So What Matters Most to You?
I've been hobbling on a sprained ankle this week, which forced me to sit still and think for the first couple of days until the pain subsided. I started out thinking about an online casual game we're working on. Three stream-of-consciousness links later I remembered a lunch I had with a friend of mine a few years ago.
A Case Study
Here's the problem he wanted to discuss (altered slightly so my friends won't recognize who was at that lunch!)
My friend is a producer for a major publisher. The project was a high-profile RTS for the PC. The game had innovative game play, a decent budget, and as an internal project it was on track for a good marketing push when it shipped. In short, the title would get a fair chance at being discovered and bought by gamers. It could be a hit.
Not all projects are that lucky. A lot of games compete just to get noticed, to rise above the noise level and even get considered by consumers.
The lead environment artist on the project was talented and understood games. He worked well with the lead animator and the other artists, and was the de facto art director for the project since the other art leads looked up to him and there was no project AD.
The levels had variety and the terrain looked natural. But on one level there was a problem. The colors of several primary units blended into the background and they were hard to see. The manager had noticed it, but said nothing and let it go for a week to see what comments they got from the first in-house playtests. "Units are hard to see on Level X" came up on the playtest feedback.
The manager asked the artist to change the colors of the level so the units would be displayed clearly against the background. The artist refused -- to him the level looked perfectly fine. They went back and forth, and the manager was unsure what to do. This was their first project together and after several months it was the first time they'd ever hit an impasse. He asked the environments lead to think about it but, given the defensive tone, did not give a direct order to make the changes.
The Manager's Dilemma
So we're sitting at lunch and the frustrated manager is running through his choices. As usual, I had no magical answers, so I spent most of the time asking him questions.
In the end, I suggested he sit down alone in a room and rank "the list of things you want to be true at the end of the project." I think it works best when written on Yellow Stickies, so you can move them around easily. Once you look at the final, ranked list it usually tells you what you need to do next.
Postscript: A reader made a good comment below that this implies the manager may choose to tell the artist to shut up and do what he's told. How the final decision is crafted and shared is a topic for another day. In this case the artist had a history of being reasonable and this felt like a strange exception. IMHO a longer, thoughtful private discussion between the two should precede any final decision.
Here are some things that might have been on his list, in no particular order:
- The game will ship on schedule.
- The artist will do what he's asked whenever the manager asks him to do it.
- The artist will be happy and motivated and spread a positive mood in the office.
- The manager will be happy and motivated and not yell at the kids when he gets home.
- The game will be a hit and sell millions of copies.
- Players will be able to enjoy each level of the game and see all the units clearly on the terrain.
- The game will earn a 90+ on GameRankings.
- Team Members on this project may argue a point, but in the end will do the things the manager instructs them to do.
- The other artists won't get upset because a non-artist told the environments lead what to do.
- The lead environments artist will still be working for the company when the project ships.
- The lead environments artist will still be working for the company a year after the project ships.
- The team will display good morale, stay focused on the work at hand and not be distracted by personal issues.
How would you have ranked the list above if you were the Producer?
Are you struggling with a tough issue on your project? What happens if you list all the things you want to be true at the end of the project and rank them based on their importance?
Often that ranked list suggests changes in how you're running a project. What would you do differently next Monday morning if you were actually going to implement those priorities in all your actions and decisions?
If you're not willing to make those changes next Monday morning, why not?
Copyright (c) 2009, Don Daglow.
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Why doesn't this art dev want to change those colors? Why are other colors or a different tint not acceptable? Considering the nature of art assets in a RTS, why doesn't this affect other levels as well? If it doesn't, what makes this level so special? (although admittantly, you should know your game well enough to know this already) You can even go as far as to ask the opinion of others on his team, although you obviously don't want to make this into a spectacle.
When people can't properly explain why they want to do something in a certain way, most will come around pretty quickly. Sometimes it can even be quite humorous when people actually realize this while they are talking, stopping them in their tracks and resulting in quite a good natured conversation afterwards. If you've really tried your best at this and someone just keeps being a stubborn diva, then you can ask yourself if they would last in the kind of collaborative environment that you want for game development anyway.
However, when they do have a very good reason you're likely going to be able to deal with that in a constructive manner, like finding alternative solutions together. Or, of course, you could actually end up finding out about a critical issue that requires immediate attention by everyone. There are many permutations possible, but the essence is always asking yourself and others 'why', and go from there.
This guy has obviously functioned very well up till now, but has for some reason changed his behavior. I would suggest the manager should try to make sense of that before he starts contemplating the nature of his managership.
A lot of times we find ourselves frozen in non-action because we don't like any of our choices. That's what was happening to some degree in this case, and it's understandable. The manager respected the artist and didn't want to act in a heavy-handed way, but he'd also concluded that for whatever reason the artist had "a blind spot" on this issue and was really digging in his heels to the detriment of the game.
By listing the things the manager wanted to be true -- including the artist feeling respected and players being able to see the units -- he could rank what was most important to him. In this situation those goals seemed mutually exclusive. Doing nothing means making a choice passively. I think that making a conscious, active choice usually brings better results, even if all the choices available suck and you do what the passive choice represented.
If the manager chooses to insist on the color change, I could have added a paragraph about sitting down and having a respectful, private discussion about it as opposed to just sending an email or issuing a command. I tend to assume that's how decisions are communicated, even though I've seen so many times that they're done another way. Good grist for another blog post, and I can think of times when I was the manager who mis-handled the issue.
Thanks for your comment and pointing out that this was not clear.
Don
To jump to the core of what you're pointing out, what makes this an example of the most frustrating situations for managers is that the people involved are all strong performers and reasonable professionals. If a programmer or a manager are constantly the problem in a collaborative environment the choices are far more clear.
What I'm trying to set up here is the case where the people are great but for whatever reason they hit an unexpected conflict. These things do happen periodically on great teams, just because we're unique creative human beings.
Sometimes being insightful means being uncooperative... but being uncooperative usually isn't a symptom of insight.
As you and Jason brought out, I have not touched on the much longer discussion this manager and artist need to have in the case study as written. In the actual case, by the time the manager took me to lunch they had had several long talks, still disagreed and the manager was questioning himself. I left all this out in trying to keep the blog post from getting longer than it already was.
I especially like your point that the people involved have to keep coming back to the issue of "why" they feel so strongly about the issue. If in the end one person has to accept the other person's point of view, understanding the "why" is critical for the relatioonship to go on for the long term.
The key point is that often managers deal with these issues either by reeling off an "I'm in charge here!" command or by doing nothing at all, neither of which are a thoughtful decision. Taking the time to sort out what's important to you and make a concrete, committed decision is what works best in the long run.
Thanks for taking the time to comment.
Don