ON CREATIVE COLLABORATION

April 4, 2024

GAME DEVELOPMENT IS UNLIKE ANYTHING ELSE

It's no secret that making video games is really difficult work, and even if you master many technical aspects of assembling a game, making a great game that is fun to play is more art than science (with a dash of luck here and there.) And there are so, so many types of games with their own technical needs, genre expectations, and other considerations. SteamDB, a platform that gives insight into the popular games distribution platform, Steam, tracks over over seven hundred, non-mutually exclusive tags used by Steam to describe games to potential buyers, telegraphing the deep level of nuance you'd find even between closely comparable titles in the same genre. The surface area of types of video games is enormous.

Video games were birthed from and have a symbiotic relationship with computer technology - a constantly moving target. An idea for a video game and the combined constraints of available hardware and software push on and challenge each other constantly, resulting in innovative solutions from both sides. Games will often drive technological progress that benefit other industries as Unreal Engine is doing for film and TV, and the continual drip of new breakthroughs in technology outside of games have allowed all sorts of new entertainment experiences to exist that were previously impossible or wildly impractical such as the CD-ROM. This inspirational "game" of tennis where innovation from either side drives "the next thing" leaves video game designers playing a unique role, working within the constraints of technology while pushing on the edges a bit to make something fresh and innovative. What is impossible today is possible tomorrow, with new constraints and considerations to discover along the way. You're constantly ahead and behind at the same time.

Because of the breadth of game types and the shifting sands of the technological landscape, there are fewer objective truths to fall back on when designing a great video game and there are often very many "right answers." Elevator pitches can sell the experience, but the devil is always in the details, and those details come guns a'blazin' for the team immediately when a project starts and never seem to stop. "Finding the fun" is an organic experience where your team must invent and discover the game at the same time, and you might end up very far from where you began. For every question answered, you're faced with more questions. No one could possibly have all the answers, and not everyone is going to agree on proposed solutions.

Not only does the game your making change while you're discovering it, the team is statistically certain to evolve throughout the development cycle as well. Different phases of a game project require different expertise, scale, and focus, and members join and leave both teams and companies regularly. The AskAGameDev Tumblr has a good note on how team's scale proportionate to how close they are to shipping. Double Fine's PsychOdyssey video series demonstrates how teams can evolve as company priorities shift around or when people come and go. A recent study that the International Game Development Association conducted in 2021 concluded that developers who responded averaged 2.1 employers in the past five years - less than 2 and a half years at one company. When games can require multiple years and hundreds of people to make, simple math suggests that team makeup is going to be an ever-floating point.

All of these factors make healthy collaboration across a great team a requirement to producing the best game possible.

UNLOCKING COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE IN CREATIVE TEAMS

Decision making in a group can be really difficult, especially when so much about game design can feel subjective because of the variety of genres and tastes mentioned above. With the fast pace of change in the industry, it's hard to know what the best way to go is. Mathematically a team is smarter than any individual on it, but how does a group come together to make the best call? A way to set teams up for smarter decision making is to consider methods to tap into the group's Collective Intelligence.

Research performed in 2010 by Anita Williams Woolley on Collective Intelligence concluded that teams can perform even better than the average of the individual's abilities, meaning the collective team is potentially more capable and intelligent than the sum individuals it's comprised of. How does a creative team truly tap into that intelligence and truly punch above its weight? Organizational Psychologist and Author David Burkus has a great blog on the topic where he breaks it down into 5 key points:

Leverage Diversity - Different life experiences provide critical perspectives
Build Empathy - Validation and respect among teammates increases team performance
Take Turns Sharing - Hearing from everyone makes everyone a little smarter
Listen Actively - Boost confidence and safety among team members
Equalize Status - All ideas have value at inception.

(David concisely describes each in better detail than my poor attempt to further summarize, I encourage you to read his short but informative post on the topic.)

Nurturing an environment where these concepts are promoted is an important responsibility for team leads. Leads set the pace and expectations for the group and are generally looked to as an example by new folks joining the team or those younger in the industry. Taking on the role of "tie-breaker" instead of "decision maker", as Transformation Coach Preston Chandler describes it in his LinkedIn post, allows room for these sorts of concepts to flourish and gives everyone room to contribute in their own unique way.

