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[reprinted from the journal on my company website]
When I first set out as a consultant it was with the intent of helping game companies improve quality of life for developers and run their projects more efficiently. Actually, that’s still my intent. But my initial thoughts coming out of 12 years at a AAA studio were that I knew how to manage projects better than most game companies (Why are their games late and their developers overworked? Clearly it’s because they are dumb, whereas I am smart.) and that if I could just reach the decision makers inside these organizations I could help them solve their mismanagement and all would be right with the world. I suppose in my head I pictured showing up, telling a CEO “Stop using waterfall scheduling based off a 3-year-old GDD”, and then they’d begin shipping high-quality games on time while only working 40 hours a week.
Epiphany!
In January of 2012, however, I started writing a lot about leadership in game development and eventually turned that writing into a book. Along the way it dawned on me with glacial slowness (in stark defiance of my earlier assertion that I am smart) that all of the project management wisdom in the world wouldn’t help a company whose leadership continued to evince difficulty leading people well. You can give someone a fantastic shovel, but if they’re intent on digging a hole using a golf ball then you really haven’t improved the situation. There’s an underlying problem you haven’t addressed.
Since that astonishing revelation I’ve sought to reach out to game companies and talk to them about how they lead their people. I’ve continually studied and learned from those both inside and outside our industry, adding to my knowledge base with information on motivation theory, mental models, employee engagement, continuous improvement, and the science of happiness as it pertains to productivity. I’ve made it a point to hunt down the best people leaders in game development and create a standard against which we can all measure the quality of our leaders. After spending a year doing everything I could think of to improve my own understanding of how to lead developers with excellence, I decided to try an experiment.
ABC. Always Be Consulting (if they’ll let you)
During the past five months I’ve reached out to 17 different game companies of various sizes and across multiple sectors of the industry and made them this offer: for just the cost of getting to your studio I would like to spend a day in your offices, talking with leaders and team members, observing how you do what you do, and then report to the senior leadership my findings about potential improvements. For this visit I would charge no fee, merely asking for reimbursement to cover travel costs. In return you receive objective insight from a published author with 15 years of industry experience who’s spoken internationally about leadership and production improvements. It seemed like a no-brainer.
This struck me as a good way to advertise my services as a consultant while helping developers and I endeavored to make the proposition as attractive as possible. I know game companies have employed other consultants who cost thousands of dollars per day, so I figured charging only a few hundred wouldn’t be too much of an obstacle. I would have offered to make it completely free – covering the travel costs myself – but after running the numbers I concluded that paying people to provide them with services was not a sustainable business model. Professor Baghiereh at Tech would be so happy to know I didn’t sleep through all of Intro to Economics.
So…What Happened?
Now to the fun part: the results. Propriety demands that I name no names, but suffice it to say that mega-budget, PC, console, mobile, social, Facebook, handheld, and MMO companies are all represented here. I spoke with CEOs, executive producers, and various types of directors at small boutiques as well as industry-leading franchises. Here are the responses to my at-cost consulting proposition.
First question: How many studios actually took me up on the offer?
Two.
In five months of offering to 17 studios the best wealth of leadership and production information I could reasonably provide, at the lowest feasible cost and making zero money, I visited two. If you're interested in how those visits turned out, send me an email or find me on Twitter. I don't mean for this post to be a commercial, so suffice it to say my clients were pleased.
Next question: What responses did I get from the other 15?
I’ve tried to simplify the replies I received and present them to you as the following Eight Responses:
- “Too busy (but with varying degrees of interest), check back later” – 6 studios
- “Not interested, we’re doing fine” – 3 studios
- “Undergoing leadership change, check back later” – 1 studio
- “Interested but can’t afford it” – 1 studio
- “We’re too small for this to be of help to us” – 1 studio
- “Interested, trying to schedule a visit” – 1 studio
- No reply – 1 studio
- SO uninterested in what I do that I didn't even get a chance to make the offer – 1 studio
I want to stress at this point that I was never met with a rude or condescending response. Even the disinterested people generally approached the topic as though it was a thoughtful proposal but not applicable for them because their studio is running well. Presumably they hit all of their dates, ship quality products, rake in cash, and focus tremendous amounts of energy on the personal and professional development of their employees, all of whom have industry-leading quality of life. Of the 60+ game companies with whom I’ve connected as a consultant, I believe one or two actually meet that description so I know it’s possible.
