Leveling Up Your Creative ProcessJAMIE GOTCHSUBATOMIC STUDIOS

Who Am I? 10+ years game industry

experience. During that time, I have worked on a

variety of games: Real-Time Strategy (RTS) Massive Multiplayer Online (MMO) First-Person Shooters (FPS) Action

In 2008, released a Tower Defense iPhone game called Fieldrunners.

As a result of Fieldrunners’ success, I formed a mobile game company called Subatomic Studios.

Why is this relevant? All of these companies shared a very

common problem!

Setting the Stage We have all been part of a group where a group decision

was needed but there was a strong disagreement as to which decision to take.

How did the final decision get made?

Setting the Stage Building a creative, innovative work is never easy. Innovation is highly subjective. Innovation requires iteration—something that makes

planning difficult. Statements I hear all the time:

“The designers are terrible! They keep changing their minds!” “The designers don’t know what they’re doing!”

Some Background In the beginning:

There was no process to resolve creative conflicts.

In the absence of a process, conflicts were resolved by whomever “shouted” the loudest.

The best idea did not always get chosen, leading to lots of unnecessary iteration.

The frequent iteration had large negative effects on team morale.

Some Background Over time:

New ideas and opinions were no longer being communicated because they were not “worth” the argument.

Team members became complacent, worn down by having to put up a fight for their ideas to be heard.

This indirectly led to a creative dictatorship. With the team less involved in the creative process, there

was less communication, leading to more mistakes in implementation and requiring even more iteration that could have been avoided.

This put a lot of pressure and responsibility on the creative dictator, occasionally leading to rash decisions and, ultimately, more mistakes.

Some Background Over time:

In an effort to improve team morale, and to reduce unnecessary iteration time, the process was changed.

All designated team members would discuss and vote on all creative decisions.

Unfortunately, due to trust issues between the creative dictator and the creative team, many team decisions were overruled.

Thus bringing us back to the old creative dictatorship.

Some Background Eventually:

We hired someone with experience in establishing creative processes.

After reworking our creative processes: Team communication drastically improved. Everyone was better

informed and understood the game they were building. Because everyone had an opportunity to voice their ideas, morale

increased. Bad ideas were filtered out early, avoiding lots of unnecessary iteration.

Some Background This is not uncommon in the creative industry. Many companies struggle to define and enforce

a strict creative process. If the leaders or the team members do not trust

or follow the creative process, it will not work.

Various Ways to Make Decisions

Brute Force Autocratic Consensus Democratic Delegated Experts

Brute Force Team members argue

until everyone gets tired of arguing and gives up the fight.

The most aggressive person typically gets their way.

Autocratic Leader takes control and responsibility of the

final decision. Team members are not included in the decision.

Consensus The leader gives up

complete control and responsibility of the decision.

All decision-making is left up to the team members.

Everyone must agree and come to the same decision.

This may take a while but the decisions are among the best since it involves the ideas and skills of many people.

Delegated Experts Decision makers cannot be experts in all fields. The decision maker delegates full or partial responsibility

to an expert on the team. The participative leader retains the responsibility of the

final compilation of the draft responses from the experts. Can be a disaster when applied incorrectly.

Democratic Involves a democratic leader that “delegates authority, encourages

participation, and relies on personal power to manage subordinates.” – Wikipedia

Team members take a more participative role in the decision-making process.

“Researchers have found that this learning style is usually one of the most effective and leads to higher productivity, better contributions from group members, and increased group morale.” – Wikipedia

For this to work effectively, it requires a strong leader and good communication skills.

Democratic The biggest risk with this approach occurs when it is poorly executed and

management continually overrules the team decision. I have personally seen this happen most of the time!

Design by committee—“A disparaging term used to describe a project that has many designers involved by no unifying plan or vision.” – Wikipedia

The process does not replace experienced and qualified professionals. E.g., Kasparov versus the World

Disadvantages of Participative Decision-Making

Disadvantages: One person in the group can pressure

others to conform. Timing to come to a final decision. Good ideas might get overlooked due to

meeting time constraints. Negative outcomes:

High-costs Inefficiency Indecisiveness Incompetence

The Wisdom of Crowds According to Surowiecki, not all groups are

“wise”. E.g., mobs, or crazed investors in a stock

market bubble. The key criteria that separates wise crowds

from irrational ones: Diversity of opinion – Each person should

have private information even if it’s just an eccentric interpretation of the known facts.

Independence – People’s opinions aren’t determined by the opinions of those around them.

Decentralization – People are able to specialize and draw on local knowledge.

Aggregation – Some mechanism exists for turning private judgments into a collective decision.

Our Creative Process1. A problem is presented with clearly-defined goals.2. Team members submit proposals to solve the problem.

(Diversity of Opinion/Decentralization)3. Once all proposals are collected, the team reviews and

votes on those proposals in secret ballot fashion. (Independence)

4. A meeting is scheduled to review the results with all voters.5. Votes for anyone not present in the meeting are discarded.6. The proposal scores are unveiled, and averaged.

Our Creative Process7. All proposals are sorted from high-to-low by their

average score.8. The top-rated proposals are kept; all other proposals are

discarded.9. The discussion starts with the proposals that are in most

disagreement. Team members with the lowest and highest values try to convince the other team members to change their vote.

10. The highest vote by a substantial margin at the end of the meeting determines the solution. (Aggregation)

11. If there is no clear winner, the conflicting solutions are further developed. Repeat from step 3.

Our Process Criteria If an idea is not written down, it does not “exist”. The meeting must end with actionable items. When prototyping is necessary, implement most minimal

viable version. JSI RSO – “Jam Stuff In, Rip Stuff Out” – Big Huge Games

Case Study - Design

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Conclusions There is no perfect solution, find what works best

for you and your team! Please learn from our mistakes, and the mistakes

of many others! Trust the process!

Questions & Answers