Advertorial
Artists Deserve Better Version Control
By Jordan Snyder, Director of Product Development, Perforce P4 One W
e're long past the days when only engineers shipped games. Creative content now accounts for more than half the work on a
game—and much more than half the file size. Artists drive what makes games memorable, distinctive, profitable. Yet they're still stuck with tools designed for someone else. I’ve seen teams rename files manually or build giant spreadsheets just to track who touched what. Without a proper version control workflow in place, one mistake—like dragging a folder into the wrong place—can bring a project to a halt. Studios often hire a pipeline developer to patch the gaps, but if your pipeline changes, only that person can fix it. Technical debt skyrockets overnight.
This isn't just frustrating; it's the disconnect between
how artists work and the tools available to them. While the industry evolved beyond its code-heavy origins, the developer-creator divide persists even as version control advances. Traditional version control systems were designed for code, not visual assets. This isn’t a technology gap—it’s a mindset gap. Artists
don’t think in branches and commits. They think in shots, iterations, versions, and thumbnails. They want to see their work, not parse commit logs. What artists need isn’t just "version control, but
prettier." They need systems that handle massive files without choking, show visual previews instead of generic thumbnails, and let teams collaborate without stepping on each other's work. Tools they can learn in an afternoon, not a semester.
THE MISSING PIECE That's why we built P4 One—a free version control
client tailored for art teams and anyone new to version control. We approached the problem visually rather than technically, reimagining version control around how artists naturally think and work. P4 One works standalone for solo developers, handling large binaries and project sizes that break other systems. It eliminates manual versioning, prevents file loss, and creates clean iteration history—all with built-in thumbnail support and file format recognition. When you’re ready to move beyond a single user workflow and collaborate with a team, P4 One can easily connect to Perforce P4 so your team can avoid the file collisions and challenges art teams too often just accept and workaround. When artists know they can create a version of a file
and always roll back if needed, they experiment more, iterate faster, and don’t fear mistakes. Onboarding new teammates is smoother—they see the history, know what’s current, and can jump in confidently. In high-pressure situations, version control keeps the team moving without losing work. Everyone can focus on making art, not babysitting files. In today’s creator economy, tools don’t just support
artists—they empower them. Because artists and designers are no longer just part of the workflow. They are the workflow.
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