, my MOD of HL2 will have very high-quality game-play, the type which you experience, but can't describe. If I were to describe in detail, I'd give away all of my secrets, and my game would be "just another mod/game" It kind of sucks because it makes it more difficult to get fans onboard, but in the long run it will be worth it.

 

[The Mullinator]

Only release enough information to make everyone feel excited about the mod, if you have a really neat feature that is really cool but are worried about someone copying it then you should decide whether the risk is worth it or not.

So yes, release the design doc, but only portions of it.

 

[sonofagun]

Cool,

Thanks for the response guys

 

[Iced_Eagle]

Release the parts that explain only the things the player needs to be worried about. Don't release things such as godly admin controls, anti-hacking stuff, unique server stuff

just pretend you were releasing a readme for the game...

its definetely a good thing.. then you actually get intelligent arguements via your forums