Great game production tips with Grant Shonkwiler - GDC Podcast Ep. 1

this is episode 1 of the GDC podcast hey guys so we're gonna wait I like your ear radio voice sometimes it just comes out [Music] I'm your host or co-host I suppose chris-craft I'm editor-in-chief of NamUs Asia and joined by Alisa McAloon I am the news editor and associate publisher who frequently forgets her titles at Gamasutra that's good that sounds important wrong it's really embarrassing yeah we actually have we have a guest but he we gonna we told him just to lurk

in the background for like the next few minutes and then we're gonna bring him out like a big surprise as if his name isn't gonna be in the description of all the you can hear him you can hear them giggling in the background so yeah this is the GDC podcast so maybe for a couple minutes we should like talk about GDC and let's just talk about this podcast like this is the first one I mean JCC is what Alissa is it like 100th anniversary oh yeah at least okay yeah so the GDC podcast I mean I think that we kind of were like hey we want to do a podcast it's what you want to get into radio well there's a lot of interesting developments in GDC this month there's a lot of interesting GDC adjacent people that you wouldn't otherwise get to talk to unless you tuned in to a stream or reading one of GTCC's mini blog posts so this gives you a more portable medium to do that oh my gosh that was really good yeah yeah that was way better than my explanation yeah so yeah Game Developers

Conference even though it only you know comes around once a year it's something that you know believe it or not people are working on it all the time all year round people's entire careers are based on this one week is that isn't that absolutely mind-boggling it sure is yeah it is mind-boggling what are we doing with their lives um so yeah but it's practically here right it's March 16th to 21st so mark that down 2020 clear your calendars for GDC 2020 I don't even like seeing 2020 like the year it doesn't roll off the tongue at all yeah and it just feels like so past the year 2000 I'm looking forward 2021 is exciting that sounds like yeah yeah yeah and a sequential - yeah I mean once you get to 2020 I feel like you can start saying legitimately saying 2000 was the turn of the century like I was wearing Jenko

jeans at the turn of the century that type of I don't want to talk about what I was because I was eight years old yeah yeah try to figure out if I was joking about wearing Jenko jeans real quick some GDC stuff that's actually going on things are starting to ramp up right you've got a GF submissions are open now for the 2020 IGF right so you should submit to that I think you can find where to do that with a quick google yeah accepted now through September 30th 2019 oh my gosh you are like links yeah yeah oh my gosh yeah and this is like the yeah this is the first time we're doing this to you okay only downhill from here so ramping up we're also going to be XR DC it's like a sibling event it's for VR not just VR games but but other stuff that eeeh you

do with visual computing that is happening in October um so yeah did you come to that October 14 through October 16 looks like oh that's good here with the notes I'm here to come no this is this is working out great for me I don't have to prepare oh we also opened up this is important so we're opening up our call for papers for actually we already opened it up for our core concepts line of GDC talks and don't be afraid of core concepts that's just another word we've renamed the discipline-based tracks for GDC so if you have ideas for our advocacy track audio business and marketing design production and team management programming and visual arts if you have ideas for talks and you want to share all that knowledge at GDC 2020 um yeah you should definitely submit we

implore you to yeah you can find all this information on a GED see um calm that's kind of weird isn't it is it GDC aunt calm or GB conf yeah so GD calm calm and there's all kinds of news just spilling out of the official Twitter account at official underscore GDC you know what else is new that's it's not a rhetorical question your audio cut out for me there so I'm not sure I don't know I don't know what happened yeah there's there's there was an another new announcement and it was advisory board members so these GDC advisory board members these are people who help us basically shape the content or the hashtag content of the show if you will and that kind of brings us to

our our guests our super secret guest this person is a Full Sail Hall of Fame inductee he worked at mega touch producer ed software might have heard of them epic games might have heard of it he also currently runs his production consultancy it's called chunk ventures that's the first a big clue chante ventures his person is a longtime friend of GDC he's been a CA he's been a speaker now he's on the advisory board he's also the co-author of books called gear up advanced game development practices and another one called creative agility tools I don't know how this person is bending a space-time continuum to do all this stuff not only that really building this up a lot so this is gonna be huge worked on credits include rage Paragon