Any great product needs a strong vision and great leads to shepherd work towards the fulfillment of that vision, the thousands of little decisions along the way can turn a "good" idea into either a "bad" product or a "great" product. When team members feel comfortable sharing, listening, and contributing, the team levels up in their understanding of the problem space and is more cognitively capable. Tapping into that Collective Intelligence can be a powerful way to make much smarter decisions as a group than allowing input and decision making be handled by a single person or a small subset of the team. When you can't lean on what you already know as truth, make the group smarter.

BALANCING CONFIDENCE AND UNCERTAINTY

In "Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview," Steve talks about how great ideas when turned into great product never come out like they start as they tend of evolve and change as they're being discovered. Ambiguity and uncertainty are pretty common throughout the development of any great product, and video games are no different. In the pre-production section of nonprofit, volunteer-run The Level Design Book, it states that "Planning is useful but it's not magic; you won't know what you're making until you actually make it." So how do you move forward when questions beget questions? Pairing confidence with uncertainty, while paradoxical, can be an effective combination when employed with humility and respect to keep a team moving forward towards goals.

Amazon is known for it's leadership principles, one being Have Backbone; Disagree and Commit. This means that contributors should feel obligated to respectfully challenge decisions when they're in disagreement - even if it's unpopular or extra work to do so. As established above, team members are unique and dynamic, and when they're comfortable dissenting, the ideas generated in the group are often being challenged for the very first time. Design decisions that cannot stand up to the scrutiny of trusted voices in the group likely don't have the merits that they were initially believed to have, and being open to both respectfully voice disagreement and hear opposing viewpoints will further help the best decisions to be made by a group. Now, it's obvious that not everyone is going to always come to agreement, and consensus is maybe even an impractical goal at times. However, "Commit" is there to put the group's forward progress ahead of the personal opinion once a decision is made and commit wholly to the direction decided.

Another helpful paradox is one often associated with tech innovator and investor Marc Andreeson - Strong Opinions Loosely Held. In a podcast with tech investor and advisor Tim Ferriss, Marc summarizes that strong theories generally drive innovation and out of the box thinking, but that a common trap is that people get too committed to their ideas that they're unwilling to react to the changes that might make those viewpoints less valid or impactful. Loosely holding onto these ideas means admitting that things can change and you might be wrong (even if you were right before,) requiring you to reconsider your position. Leaving room for ideas to be negotiated when necessary is key to not getting stuck in ruts on principle alone when feedback, the product, or the market is telling you to change your mind.

As any creative work goes, game teams and individuals need to expect that things will change and ideas will constantly be challenged by new information and differing viewpoints. Balancing the determination of having a firm opinion with the flexibility and awareness to admit when it's worth letting go can be an effective way to weather the unknown and make the best decisions you can for your product. It takes both confidence and humility working together to achieve that goal.

WE ARE ALL HERE TO MAKE FUN GAMES

The vast majority of people working in games joined the industry because they were first gamers - gamers that cared so much about games that they dedicated years of hard work to have the chance to make games themselves. From marketing to engineering, every department is full of people that enjoy games, have opinions about games, and want to be part of the process of making games. It's critical that the design team finds the right ways to gather input from other disciplines and keep them as part of the creative process.

Often times the job of the designer is to filter new ideas and other feedback to decide what is worth pursuing, and often the first feedback you get from outside the design bubble is from other disciplines during ideation phases. It might be that your team's precious ideas are being challenged or you're being pitched something you feel in your gut is a bad fit for the game, but it's important to remember that you all share the same goal despite your different areas of responsibility and expertise: make a great product that people will enjoy (so much so that they give you money for it!) Numerous times throughout my career, I've heard (and implemented) amazing ideas or tweaks that have come from engineering, marketing, production, and other non-design disciplines that ultimately had a noticeable, positive impact on the product. Always be listening to what people are telling you, you might be surprised!

Great ideas can come from anywhere, especially from those that are in the boat with you and understand what you're trying to make. Keep an open mind to input coming from everywhere and use your design sensibilities to process it instead of disregarding or minimizing it. Remember that your game's first and biggest fans are already on the dev team.

CONCLUSION

In a highly dynamic environment such as game development, organic and inclusive collaboration can help teams make the best creative decisions and in turn, make amazing entertainment products. Leaning into the power of the team by establishing high levels of trust through empathy, inclusion, and equal participation can lead to outsized results. A culture that empowers confidence and even dissent when balanced with flexibility, humility, and respect can strengthen ideas and aid in weathering constant change and uncertainty. The team is full of and surrounded by passion; find ways to involve others that might not always have a seat at the table and invite ideas from those closest to the process.