Game Studio Leadership: You Can Do It

[Music] hey everybody it's five o'clock hope everybody's having a super great GDC for people just coming in there are some seats down the first front rows don't be shy so I gave a talk last year about game studio management and how Studios should be structured and I was surprised to learn that oh I still have a bunch of things that I'd still like to say about that but this year I'm giving a kind of a different talk game studio leadership so this is much more about what you personally as a studio leader things that you should maybe be considering doing it's called game studio leadership you can do it I'm a little nervous because it's all new material but I'm confident that I can do it so it's gonna be fine so just a little bit about my background a long time ago I used to be a circus performer traveling juggler with a number of different troupes like the fry hopper circus troupe right there

and inexplicably I went from there to start becoming a programmer at IBM then I was working at the phone company for a while then I managed to get the phone company to send me to graduate school to learn about virtual reality and that I leveraged into a job at Disney so sorry phone company and then I was I was at Disney for seven years and then I about 15 years ago I moved to Pittsburgh I started teaching at Carnegie Mellon University and also I started a studio called Schell games which started as a small studio and has grown quite a bit so a lot of the lessons I'll be talking about talking about here a lot of its gonna be what I've learned kind of running shell games over the years but also these other organizations that I was a part of were very instructive to me about different ways to deal with leadership in in creative situations here's some footage of what shell games looks like on the inside we got about a hundred and five people we we produce

multiple games at a time typically between 6 and 12 games is not at all unusual for us to be working on if you're wondering how we got that cool footage is very simple just drones flying around inside that's not distracting at all yeah we're not going to keep those up full time we tried it it's it's not it's not good so who's this talk for exactly so it's definitely for people who are interested in taking on some amount of studio leadership or maybe you're already doing some studio leadership I've tried to make it so that it will work for people doing small studios with just a handful of people and also maybe you had a small studio and it got a little bigger and it got a little bigger and oh my god you're really freaking out right now and so growing studios a growth is a very one of the most challenging parts of studio management or maybe you're not really running some independent studio maybe you're part of some large grey entity

but somewhere deep inside that entity you're running a small team and a lot of the same things applying so we'll talk about some of those things as well so I call those embedded studios so when it comes to studio management I often think about airports airports are kind of like snowflakes have you noticed how they're all different like no two airports are alike they're like radically different from each other and some people say that studio management is like airport design no one seems to know the right answer and no matter how you do it people are unhappy and I know that sound you know people say that but I'm here to tell you that no you can do it you can do leadership inside a studio so now why would you do this anyway right why does someone go and go take on the ridiculous endeavor

of starting and trying to run a studio now for some people you know it may be that you just don't like the idea of working for someone else or maybe you tried working for someone else and you got tired of making the wrong games with the wrong people the wrong way right and you have a fantasy about like I'm just gonna cut these chains and I am gonna go out and I'm gonna do things the right way here's a movie to illustrate that we got our audio up there Scott are we good all right [Music] that is the best echo ever I just really like that echo now I know there's a lot of people out there saying yeah no I get it I really that's what I want to do I want to pick up the sword and I want to

go out there and do this but some of you were saying like but I'm not sure Shira I'm not exactly relating to that she was not exactly someone I'm relating to and if you feel that way I would like you to consider that every woman who comes to GDC 95% of the time they see male role models onstage and that's how they feel and so we can all kind of you know think about being Shira like we can we can handle that just for just for one day for for one moment because one thing I really I'm it's exciting we're seeing more women come into the game industry one thing I'm really hoping to see is more and more women running their own studios is that right ladies yeah cuz I'll tell you ladies if anyone can do it you can do it yes actually ladies actually if you don't if you'll indulge me just the ladies right now what I want to get is for the honor of Grayskull on the count of three all right ready one two three

oh that was kind of Awesome sometimes there's parts in the talk that are just for me it's okay that's okay that can be a thing all right so you decided you're gonna start a studio you've got you've got the fantasy you're gonna go and do this so you have the plan so here's the plan simple plan number one build a studio number two make awesome games yes this is the plan excellent plan before we embark upon this plan we should consider what a game actually is right so games interact with the mind right so games are machines that interacts with the minds and this is why they're so hard to make because the mind is super complicated and machines are super fragile but it's cool because when they interact with the mind like amazing stuff happens and the machine produces joy and money right that's amazing so

that's what a game is a machine that interacts with the mind to produce joy and money of course who would not want to make that that's amazing right so how are you gonna do that well you can work on your own but you can only go so far on your own so you got to get some people together right so you get a group of people together and they're gonna work on your game and this sounds great this sounds like a great thing to do that's what building a studio is and this is not easy because unfortunately the world is a chaotic place so in this talk to represent chaos I'm gonna use the ancient Greek symbol for chaos how many people are where's the sharknado all right because the world is full of chaos that wants to rip your studio apart it turns out that game developers want things like they want to eat and have a life and all these things that require money and they require freedom from distractions so chaos can come from an awful lot of places and how are the developers going to deal with this chaos

that's gonna rip apart the game development process they're not you're going to do that that is what you're going to do that's when you picked up the magic sword that was the deal right that you're going to be the one that deals with the chaos so that they can focus on the process of getting the game made and this is the difference between leaders and followers the thing to think about is that what good followers do is they excel in orderly situations an orderly situation is set up the followers are kind of given some kind of marching order and they go and they do it super super super well that's what followers are about leaders on the other hand they need to excel in chaotic situations now everybody does some amount of leading and following anywhere in their job even if you're just sitting down and you're gonna code something up you run into kinds of chaos and you've got to deal with it you've got to take some level of leadership in that but the leadership I'm talking about is the is the leadership that destroys the chaos that