battle breakers doom Wolfenstein and about 60 other games including a little little app called fortnight if credit on that and so here we go let's welcome grant zhang qilin Wow that is uh no that was overwhelming did we miss anything I don't know I was I was born at some point I mean that's just for the great introduction that was that was a lot about me yeah yeah no problem just required so much internet stalking I mean we started kind of feeling gross about it yeah so tell us a little bit about your background you are a producer and your consultancy as stronk ventures and tell me what you do yeah so I've been I've been making games for a long time I started actually making games when pokemon red came out

my buddy and I swapped games back and forth back then and and I thought Pikachu cut which was apparently the wrong thing to do we got a big fight we were punching each other it was great and I said you know what I think we can make a better Pokemon game and so we designed our own game called Pokemon killer athlean ufff submitted the game to to Sony actually sent paper designs to Sony and said this is this is gonna kill Pokemon you're gonna be bigger than Nintendo they actually wrote back and said we don't want to get sued but keep on designing games that's cool and and that was it from from there on out I've been making games I started modding games and just designing and doing goofy little things and then I went to Full Sail University to learn to be a computer programmer and then I started in the industry at makeup

games as you mentioned where I was programmer and then quickly realized all the other programmers were much better than me and I was not progressing at the rate that I wanted to be so I told the creative director I would help him out with design and next thing I knew I was a designer and then I was a lead designer and then I was like kind of all the game stuff at that company so that was great you don't mind me if you don't let me interrupting real quick that we need to pump the brakes a little bit a little bit and go back to pokemon killer and sony actually must have looked at the design document if they replied to you then said we don't want your game yeah but which is of course crazy to think about I don't know if it was just like an intern or someone who who opened up this file was like just reply it's like a kid you know make them feel good about their day but what I you know I really appreciate that I've had the opportunity to talk to many people who were at Sony back then and say you

know I want my document back yeah so far no one has found it which is probably good because when it's terrible into my handwriting has not improved and was really bad back then it's just got to be like framed up in someone's office somewhere that letter that was sent in once yeah the one thing I remember was that I used reading I don't know why I remember that but I used reading be killing because the a killing part yeah yeah it was a very violent game do you think that like ken Kutaragi has that hanging like in his family room I like that I like to imagine that I would I would think that he does so you know you you're you're a producer guy and yes you've done talks at GDC and PACs and other places and you're your background when I'm listening to you talk you know obviously you're well versed in like the methodologies of product development and

all that but you talk about the fundamental stuff like the foundational things can you tell us like the most important parts of being a producer yeah so the most important thing that I always tell you know when I when I start working with a junior producer is first off your communication skills right you have to be able to communicate with people at their length at their level in their language so I recommend all of my junior producers learn a little bit about coding learn a little bit design and art and stuff I'm not asking them to become those things but at least be able to speak the language I often tell them to do the thing that I do which is like I'm I'm not a senior artist can you speak to me like I'm five and explained to me what MIT maps are or whatever it might be because you want to start to progress to the point where you are interrupting meetings because you just understand anything so communication is the first one the second one is second one is just understanding that people are people and

that and that is ultimately our job our job is is people first so so focusing on people and making sure that they they have what they need another thing I always tell people is when they become producers or junior producers is congratulations you're now the lowest of the low you know people think producers are you know high up at companies because were the people doing a lot of interviews and stuff but that's actually because the important people can't stop working to come do the interviews so yeah so I would say our job is anything from from getting coffee to you know making big decisions and we do that for everybody even if they're considered more junior than us on the org chart so I tell people in a lot of ways you're your servant your Butler and you're also a little bit of a camp counselor because people will come to you and complain so those are those are like the core basics I can if people understand that then I can teach them how to be at least a

decent leader based off that and I can teach them you know all the processes of game development and those are things that you just learn as you make games but put the core stuff if you if you're not a good communicator and you don't understand people out of basic level then you're really going to start going to be a producer it seems like humility and empathy are some core parts of being like here as far as a Peter pretty for good yeah which is interesting because then you like talked me up and then that makes me feel really narcissistic and so I have to like bring in the humbleness now right yeah great work hey you're still sick yeah so um you you did something like a wily guy talk to you a little bit about it at GDC and you left the game industry for a little bit am I getting that right yeah what did you do yeah so I left epic and took about a six-month sabbatical um

