I'm by no means a game dev, but I used to do volunteer illustrator work for an indie visual novel game. It was a miserable experience: the lead wanted to conrol everything. She wanted every artwork to be made precisely according to her vision, with her monitoring the whole process... which wasn't doable with the number of assets we needed. By the end of it, our meetings were awkward and I really stopped giving a damn, even though I joined out of genuine passion for the story. Really, if you want the project to be all you you you, just make everything yourself.
Creativity Inc talks about the "Brain Trust" at Pixar where a group of directors continually reviews a film in progress and gives problem statements (not solutions!) to the director of the current film, and it's that director's responsibility to address it in some way. Programmers are very good at solving problems (or should be). When we are told to implement something without an understanding of why, it will likely not address the actual problem the implementation was designed to fix.
It feels like the need to "always succeed" has increased over the years. The time to cultivate team members' ability to learn from trial and error feels lessened.
Funnily enough that senior scenario you used as an example is happening to me now. I was brought onto a project to help out, Small amount of task which are easy to complete and should give us enough time to trouble shoot problem areas and optimise but I'm being hamstrung by management due to control. So effectively I have my hands tied behind my back getting stabbed to death by time rather than being trusted to do my day to day which they haven't done in a long time and what started a nice deadline challenge to work towards has become my day of freedom and onto a project where I'm trusted to do what I'm paid for. Keep up the good videos Mark and covering subjects this industry pretends are not a problem.
A tool that has worked for me in the past is reviewing completed work as a team. Talk about what we like about it and what can use improvement/iteration (facilitating it in a way to avoid negatively charged words like "bad"). This, obviously, is not feasible for every feature but you as a leader get to decide what features need revision, and your team can figure out a better solution and iterate upon it. The occasional "this is fantastic" comment on a pull request does wonders too.
I also want to point out that sometimes these things happen... and it can be nobodies' fault! I had a scenario where a lead was just that good at their job and everyone went to them for advice. There wasn't any insecurity (that I could see anyway), but things just happened to fall in place. Fortunately (or unfortunately), this lead had to be away for a time and let me tell you... it was painful. The team had to learn to be a team again and it was a challenge to attempt to delegate and build confidence in a team that didn't know it was lacking
Its an interesting topic to think about. On one hand you have games made by Hideo Kojima where it really is just him using people to make his game while on the other hand you have the style you mentioned. While I think Hideo Kojima's games are cool I have to wonder if tge developers there have learned helplessness.
I remember reading the work evaluation of someone very close to me with very high praise for the work they've done but there was a negative side about the inability to delegate tasks. And this stuck with me for many years. I don't think I'm very good at it either but I still keep that in mind. Delegating is the first step of fostering trust, specially with a new team.
What ? Trust ??? You mean that I shouldn't look over the shoulder of every director, every lead, and every member of my team to make sure the work is being done ?! Clearly you must be mistaken and what you say doesn't apply to ME ! I'm a great leader of projects. And I know everything. We only lost 40% of our workforce to burnout last cycle, that's how good I am !!!
My personal philosophy is to let people make mistake, but the questions is.. how many mistakes we can afford to make? I struggle with this questions for a long time. I've worked as an HR professional for a big old-style corpo. A lot of old people holding on to their positions, need a lot of regenerations which will not going to happen when these older more experienced people do not trust younger people to replace them and they're unwilling to let the younger people to learn from mistakes. But older generation accept no less than Flawless performance. Anyway, I think culture of trust is important and people should be afforded enough opportunity to make mistakes. It's the only way most people learns. On topic of mistakes.... I've been thinking a lot of BioWare history, especially this last 15 years. I personally think BioWare should've learn some important stuff from Making Andromeda and Anthem. But what shown in the gameplay trailer, while alleviate some doubts still leave a lot of things that I really worried that you guys haven't learn anything from Anthem/Andromeda. Dragon Age should be unapologetically cRPG. Newer fans, even console folk will learn how to navigate its abstract system, Baldur's gate 3 has proven that it's possible. Instead we're following Mass Effect. x) Less Dialogue options (hopefully this is just because we only seen a glimpse of the actual size of the game). x) Combat system that lean too much to the action category (I will not be using that manual aim bow, I've been playing RPG for the last 15 years specifically because I physically nauseated by fast paced action combat, this is not an insult, It's an actual condition I am having). x) And the tone, boy, I understand it's a post-blight and post-rift world but since it's going to be a mature game with the nudity, the violence need to be dialled up. I hope, the next gameplay trailer/teaser show these important RPG aspect, show us the dialogue, show us how the differential going to affect our playthrough, show us the RPG system, not just 80% of nothing gameplay where the player seems to be constantly doing basic attack (while the ability already cooled down!) and 3 (tops!) dialogue option in overly cinematic cutscene. We need a clear W before the release, do not let this franchise die like so many others.