will destroy your studio right that's what you as a studio leader that is your job to kill those sharknadoes that want to rip your studio to pieces and that's tough right because you're like oh my god I don't want to deal with all that chaos that's really hard and that's that's really difficult and I'm here to tell you you can do it you can do it and we'll talk about how you're going to do it okay so how are you going to do it you need to protect the developers from all this chaos and that's what building a studio is a studio is a boundary and a border that kind of finds a way to keep the chaos away so people can focus on making amazing games and one of the main ways are going to do that one of the main things that keeps chaos away is money right if people have money to take care of their their lives and their food and their rent and all that they can focus on doing the things that they love and the chaos can stay away the leading cause of ripping Studios apart isn't

getting not having enough money to kind of get your stuff going so we'll talk a little bit about that but all that goes well then you get rid of the chaos and everybody can focus in you're making amazing games but where you're gonna get this money from right because that's a question and hey before we even talk about where you get the money from we're gonna get the people from like where are these people coming from so maybe we better revisit the plan alright plan want build the studio okay and then what then you're going to protect the studio and you need to protect the studio with money and other things and then you're gonna make awesome games okay so build the studio protect the studio make awesome games let's pause for a moment now to talk about some of the concrete things in terms of building a studio I'm not going to go into a lot of detail about these I'm just gonna kind of skim over it real fast because you can find out about this stuff in other places but if you haven't done it before one of the first things you don't want to start with is getting some kind of lawyer because you need a lawyer to

help you do things you can't do on your own like for example start a legal entity starting a company of some kind you're gonna want to do that because it's a form of protection for you and for your other employees and a lawyer will help you do that likely you're going to want some kind of accountant so you can help get the taxes done and get you know get to get those sorts of things rolling and you're gonna need some kind of payroll service system these things are all easily obtainable anybody who starts like a hairdressing shop or whatever has to do all this you can do it too so I'm not gonna dwell on that you're gonna have the question of office space do you want to you're just gonna work out of your home just work out of Starbucks or you're gonna get some kind of office space that you rent you're gonna have to work that out talk to a real estate agent you'll have the question of insurance is your are you as a studio owner providing health insurance and and all of that of course there's gonna be equipments are people just bringing their own equipment or are you providing equipment and then of course finally you gotta have some people for this studio so there's your quick eight step process to getting a

studio built right there you need to do at a minimum those those eight things and now some people say no no wait a minute wait a minute wait a minute wait a minute wait a minute why are we getting a bunch of people in here we haven't even decided what the studio's doing shouldn't we have like an idea shouldn't we start with like I have this grand vision of the perfect game and then I will go out and get the people for that perfect game and go and do that and that is a way you can go and do that but there's a lot of people who advise it no that's not the right way to do it there's an excellent book that encourage people to check out called good to great it's a study of companies that started out pretty good and eventually became great and stayed great for 10 years or more and it finds patterns between them all that how they all similarly excelled and one of the things that I found is they did not start with an amazing idea that isn't how they be they went at it differently instead of saying I've got a great idea let's get the right people for that idea they instead they use this analogy of a bus right the ideas you could say hey I've

got a bus and it's going to this very specific place let me get people and let's get them on the bus what they say no don't do that get your bus go get the best people you can get them all on the bus and then all look at each other and say now where should we go right because if you have a bunch of smart people together then they're going to do something really smart ideally you're gonna get people smarter than you right and they are gonna do something really smart so one of the one of the principles from that book is first figure out who and then let the right people figure out the right thing to do so that's something to think about something to consider certainly if you're building a game development studio you're going to be having the three main types of game developers sometimes refers to as dwarves elves and men other times referred to as engineering arts and design / marketing / everything else

right and that's sort of a joke but also everyone knows it's like no it is really kind of like that these these are three different groups of people who think about the world in really really different ways and you're going to need those different people and you're going to need to be ready for the fact that they're not going to agree on everything okay so that's fine so you're gonna get a bunch of great people and now now what are you gonna do well one other thing to think about is other ways to look at people you want just you like sure I want great artists on a great engineers but is that enough am I just looking at skills so this I got this interesting formula from Paul Stefano who used to work with a set at Schell games and I found it very interesting and very useful that often the right way to think about developer value don't just think about skills what would Paul suggest it to me and I still believe is very true is that you take skills and you multiply that by enthusiasm and then you multiply that by respectability

now what is respectability that's a crazy word though why would you why would you even say that it's a complicated idea the idea is this the ability to make others feel respected okay not how much respect you show to others necessarily and not how much respect you've earned from them but how much you make other people feel respected and then that sounds a little oblique but I totally agree with Paul that if you give everybody scores on these three numbers from like zero to three and then multiply those three numbers together it gives you a pretty good sense of how much someone's value really is because someone with like a three in skills and a three and enthusiasm in a zero and respectability like has zero or possibly negative value even maybe there should be a negative respectability I don't know so someone who has all twos has an eight someone has all threes has a twenty-seven like it makes a big difference but these are three really important things to think about when you when you're trying to pick the right people and yeah even three and three times three times zero