and I wanted to well I won't say I wanted to understand myself or anything like that but but i weirdly have had a job since I was very young illegally at 8 years old and then went to college and then started making games and I realized I was starting to feel a little bit burnout and I was talking to different mentors that I have about burnout and realized that that was coming and so I wanted to figure out if I could be happy doing something other than making games and so what I decided to do was just travel around the world and do odd jobs and that got to the point where I was you know staying with friends and building them a new restroom to you know working on construction sites in Indiana to going to to New Zealand and hiking for a few weeks and then ultimately I ended up on an island called Lord Howe Island off the coast of Australia that my friends own and was working on a farm for a while so that

was probably the culmination of it the friends on the farm not the enemy that's um wait grace here so so yeah so I worked on a farm and then I came back and Clint asked me if I wanted to write a book with him and that's when I decided to come back into the industry and you're talking about Clinton Keith yes Clint yeah yeah world renowned production guru yeah that was quite the shocking call when he was like hey you want to help me with this book and I was like I've looked up to you since before I started in the industry so I've talked about a humbling moment yeah that was one of them if not for that moment do you think you would have come back eventually or would you still be on a farm on an island somewhere yeah so interesting thing about that I was on that farm but I'd already bought tickets to the next GDC yeah so I wasn't I wasn't like I'd already like volunteered to the SCA and comments associate and I had bought my flights

and hotel rooms and everything and I was like I'm gonna come back and I'm gonna be this really weird person at GDC who's like I work on a farm but what happened was I started working on this book and then I was at GDC and a friend of mine asked me to review some stuff that their company was doing and then they paid me in an Amazon gift card and I was like wait people get paid they like give other people advice and they're like he was like yeah in fact we'd like to hire you to give you a tip for you to like review stuff and give us advice and that's when I started my company was actually at GDC I think a lot of people are like that right yeah I have some information and you know you're you're obviously an enthusiastic guy sharing all of this stuff that you've learned over you know many years that you've been in gamedev now do you like it people are just kind of like oh I can get I can get paid for this yeah for my time and my almost like these ten years

that I've been like I can actually get a living out of it yeah yeah I've been doing it for free for so long that when somebody was like I'll pay you I'm like is that fair yeah yeah yeah yeah I don't know I mean your hands are calloused and your brain has been you know is through all of this stuff hate so right like going going off in doing that and kind of getting away and you know what finding yourself sure what did what do you feel like you came away with from all that like what did you learn I learned a few things so the first one was allowed me to be creative in ways that I have never been before so I used to write a lot when I was younger and I wanted to take some time off so I actually wrote a couple screenplays that I expect will never be made because I've never done anything with them but I've put over a couple screenplays just to kind of you know kind of explored creativity in a different way I also learned that you

know stress is really fairly easy to defeat when you realize that most things that we're stressed about are not important in the grand scheme of things this is a little philosophical but when you're hiking in the middle of New Zealand then you're the only person for like 50 miles around and you're sitting on top of a mountain you realise about infant testimony small you are in the grand scheme of the cosmos and so when you think about that and then you think about like oh man our game is broken in X way you're like that doesn't really matter and so we're looking to present anyway yeah you can either go the very nihilistic where you can go kind of a positive route which I do which is like hey this isn't like as soul-crushing as possible let's just calm down relax and we'll get through it and and because of that I feel like I'm even more kind of chilled out when it comes to the

hardcore process of making games so that was definitely a big thing that I learned as well as just learning a lot about about myself and you know ways that I functioned well as far as sleeping eating things like that because I wasn't in a tight bubble of half the wake of it this time and do this and that matter yeah I wasn't expecting the first GDC podcast to go full galaxy yeah so alright we we talked about philosophical stuff maybe which it was just great I love it and I think it is important you know that's the foundational fund a tional stuff at working in a in a job like game development so now I'm wondering of why you wear rugby shirts all the time that's not let's get the nuts and bolts of the production here so what's interesting is this is another GDC story so when I first started going to GDC in

