Creatives: We Thrive with Support & Encouragement

In the desperate scramble for funding amid massive game layoff, it’s easy to forget the core principle that creates longevity and quality in games — taking good care of your team. 

A game dev team is a delicate eco-system that needs nurturing to produce excellence.

This means all of your team — from the creatives to administration. Every member of the team needs to feel recognized, appreciated, supported, and protected. This sense of care is essential for human beings to do our best work -- particularly creatives.

The beauty of Game Development is that it is collaborative.

Expecting that people will do their work simply because they have been lucky enough to receive a position in times of scarcity will not engender excellence or the safety of exploring creative ideas. It will not breed a spirit of going-above-and-beyond, or foster talent retention.

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In games, we work together to make each other better. We have each other’s back. We bounce ideas off of each other. We trust each other to act with mutual respect.

The sense of collaborative community doesn’t happen by itself. It comes from the top. It requires leadership to model collaboration, support, encouragement, and recognition of individual talents that join together to make a whole. 

And… if the game team is in early development, meaning it is running on volunteer team members without pay, then leadership must be ultra-vigilant. 

Leaders need to be generous with their encouragement.

Leaders of a volunteer team must be frequently generous and specific with their encouragement. This is particularly true as funding drives go on for years and volunteers have stuck with it for love of the project. If you’re not paying your people, your currency is recognition, respect, listening, positive feedback, and support.

Specific positive feedback is essential. Try saying “I saw what you did this week with the gobbledygook. You’ve really clarified and enhanced the game intention. Great Work. I appreciate you. I appreciate your continued devotion to the team.” 

The team leader needs to acknowledge every team member and let them know that you’ve seen what they are doing and understand how it supports the team’s goals. Recognize everyone. Leave no one out.

Encourage team members to talk specifically about how much they appreciate their other team members. Being seen by colleagues is a tremendous boost.

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If any Game Devs have read this far and are saying to themselves, "I don’t have time to do that. Or, my team members shouldn't need to be coddled." I say, if you don’t have time to take care of your people, you should not be in business. And if you don’t understand the needs of collaborative work, you need to stick to solo projects. 

Your people are your most valuable asset.

Without happy creative collaborative people, you can’t make an excellent product. Which means that you can’t get funding, and you can’t hire more people. It’s a Catch-22 situation. There is only one thing that you can do to truly feed the cycle of funding — support your people. 

Happy team = the most compelling creative work = funding for your unique project

That’s the positive. Collaboration also means that leadership makes sure that any negativity is addressed immediately before it poisons the well. One person who is overly critical, tries to overturn the work of the team, or even has a sour disposition can destroy a creative team. This is particularly true of a small team. In a small group, the negativity cannot be diluted or buffered by positivity from a large group of other team members. It is potent!

One person who is overly critical can destroy a team

Here’s an example from my life before games: I was the chairperson of the Actors Committee for the Short + Sweet short play festival in Sydney. https://shortandsweet.org/ The committee was entirely voluntary. The festival produced 800 ten-minute plays every year culminating in an annual showcase.

We had a casual friendly committee of about six people. We ensured that actors got a chance to audition every week. And we made sure that the actors understood how the festival worked and what was expected of them. It was a lively committee of up-and-coming actors.

Then a new person began dropping into the meetings. She wasn’t horrible. She was just subtly negative in her commentary about people and activities. She made little problems out of nothing. She never did anything so heinous that she could be called out. But her negativity changed the collaborative feel of the team and stopped the safe flow of ideas and actions.

People felt less comfortable about showing up. They told me that she was the reason. The rest of us worked hard to be positive and encourage each other. We didn’t respond to her negativity. We didn’t feed it. We kept doing our work. 

Had I been a better leader or perhaps a skilled counselor, I might have been able to address the issues with her directly. Instead the team did extra work to circumvent her negativity. She eventually lost interest and stopped attending the meetings.

In Game Development, where volunteers are receiving credit for their resumé and hope for a future salary, it is less likely that a negative person will naturally lose interest and leave. It is also harder to work around them. It has a direct effect on critical workflow. Their negativity needs to be addressed by leadership. If it isn’t addressed, the team will fall apart. Dedicated team members with institutional knowledge will be pushed out.

Leaders need to address negativity before it destroys the team.

Maybe the negative person is unaware of the debilitating effect they are having on the team? Maybe they haven’t had experience in how to give effective and motivating feedback? Maybe they don’t know how to work with others? They can be trained. They can emulate the behaviour of others. They can be supported in their personal growth to become better team members.

My Suggestions:

1) Short monthly team workshops about feedback and communication techniques Regularly demonstrate, practice, and play-with these ideas in a fun exploratory environment. Use role playing. These techniques include demonstrations of respect such as showing up for meetings on time, documentation about meeting results and work status, encouraging your teammates, and using a thoughtful tone in written and oral communication

2) Weekly meetings to celebrate each team member's contribution Leadership commends the specific contribution of each team member, and team members celebrate the contributions of their team mates. Again this can be game-ified. Have each different discipline introduce a new vocabulary word that is unique to their specialty. Let other's guess what it means and how it is used. Learn about each other. Appreciate each other!

3) Interview questions that address collaboration, optimism, respect, and communication skills This is about self-awareness. This is about a potential team member and project leader understanding themselves and how they will fit into the team culture.

1. Collaboration: "On a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 is “My way or the highway” and 10 is “I don’t have a single idea of my own. Where do you see yourself?" And they can’t respond 5 to any of these questions. No one is perfect. If you really think that you are balanced, you can say 4.5 or 5.5. I know myself. I am a 6. I lean more towards collaboration and incorporating the ideas of others into the game. That's not perfect. Maybe I should be tougher, but I lean towards inclusion. The interviewee may say that they are an 8. And maybe 8 is the right match for that particular role.

2. Optimism: "On a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 is 'Game Dev is hell, it's never gonna get finished, why bother?' and 10 is 'Game Dev is amazing. Everything always works out so that all team members are happy.' Where do you see yourself?" Admittedly this one fluctuates for me from 3 right up to 9 on a daily basis.

3. Respect:"What's the most difficult piece of communication that you've had to share with a colleague? How did you do it?" Ugh! I had to fire someone. I've had to lay people off. It's hard. For the firing, I had legal advice and written documentation to back me up as I informed the team member in a clinical manner. Laying people off, I was straightforward, professional, and compassionate.

4. Communication: "On a scale of 1 to 10 where 1 is 'Why should I tell you what I'm doing? My department is independent.' and 10 is 'I spent my entire week drafting meeting notes then calling every team member and incorporating their comments about my meeting notes. So I didn't get my work done.' Where do you see yourself?" I'm a 6. I think it's important to document and share any decisions and actions so that the rest of the team knows what happened. I immediately write the notes briefly in bullet points while the meeting is fresh in my mind, publish them, and make a note of being open for any corrections. Once I publish, I don't think about the notes except as a resource going forward.

4) During onboarding, re-emphasize the collaborative nature of the company. Share the meeting notes from the team’s previous feedback and communication workshops. Let them know who has been working on specific tasks and how long team members have been working together.

Let the new employee know the pillars of the game and the pillars of the company. Let them know how each team member is supporting those pillars.

Thoughts about this issue? Have you had it come up with your small team? With a team of volunteers? Let me know.

cindi@cindiknapton.com