When looking at someone else’s work and feeling a change needs to be made, the first question you must ask yourself is why. Why do you feel the need to edit it, and why is the change you’re making important? You must answer this question before acting. This isn’t just out of respect for others’ work – though that is a core piece of it – this process makes your edits meaningful.

It’s easy to make changes due to personal taste, but that’s not helpful on a team. While subjectivity will always play a role in our desire for edits, it’s important to minimize the input of our own egos and think critically about the work we’re interacting with. Games are inherently a collaborative medium, so editing should always focus on harmonizing our voices rather than overriding others’ in favor of our own.

Go through this process with each edit you make:

1. Ask yourself why the content needs to be changed. Write down your answer.
   • If it’s something like “I don’t like it.” That’s not good enough, go deeper. You need to have a concrete, story/character reason to edit it.
   • If you can’t come up with a reason, leave it alone.
2. Once you have your “why,” make your edit.
3. Ask yourself how this edit addresses the concern of your why.
   • If it doesn’t, revise it until it does.

So you can see how your “why” becomes a litmus test for whether your edit is meeting the needs of the narrative. This is how you achieve worthwhile revisions. It’s even useful when editing your own work!