Saints Row for PSP: the official game design doc

Deep Silver Volition has just released their official (lenghty) game design document for the unreleased Saints Row game they were working on for PSP. Needless to say that it can be extremely useful to see how AAA do their documents:

http://www.dsvolition.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/SR_Undercover_GDD.pdf

For those curious, the prototype can be downloaded in ISO format (link from Gamasutra so it should be legit):
https://www.unseen64.net/saintsrowundercover/

 

Thanks for the link! I love seeing these.

 

But what if someone steals the idea!?

 

The idea is way too generic to really matter outside the SR franchise.

Better to look for ideas on Kongregate, GameJolt or even around here. That's where you'll find creativity. A lot of clones and junk too but still there are many great ideas.

 

I was being sarcastic, remember all the guys going on about posting their game ideas and worried about them being stolen?

 

Ha ha! Yeah I figured that is what you meant. It is an interesting thing though. Games like SR and basically most any AAA game are popular not so much for innovative ideas as they are just for scope and focus on presentation. I mean sure there is the rogue cop angle.

Thinking about that we can see a couple of distinct options to test:

1. Make a super simple game (like Space Invaders) and make the best graphics, sounds, music possible then juice it to the extreme. Sell the "sizzle". This seems like what most Indies are doing more or less.

2. Make an involved game with a fairly grand scope but use the simplest, cheapest graphics, sounds and music possible and sell the "scope". This is the kind of thing I am more interested in. Now thinking for heck of it sometime I may try the other way sometime because it seems like a lot less work with more of an immediate wow factor. Never really thought about it before.

I've often wondered why all of the folks who want to make an MMO RPG game don't make the game using ultra low poly models or even primitives. "Your heroic cube will explore vast areas, interact with others in the towns of Shorty Cubes and seek out the legendary Town of Tall Cubes. Find many different armors and weapons of the ancient pyramid order. Beware the dark spheres that fill the dungeons.

People have talked about making these epic RPGs so much I am kind of starting to want to see someone come back and say "I did it! It's all just cubes, spheres and other simple forms for the most part but I have completed an RPG 3 times the size of Skyrim!"