2008 there used to be a charity poker tournament that was open to anyone and I wanted to go and I was I was a student and I was like you know I don't really have any nice clothes the only thing I have has a collar as a rugby Jersey and so I wore a rugby Jersey and weirdly I guess not weirdly most of the people who are at this this this poker tournament were people who had been in the industry for a while had disposable income went to schmooze with each other and give to charity and so here I am this this young guy in my rugby Jersey playing playing poker with people and beating them quite soundly because I wasn't oh you speak very good at poker and and I distinctly remember meeting Kim Young at the time another GC advisory board member and him being like your American why are you wearing a rugby Jersey and I was like oh I play rugby and he was like oh that's interesting so fast forward to the next

day and I'm walking around GDC and Kenny comes over and he's like hey you're the rugby Jersey guy and I was like what and then somebody else came over was like hey you're the rugby Jersey guy and that's when I was like well I guess I'm the rugby Jersey yeah so so that's my brand so ever since then whatever I travel to a new country I find it a national rugby Jersey or a team rugby Jersey from that area and that is pretty much my exclusive where when I'm doing professional things I'm even wearing one right now and other than maybe wearing a JD CCA shirt most people expect to see me in a rugby Jersey those are the only two like shirts that I've seen you yeah I went to visit friends who I met through GCC once and I was not worrying the rugby Jersey and they walked right what are you wearing a t-shirt completely unrecognizable it's like an

archery episode where he opens his closet it's all these like black and like off black turtlenecks and like that's what I'm imagining it's just a closet wall-to-wall yeah pretty much like Steve Jobs exactly a little networking protip yeah yeah um so speaking of rugby scrum I mean what came first the the rugby jerseys or the product development methodology interest in scrum that's interesting so I've had rugby Jersey since high school so that one would have come first and then I remember studies from for the first time in in college and interestingly there was like this whole video that they showed and it was a rugby player talking about scrum and agile development and I was the only person in the room who knew what he was actually talking about so I was like I played rugby and so yeah then I was like well you know this takes one of my laws

which is rugby and another one which is video games and this is like a methodology and I was like I guess I'm going to try and learn and become like a master of this so that I can use it everywhere and you know then I have a reason where he's like yes oh my gosh now I know why you do what you do so kit for our listeners or maybe even listener I don't know this is a brand new podcast I don't know can you can you describe like scrum in rugby and scrum in product and you know game development sure so scrum in rugby is used to restart play so just like in basketball when they throw the ball in or you know soccer they couldn't ball and or if there's a penalty they kick it in scrum that they're in rugby they're a certain type of infraction that need to be restarted through a scrum I won't explain what all those are but basically what happens is you have eight players

from each team and they bind together very closely act as a single engine a single unit and they slam their bodies into each other and the most violent way possible and the ball gets inserted into the middle and they kind of push back and forth for the ball it's it's really interesting that they pick that term for for agile development for development practices because I'm really describing agile game oh that was really close really close but and I think it's because ultimately you're taking meet people of very different body shapes and sizes and turning them into one cohesive unit that can generate power beyond the like really young a normal person can imagine and so that's kind of the ideas from and all kind of a because I kind of just described a Belle development which scrum is one of the many terms and types of that in a Belle development it's about being iterative as opposed to waterfall development which is like you

know we want to make the game we wrote a design doc and then the artist did this thing and then they handed the design in the art to the programmers and the programmers made it a new game came out it's more like we have a set of features and we designed the basics of those features and then the artist maybe do a little bit of their work and while they're doing that we're prototyping it and we're iterating it and that tight loop of maybe two to three weeks and in that you're kind of going in circles I'm making circles with my hands here you're going to they're going in circles where you're like you know create test reevaluate and then you kind of go through that over and over again and what what it what the value of it is is that you can very quickly move through things and things going to be more flexible the the negative of it that a lot of people have is if you don't monitor it closely which is where scrum comes in then it just comes to like major feature and scope creep or people are like we're agile we can do whatever

we won then they throw in a new feature in the middle of a sprint scrum is a set of rules and practices that go around that which I won't get into all of them that help you kind of prioritize and figure things out in a proper way to make sure that you're not over scoping within that process give us the one what was the best scrum rule favorite one my actually my favorite my favorite rule in practices is actually the the daily stand-ups oh I like I like having a time to get everybody together to talk about things that's probably the one that I adhere to the most even though everybody does what we call that scrum its scrum but I do this as scrum but I do that but the one that tends to be done by everybody is that one right there where people are getting together once a day and saying what they're working on where it's at in the process and what they're gonna work on that day Elissa do you have anything to say about let's come well no actually