There are many legitimate reasons why even a low-cost visit like this wouldn’t be attractive. “It disrupts the studio.” “We can’t possibly learn enough from you in one day to make it worth having you here.” “Your credentials just aren’t impressive enough for me to believe we could learn from you.” Any of those might have been the root cause behind “not interested, we’re doing fine” and they are all fair responses. Nonetheless, I highly recommend to studio leaders that they perform some analysis – perhaps with the classic 5 Why’s – to ascertain exactly what they’re thinking when they turn down help because they’re “doing fine”. Your real reasons may be entirely justified, just make sure you know what they are.
I’ll spare just a moment to comment on the largest category – “the timing isn’t right.” There’s never a right time. There. I said it. Having been in that position as a studio developer, I appreciate the feeling of wanting to put something off until after the demo, until after E3/GDC/WWDC/Christmas/summer, until after we ship, hit cert, have the layoffs, hire the director, move to the new building, switch engines, reorganize the team, hear from the new writer, have the board meeting, or suffer through the visit from the EVP of Verbing Nouns. I could go on. It’s a matter of priorities. If you think something is important, you’ll treat it thusly.
It’s Not Me, It’s You. Well, Really It’s Them. At Any Rate, Definitely Not Me.
To wrap this up, here’s a quick summary for everyone who has a leader…the middle managers, the frontline contributors, the boots on the ground. I wasn’t kidding when I said I started down the road as a consultant because I wanted to improve the work environment for individual developers. That’s why I do what I do. And I firmly believe that making sure you’re led well is a huge part of that. Numerous psychological and corporate studies back it up. I’ll keep trying to get out to your place and help improve leadership, but if you’re wondering why I haven’t been to your studio yet, now you have at least Eight Reasons. But please note: they didn’t come from me.
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I've often noticed the places with the most need for those kinds of services also happen to be led by leaders who can give all kinds of rational excuses for avoiding change. Not unlike what happens with Gordon Ramsay and his Kitchen Nightmares show. I wonder how your responses would change if you had contacted middle managers or people in the trenches.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect
Jesus... this perfectly describes a group of people I had the misfortune of working with for 6 years. Thanks for the link!
On a macro scale, this seems strangely intuitive. It would also make sense that they would not be motivated to seek self improvement, by reading Gamasutra for instance, since they have no need to improve.
It was to me VERY STRIKING when the production (not Ramsay) asked why the owner called Gordon, and she said that it was because she wanted to prove to everyone that wrote bad reviews of her, how awesome she was by Gordon saying how awesome she was on TV...
She TRULY believed she was awesome enough to Gordon tell her how awesome her food was! It was... beyond the Dunning-Kruger, beyond delusional, it was a sort of megalomaniac grandeur, that unfortunately is also quite common in our industry (usually with studio owners that insist they are game designers and "idea guy" and that they will make the best MMO ever)
I believe Steve Jobs called them "Bozos". Apparently the bigger problem is all they do is hire other Bozos who make them feel good. it's the Bozo effect :P
One thing I've noticed over the years, partially in my own work as a consultant, mostly from hearing other people's experience, is that people value a service based on what they're paying for it.
I understand the reasoning behind your idea to consult for (almost) free-of-charge for a bunch of studios. It's a great way of building up a reputation and advertising your services.
I suspect that this is the case for the "we're doing fine", as well as at least some of the "timing isn't right" replies. Somewhere between the lines is a different response: why should we accept services from someone who's giving them away for (almost) free? Why is he doing this? Is it perhaps that no one is willing to pay him?