is zero now a lot of people may have heard Jason Vandenberg in the in past years has talked a lot about the Big Five personality types and this is psychologists in the world don't agree on much but this is one thing they all agree on that when you want to evaluate like what are the types of personalities that people have there are these five spectrum are people more curious or more cautious so the introverts or extroverts are they more nervous or they more secure these opposite ends of the spectrum and then when you can basically do is for almost every individual you can kind of do a little tests and figure out where do they where do they reside on each of these spectra so this leads to a question what personality type is best for game development right and the answer that people figure out pretty quickly is like no they all of these things have pros and cons being more curious is the pro but it can get you in trouble but being more cautious is a pro but it can also make you too safe right every single one of these has a pro and

has a con and ideally most people quickly realize what they want is they want to cover the spectrum they want a mix of people that will have little red X's in all the parts of all five spectra which that way great we're covering everything we got people who was thinking about risk and people are thinking about adventure you know all of those things with people who like to just stay in and work people like to go out and network that's all great but the important thing to realize is these are all opposites these people are not going to agree with each other right just inherently what we're saying is if the optimal studio covers all these bases the optimal studio is at odds with itself all the time and guess whose problem that is it's your problem right because when you picked up the sword oh my god now that's totally your problem and a related question we often think about what skills do I need what skills do I need I talked about skills and enthusiasms an excellent question is

what enthusiasms do I need what kinds of champions do I need because you sure you have people who are good at this and good at that but what are people excited about maybe someone's not good at playtesting but they're super excited about it and they really want to learn about it and they really are going to defend it protect it maybe someone really cares about user experience maybe someone really cares about marketing the studio right thinking about having a diverse collection of enthusiasm so that you have the right champions in your Studios really important so those are some tips for getting the right people okay so check number one we built a studio we had a lawyer we got great people now we're good so now part two we got to protect to the studio from chaos and we're going to do that by going out and getting some money I keep this little statue in my in my office that I found somewhere because I love it because it's just for me it sums up finances in the game industry perfectly right the money's right there just grab it just go ahead just take the

money it's right there just go and get it right but unfortunately going and getting it is not so easy and even once you do get it and you give it to the developers big they go through it super super fast so money is on your mind a lot if you're if you're gonna be making your own studio and trying to run it so let's talk about the four different ways that you're gonna get money number one scenario one you use your own money you know you're independently wealthy of this big sack of cash you're like let's do it let's let's make this awesome game that's great if you can do that excellent good for you and I've seen a lot of people do that it's often they'll do it by scrimping and saving but they'll do it so let's just talk about how that works so there's your studio and you're gonna put your own money into it and that's great and then boom it starts making games and the games start coming out and that's great and then you've got your big vacuum machine on top and it sucks the money out of those games and then it puts them back in and hopefully this virtuous cycle just keeps going on to

infinity now of course we all know that sometimes that doesn't happen but at a great roundtable this morning people talked about oh we made a game we're so successful and then we got complacent and the money dried up and we got in all kinds of trouble but this is the easiest and best situation so if you're already rich like good congratulations you're in a good position for this but we're not all like that so let's look at scenario 2 which is the work-for-hire scenario and this works this way all right so we've got our studio where's the money come from it's not our money it comes from somebody else somebody says hey make a game for me and then well what happens with this game they you produce the game but it's it's their game not not yours see I made the game's a different color because it belongs to them now and then do I bring down my money pipe and suck the money out no they have their own money pipe and they're gonna suck any money that the games get in that goes away and you don't get any new money for that but at least you got to make games and that's cool and you got to do that so oh look

there's my sad dry money pipe and like nothing's happening with that and some people are like oh I don't like this the whole point of my own studio is so that I don't have to make other people's games and if you feel that way you probably want to avoid work for hire but we're for hire can be really cool you can work with amazing world-class partners and have a great time working with them and then when the projects over and they're going all insane and they're getting ready to lay people off you're like that's we'll go work over here now everything's fine you know good luck guys well we'll let you have that so you can kinda if you enjoy it it can be really great our studio we've done an awful lot of work for hire over the years we but we've stayed completely independent because of that we we've it's not uncommon for us to be doing sixty to eighty percent of what we're doing is work for hire use the profits and then to use those on our own IP is not at all unusual then there's scenario three used to be super common the publisher scenario now it's less common and now it's hard you know hard one but it comes and goes so let's just be clear about how that works as a publisher scenario work there's

your studio and what happens okay they put in a bunch of money but some of it's your money they kind of expect you to put some of your own money in that's kind of they like we we need you to have skin in the game mister shell okay yeah I got it well since that sounds gross but I'll do it and then you make the games and depending on how the deal works right sometimes you own them and sometimes they own them and sometimes you want part of them and so that's negotiable so some games are owned and some aren't and then what happens with the money like you both bring money pipes of different kinds and you have a big wrestling match about money pipes trying to figure out who can get how much and all that and this is the kind of the traditional publisher relationship which can be really nice for studios because it kind of reduces your risk but you still have homerun protection if you got a big hit you can still get really rich off of it and that and that can be that can be pretty nice but publisher deals are harder to secure than they used to be and then scenario four or investments all right how's this work alright I got my studio it's all

somebody else's money you know you might put your own money and but you probably won't right so somebody else has brought their money and this is great this sounds good so far I don't have to worry about my own money and what do they want in exchange oh my god right oh it's suddenly it's not your studio anymore well you still have part of it but most of it is gonna be theirs or maybe I know there's gonna be a big fight about who owns how much of a studio and then your producing games and you own some and they own some you know the money pipe like sucks the money back in and that's pretty cool but like wait now whose money is this now that it's not totally my studio anymore now it depends on how you work that out right and the idea of majority control and who has who owns more than half of the studio ends up being really really crucial and it's really hard for game studios to get investor money sometimes because investors generally are coming from the tech sector they're not thinking about games as games they're thinking about games as a platform how was your game a platform I don't hear about the game on here but your platform