Respectfully sir if they flew to Cali fot a scavenger hunt n not preorders are live revealing a September release. Thats gon be my 13th reason. Nov got avowed (leaked for nov 12th) n ac shadows. Oct got SH2 Remake Dragon Ball n Life is strange double exposure...
I can admit that when I have been a manager, I’ve failed at this very thing. Oddly enough, I know full well what it feels like to be a victim of it. It is very destructive and demoralizing.
I definitely don't trust the team in charge of Veil Guard at this point. Reducing party by one? No direct control of them? 3 abilities? ARPG? Disney demons and darkspawn? Holy fuck. I'm not anti-woke either, Dorian was one of my favorite characters and incredibly well written but I knew as soon as I saw those shades appear, Varric say "we got company" - we went Disney Stars to this franchise, the game play did not redeem the first trailer, it just solidified that the franchise has forgotten what it is. Andromeda, Anthem and now Veilguard, it legitimately looks like 3 flops in a row.
@@MarkDarrah Probably a pass at this point. The game needs more direction so it's a somewhat consistent experience from game to game. Ex. Dark Souls 1, they changed the formula Dark Souls 2, got shit for it, changed back in Dark Souls 3. Now in other games from the publisher UI, flow, tone etc for Bloodbourne, Elden Ring etc, it's pretty well similar and that's across multiple game titles. Dragon Age is the same game franchise and it's so confusing for the fans of the series because we have no idea what we're going to get in any given game. I'm not one of the homophobes or anything either. Dorian was easily one of the best written companions in the series. I don't care that the franchise is "woke". Each game, I still felt like it was Dragon Age at it's core, it had soul. I was a bit cheesed we lost abilities and were reduced to 8 in Inquisition but enjoyed it anyway. A massive fan of the franchise, bought novels, DLC, both volumes of Thedas, I am just pissed that as a fan, I feel like an afterthought.
I'm by no means a game dev, but I used to do volunteer illustrator work for an indie visual novel game. It was a miserable experience: the lead wanted to conrol everything. She wanted every artwork to be made precisely according to her vision, with her monitoring the whole process... which wasn't doable with the number of assets we needed. By the end of it, our meetings were awkward and I really stopped giving a damn, even though I joined out of genuine passion for the story. Really, if you want the project to be all you you you, just make everything yourself.
yup
Creativity Inc talks about the "Brain Trust" at Pixar where a group of directors continually reviews a film in progress and gives problem statements (not solutions!) to the director of the current film, and it's that director's responsibility to address it in some way. Programmers are very good at solving problems (or should be). When we are told to implement something without an understanding of why, it will likely not address the actual problem the implementation was designed to fix.
yes. the more context that can be provided the better.
Too many managers are worried about information control beyond any rationality
It feels like the need to "always succeed" has increased over the years. The time to cultivate team members' ability to learn from trial and error feels lessened.
Yes but I’m not sure where it’s coming from
This is good advice for any manager, in any industry, and us worker bees appreciate it.
Hope it helps
Funnily enough that senior scenario you used as an example is happening to me now. I was brought onto a project to help out, Small amount of task which are easy to complete and should give us enough time to trouble shoot problem areas and optimise but I'm being hamstrung by management due to control.
So effectively I have my hands tied behind my back getting stabbed to death by time rather than being trusted to do my day to day which they haven't done in a long time and what started a nice deadline challenge to work towards has become my day of freedom and onto a project where I'm trusted to do what I'm paid for.
Keep up the good videos Mark and covering subjects this industry pretends are not a problem.
Thank you
A tool that has worked for me in the past is reviewing completed work as a team. Talk about what we like about it and what can use improvement/iteration (facilitating it in a way to avoid negatively charged words like "bad"). This, obviously, is not feasible for every feature but you as a leader get to decide what features need revision, and your team can figure out a better solution and iterate upon it. The occasional "this is fantastic" comment on a pull request does wonders too.
With a constructive culture this can work great
I also want to point out that sometimes these things happen... and it can be nobodies' fault! I had a scenario where a lead was just that good at their job and everyone went to them for advice. There wasn't any insecurity (that I could see anyway), but things just happened to fall in place. Fortunately (or unfortunately), this lead had to be away for a time and let me tell you... it was painful. The team had to learn to be a team again and it was a challenge to attempt to delegate and build confidence in a team that didn't know it was lacking
Very good point.
Great advice! And holy schmokes, that outro music! Off to headbang.
I can't land on music that fit conistently
@@MarkDarrah I wasn't complaining, it was kinda lit.
@@MarkDarrah Try Swedish Death Metal, Stockholm in particular ;-)
Its an interesting topic to think about. On one hand you have games made by Hideo Kojima where it really is just him using people to make his game while on the other hand you have the style you mentioned.
While I think Hideo Kojima's games are cool I have to wonder if tge developers there have learned helplessness.
