When starting to develop a game, you just open a Google Doc and write.

You feel good with its up-and-running capabilities and stick with it as it grows. However, at first, it was just a collection of notes; now, it's a massive document with lots of information scattered across hundreds of pages. As a result, you feel overwhelmed, waste time searching in it, and communication with your peers becomes a nightmare. This is where the Wiki comes into play.

With the Wiki format, you can split a single document into many small self-contained docs heavily linked to each other. In this week's episode, I'll show you 4 reasons why throwing everything in a single doc is the worst thing you can do and how structuring everything as a Wiki can solve all your problems for good.

What seems quick at the start can become an exhausting death march at the end, so you better be prepared.

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Here they are:

• Dive Deep Only If You Need
• Collaboration Is Not A Pain
• Optimized For Speed
• Easier Document Hygiene

Without further ado, let’s jump right in.

#1: Dive Deep Only If You Need

In a single giant doc, there’s no separation of contexts.

When you search for a specific thing in it, you’ll come across many information you don’t need just because they’re in the same document.

This has several disadvantages:

• Decrease focus
• Waste time
• Increase reading effort

These can be tiny problems, but they will add up, and then none reads the documentation anymore.

Instead, by eliminating the useless, you can highlight what you need.

The Wiki format deletes this problem from the root.

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When you click on a link, you’re intentionally changing context.

You need to turn a single Wiki page into a clear and small context. And use the link to other pages to switch to different contexts.

This behavior, which is the focus of the Wiki format, captures the mindset I like to call: Dive Deep Only If You Need. Let’s say; for example, you have a page ONLY describing the player’s movement and another page describing ONLY the player’s jump. You keep the 2 behaviors breakdown separate, but they reference each other through a page link. This allows whoever in the team (even your future self) to only look at what he needs without distractions.

You delegate the intentionality to change context to a link without frontloading useless information.

The separation of contexts leads us to the following powerful reason.

#2: Collaboration Is Not A Pain

The single document doesn't encourage collaboration.

Collaborating in a game dev team is crucial to the game's success and the team members' efficiency and mental health. Unfortunately, the single document makes collaborative writing an absolute pain in most cases. Imagine an entire team writing on the same document all at once. Your page view keeps scrolling up and down because other people are writing above and below you in the document.

Again, adopting the Wiki format can change this in a blast.

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Writing everything on its own page encourages collaboration.

Since you're working on a small single file that describes only one thing, you'll probably be the only one to work on it.

This makes collaboration a joy for 2 reasons.

• You leverage other people's work by linking your document with others.
• Your communication improves since linking a specific page is easier than scrolling to the right section.

Forget writing conflicts and lack of focus forever.

Collaboration is not "working together"; it's combining knowledge and expertise towards a goal.

Now I want to pinpoint another reason the Wiki format rules: speed.

#3: Optimized For Speed

The bigger the document, the slower and more annoying searching for something will be.

You can use the universal search command (CTRL/CMD - F), but trust me, you don’t want to do it in a 200+ pages doc. This way, valuable information gets buried under other things, and it’s hard to find and keep track of it. Also, since it’s a huge document with lots of media files (in-game screenshots, referencing images, software embeds, etc.), your computer RAM can have a hard time.

Reading a document and retrieving all the necessary information should be a breeze, not a daunting chore.

The Wiki format makes it so by optimizing for speed.

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A Wiki has several tools that make it easy to find what you need at lightning speed.

The search function is natively present in the wiki format so that you can search by document title or content. You can use the CTRL/CMD - F, but it will always be local to the single Wiki page. Media files won’t be a problem, regardless of their amount, since they are distributed in many small files. This way, you’ll always find what you need when you need it in seconds.

Let’s now see the last reason, highlighting the main issue that leads many teams to feel frustrated about documentation.

#4: Easier Document Hygiene

The single giant doc is hard to manage and makes people abandon documentation.

Writing documents is one thing; managing and keeping them updated is a whole another thing. The bigger the documentation, the more difficult it will be to keep it clean and organized. The single-doc format pushes you to write more since you must describe everything in the same place.

And in the long run, this creates a pile of junk and useless documentation no one reads anymore. The docs keep getting old since no one updates them, and there comes the claim: “Docs are a waste of time. No one actually reads them”.

GDD structure is not the only reason this happens, but the Wiki will solve at least half of the problem for good.

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The Wiki encourages people to make shorter docs and keep them always updated.

When you have a small piece of documentation to take care of, your document hygiene skyrockets. Since 1 topic = 1 page, you’re forced to write short documentation. This helps you a lot in keeping it nice and organized and, most importantly, updated so everyone on the team can benefit.

Of course, the Wiki doesn’t update by itself; you must put in the necessary effort. But when you optimize the structure for that, it will be more natural.

Game Design Documents are “living things”, and the Wiki makes it easier to keep them alive.

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Key Takeaways:

• The single doc frontloads information; the Wiki dives deep only if you need it.
• The single doc makes collaboration a pain; the Wiki makes you combine knowledge respectfully.
• The single doc is slower and frustrating; the Wiki makes you find what you need in seconds.
• The single doc is hard to manage and update; the Wiki keeps your doc always alive and relevant.

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I’ve also talked about Game Design Documents in previous Game Design Compass episodes:

• 👉 What Documents Should A Game Designer Focus On?
• 👉 4 Reasons Why You MUST Write Game Design Documents
• 👉 How To Build A GDD Wiki Home Page That Boosts Efficiency And Collaboration
• 👉 Game Design Documents: 3 Effective Tips To Use Them And Boost Your Design Process
• 👉 Game Design Document Formatting: 5 Critical Mistakes That Make Your Docs Ignored

Check them out if you want to dive deeper.