Is there a site where I can find Game Design Documents for old released games?

Here is a site that has a collection of design and pitch documents http://www.gamepitches.com/ In general many teams are moving away from the traditional big pitch document, although some publishers still like them. The problem with the traditional design bible word doc is that it quickly becomes unwieldy, out-of-date, and unread. More modern approaches include Wiki's with 1 page per feature, nicely compartmentalizing the design into discrete chunks digestible by the people working on that feature, or a series of powerpoints per mechanic. The powerpoints allow for visual representation of the idea to get across the concept as quickly as possible. It's a bit of a red flag to hear about spending hours writing design docs. As general advice, design documents should be as concise as possible, objective descriptions and bullet point lists. You shouldn't be writing flowery, conversational, or narrative text in your design documents.

I hate design documents -- they don't hold up to the first iteration and end up being self-inconsistent very quickly.  We don't make anything more than a few pages, and that's only to inform strategy around major issues early in a major feature. The best design documents are simple prototyped games or systems :)

I have placed a large collection of my own game design documents on my website at http://www.erasmatazz.com. Look in Library/Game Design. Several previous answerers pointed out problems with design documents. I would suggest that the more experienced a designer is, the more faith that designer puts in game design documents (partially because more experienced designers know how to write good design documents). Think of it this way: imagine a sequence of documents, the first of which is something like "This game will be a really great FPS." and the last of which is the code. This last document is the most precise statement of the game design. The sequence starts with the least precise statement and steadily moves to greater and greater precision. My own approach to game design documents is abnormal, because my designs themselves are highly unconventional. This requires me to sort out issues that have never been figured out before. In my design essays, then, I put down on paper my thoughts on the evolving design as they develop. The nice thing about those documents is that the reader can readily see all the mistakes I made, the wrong turns, the jerking around, and the final resolutions of various problems.

I tend to think of game design documents in two ways. First: design docs can work as templates for QA test plans, so that the testers have a reasonable guide for distinguishing a legitimate bug from a feature that is working as designed (but may seem like a bug - in that case, danger!) or from something that got half done. Second: I use design docs to record my own thought process and to reassure myself that I am thinking through a problem to the right extent. For this reason I don't expect anyone else to read them. I will sometimes refer engineers to parts of them, just so they can get an introductory understanding of what we're going for, but that is always as a prelude to many conversations about the implementation details, the likely directions the feature will go next, etc. I never expect anyone to implement anything based entirely on a design doc. Rereading this, I suppose this is a terrible answer to the actual question, but it might be useful when you find some to read. Design docs can serve a lot of purposes, so maybe think about how you would use them and try to find the ones that will help you develop your design sense in the ways you want.

I'm the guy that runs http://www.gamepitches.com that Mr. Kerslake linked above. For anyone that has design docs that are either out in the public domain or you have the rights to, I always happily take submissions to post on the site for all. :)

They are around, but there is no central repository.  Here are three I know of: Doom: http://5years.doomworld.com/doombible/doombible.pdf Grand Theft Auto (originally Race 'n Chase) http://www.flickr.com/photos/mikedailly/sets/72157602022230830/with/5548285262/ Amnesia: The Dark Descent Level Designs: http://www.scribd.com/doc/61699696/Amnesia-The-Dark-Descent-%D0%90%D0%BC%D0%BD%D0%B5%D0%B7%D0%B8%D1%8F-%D0%9F%D1%80%D0%B8%D0%B7%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%BA-%D0%BF%D1%80%D0%BE%D1%88%D0%BB%D0%BE%D0%B3%D0%BE-Chapter-01-Design With Amnesia in particular, the design and proposal docs are easter eggs of the game itself.  Google super_secret to figure out how to go about that. In general, companies are loath to release design docs, as it exposes the original grand plans that did not go through, and (in their mind) lessens the game they made.

Here's a link to "sample outline" and a few examples: http://www.sloperama.com/advice/specs.htm And there's a long linkedin discussion with lots of links here: http://www.linkedin.com/groupItem?view=&srchtype=discussedNews&gid=59205&item=87415982&type=member&trk=eml-anet_dig-b_pd-ttl-cn&ut=1zY9AHTEIGtR41

Here's another link for game design: Gamestorm on tumblr: A collection of doodles, sketches, and scrap-paper designs by game developers around the world! http://gamestorm.tumblr.com/

There are a few. I saw design document for Van Buren, which was Fallout 3 from Black Isle - you can check it out, should be on No Mutants Allowed website. And I also know that some local publishers may publish examples of their kind of ideal GDD for small studios, who may want to work with them; for example, 1C did that for Russian studios, but yes, it was in Russian. You can try to dig in that direction anyway.