Version Control

Programmers have used version control (Git, SVN, Perforce) for decades. Every code change is tracked, diffable, and reversible. Branching lets developers work on features in isolation, and merging brings changes together with conflict detection. This workflow is so fundamental to software development that no professional team would work without it.

Game designers, however, are still working without version control. Their design documents live in Google Docs with limited history, their balance spreadsheets are in Google Sheets with no diff capability, and their narrative content is scattered across wikis with no branching support. When a critical design decision is changed or overwritten, there is no way to see what the old version was or understand why it changed.

Applying version control to game design documents means every change is tracked with a visual diff, every version is preserved forever, and branching enables safe experimentation. The same discipline that makes code development reliable can make design development reliable too.