Unfortunately I'm just an 'idea guy' but do hope to work to being something more in the future (Understand the trouble getting the motivation for it)

This demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of the field of design. The rules of chess are not a GDD, they are (in and of themselves) a complete implementation of the game of chess.

Yes, you're right. I suppose this was a poor choice of wording on my part. I should have said the rules of chess would be a fundamental part of the GDD, not the GDD by them selves. Still, my point stands - the programmers would be required to implement these rules exactly as stated. It would be these rules that guide the programming process of the game mechanics. There is little room for interpretation. Am I wrong? Is the GDD in fact only meant to be a guideline that is up for interpretation and deviation by the rest of the development team? Can it not include any hard rules about how the core mechanics work?

GDDs are not blueprints, they're a communication and documentation tool.

If you're cloning an existing game then yes, you do have to stick to the rules(it wouldn't be a clone if you didn't), If you are making something new(Which really is what game design is about) you would have to be extremely arrogant to reject any possible improvements before you've had several people play the game and give feedback on it.

Call me when somebody finds an 'idea' guy has skills outside his ideas and has produced a completed game that has gone to market. The "idea" of the "idea guy" is nothing more than children trying to justify their lack of real work on real products. Learn to code, to create artwork, and see a game through to the end. Only THEN are you allowed to tell anyone else what value ideas have.

If you've never made a game, either individually or as part of a team, then you're not an idea guy. You're audience.

So accually it seams that a ideaguy can nothing other be then audience outside game industry. And be that anyone can have idea's even outside the industry. And because that is so accesable part of game making. The very first fase where it starts. It so abundant as water in the ocean. So the value of ideaguy and there idea's is like nothing. The only backdoor entrance I see if the idea guy could fund a full team where he/ she can be only the idea guy or gall. Also my definition of a idea is the spark of a game vision. At most a concept on paper. So still far of of a GDD wich lead to TDD or even prototyping.
In the game industry it also very difficult to pitch your own idea. Even if you are profesional game designer or lead programmer. But then your arent a pure ideaguy, but a game designer making his own games.
And there is that independant branch of the industry. Well the problem there is. No room for idea guy. Teams are so small you need to bring in one but even more skills to fulfill small team needs to make your game idea.

They say making games is aiming at a moving target so you iterate playtest to get it right. But cloning is different espacialy if you on the same thing often. That it more a routine job. So a TDD might be closer to a final blueprint.
The idea of chess is a clone idea.

Discusion of art is not relevant to idea guy problem. Games and a rockband are very different forms.

There are buildings wich have a monumental artistic value. So that a merge of art and architectual knowlege.
Games are huge part just software enginering.

Call me when somebody finds an 'idea' guy has skills outside his ideas and has produced a completed game that has gone to market. The "idea" of the "idea guy" is nothing more than children trying to justify their lack of real work on real products. Learn to code, to create artwork, and see a game through to the end. Only THEN are you allowed to tell anyone else what value ideas have.

I think the fundamental problem with "idea guys" is that they assume that, since a game can't really be made without an idea, ideas themselves must be inherently valuable.

Unfortunately, ideas are like air. Air is vital to us; in order to survive, we need a pretty much constant supply of it. But air is everywhere, all around us, and all we need to do to get some is inhale - and because of this, air is utterly worthless.

Professional game designers typically have dozens, if not hundreds, of ideas, most of which will never get made. Most other people who work in the industry have ideas of their own. I myself have a stack of notebooks 2 1/2 feet (76 cm) high filled with game ideas (many of which are not worth making, and soveral of which are way beyond my capacity to make).

Furthermore, "idea guys" often overestimate how much the core idea influences the quality of the resulting product, not realizing that a poor execution can ruin a great idea, and conversely great execution can even make a good game out of a bad idea. For example, "fighting game parody using only two buttons" I would say is a bad idea, and in most people's hands would probably make a terrible game, but because the people responsible for Divekick are experienced competitive fighting game players, they are able to make a surprisingly deep game out of what was initially meant to be just a joke.

Sadly, every field of creative endeavour is positively swarmed with people who believe they have great ideas and assume that they can sell their ideas to other other people to implement, completely unaware that the hard part of creation is not coming up with ideas in the first place, it's making them into reality.

. I should have said the rules of chess would be a fundamental part of the GDD, not the GDD by them selves. Still, my point stands - the programmers would be required to implement these rules exactly as stated. It would be these rules that guide the programming process of the game mechanics. There is little room for interpretation. Am I wrong?

If you were making a clone then yes you would be correct. But then you wouldn't be an ideas guy or have a new idea if you implementing an existing game.

