Tolstiy's Place has published an interview with Ion Storm's Harvey "Witchboy" Smith, Lead Designer on Deus Ex who discusses the team's process for managing a game's design document...

Basically, we start an HTML doc on the local network. This has links to pages dedicated to team member phone lists, schedules, the design doc and more. We plan out the game by meeting and talking about it (one on one, in groups, over dinner, et cetera). As we come up with new aspects of the plan, we expand the pages of the HTML site. So, for instance, we might talk about weapons one day and a team member might volunteer to do the initial write-up on the game's weapons. A month later, someone might go up the web page, see the weapons, then volunteer to add some new ideas. Eventually, people use the hypertext design doc for reference as the code for the weapons gets written and the settings/values for the weapon properties get set and altered.

by MacNN Staff