So What Matters Most to You?
I've been hobbling on a sprained ankle this week, which forced me to sit still and think for the first couple of days until the pain subsided. I started out thinking about an online casual game we're working on. Three stream-of-consciousness links later I remembered a lunch I had with a friend of mine a few years ago.
A Case Study
Here's the problem he wanted to discuss, altered in a number of places so my friends won't recognize who was at that lunch!
My friend is a producer for a major publisher. The project was a high-profile RTS for the PC. The game had innovative game play, a decent budget, and as an internal project it was on track for a good marketing push when it shipped. In short, the title would get a fair chance at being discovered and bought by gamers. It could be a hit.
Not all projects are that lucky. A lot of games compete just to get noticed, to rise above the noise level and even get considered by consumers.
The lead environment artist on the project was talented and understood games. He worked well with the lead animator and the other artists, and was the de facto art director for the project since the other art leads looked up to him and there was no project AD.
The levels had variety and the terrain looked natural. But on one level there was a problem. The colors of several primary units blended into the background and they were hard to see. The manager had noticed it, but said nothing and let it go for a week to see what comments they got from the first in-house playtests. "Units are hard to see on Level X" came up on the playtest feedback.
The manager asked the artist to change the colors of the level so the units would be displayed clearly against the background. The artist refused -- to him the level looked perfectly fine. They went back and forth, and the manager was unsure what to do. This was their first project together and after several months it was the first time they'd ever hit an impasse. He asked the environments lead to think about it but, given the defensive tone, did not give a direct order to make the changes.
The Manager's Dilemma
So we're sitting at lunch and the frustrated manager is running through his choices. As usual, I had no magical answers, so I spent most of the time asking him questions.
In the end, I suggested he sit down alone in a room and rank "the list of things you want to be true at the end of the project." I think it works best when written on Yellow Stickies, so you can move them around easily. Once you look at the final, ranked list it usually tells you what you need to do next.
Postscript: A reader made a good comment that this implies the manager may choose to tell the artist to shut up and do what he's told. How the final decision is crafted and shared is a topic for another day. In this case the artist had a history of being reasonable and this felt like a strange exception. IMHO a longer, thoughtful private discussion between the two should precede any final decision. By the time this manager took me to lunch those long talks had already happened.
Here are some things that might have been on his list, in no particular order:
How would you have ranked the list above if you were the Producer?
Are you struggling with a tough issue on your project? What happens if you list all the things you want to be true at the end of the project and rank them based on their importance?
Often that ranked list suggests changes in how you're running a project. What would you do differently next Monday morning if you were actually going to implement those priorities in all your actions and decisions?
If you're not willing to make those changes next Monday morning, why not?
Copyright (c) 2009, Don Daglow.
Comments