it's really interesting I do I knew nothing about rugby scrum or game development scrum prior to that explanation and hearing just that that brief description of it has helped play contextualize some of the things I know about other studio structures and from talking other game developers and stuff like that so it's all kind of coming into focus with the understanding of scrum yeah you're welcome yeah so when you're working at chunk ventures and you're talking to clients and they're saying please deliver us from the mistakes that we made what what are the most common production mistakes that you see with your clients yeah that's wow that's a great question so the first the first common mistake that I see from people is this over strict adherence to rules that they've created in their own brain and what I mean by that is like we have to be by the letter with scrum or agile and we have to make sure that you

know we're doing this and it tends to be at the detriment of the team and if we go back to what I said you're poor tenants of being a producer art which is about communicating and being kind of you know just this facilitator and a person who's focused on people scrum and agile tend to cause a lot of problems when they first come in and you can get angry and frustrated and so what I say is you know I actually talk I talk about the book but we call beach heading a new practice where you take a small group of people and you have them learn that practice and then they can kind of change it based on your studio culture and then they are your champions bringing it out to the rest of the team so that's one of the main things that I tend to see is that people are like we decided to become agile and here's our super strict rule set and they bring it in and everything breaks and they're like and everybody is like heads on fire so I'm always like don't worry we're gonna fix it we just kind of

kind of iterate through with the team so the main thing that I usually like help my clients focus on is making sure that the team understands why changes are being made making sure that the team understand the goals of that and then understand you know what the team actually wants out of these changes so it's a lot of outsider kind of perspective and bias where I'll talk to the teams and I'll talk to the producers and the leaders and they may kind of be saying the same thing to each other but not really hearing it and then I present it and now everybody thinks that I'm a genius so I tend to apologize a lot especially the producers because a lot of times what I found is that the producers know the right thing to do they're just stuck on one or two things and also there's that you know the relationship baggage that might be in there even if they have a lot of trust from their team they're still uh-oh he's been doing X for this long and or

she's she's been saying it this way for so long now they want to change it whereas I can come in and say well this is this is actually what we need to be doing and a lot of times it's exactly what they were saying but people are like oh yeah yeah that makes a lot of sense you work on fortnight and I'm like yeah just call me the rugby shirt guy yeah and that's probably something that also benefits from what you were saying earlier where you have like some multi-discipline experience and I imagine some of that language gets lost when they don't have the verbage to describe what they want in the terms for the developers are speaking to as well yeah definitely definitely and and it's one of those things where you know I always say that you know the best team is a team that is a little everybody's a little bit well-rounded and a little bit of everything obviously people are experts of things but I want everybody on my team to be a game designer and a producer as well as whatever else they are because I don't I don't think a game designer should be holding the hand and

telling a program or every single thing that needs to be done in the design there should be some creativity in there and and a designer shouldn't be you know not caring about the schedule so one of the things that I tend to do with all of my teams that I work with is is try and figure out ways to level up all the individuals on the team so be--that spending a little bit of time every week or every month with the creative director lead designer kind of explaining what the game is and more detail or having the producers kind of teach tools and a more intuitive way so things aren't super you know their gear isn't super complicated but it's very simple for people to understand so that they want to be in there moving things along and making it you know more interactive and fun for them as opposed to you know having to walk around every day and be like did you update your gear did you update and soft which I've been that guy that's not a fun experience for anybody so that's a that's a big part of what I work out with my clients so you

swoop in and obviously like you don't stay you know you're a Prairie person how do you leave the lessons with with people and how do you kind of give the producers that you work with and the teams you work with the tools where they will have less stick disagreements and they'll be more efficient like had raised hand that off yeah so so part of it is there is like a you know a monthly or every other week follow up with with the key people that I've worked with so be that someone in leadership or producer kind of a coaching relationship or we're just having these constant conversations the you know a big part of jokingly a big part of white button and I wrote the book was that we wanted an easier way to leave a client and and an easy way to leave as financing yeah in a way right in a way like you know if you wanted to you know for one on one or

either you know you can just buy a book which is much cheaper or to you know we kind of leave them were like hey just a reminder here the six or seven practices that we put in place let's make sure we're on the guidelines of this but you know just just like any leaving of a job I write up documentation you know I do like I wouldn't call it an exit interview but I do kind of felt like hey I'm leaving here the things that we accomplished here are the things that still need to be done here's how you should do those one step once I'm gone you know you know you want to leave them wanting a little bit more that's how you get repeat clients but you want to fix as many if not all their problems in one go yeah you also run gamedev drink up yeah yeah hi I'm a multi-faceted person so so John Jonathan Hawkins in LA who runs his own studio he started the game dove drink up oh man it was nine years ago almost nine