All in all, I have to pessimistically say, helping people for free in business is much, much harder than helping them for money.
There is another aspect to this, as well. Free advice is freely ignored. In one of the companies I worked for as an ordinary employer, I saw this all too clearly - no matter how experienced an employee would suggest a sensible change of policy, no matter how many people in management agreed that it sounds reasonable, ultimately the boss only ever changed policy based on the feedback of paid consultants. Something in his psychology made it impossible for him to accept that advice can be sensible - unless he was paying for it, and the more he paid for it, the more sensible it was (much to the chagrin of his employees, who time and again found the company driven into chaos by idiotic advice from consultants who didn't even know the industry they were dealing with).
That said, changing entire systems in this industry, which seems to be what both Keith and I are up to, is "high bandwidth" as a European CEO told me in 2011. Trying to convert to a totally different way of doing business, even if it is much more effective, basically grounds decision makers for a significant amount of time. How do you schedule something like that around existing projects?
Also, what if the new system favors some employees over others? Do you risk adopting a new system without even knowing in advance if it could threaten your job? Someone must be thinking this, even intuitively, and will have incentive to be subversive.
For these reasons I mostly just write.... and write.... and write. When studios are ready to talk to me, they manage to find me, and this means the biggest hurdle is already crossed. From my experience when I try to initiate, it will always be the wrong time and my success rate that way is close to 0%. Often if I just wait, the same studios I would have liked to talk to come talking to me, and this results in a much more productive dialogue.
It's a very interesting proposal you have, and while I agree with what you want to do, if I got your e-mail at my company, I would decline. It comes down to "why would I pay you to disrupt my office for a day, and then tell me everything we're doing wrong?" Now, I didn't receive your proposal, but here are my biggest concerns:
1) Why are you not charging a consulting fee?: I would be more likely to bring on a consultant who I am paying for their services than someone who is volunteering. The reason behind this is because I'd wonder why you aren't charging? Is it because you need experience? Is it because you want to use me as a case study? If I'm not paying, what is the "cost" that I'll have to deal with? The answer that you seem to give here is "because I want to help" which is awesome, but I wouldn't believe that if it came to me via email (skeptical person is skeptical!)
2) One day is just long enough to throw me off track for a week, but is it enough to get anything done?: If you got to my office at 9, I'd have you introduced to everyone by 10, we would take a tour and discuss what's up until 11, you could watch the process for an hour or so, go to lunch at 12, come back by 1, observe for another couple hours, and then start discussing productivity around 3, and go home around 5-6. So that, means I'd be getting a few hours of consulting work. However, I would have cancelled meetings with publishers, moved internal meetings until later in the week, stopped work on my tasks, and that's just for that day. After that, I'd have to review your advise, make policy changes, roll them out to the team, take feedback, etc. The cost isn't just paying to you fly out, it's also the disruption of my productivity for several days that I would have to factor into the "cost".
3) How much are you going to learn about how we work in a single day?: When we have guests in the office, everyone is on their best behavior. Meetings are well managed, items are broken down and communication is great! Without relying on testimonials, I'd be skeptical that you could learn how the office actually runs in only one day.
Now, I'm not a meany-jerkface, and I do agree with your concept, so I would probably send you a "thanks but no thanks" e-mail that said something like "we are too busy right now, but I like you concept so please contact me in 6 months when my schedule clears up a bit."
Perhaps if you changed your approach a bit, I would be more likely to bite. What if it was for a "nominal fee"? Work your travel expenses into it, and then charge a low amount. Make me feel like I'm not going to be a sucker when I find out what the true cost is later. What if you stayed for a couple of days instead of just one? I would feel like you were getting a more realistic picture of how my office works, and I could spread out the disruptions a bit more. The longer the visit, the better I would feel about you getting a good idea of how we are actually running, as opposed to the "visitors in the office" face that would happen if you were only there for one day.