right and what do they want they want 10x right 10x what does that mean it means well if I give you 2 million dollars I expect to see 20 million dollars back for my investment oh my god that's a lot really your game is that good they're gonna put in 2 million and get 20 million out you've got to be pretty bold to be able to go and tell them that story but people do it all the time right in case you're not case you're not clear about 10x means it's this many like it's a it's it's a lot of money's it's it's a lot but particularly if you've got a platform story it can be very valid and it can work out really well in a lot of scenarios so those are the four main scenarios for raising money now some people do just one some people mix and match and then there's others we didn't talk about crowdfunding and I didn't talk about that because almost nobody can survive purely on that people use that as a supplement you might also get grant funding for something you do right and that can be a supplement but again nobody can subsist entirely on

that and so if you're gonna keep the studio going over over time you're gonna have to be thinking about this a lot and if you don't like thinking about money and you really don't enjoy it well then you need to do something different um let me ask you does anyone know who that is say again Walt Disney ladies not Walt Disney that's a good guess though a close relation right right you know anybody recognizes Walt Disney but who recognizes Roy Disney right Roy was there with Walt every step of the way when they created the studio back in the 20s it was the Disney Brothers Studio Roy was more or less the CEO of that place almost the entire time but he realized that having Walt as a frontman was a better way to get business because Roy was a consummate businessman he knew how to make the money work and Walt sure as hell did not write Walt was bad with money he was a creative genius who want

to do these incredible beautiful things and when it came to money it was he was this kind of a scary disaster but Roy was there to kind of deal with the money so you've got to think about like are you cool are you like into the game of like getting the money and dealing with that if you are that's fine do that if you're not get some help because you're going to need the help because it's never easy okay so we got the people and somehow we got the money awesome finally Studios done studios protected now I can get to what I've always wanted I'm gonna make awesome games I'm not going to make awesome games what is happening no no you're not because you run the studio now and that's not your job anymore you have a new job your job is optimized the studio that's your job and you know like but wait a minute wait a minute wait a minute I've got my people and

I've got my game everyone knows a great game is the most important thing that's my top priority no it's not your number-one priority is making sure that your team has everything they need to make a great game your number two priority is making sure that game is great so let me just make that clear your team's top priority is making the game grade your top priority is making the team great because if you're not going to do it who's gonna do it there's no one else who's going to do it and that has to be your priority and again if you're not up for that if you're not ready for that you want to think twice about really am I the one who's really gonna run the studio because it's the primary responsibility of leading a studio team and it's tough man because the team wants all these things they want all this stuff and if they don't have the stuff they're not happy and if they're not happy you don't have a good game and everything is bad they want so

many things oh my god they want like an alphabet of things right it's actually not a whole alphabet it's weirdly a half of an alphabet technically a halfa bet also known this one particular is the health a bit of happiness TM and you're like I don't want to solve these problems I don't want to I got to find ways to get people excited about their work and make sure they like each other and coach them and just really that's you know what I when you picked up that sword you signed up and when you're like what do they expect for me really they expect me to do all this this is what they expect they did because when you picked it up you know what you said you said I'm a superhero that's what you said and that's what they expect now you know you're not a superhero I know you're not a superhero and they kind of know that too but they

expect you to be one anyway right that's what they expect because and when you're a superhero every problem is your problem every problem at the studio it's like well you can't say like well that's their problem though it's all your problem it all goes to you right and that sounds terrifying and daunting but guess what you can do it you totally can so I'm gonna give you practical tips on how to be a superhero now right practical superhero tips number one you want to get organized get yourself organized a lot of people are like wait I'm a creative person I don't like organization is death organization is the end of the world is terrible it's not right I like what Flaubert had to say be regular and orderly in your life so you may be violent and original in your work right being orderly is a way to be powerful or as Alton Brown says organization will set you free and who's your main enemy the sharknado the opposite of chaos is

order you want to find ways to be orderly when you were orderly you protect your studio from the chaos that will rip it apart so even if it's not in your nature find ways to be orderly and I'll give you some tips one get a notebook because your memory it sucks people like hey you need to do this oh yeah I'll remember to do that no you won't you totally Ward you got a million things to think about your brain can think about five things at a time if you're lucky right so getting a book I really recommend the book getting things done it's a little out of date in practical wise but philosophy wise it really is great at helping you become an organized person note the subtitle the art of stress-free productivity because that's the goal to be orderly in a stress-free way and get everything done at a minimum you're gonna want a to-do list of course so that you remember to do things you're gonna of course you're gonna have a notebook for general notes about this and that but you're also going to need a hot list and it took me a long time to understand about a hot list I've been using the same notebook now for 20 years I've had this notebook

