Jordan Mechner

Mentioned in the article, the journals by original game designer Jason Mechner are a great piece of history, about growing up, finding one's own path. Recommend, even if you're not into game development!

https://www.jordanmechner.com/en/books/the-making-of-karateka/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jordan_Mechner

"Reading them transports me back to that place and time. We all knew this was an exciting new industry, but I don't think we had any clue what it was going to turn into during our careers. There were no schools, no books, no theories covering what we were doing. Everyone was just figuring it out on their own. Following Jordan's creative path is a great example of how to go with your own gut instinct. It's also a great inspiration, showing how persistence and determination can lead to unexpected and wonderful results." -- Will Wright

Another good one:

http://jordanmechner.com/old-journals/page/4/

July 18, 1985

Driving me to the airport, Tomi said:

"I think you should pursue screenwriting. Go for it."

I was surprised and asked her why. She said that Broderbund is a really nice, warm, friendly place to work, but for programmers it’s actually not that great a deal. The older ones, like Chris and David, are starting to get scared, because programming’s the only marketable skill they have, and it’s a young man’s game. The new crop of kids coming up are willing to work harder and cheaper, and don’t have girlfriends or families yet to cut into their working hours. And nobody knows how long the games market will be around, or what it’ll be like next year.

I never would have thought of it quite like that.

There was a site, gamepitches.com, that wanted to archive these types of documents but it only existed for a few years. Here's a Wayback Machine link to the document archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20150406082704/http://www.gamepitches.com/game-designs/

Some classic design documentation is available for Karateka and Prince of Persia by the creator: http://www.jordanmechner.com/backstage/journals/

Gamasutra postmortems are a good resource for modern games. They don't usually have design documents but they often talk about their plans and how they had to change during development: http://www.gamasutra.com/features/postmortem/

This series is fascinating. Loads of stories about weird hacks to make the graphics cleaner, to up the polygon count, to make the animation more cartoonish, writing a dialect of Lisp to define the gameplay.

Related: an article about making Ratchet and Clank using some Jak and Daxter rendering code which Naughty Dog basically gave Insomniac for free. http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/2842/postmortem_insomniac_games_.php?print=1

Another great series: Jordan Mechner's diary about making the original Prince of Persia.

http://jordanmechner.com/category/old-journals/

Here are a couple of additional things to read if you liked those:
* Jordan Mechner - of Prince of Persia / Karateka [1]
* Ready Player One - fiction - but in the same vein [2]

[1]
Jordan's website w general links: http://www.jordanmechner.com/

The Making of Karateka - 1982- 1985 : http://www.amazon.com/Making-Karateka-Journals-1982-1985/dp/1480297232/

The Making of Prince of Persia - Journals 1985-1993: http://www.amazon.com/Making-Prince-Persia-Journals-1985/dp/1468093657/

[2]
Ready Player One - http://www.amazon.com/Ready-Player-One-Ernest-Cline/dp/0307887448

Of course, you need only go to the horse's mouth. [1]

It's been posted before but Jordan, the creator of both Karateka and Prince of Persia, has a wonderful series of journals documenting his travails with video games and the movie industry. [2] As part of this he has a detailed description of his trek out to California and a lot of details on technical obstacles that make you thankful to live in the second decade of the third millennium.

[1] http://jordanmechner.com/wp-content/uploads/1989/10/popsource009.pdf

[2] http://jordanmechner.com/