I appreciate the attempt, and think you have some good ideas here. I'm definitely interested in the kinds of things that you have found with your consulting. I look forward to other articles from you.
I'll second Ramin's suggestion to continue writing. I'm already a fan of what he writes about and naturally would want to consult with him when/if the time comes that we need his expertise. If you have valuable changes to suggest that would help gamedev studios, then please share them!
I also agree with Katy that I would want to know how you can effectively evaluate a team in a single day and to hear examples of the kind of feedback that could be expected. Also, if the plan is to consult past that initial engagement with the company, then I'd invite you to be up front about that and explain that this is how you work. I would want to hear what you've done with other companies that have done business with you and the results of that work. I think it's awesome that you were willing to take the risk of spending your time to help other companies and my projection is that, naturally, those companies will want to continue working with you if they see the value. In return, you'll receive return on your investment in them.
This was added after I first replied, but now that I see it, this is a very common response I get when I do try to initiate with studios. Granted, I only initiate with the studios that I think clearly most need assistance, and this probably is part of why they are least likely to respond affirmatively.
For instance, I saw the lack of persistence in League of Legends as really holding back their monetization so I spent about 50 hours of my own time writing up a model for a persistent game in the LoL universe. The complexity was higher, of course, but the monetization (even under F2P) was potentially over $1000 ($450 with preorder) per account without any "pay to win" or coercive tactics. In fact, with the exception of the pre-order, I made players earn the ability to give us money.
RIOT refused to sign an NDA, they did not even want to look at it. I was not charging them anything. I lived a mile from their studio.
When Trion Worlds announced they were going to make End of Nations F2P back in 2011, all sorts of flags went up in my head. I was a designer on the spiritual predecessor, Shattered Galaxy, so I had been down this road before. In making an MMORTS, maintaining balance is key because you can't sell advantage, which is what is usually sold under F2P. So again I spent over 50 hours making a model for them that would allow "fair" F2P and monetize much higher than conventional models. They refused to sign an NDA or talk to me.
Now if the person is right down the street, what does it hurt to have lunch with them and let them make a pitch, especially if it is written down? If it was really bad it would at least make a good joke back at the office.
I stopped doing proactive work for successful studios that could be more successful, and honestly I can't remember anyone contacting me saying "we are doing really well and we would like to know how we could do better." As pointed out earlier in the comments, studios that are not doing well are just as likely to not seek help. There seems to be a narrow band in the middle, usually involving vets in new studios, where engagement of this type is most likely.
@Amir: Your words do me honor, I thank you.
e.g.
http://leviathyn.com/games/editorials/2012/04/28/assassins-creed-i ii-in-trouble/
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/lawsuit-claims-paramount- stole-paranorm
al-445926
http://www.nola.com/movies/index.ssf/2013/05/gi_joe_retaliation_st udio_para.html
http://marquee.blogs.cnn.com/2011/12/09/avatar-subject-of-lawsuit- claiming-idea-
was-stolen/
http://www.brobible.com/life/article/stanford-alum-claims-snapchat -stole-idea
some great feedback here for you from others IMO. your offer is a pretty generous one too, if there's value. that's the real question for most of the solicited. my suggestion would be to initially express your insight on a wordpress blog and make sure to contextualize your insight with real world use cases. if you SEO and position that thing properly you'll probably get buried in customers if you are offering them real value. looks like you have nothing but AAA Activision background on MobyGames, which is fantastic! That being said, the mobile platform and big company to smaller indy sea change forces people to look at that differently than 4 years ago ;) there's a lot of things going on out there that we never realize so the other recommend is to never assume anything. keep it up! newcomers and others have a lot to benefit from mature and experienced game folks like you sharing information...
I left out a number of details in the original post that may clarify a few things. In making my offers to studios, it was never a cold call. I always went through someone I knew personally.
I went out of my way to explain I was not promising to "fix all the brokenness" in a single day. As many here have pointed out, the sorts of issues we're addressing in this problem space require more time to get to know people, understand history, and investigate root causes.