years ago and he asked me to I kind of took over the the Dallas chapter after it was it had one meeting and then the guy who's running it left so he asked me to run it and then over time I've just kind of taken on a lot of the responsibilities of setting up the events helping new chapter start and things like that it which is odd because I don't drink and a lot of people say to me like I don't want to go to the game don't drink if I don't drink miles like I run it in you know drink so it's not a requirement it's just it's just the name and very excitedly the first chapter which is in LA is having its 100/100 event in August so we've been doing it for a long time I I forget how many events we've done but it's close to 600 and and we've had over 15,000 people attend and we're in four countries right now so very dance and that's so yeah I mean and that's like what you're all

about you know it's it's a fun thing but you're you're like a community building guy right yeah that's that you know I we got into my you know if you're in your town I mean I don't know the person who lives across from me or move beneath me in my apartment complex you know I don't I don't know anybody in my area we leave the towns were born in we don't necessarily go to a religious ceremony or event anywhere so we don't have a lot of community so one of the things that I've tried to do my whole career starting with my mom in my GTA in the early 2000s was help build communities in any way and so what the end of trip does differently than i GD A which we encourage all of our members to go to IG DEA meetings is we're not education and we're not about your career were literally just about your community and about helping you network and what we found and this is this is just anecdotal I haven't done a full study on this but what we've found is that if city has a

gamedev drink up it is like much more likely that developers will stay in that city if they're laid off or there's a closure than if there isn't because they have a network of people around them that are not just there their office so that's kind of been our goal all along is provide community so that people don't need to uproot their lives every time you know there's a studio closure or how are they get layoffs yeah people who are like adjacent to cities that host a gamedev drink up or another kind of game dev gathering event what do you have for advice for them to get the most out of those meetup opportunities yeah so first off is if your city doesn't have a game dev drink up you can just reach out to the game dev drink up on Facebook or Twitter and we'll talk to you about studying one up if you have any other event in your area or you have a game that drink up but I always tell people is is just show up and just be friendly you know don't show up with a resume in your hand don't show up trying

to you know and press people just show up and ask people about themselves I am a little weird and this is a weird thing to recommend to people when I realize how weird this is I have done targeted networking especially when I was younger and looking to learn about the industry where I would know that you know certain people would go to certain events at GDC or that I meetings and I would go specifically to try and meet that person and I think as long as you're not doing that in like a creepy way like yeah I can hear you right it doesn't sound creepy at all you know coming to an event and saying like hey you know I love your games and I wanted to ask you this piece of advice you know I've had people do that with me and and it's it's less creepy than for some reason I get really creeped out with some of these like I follow you on twitter and I'm like well why why would you do that you know so be very very purposeful

and when you go to the events part which is is to meet people in what I always tell people is networking is just a fancy word for making friends so just go up to people and ask them hey what game are you playing lately or you know what are some of your hobbies just have conversations with people so I feel like it's really easy to like look at these networking events and especially if you're younger I went to a school with a game development major so there were a bunch of people being like oh you have to go to these conventions you have to go to these parties and you have to meet these people and it was just very like high-stress to do to do to do to do yeah and it seems like kind of not doing that is what you're recommending yeah yeah yeah don't don't stress about it don't think that like don't think that as a job interview just think about it as a place to meet friends obviously you want to maintain a level of professionalism if you're going to a networking event I don't recommend you getting drunk right but you can go and look have a good time I know those we have to talk later you

can have some drinks you know have a good time and get to know people and you know what I jokingly say that the real reason I started a game to have drink up chapters everywhere that I've moved is I'm inherently lonely person and I just want to make friends so I started a drink up chapter and then people come and hang out with me once a month I'm like look at all my friends you know what like I meant to bring it up earlier but I think the first time that you and I met and it I think it might have been like the narrative summit meet up when GDC online was happening in Austin still yeah and yeah grant and I were at this place called the ginger man down here I ended up moving here and yeah I think that there's a there's a facebook picture of us somewhere I think that you might actually be carrying me so grant is like the first time I met Grant he like literally swept me off my feet well