Likely there is a cultural impact as well
I remember reading the work evaluation of someone very close to me with very high praise for the work they've done but there was a negative side about the inability to delegate tasks.
And this stuck with me for many years. I don't think I'm very good at it either but I still keep that in mind. Delegating is the first step of fostering trust, specially with a new team.
Delegating is like coding in a very high level language
What ? Trust ??? You mean that I shouldn't look over the shoulder of every director, every lead, and every member of my team to make sure the work is being done ?!
Clearly you must be mistaken and what you say doesn't apply to ME ! I'm a great leader of projects. And I know everything.
We only lost 40% of our workforce to burnout last cycle, that's how good I am !!!
Well done. Keep up the good work
My personal philosophy is to let people make mistake, but the questions is.. how many mistakes we can afford to make? I struggle with this questions for a long time. I've worked as an HR professional for a big old-style corpo. A lot of old people holding on to their positions, need a lot of regenerations which will not going to happen when these older more experienced people do not trust younger people to replace them and they're unwilling to let the younger people to learn from mistakes. But older generation accept no less than Flawless performance.
Anyway, I think culture of trust is important and people should be afforded enough opportunity to make mistakes. It's the only way most people learns.
On topic of mistakes.... I've been thinking a lot of BioWare history, especially this last 15 years. I personally think BioWare should've learn some important stuff from Making Andromeda and Anthem. But what shown in the gameplay trailer, while alleviate some doubts still leave a lot of things that I really worried that you guys haven't learn anything from Anthem/Andromeda.
Dragon Age should be unapologetically cRPG. Newer fans, even console folk will learn how to navigate its abstract system, Baldur's gate 3 has proven that it's possible. Instead we're following Mass Effect.
x) Less Dialogue options (hopefully this is just because we only seen a glimpse of the actual size of the game).
x) Combat system that lean too much to the action category (I will not be using that manual aim bow, I've been playing RPG for the last 15 years specifically because I physically nauseated by fast paced action combat, this is not an insult, It's an actual condition I am having).
x) And the tone, boy, I understand it's a post-blight and post-rift world but since it's going to be a mature game with the nudity, the violence need to be dialled up.
I hope, the next gameplay trailer/teaser show these important RPG aspect, show us the dialogue, show us how the differential going to affect our playthrough, show us the RPG system, not just 80% of nothing gameplay where the player seems to be constantly doing basic attack (while the ability already cooled down!) and 3 (tops!) dialogue option in overly cinematic cutscene.
We need a clear W before the release, do not let this franchise die like so many others.
Dragon age hasn’t “been an unapologetic cRPG” since DAO. It hasn’t been trying to be that either
Respectfully sir if they flew to Cali fot a scavenger hunt n not preorders are live revealing a September release. Thats gon be my 13th reason. Nov got avowed (leaked for nov 12th) n ac shadows. Oct got SH2 Remake Dragon Ball n Life is strange double exposure...
Huh?
I can admit that when I have been a manager, I’ve failed at this very thing. Oddly enough, I know full well what it feels like to be a victim of it. It is very destructive and demoralizing.
It can be hard to avoid. You don't want to fail either
I definitely don't trust the team in charge of Veil Guard at this point.
Reducing party by one? No direct control of them? 3 abilities? ARPG? Disney demons and darkspawn?
Holy fuck.
I'm not anti-woke either, Dorian was one of my favorite characters and incredibly well written but I knew as soon as I saw those shades appear, Varric say "we got company" - we went Disney Stars to this franchise, the game play did not redeem the first trailer, it just solidified that the franchise has forgotten what it is.
Andromeda, Anthem and now Veilguard, it legitimately looks like 3 flops in a row.
Hopefully as you see more, you change your mind.
But if not, at least you aren't buying something you won't like
@@MarkDarrah Probably a pass at this point.
The game needs more direction so it's a somewhat consistent experience from game to game. Ex. Dark Souls 1, they changed the formula Dark Souls 2, got shit for it, changed back in Dark Souls 3. Now in other games from the publisher UI, flow, tone etc for Bloodbourne, Elden Ring etc, it's pretty well similar and that's across multiple game titles.
Dragon Age is the same game franchise and it's so confusing for the fans of the series because we have no idea what we're going to get in any given game.
I'm not one of the homophobes or anything either. Dorian was easily one of the best written companions in the series. I don't care that the franchise is "woke".
Each game, I still felt like it was Dragon Age at it's core, it had soul. I was a bit cheesed we lost abilities and were reduced to 8 in Inquisition but enjoyed it anyway. A massive fan of the franchise, bought novels, DLC, both volumes of Thedas, I am just pissed that as a fan, I feel like an afterthought.
What if they are the director and they release a terrible AAA game demo?
Why wasn't that fixed before now?
Keep watching
@@MarkDarrah I am a fan of your work especially these instructional videos. I trust your opinion so I hold out hope.