You get what you pay for, and these studios were paying for essentially a test drive, which is how I framed it. A dealership doesn't charge money for a test drive, but you *do* pay in time and energy to visit the car dealership and try the car. From that test drive you narrow your selection and/or determine if you want to make a purchase. Similarly, I was upfront with studios that I could very likely give them *some* value in 8 hours, but it would also be about determining if there was a basis for further business.
As Jakub was quick to point out, "perceived value" is important to grasp. Charge too much, people feel they don't get their money's worth. Charge too little, people feel you can't possibly be offering anything of value. Either way, you don't gain those people as clients. This at-cost model is certainly not how I intend to put food on the table for my family going forward, it was merely an experiment to learn more about the target market, validate my belief that I have something meaningful to offer as a consultant (see Impostor Syndrome), and achieve a measure of advertisement...all while still being of *some* help to developers.
Amir, you have my respect from your AltDev postings. I've followed them with great interest. To your point (and Ramin's) about writing...I *did* write a book on improving leadership in game dev. :) I also post frequently on my website's Journal page (where this blog post originally came from) and I have a monthly newsletter. As I said in the post, I didn't mean to use Gamasutra as a platform from which to launch a commercial so I didn't mention these items earlier. Hopefully I've also addressed your points about evaluating a studio in a single day (I'm clear that clients won't get exhaustive results in only a day but *will* see value) as well as being up front about my desire to consult past the initial visit.
Many here have -- with total reasonableness -- asked for further proof. You'd like to try before you buy. (This is a bit of a perspective issue, since some might argue that having me visit for a day *is* a try-before-you-buy option) Assuming you've read my book, followed my journal, seen my recommendations on LinkedIn, looked at all of the comments from clients and associates on my website, and still aren't convinced that my services represent value to your business...there is a potential next step I've offered to interested parties in the past. I've invited people to one-on-one coaching via Skype or phone for what some here have termed a "nominal fee". Let's get on a weekly call for a month and see if you feel I can grasp what your company's friction points are and if I can offer meaningful insight.
As one last attempt to address the "I'd like a case study" point, let me leave you with a comment from one of the two CEOs I visited. It's clear on my site, I've talked about it on Twitter, and Dave thoughtfully consented to act as a referral, so I feel this is above board:
"At first I was skeptical that anyone could drop into our studio and quickly identify the issues that challenge us daily…but Keith did exactly that. After meeting with key members of the company, he measured our strengths and weaknesses against the vast array of other developers he’s worked with, and isolated a few key themes for us to focus on improving. While some of these issues were known, getting such a clear focus on what we should be fixing “today” gave us the shot in the arm we needed to address stuff that makes every employee more happy and productive." -Dave Lang, CEO, Iron Galaxy
Even though I've only responded to points in the earlier comments, I fear I'll soon step into "this is a commercial" space so I'll simply say: please contact me on Twitter or via email or even phone for further details on what I do. My contact info is on my site.
Thanks, all! I'm very excited by this response since it means people *do* care about leading developers well!
The number of decision makers in our industry is a relatively small group. Once you do enough good and verifiable work you hit a certain critical mass and then you don't need to hustle anymore. Word of mouth takes care of that. The people following in your footsteps will have to do what you did. It will be easier for them, but you will still be "the vanguard" and as such the person people try to recruit first for help.
I wasn't aware of your site or that you've been blogging for a while now. I enjoyed this article:
http://www.fullergameproduction.com/journal-page/2012/1/3/how-to-l ead-better-whi
le-doing-almost-anything-else.html
http://qz.com/78105/the-self-evident-and-life-changing-truth-about-working-for-f
ree/
I did this under the guise of being a QA person or a journalist and provided valuable feedback to the studios I studied along the way. My friends thought I was on a fool's errand, spending 14 years training myself for a job that did not exist yet. While playing games professionally brought in some good money here and there, times were lean all the time. When I saw Steve Job's 2005 Stanford commencement speech, saying that the best place to be is "foolish and hungry", it was a real inspiration. I don't know if I would have been able to hang in there without those words.
