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| 04.09.2007On Becoming A Stellar Games Industry Manager
I've been watching Marc Mencher's columns about team management and leadership in the game industry for the past few months. They strike me as basically very applicable to your typical office environment anywhere in corporate USA.
But that's my problem: they are very applicable to your typical office environment anywhere in corporate USA.
They're vanilla.
To me the glaring omission in them is they don't come to terms with the unique creative challenges native to game design and development - or really any sort of heavily creative industry. They are collectivist, and drive everything down to the lowest common denominator. They normalize things, and expect people to have normal behaviour.
I'm not sure if Mr Menscher ever went to, say, a fine arts college - or hung out in a big metropolis artsy scene, or whatever - but if you expect creative types to be "normal" you are killing the very thing that is supposed to be earning you money. I mean, yes they say "show BUSINESS, show BUSINESS" - but the word "show" is still there.
If we are to listen to these rules if you are really possessed by a vision, and your team is mangling it because they don't understand the vision, YOU - not the team, or an impossible process - YOU are the problem. I could mention to Mr Menscher that creating any great innovative work is intrinsically un-understandable.
After all, such an undertaking is like a voyage to another continent: you can spend all the time in the world explaining to the team what it's like there and how to get there, but until they get there (read: make the game) they won't truly know what you're talking about. So if they expect to have seen where they're going before they get there, they're being unreasonable (an unreason born of fear of the unknown).
Sooner or later one of two things happens: you either dilute the hell out of the vision so they can understand it (you know that trip to Nepal? well, how about Disneyworld instead just so I can shut you people up? I have a headache), or they have to just face their fears and go with it.
I mean, I found it very telling in his most recent article - the one on leadership - that in the section entitled "Using Your [Leadership] Powers For Good", of the five reasons mentioned NOT ONE is to further the aesthetic and creative dimensions of games.-Grassroots Gamemaster
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