In this first step, the team comes up with the concept of the game, and conducts the initial work on the game design. The main goal of this stage is the game designer’s documentation, which includes a Vision (a detailed document describing the game as a final business product) and Concept Document (the initial elaboration of all aspects of the game).

In the product documentation, the game designer formulates and stores his or her ideas. The product documentation allows the tester to properly understand his tasks to implement the product. The tester clearly sees what to test and how to test it. For the Producer/PM this documentation provides material for making plans and controlling tasks. For the Investor (especially in the early stages), he gets an understanding of what he is allocating funds for.

It is fundamentally important that all project and product documentation is kept up to date at all stages of project development. For its effective use and updating, it is right to use special tools. For example, using Confluence to maintain the game design documentation greatly simplifies the process of concurrent changes introduction by several development participants, as well as enables all team members to promptly receive any relevant information on the product and all its changes.

Among the key principles of product documentation are: structured, unambiguous, full product description, and regular updates.