I realized really 20 years the same exact notebook it's one of these notebooks we can take the pages in and out so you can reorganize it and you'd see how I've done it here I've got a bunch of tabs on the front page those are all the different things I have to keep track of some of them are people that I have to coach and manage some of our projects I need to keep an eye on and then so I have a page for each one you see a sample page there on the right and look I keep it really simple what a hot list is it's not stuff I have to do it's stuff that I have to keep an eye on that I have to remember to keep checking with the team about like I'll see you're thinking I'm like boo those textures are ugly and I'll say when are you gonna fix those textures like on and I'm pretty soon maybe next week so you're right down ugly textures right and you put a little note next week they say they're gonna they're gonna fix it so that way when we check in with the team they're like anything you want to check on I'm like oh yeah those ugly textures did you fix those yet right so you remember to do that so having a hot list is very important I'm a pet paper-and-pencil kind of guy and so again in terms of being organized one things I always say

being organized is reaching for the ketchup and it is there right so that's what what organization is right it's not like you forgot to get to catch up or you lost it or anything so it's very important I need an eraser for this I know that sounds stupid but I'm always you write things and then you array status things but who has a pencil and eraser with them I do because it's taped in the notebook right it's it's always it's always right there I like I can't possibly lose it it's always right there and when that thing you have to do that but you have to come up with your systems the systems that are going to work for you you gonna think of things all the time write them down keep a notepad by the bed if you don't do that oh my god keep a notepad by the bed and why would you just keep it by the bed like you're shaving or whatever why wouldn't you have one in the medicine cabinet you think of so many smart things then you're like oh I'll remember that later you won't write it down and get it into notepad that goes somewhere and yes yes this is totally a thing in the shower one day I was like oh my god waterproof paper that would be genius I should invent it someone already invented it so

keep a waterproof paper pad in the shower cuz you think of things in the shower you know you really important things write them down all right so get organized you're like ooh who does that a superhero that's who does that alright so another practical tip running a studio it's so tempting to run around fire fighting all the time there's sharknadoes breaking everything and causing fires all over the place and you've got to help this and you got to fix this you got to fix that and it feels so productive when you're like putting out all these fires but when you're doing that you're not moving forward you're just barely getting by what you need is to find time so you can think ahead of like what happens next what is this studio and you do next who do we need to hire next you need time for that you need to get beyond firefighting mode okay and there's a lot of ways to do that one of them is to make time for yourself on my calendar every morning from 9:00 to 10:00 is a block it just says important work during that period I am not allowed to look at email I am only allowed to do things on

my to-do list which are things that are kind of for getting out ahead of things I can't I don't always hit it every day but trying to have that this one makes such a difference and makes things much much calmer delegating is one of the hardest things for people you started your own studio because you wanted to do everything you want everything to be perfect your way but you can't do everything and pretty soon your people are going to start to hate you because stuffs not getting done because you're the bottleneck right and you don't want that and you need to make time to do the important things so you need to start experimenting with delegating getting other people to do things and figuring out what are the tasks you want to hold on to and what are the tests you want to give to others another important one keep doing what you're best at now I know I just said no you can't work on the game anymore you got a focus on the people well of course the people are your top responsibilities but you're doing this because you have some genius with games there's something you're super good at don't give it up because you're still good at it find a

way that you can still do the parts that you're best at your team expects that from you it's your superpower it's one of your superpowers your team expects you to bring that thing you're best at and find a way to get that in there being humble is super important it's real easy to pick up that sword and get real arrogant and it leads to a downfall every single time it leads to people not telling you the truth it leads to all kinds of problems and what do we call a superhero who's not humble a villain right you might be a supervillain and you don't know it and no one's gonna tell you because you're such an arrogant pain in the ass right and then that that's that's never good so you want to be humble important take care you're you're now gonna be super busy you're gonna be so busy you're doing this job 60 out 80 hours a week whatever it can be easy to run yourself into the ground and get a lot of bad habits you need to find your healthy self find a way to kind of get healthy habits in your life because

everybody needs you to do that an unhealthy superhero you know who's coughing and wheezing down the street and hyperventilating every time something goes wrong it's like that's not gonna work for you and a phrase I got from Jeff outlaw one of the one of the senior producer at our studio you eat last okay think of a situation we're bringing pizza and we're having a big brainstorming party did we order enough pizza I don't know probably we did everybody's lining up getting pizza imagine a situation where like you eat first and then there's not enough pizza for somebody else and then there you are you know run in the studio and you're eating pizza and other people are like oh man I'm sorry I was late I was fixing all these bugs that we only have because the deadlines were so short and like and what happens is people notice what you do they notice they're always going to tell you that they notice they notice what they do because they expect more from you than they expect from the other people they work with because you picked

up that sore they expect more from you so you need to always remember like I put the everyone else first because that's what superheroes do okay so there's some superhero tips so let's get to the health of bet of happiness we can do this we're gonna go through these and do these things now they're hard and I know they're icky and I know they're gross do I have to do them yes you do because you're holding a sword so who else is going to do it one way to think about why these are so important and and what's important about them for people any was taking a basic psychology class has run into Maslow's hierarchy of needs we often talk about it in terms of players and storytelling but do you think about it in terms of the people in your studio it's very very relevant and valid right at the bottom or your basic physiological needs and you say well what does that have to do with my studio how do you think people pay for like food and water and when people crunch and they're not sleeping you're like taking away one of their basic physiological needs and then after that there's psychological needs and you're

like well what a you know family friendship whatever what is that to do with anything when you've got your staff like working 60 hours a week and they can't maintain their family relationships very well like they've got all kinds of troubles and problems because the whole point of this hierarchy is the stuff at the top can't happen unless the stuff lower down is taken care of and what's at the top at the very top we have like people achieving their full potential right and ended and in doing creative activities how are they going to be great game developers if the things underneath are like falling apart in their lives they can do it for a little while but they can't sustain it and so you need to always keep an eye out for like dude does everyone have all their needs fulfill and even look at that level for esteem needs like if you're just barking at the team all the time and they're feeling like oh man yeah geez I guess maybe we do kind of suck like again they're not going to be their best creative cells so some concrete's things that you can do alright hey adequate salary well that's not

