I’d like to share a brief introduction and philosophies that I share with a colleague who thinks about how to support healthy teams and their creativity in the game industry. The lack of documentation and description of assets prevalent in game development is a well-known bottleneck. Ken succinctly summarizes why:

The benefits of a mindful documentation process extend much further than simply providing a spec for engineers to build from.

When reliably updated, it builds team faith in the solidity of the design and the project.

When correctly tagged in the workflow, it reduces the need for multiple tickets or tasks on the same feature or issue.

When properly hyperlinked, it encourages a holistic approach in which we are encouraged to note how our work impacts other features or disciplines.

When properly attached to a well-built UI or report generation application, it can provide a history of the decisions made and the reasons for those decisions, which in turn can help you avoid costly churn.

All of these benefits and more will directly and measurably improve a team’s efficiency, cohesion, magnitude of impact, and even their general happiness level.

The most important thing you can do is to make sure that documentation updates are a primary concern and a direct responsibility. You may lose a couple of hours up front, but the overall result is velocity gain, every time.

As a 20+ year industry veteran, with direct experience in production, QA, and design, along with a strong background in information traffic analysis and best practices from his MLIS degree, Ken is one of a few individuals uniquely situated to help you improve your documentation and archival protocols, so you can create more fun and have fun doing it.