Designing a Version-Aware Game Wiki for Early Access

Early Access games create a documentation problem that ordinary wikis do not handle well: the facts can change faster than search results, community posts, and copied tables are updated. A page can look polished and still be wrong for the current build. I have been working on an independent Subnautica 2 player wiki, and the most useful engineering lesson has been to treat every guide, map marker, and item row as versioned data rather than timeless prose. This post describes the workflow without assuming any particular framework. 1. Put provenance next to the fact For every structured record, keep at least: the game build or patch it was checked against; the source type: official note, in-game observation, or community report; the observation date; a confidence state such as verified, provisional, or disputed; a stable identifier that survives display-name changes. A user should not have to trust a page because it looks complete. They should be able to see whether a coordinate came from the current build and whether another player can reproduce it. 2. Separate stable identity from mutable labels Names, descriptions, recipes, and locations may change. Use an internal key as the identity and keep display text as versioned attributes. This prevents an item rename from creating a second logical entity or breaking every inbound link. The same rule helps with localization: English and translated labels point to one entity, while the source and verification state remain shared. 3. Model maps as evidence, not decoration An interactive map should not be a pile of pins. A useful marker contains coordinates, category, build, evidence, verification state, and a short player-facing note. If a patch moves or removes the object, preserve the history and mark the old observation as superseded. This also makes filters honest. “Show verified markers for the current build” is a meaningful query; “show everything ever imported” is not. 4. Make guides depend on structured facts Low-spoil