Practical Game Design

Scoping a Game Project

In this chapter, we'll teach you the concepts and relationships between a game's overall scope, its structure, and its content. We'll explore real-world examples and help you build an understanding of how to better document the size, complexity, and dependencies in your game, as well as to help you estimate your tasks.

The game's scope is a term used to define the project's perceived size and complexity. Without knowing the scope in advance, any production scheduling, costing, and staffing would be nigh on impossible. The scope is usually well defined by the time you wrap up the first version of the game design document.

As a game designer working on establishing the initial scope, it's your responsibility to list all ...