straightforward people need to get paid and then but the problem is now it's your job to figure out how much is that how much should people get paid here's my pro tip ask them right so you know how much how much would you be looking to make at this job they'll tell you and if you're like oh like we can afford that then you say yeah okay that's great and if you're thinking oh oh no we can then you figure out well well what can we get for it and you tell them and they'll decide right and that way either way like they decided yeah okay I'm doing it and then you'll be starting on a basis of some kind of adequate salary you know it's an it's it's a simple but important thing second one people need to believe in what they're doing especially in something like games games it's a passion based industry and they need to believe in the mission not just the mission of this particular game like where's this studio going what are we doing after this game what is this place really all about I was working at a

place once and I asked the boss that I'm like what what exactly is our goal and he's like you know I don't know make cool stuff I don't know and it was so unsatisfying to realize my god he has no plan we're just gonna drift around from one thing to the next that doesn't feel great I want to feel like I'm part of something important now some people say oh really I'm gonna make a mission statement that sounds like the most corporate thing ever and yet if you make a crap mission statement it is right but you should are you doing this for an important reason or not and the answer might be no I'm not doing it for an important reason but if you are you should be able to say what that is that's the mission statement now it's takes some thinking and it takes some work and it takes some some bravery to be able to do it I really recommend reading this book the advantage by Patrick Lencioni is it is short and it is great it is all about that the main advantage an organization can have is to be healthy and he gives all these tips and one of them is about coming up with clear mission statements clear core values clear principles and

so following the template of that one of the things like we've done at our studio is we have you know we have this little sheet right here where we have our clear mission statement our clear core values we have a bunch of principles I'm not going to get into all those and you'll notice at the bottom top priority right now and this is our current studio priority which we decided is protect and leverage our VRA our momentum now you might say one priority like yeah you can only have one top priority that's how top-priority works and so there I labeled everything and that's that's the thing and if you want to download these slides later you can you can check all that stuff out as a sample and but the important thing is that you have these discussions with yourself and with the team to figure out what are we about what is important to us and guess what you can change them later if you realize that you picked the wrong ones you can do that it's okay but you need to be brave enough to step up and say this is what we're about and say it in front of everybody and get them to believe it and it's tough right because

if people are scared to put these principles down because this means oh my god what if I don't always do these this means I'm gonna be a hypocrite and people will call me out yes that's right they will people will call you out for going against your own values you want that to happen you want that to happen it's helpful it hurts but it helped it's helpful culture is really important everyone that says culture is so important how do you engineer on an excellent culture you can't engineer an excellent culture cultures grow that's what cultures do they grow from the how people interact with each other and so that starts with you how do you interact with everybody else and then how do they interact with each other that's all the culture is and so focus on those interactions and you'll have an excellent culture it's not about any way of jelly beans in the break room it's not about that it's about how people interact with each other a big part of your job is removing distractions one of the horrible things sharknados can chrome about crop up inside the studio they don't all come

from outside you can get two people together who just don't get along and suddenly you have chaos and that's your problem to solve so chaos can come from anywhere and you have to keep an eye out for it you need to look for it and you need to find ways to deal with it people always say oh I hated working at that one place because it has so much politics what is politics politics is one person wants to tell something to someone else but they can't they're just there they're afraid to where they have this reason and they that reason they can't tell them so they go and tell other people oh did you hear what that guy said and this and that that's when politics begins you need to look for that and weed that out and not let that happen and of course it can come from you yourself and you have to watch for that great advice from Ed Catmull another excellent book creativity Inc his tale of how Pixar was created and formed and he has all these leadership lessons in there a lot of great quotes in that book you have problems you know and problems you don't know and

realizing this realize and of course we all know we have problems we know and we're trying to fix those problems but acknowledging that you also have problems you don't know means you're going to keep an eye out for problems that you're like not even aware of yet it's very important and the other phrase uses the good hides the bad when things are going really well at the studio no one wants to tell you about some crappy situation where there's a fight between the art and engineering department because people feel bad that they've got this crappy thing going on when everything's so good because when things are good when things are bad everyone will talk about all the bad things when things are good the good things hide the bad things so don't fall under the illusion like Oh everything seems to be going so well you still must weed out these hidden problems and a very important thing he mentions only the leaders can remake the rules of the studio sometimes you have rules written or unwritten at the studio that are broken and bad and the the most of the people the studio can't do anything about it it's just they don't see it as something within their power it's only

within your power and capital tells this great story about this really bad design table they had that was long and skinny and the people who sat in the middle of it were the important people and people on the ends didn't really get to participate very much and everyone knew it was bad but no one would say anything because they were like obviously management likes this because that's why they put this table here right and eventually they had to realize oh my god we have to change this and it was a big deal I had a situation on I expect you to die we've been very very budget-conscious because we'd had a history in the past of some house going over budget on internal projects so we'd really clamped down on and we had rules about you know this is the budget and that's that the team came up with this brilliant idea to do this opening credits song sequence and they were like oh this is great but you know we can't do it because it's just not in the budget and no one even wanted to bring it up with me they didn't even want to say it because they were sure I would shoot it down and then I happened to see it I'm like oh my god this is so amazing we have to do this and they're like and so

