Andrew Rollings and Ernest Adams on Game Design

The Design Script

This is the real McCoy—the document that officially, formally records your game's design. Whereas the high-concept document and the treatment are primarily sales tools, the script is primarily a development tool (although publishers often want to see a completed script before funding the next phase of a project). As we said in Chapter 1, it is a record of decisions made (and not yet made), a way of transmitting the design to the rest of the team, and a reference work for bringing new people up to speed as they join the team late in the development process.

If you already have a design script, even a partial one, bring it along to the pitch meeting to show how far along you are. Although it's not intended as a sales tool, a producer ...