--- title: Evolution Of Design Documentation | daily.dev description: A 45-year retrospective on how design documentation in game development evolved from nothing in the 1980s to modern wiki-based systems. Starting with zero... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/evolution-of-design-documentation-yqemib2kl twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Evolution Of Design Documentation | daily.dev og:description: A 45-year retrospective on how design documentation in game development evolved from nothing in the 1980s to modern wiki-based systems. Starting with zero... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/evolution-of-design-documentation-yqemib2kl og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/YqEmIB2KL.png og:image:alt: Evolution Of Design Documentation og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Evolution Of Design Documentation **[Cain on Games](https://daily.dev/sources/cainongames)** · 15 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary A 45-year retrospective on how design documentation in game development evolved from nothing in the 1980s to modern wiki-based systems. Starting with zero documentation at tiny studios, through napkin sketches and flowcharts in the 90s (including Fallout's SPECIAL system switch done verbally in two weeks), to publisher-mandated GDDs in the 2000s, spreadsheets at Carbine, and finally Confluence at Obsidian. The key advantages of Confluence highlighted include linked subpages, page-watcher notifications for changes, version history, and inline comments that preserve design discussions and rationale — especially valuable as teams grew from 5 to 200+ people and shifted to remote work. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Similar posts on daily.dev - ['The goal of design is to efficiently communicate ideas'](https://daily.dev/posts/the-goal-of-design-is-to-efficiently-communicate-ideas--fxcj61pui) · Game Developer · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [How to Create Design System Documentation: A Step-by-Step Guide](https://daily.dev/posts/how-to-create-design-system-documentation-a-step-by-step-guide-pdtssaab3) · Netguru · 55 upvotes · 0 comments - [A year of documentation-driven development](https://daily.dev/posts/a-year-of-documentation-driven-development-x8uhdq5x0) · Ubuntu · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#tech-news](https://daily.dev/tags/tech-news), [#general-programming](https://daily.dev/tags/general-programming), [#game-development](https://daily.dev/tags/game-development), [#leadership](https://daily.dev/tags/leadership) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/evolution-of-design-documentation-yqemib2kl) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Evolution Of Design Documentation","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/evolution-of-design-documentation-yqemib2kl","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/evolution-of-design-documentation-yqemib2kl"},"datePublished":"2026-07-19T07:58:52.051Z","dateModified":"2026-07-19T07:59:32.253Z","description":"A 45-year retrospective on how design documentation in game development evolved from nothing in the 1980s to modern wiki-based systems. 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