It’s actually pretty similar to how licensed characters are handled - when we have a lot of different designers and artists touching the same content, we need a design bible for game world’s lore and specific characters to establish important facts - visuals, personality, quirks, dialect, affectations, history, and so on. The more established the franchise, the more established these design bibles tend to be.
Also similar to licensed characters, if the team is big enough and the need is there, we’ll assign a specific designer and/or artist to be the “owner” for specific characters or environments. It’s these peoples’ responsibility to hold others working with their charges to the proper standards. Their signoff will be required at design or art reviews. They’ll also likely be the ones doing a lot of the work on those particular characters or environments. As long as the “owners” and the bible remain consistent, the game content usually remains consistent.
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