James Goddard over at CrunchTime games has provided us with something very interesting.  Many independent developers dream of getting a title on XBLA (hobbiests have a better route through the upcoming Xbox Live Community Games).  Unfortunately, the path to that goal is fuzzy at best. 

Game Career Guide is hosting two documents that Goddard has made publically available, the game pitch, and the 60 seconds of gameplay documents, for his newly released game Shred Nebula. 

The pitch document is officially what allowed Microsoft to give the game the green light. The “60 Seconds of Gameplay” essay is a separate document that Microsoft requires of all its published games, whether developed in-house or out. In it, the authors must describe, step-by-step what the player does, sees, hears, and feels during a full 60 seconds of gameplay, which can be taken from any point in the game.

As a professor of game development, Goddard clearly understands and values the passing on of knowledge about game design to future generations, and it’s good for the industry to make the standard practices more transparent.  Hopefully more developers will follow suit in releasing their design documents in the future.