Now I make more in a month than I used to make in a year. But that is not the point. What matters to me is that I am doing exactly what I dreamed about doing for most of my life, and hope to do until I die. I feel like what I do matters, and improves the world.
So yes I would agree that if you can handle living like a monk, it is always better to do a job that challenges you and pays little or nothing, than to take work that pays well but makes you feel bad about yourself every day.
To a casual observer this may sound like bragging, but an experienced consultant will recognize the challenge instantly: we're experiencing growing pains. We're in the process of going from "minimum structure, everybody knows everything" to "elaborate structure, no one sees the whole picture anymore". Yes, we're doing fine, but if there's a team that could use good advice, it's probably us.
Yet, if my boss asked me whether we should try it out (and he actually does ask about such things), I wouldn't say yes. I would hesitate and probably give up on the opportunity, because I'm concerned about the integrity of our team culture. One very important thing about it is that most of us here are not newbies. In most cases we didn't like at least some of our past jobs. There are things that are very common in the industry, things that many people consider obvious - but those are precisely the things we don't want in our team.
For instance, while we do have a formal hierarchy, its primary function is to serve as the interface between us and the rest of the world. Internally, we have a process where structure emerges spontaneously around a specific problem, in accordance to an unspoken social norm. If I wanted to improve something in our team, I would take a very close look at that norm, but I would never, ever try to replace it with a more traditional, pyramid-like structure.
The gist of the concern is this: if I let an outsider into the team, how do I know they're going to recognise this process for what it is, rather than saying: "man, your team hierarchy is a mess"? How do I know an outsider can understand my team's identity? It's natural to assume that it's not something an outsider can do. I keep repeating the word "outsider", because that's the core of the issue in my opinion: an offer from an external consultant turns on a flashing "outsider" sign inside the part of my brain that acts upon instinct. It doesn't really matter if I've met them in person before. They're not part of the team. Outsider, period.
The rational part of me says it's precisely the job of an external consultant to be able to get into anyone's shoes. The other part of me just doesn't believe it's possible. It doesn't help that I've met some consultants who couldn't do it.
Initially he was not interested in what I knew about monetization. He wanted to get from me that I understood the workings and needs of his studio and project. Surrendering design control to an outsider was a new experience for him and it took about a week for him to trust me. Not a lot got done that week. After he got it that I understood his needs things moved quickly and I was done doing all the numbers 3 weeks after that.
I'm pretty used to wearing the outsider label, and there is always a loss of efficiency when I am training a new studio and they are training me. This is the downside of using consultants vs. dedicated staff, and as our industry moves to a model where more and more of us are consultants I think there will be more work for Keith if he has a solution for the potential friction that brings.
I can understand, though, why many of them turn him down. When you say "leadership" I imagine that most of the people who are in a decision-making role take that to mean "he's talking about me," rather than "he can offer us insight on how to improve our process." Indeed - in many studios the problem *is* the people; some folks just aren't cut out for leadership. And from that point of view - why would a person in a leadership position want an outsider to come and tell them how/why they're doing a bad job? Few people are going to identify themselves as the center of their studio's problems, or want an expert to shine a light on that fact.
Maybe it'd be better, when offering these intro sessions, to offer something a bit more concrete and generic with a focus on *what* they could improve on, such as "5 things you can do today that will improve the morale of your team" - get to know their leadership, and get them to know you and trust your insights, then dive in a bit deeper.
Just some thoughts. I hope more people take up your offer in the future ;)
On a side note, consulting helps me everyday (design, business, development..) and it is always well worth the price, as the other side of the coin is often simply overlooking something very important. My 2 cent: I would say that beyond the experiment you tried, don't offer free services (unless someone you know needs your help or advice). Free or cheap advice is a lot less valued than the expensive one in my experience.