here I am I'm the head of the company telling them we have to do this and they're like we can't I'm I can't wait that's just the budget it's not there I'm like we'll change the budget and everyone's like wait we can change the budget right and get like because so that's one of the things when you're when you end up in a leadership position you have to look for places the rules need to be remade people need to not just believe in their work and believe in the mission they need to be excited about it they need to be enthusiastic and you're like of course they are they're making games it's awesome are they really maybe maybe not you need to talk to people you need to ask check in with people about how they are feeling about the work you need to ask just in case people need to feel cared about it's important it's one of the things that really improves their self-esteem and it's not and and you might say of course you know they get

paid they get to make games of course they feel cared about but is that really true like what have you done to really show you care how they feel right and a great way to do that is to ask them how they feel I like this phrase I forgot I forgot to say I care and it's easy it's an easy thing to forget so the best way to do this is first you have to actually care right if you don't actually care you're gonna have a hard time but first you have to actually care but that's not enough then you have to back that up by doing things that caring people do and even that's not enough then you have to tell people anyway about that you care how they feel and that you want to know how do you feel about this and a lump these next two together because they have a lot to do with each other good feedback and helpful coaching this is one of the hardest things I for me personally this was really really hard and I think we still struggle with it a bit but it was a turning point for me to realize how important these things are that people really need excellent feedback about what they're doing I

personally believe 360 feedback where you collect feedback from people's peers about each other about what is what are they what do they need to get better at is really important they can't give it to each other directly because it's too dangerous it's too could cause too much tension so you create a situation where it has to flow through studio leadership where people say here's what I liked about this person and here's where this person needs to improve and then the the manager as coach needs to kind of sit down with people and say you know here's what people feel like you need to get better at and so you need to get that feedback a thing you need to come to terms with who are your a B and C players who are your people are excellent who your people are yeah they're okay and we were people who were having trouble nobody likes to face this you don't like to face the fact that yeah and that one guy is not really doing very well I'm just gonna try not think about it because I want to avoid it you need to think about it because that person who's not doing very well you could have an a player in there instead and imagine how much better everything would be and their life won't

end if they have to end up leaving the studio and maybe if you actually confronted their problem maybe you'd help them deal with and they get better right but ignoring the C players is just unacceptable because people need to know where they stand they need you to tell them like how am i doing am i doing well how do i hello and if not how can I get better and the C players you need to find a way to get the better and if you can't get them better you need to get them out and it sucks nobody likes firing people it sucks to have to do it but you have to do it and people's lives don't end when they get fired often it's better they're like oh I was really strongly there's one place I got fired and man I found a place I fit in much better and I'm doing better work it happens all the time so coaching you must make time for one-on-one coaching meetings it always feels like oh I don't have time for this we've got to focus on the game and I got to focus on all these fires you need to make time to sit down with people and say how's it going what's going well what do you need help with what are problems that you have you need to give your people time so to talk through

their problems so they can get advice from you or from somebody and this really as a leader this is your number one priority one-on-one meetings with the people you work with is the best thing you can do to help make them great and it's scary because you don't know the perfect way to do it and you don't know exactly what to say and you don't have to have all the answers we've all had the situation where you go and you you go to somebody with a problem and like you talk through the problem then you realize the solution in your own brain just through talking about it right just and the more you do it you're just gonna get better at it anyway and this is a great time for you to have your core valuables with your core principles and your core values ready like I always keep them on a little sheet of paper right nearby when we have these meetings so when someone did something really great I can say hey man that's really great you're really embodying like what we're about or someone did something that's questionable I can say well I don't think that was good or I can say hey look guy principle number four like we've talked about this like why are you going against it let's talk about it in

the concrete way and very efficient help people coach each other make opportunities for people to get together and just share their problems with each other and just create those opportunities get them scheduled because and and I remember the first time I finally figured out to do that and people like wow I didn't know that like we were allowed to do this like yeah okay right no it is really useful and sort of obviously useful but like no one ever said this was a good thing to do to amazing books by the same people by stone and Haines difficult conversations this is all about how do you have difficult conversations in a productive useful way and related thanks for the feedback it's real it's a book about how to take feedback but in doing so it's really about how to give the best possible feedback and one thing I've been doing recently I totally recommend get a tool for anonymous feedback we've been using this one called office vibe it's expensive I'll put it out there a

little debate about like is this really worth it but like we feel like it is and what this does is it sends little quizzes easy little surveys to people about how you feel about your project how you feel about your co-workers how you feel about your boss just little simple things simple simple little web things just just like one or two questions a week real simple and then it collects all that data and it shares the data with management in an anonymous way so you can kind of see the vibe of like what's going on in there but most important this is the most valuable part people can kind of there's freeform open boxes people can kinda type stuff in and you get it all and it's all anonymous so it's like a suggestion box of the things people are concerned about and here's the best part you can answer the questions anonymously you're not anonymous they know it's you you're the boss they know that but you don't know who asked it so someone's like man I'm really upset by this one thing this project got cancelled and I like I think we're going on the wrong track and you'll be like whoa like I haven't heard about this and you can say hey anonymous let me tell you like I really think this is better and here's the reasons why

it's so much better and sometimes they come back they're like first they're like oh my god I just like my big serious complaint I'm like the boss just like but got me a letter back in and sometimes they're like I've actually made sense and they write back to you and they say oh thanks for explaining I didn't I didn't know I didn't understand I've had no other way to get information like that so out like finding a tool for anonymous feedback is great you can check out my talk from last year it was all about information flow in the studio one of the great things in this Patrick Lencioni book uses a term this is super valuable over communication he points out that people can't read your mind and as a leader you must over communicate the things that are important you must say them not just once you can't be just like oh I said it they all know you need to say it again and again to the point where you're a little embarrassed right because a repetition of important things is helpful because they're important right so you should repeat important things you should be saying important things again and again in different ways because it's better for people to hear

