He might not know how to make a game? He might not be a programmer or an artist. He is talking about game design and just designing a game is a job in the industry. If he doesn't know these other skills then he needs to get his idea across to people who do, which is why a detailed game doc is handy.

I disagree. My point is he should get the skills of a programmer (or an artist) first, not to learn how to get his idea across to others. As for designers in the industry, they *usually* don't code because they don't need to, not because they don't know how. Besides, when I watch these videos of "making of the game" I notorously see a designer coding a rough prototype to test a concept all alone. Personally, a computer game designer who don't know how to code is a nonsense to me...

I realize many people disagree with my opinion

Brenda Romero gave a talk at GDC a couple years ago (well, she gives one every year but this particular one was a couple years ago at the education summit) where she discussed hiring practices. In a nutshell, resumes of designers that can program go into the keep pile and designers that can't go into the trash. The game industry is a highly competitive field and if presented with two candidates for the same job the one with better qualifications is more likely to be interviewed. If you can't at least do some scripting, you're going to have a hard time with the design test most companies will give you as part of the interview process.

To pull an excerpt from the Valve Handbook for New Employees:

"Non-Engineers: program or be programmed

Valve’s core competency is making software. Obviously, different disciplines are part of making our products, but we’re still an engineering-centric company. That’s because the core of the software-building process is engineering. As in, writing code. If your expertise is not in writing code, then every bit of energy you put into understanding the code-writing part of making software is to your (and Valve’s) benefit. You don’t need to become an engineer, and there’s nothing that says an engineer is more valuable than you. But broadening your awareness in a highly technical direction is never a bad thing. It’ll either increase the quality or quantity of bits you can put “into boxes,” which means affecting customers more, which means you’re valuable."

Edit: I added a link to Brenda's rant on her blog. Check it out.

I understand the points you're getting off, I've actually given it much thought previously. To me, learning to program, make art and create music is less about having more qualifications, I find that actually knowing a subject is a whole lot better then simply understanding. It's the same as when a climatic event happens in someone's life, people can understand but it is only the people who have experienced the same form of event that can bond and with that someone.

I believe this is the same as in game design. Simply understanding the other roles in the game design will not help, knowing and appreciating the different areas of expertise will create a more beneficial process and game.

Not to mention you can actually implicate specifics inside your GDD to further help the other fields. For example, I took music at school and so understand most of the musical phrases used to express how you want a piece of music to be accomplished, if I can portray that in my GDD for a specific area; then the music people creating that will go 'oh, I understand' instead of trying to decipher 'soft, but harsh at the climatic point'. I know that seems easy, but creating music is the same as creating art; one stroke can change the whole design.

i don't' believe I've done enough work in any of the fields though, but I felt that I should be divulging my time at this point to a more design focused area as I will soon be attempting to enter University in relation to that (though I decided to take a broader view and applied for Multimedia).

Alright, now that I'm off my tangent lets go backwards to the other comments. Thanks sunshadow, I've already had my eye on that article and tested various parts of it within a fake GDD document (thanks for the link too jbadam, saves finding it). The Global Game jam sounds intriguing Adam, I'll see if I can attempt it at the beginning of next year, but if not I'll definitely be aiming to be in it the year after. I also appreciate the additional post you made, I can understand the focus that is applied on learning code for designers. After all, not being able to implement a test of your idea or thought process could waste considerable time or even block any continuation in your project. While I have created my own games, I have not used much code in these games. I've more relied on programs like Game Maker, which are very useful for designers but creates a limit in understanding and implementing programming when its a necessity.

To me, I've failed when I have to use Google to program parts of my game.