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Production Values: The Value of Communication In Game Development
[In her second 'Production Values' feature, following a detailed discussion on project management, EA, Ubisoft and Activision veteran Heather Chandler discusses how game producers can improve communication on their teams, helping to fix mismatched creative visions, missed deadlines, and more.]
Communication is something we do every day, so you think we'd be pretty good at it by now. However, if you talk to an average game development team about the one area that needs the most improvement, they will probably say communication. Bad communication seems to be a catch-all explanation for a variety of problems that occur during game development, such as missed deadlines, misunderstandings about what features are being worked on, and mismatched creative visions.
And when you start thinking about how a game producer spends his or her day, you will find that most, if not all, of the work revolves around communicating the project's needs to various people throughout the company -- working with IT to order new computers, meeting with management to discuss the budget, and prioritizing development tasks with the team. Therefore, I wanted to briefly discuss the value of communication, and ways you can improve it on your game team so that you can prevent bad communication from becoming a troublemaker on your project.
 Bad Communication
What constitutes "bad" communication? If you can't answer this question, it will be almost impossible to improve the situation.
Bad communication can be created in a variety of ways, but most examples fall under the same major categories: people are too busy to communicate, people are not effective communicators, or office politics creates situations where people can't communicate.
Too Busy to Communicate
How often have you heard someone say, "I have an open door policy, stop by anytime to talk," but every time you go by his or her office, no one is ever there? As you get more anxious about talking to this person, you find yourself walking by the empty office every chance you get -- you even invent errands so you have more opportunities to catch this person before the end of the day.
How about when you finally get some face to face time with your boss in his office, and he is so busy answering emails, screening phone calls, or instant messaging, that he is not even listening to what you are saying? By the time you leave his office, you are convinced it was a waste of time, as he probably didn't hear anything you said.
Have you ever spent 10 minutes explaining the risks and options to someone, and she keeps nodding her head in understanding, then when you are finished, she says "I'm sorry, I was thinking about something else while you were talking, can you explain it again?"
In each of these scenarios, the person you are trying to communicate with is clearly too busy to communicate with you. This doesn't make them a bad person, it just means they haven't figured out how to deal with all of their obligations in a timely manner.
So if you anticipate these scenarios ahead of time, you can tailor your communication approach to these busy people in order to get the most benefit for both of you. If possible, prepare these people for your meeting by putting together an agenda or just briefly describing what your major goals for the meeting are.
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