you get the idea but look how uncomfortable it is but I'm gonna do it anyway important things you should repeat them right yeah so a joint feeling of respect right you want to feel respected by people people want to feel respected by you you want to look for these situations this is back to this notion of are you yourself good at making others feel respected and you need to look inside yourself and make sure that that's really true keeping communication comfortable because when it's not comfortable it stops and that's when politics begins one of the things as a game designer I feel like my most important discovery is this reading some psychology neurology paper and realizing that we have two different circuits in our brains that the circuits for avoiding negative quences and the circuits for seeking positive consequences are completely different brain systems and we see this in game design all the time this moment when people switch from reward seeking to punishment avoiding it's very important for game design it's also very

important for your studio why are people communicating with you are they communicating are they communicating with you because they have to or they communicating with you because they want to everything will be different if you're the kind of person who is tough to talk to and they're like I want to talk to that guy like you that people are using a totally different part of their brain and how's it going in your studio how's the communication going when is it comfortable when is it uncomfortable people want to like their teammates and I know that sounds sort of simple and sort of straightforward but it's true and it's important and when you interview people you should be thinking about likability who is going to fit in with a culture and how are people going to like each other and if you check out last year's talk I talked a lot about the research evidence that shows that likability is more important than how good somebody is at their job that sounds crazy but it's totally true and you can you can hear the complicated story about it but you want to focus you want to think

about making sure people like each other what's one of the main reasons people quit a studio is like I couldn't stand the people I was working with and the last part of the halfa bet is measurable progress people really want measurable progress we know that we're game designers oh my god how do we not know that we we do know that but we so rarely designed it well into our Studios and it comes from so many places it can certainly come from the project we're making great progress on the project I feel really great about that raises are really important did you ever think about why we have inflation here on planet Earth every nation has inflation why should it be that prices and salaries gradually rise over time shouldn't it drift up and drift down no it gradually Rises because human beings like progress even if we have to make it up right so figuring out the raises that are going to feel like good measurable progress for people is very important and very tricky people's

growing responsibility and getting a more and more responsibility is important and of course you want to make it clear measurably clear letting people know that like I'm now you know yeah well we're giving you these new responsibilities and we're looking forward to you taking care of those one thing people talk about is the Peter Principle this is a famous thing in large organizations the idea that people get promoted you know you're good at your job we're gonna promote you oh you're good at your job we're gonna promote you and when do we stop we stop when you suck at your job and what that means is ultimately you're gonna have an organization full of people who suck at their job right and that's and some people like there's nothing you can do about it it's just what happens it's not true the way you do it is don't promote people until they've already been doing the new job for a while because they do know the new job and they suck don't promote them but if they do the new job and they're great well then you promote them in you avoid the Peter Principle so job titles and figuring that out is important and I know it sounds silly like oh really just a name just a label you're game designers oh my god you know

that you know how important just some bogus title is into making someone feel good about themselves you know that clear feedback of course about exactly are you good at your job are you getting better or not it having your manager tell you yeah you're really getting better I really see you getting better and being very clear about that is important and then of course watching a studio grow itself which sometimes happens with Studios that can feel like progress to people as well so I'm going to talk about some studio growth rules of thumb just real real quick here if you have more than five people that's at the point where you need a producer and you're going to need another producer for every ten developers that you get if you have more than ten people in your studio you're gonna find you needing sub team meetings to get certain kinds of communication to happen when you've got small studios you don't have to think about communication so much it just happens everybody's just there once you get more than ten you have to organize and plan the communication or it doesn't happen once you get more than 20 people like coaching isn't going to happen so

naturally anymore you need to assign formal coaching responsibilities once you get more than 30 you better get a full-time IT guy I'll just say that it's important and you're going to need one every 50 more developers you get once you get around 40 people you're going to find you departments of some kind of flat architectures not going to work for you anymore and you're getting the leaders to lead up these departments and by 50 you'll probably need full-time HR you'll probably need full-time accounting and Finance once you get to 60 you're going to need two layers of management for coaching inside departments I heard when Media Molecule was formed the the guys who do LittleBigPlanet they said we're our plan is to not have to get bigger than 30 because we've had the best experiences with no more than the 30 dev so we're gonna design games that only need 30 devs now I just looked at the website they have 51 devs right now so I I think what I suspect is they're pushing up against that sixty number they don't want it they don't they don't in the place where they want to have those two layers and you know we're up

205 I'm not really seeing too many more barriers right now but I'll tell you this once you reach 150 and I've seen this again and again you hit Dunbar's number this is an innate human thing you can read all about it and your organization will split in two it's just what happens with human primates now when do you should you get Business Development once you get marketing I can't give you guidelines on that some people start with it a day one some people don't need to start with it so later you said but you're gonna need it sometime so you better figure that out okay back to the plan you built a studio you protected the studio and now you're focusing a lot on optimizing the studio but you're still a little bit sad because I didn't really want to think about people all day I want to think about games that's why I did this I want to think about games all day and I'll give you a secret the studio is a game and the people who work there are the players and everything you know about game design you can use to make that

studio great and if you do that you're going to make a studio that doesn't just make games and doesn't just make money but is going to create joy for every single person who interacts with it at all and it's going to be the hardest damn game that you have ever worked on but I'm here to tell you you can do it thanks very much it looks like I used up all the time I'm happy to chat with people afterwards please don't forget to fill out your surveys and have a great GDC [Applause]

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