Also your example is flawed because chess is hundreds (thousands?) of years old and there are several variants with different pieces, boards and rule sets throughout history and still played around the world. It would probably be a good guess that chess was actually an iterative process and the rules were not created first but evolved over several years and in several different directions in different countries.

GDDs are not blueprints, they're a communication and documentation tool.

I see. I was under the impression that a GDD should contain as much information as possible so it could essentially be used as a blueprint to create a game. I was unaware of just how much revamping and interpretation the original ideas undergo during the development process when everyone else on the team is involved. In that case, does it really have to be this way? Wouldn't the ideal scenario be for the game designer to work on his idea alone for months, figure out as many details as possible, weed out the flaws, refine it, create a working prototype, test play it (with other people of course) and get feedback - all of this before even starting the actual production of the final game with the entire development team?

Coming from an artistic background, the process of refining and revamping ideas during the production process seems a little like putting the cart before the horse. Since the painter analogy has been made several times on this thread, I'll use it again as an example. A painter does not begin the process of making a painting by applying the paint to a blank canvas. He begins it by thinking of an idea, then by creating pencil sketches of it and even a few colour studies. After much refining, he will then create a final, pencil draft that he will copy onto the blank canvas to paint over.

So when does he begin creating the final painting? After every detail about the painting has been finalized. The painter does not decide halfway through the painting process to add something. All of that has been decided upon in the drafting phase.

This is why it doesn't make much sense to me why a concept for a game goes through so much change and is up for so much interpretation during the production process. What are the artists doing while the concept is still in the process of development? Are they creating the graphical assets for a level that might - or might not be in the final game? Are the composers creating music for a certain cutscene that may or may not exist? Are the programmers implementing the core mechanics that could possibly undergo many changes? All of those scenarios are very wasteful, and could have been avoided if the design process had been more thorough.

If you were making a clone then yes you would be correct. But then you wouldn't be an ideas guy or have a new idea if you implementing an existing game.

In my original post where I used chess as an example, I said a game "such as chess". I did not mean to clone chess, but rather to create an original game with mechanics as rigid as chess - sorry for any confusion.

My original point was that the mechanics of a game such as this could be worked out and refined on paper rather than creating a digital prototype to get feedback. In other words - it's something the game designer could do alone (with some feedback by play testers, of course) before even presenting the idea to a game studio.

See Daniel Cook's thoughts in his article "Why you should share your game designs":

A game starts out with 1% game design and end up 100% production and polish. During the production and polish stages of the title, the game design is likely to change dramatically. For example, there was once a genre busting game design by a famous designer that involved a magic hammer and was described as an epic fantasy action RPG. Something very interesting happened along the way to creating the title. First, they did what every good team does in the early stages. They prototyped the concept and evolved what worked. The grand initial design ended up turning into an intense FPS shooter. What was this fantasy RPG? It was a little title called Quake.

When a team gets a hold of a game design, they change it in ways unique to that team. Give 5 teams the same game design document and I guarantee that you will get 5 distinctly different games. A game design ends up being closer to a movie script than it is to a blue print. The director who executes your design has a major impact on the ultimate results.

...and a column by Ernest Adams on "Why Design Documents Matter":

[...]
Another common objection is that, as most games are prototyped first
[...]
In practice, milestone schedules always change, and the feature list almost always changes too.
[...]
The vast majority of design consists of figuring out the details. Although you'll always change those details later in testing and tuning, you have to start with something.
[...]

Obviously I picked out a few relevant points, but the rest of the article is also a great read and goes into some detail on what a design document is used for in practice.

Unfortunately I'm just an 'idea guy' but do hope to work to being something more in the future (Understand the trouble getting the motivation for it)

I have seen some your posts and you are not an idea guy.

An idea guy would be someone who has an idea and wants someone else to make it without dirtying his own hands (here are the perfect blueprints I made, now you make it reality). What you do is reply to topics with ideas of other people and try to give feedback/ideas based on the constraints provided. You are more like taking part in the refining proces Cornstalks mentiones.

To me it does not count as an idea guy at all :)

i didnt bother reading the whole stuff until i raged down to write a reply and here it is:

I personaly think that what makes any film, book or game-idea be "worhty", have "dignity" and a right to be made is if the idea/story is original and anti-cliche. I think for amateurs today, the key to breaking into the industry isnt to make superb visuals (movies) and good gameplay (games), but good STORY!

Thats your way in. Because THAT, the STORY, is what critics today are so unhappy about today:

bad stories

my opinions are mine alone