we're gonna wrap up here um I do want to talk about I want to talk about crunch because hey we want to end on a really happy note yeah but I I like to talk about that just a little bit because you know you're a producer and do you think that do you find that one of your duties and one of your jobs is to totally help teams eliminate that um I think it's it's about helping teams understand why it exists more than it is to eliminate it I mean I think that that is often a goal which is let's eliminate crunch but what I can help is not just straight eliminate crunch but help you understand why crunches existed and you know Keith Keith fuller who also as a consultant and has worked in the industry for a

long time describes crunch into two different ways which I like to to understand as well which is there's there's crunch and then there's overwork and crunch can be voluntary right like you really want to make this angry and so you want to work a few extra hours and put that in and you know I'm usually fine with that as long as it's limited to two weeks you know I don't want I don't want somebody being like I want to make this game great and six months later I realize that they've been not seeing their family a single day during the week first six months and then there's then there's an overworked which is when the studio stands up and says hey we we have to all be here for 12 hours a day six days a week and that is that is almost easier to fix than the second one because the second one is just people being passionate and helping them understand what their limits are which is a lot of kind of talking with people and understanding them and especially if they're younger helping them understand that limits but overwork is you know the first thing to

say is like hey we're not gonna do this and then figuring out why you've been doing it and usually it's it's not about deadlines it's about miss scoping you know figuring out where you can't like you know you get to a point where you're like I can't cut anything okay but can we limit things just a little bit can we focus on things differently and understanding that yeah as producers it's it's our responsibility to make sure our team doesn't have to crunch or overworked ever so if we get to a point where we are doing that and ultimately we've failed and I know that that can sound a little bit harsh to people who have been in that position and myself included where ultimately it was the decision of people above us to do that with the team and we could have delivered the game on time if they had let us cut certain features but we have to kind of stand up and be like no this is the cause the human cost of what we're doing and here's possible solutions and ways to work through that

it's not as easy as staffing up it's about making hard cuts our decisions and you know understanding your team and what they can actually do so from your perspective as a consultant and somebody who's worked in you know at these major studios and smaller studios and in 2019 is test crunch gotten better in my personal life it's because I'm a consultant I think that the stories that I'm hearing about crunch are a little bit different and I feel like they are less ubiquitous it's not you know when I when I was going through my first major crunch in 2000 you know a 2009 it was everybody everybody was doing it we were all trying to hit Christmas deadlines or whatever it might be and I remember talking to all my friends and be like oh I was at my work until I you know 2:00 a.m. and they're like I

was there till 3:00 and now I feel like people are getting older and having families and responsibilities so they're willing to kind of push back and be like hey you know I'll work a 12-hour day but I'm not liking Saturday Sunday and figuring out ways to have work-life balance so I think that it's not as common in the industry but it is still common and it's something that we have to keep kind of fighting against and figuring out what are the proper solutions and ways to do this I think the big difference between 2008 and now is there are a lot of studios standing up and saying we don't crunch or we are now focusing on fixing this problem whereas in 2008 it was kind of like yeah crunch is bad and then everybody's like it's not really bad we're gonna do it anyways whereas now it's people are coming out and publicly saying these are the steps that were taking to change and I really like a lot of the pressure that has kind of been put on gamers to understand what what is

what happens in this and now they're kind of pushing back on their studios and being that of the games they love and saying hey don't sacrifice your people to make sure we have new content every two weeks like that's not that's not the worth it to us so I think it's a it's it's about educating everybody from the game players themselves to people who are making games and and their families to understand the proper way to have work-life balance and ultimately once you can get to that work-life balance the team is going to be richer and more you know passionate and understanding about the project than they would be if they're working 75 80 hours a week that is a great summation of like what we should do I love and I also think it's a great place to bring an end to this this segment but a grant of where can people find you online I mean Alissa and I already know every where to find

you I if people want again contact you about about your consultancy where they can where can they find you yeah so the easiest way is just to Google Shock ventures which is just SH o NK and adventures like fm but you take off ads so stronk ventures if you google that or G song g sh o and K you will find all of my social media websites emails and easiest ways to contact me sounds great well thank you so much for joining us and thank ya Thanks [Music] [Music] [Music] Wow that France huh we're still trying to get our editing down on this podcast by the way you can

tell by our casual banter that Wow Granta example conversation here at the GDC podcast oh my gosh yeah actually this is we're recording this before we even talked to grant no actually no it's after ELISA what what what are your takeaways there what yeah what's going to brain effort he mentioned hiking Lake away at the beginning and I've had this just camping itch for just like just going camping and then contextualizing that with like oh it's this whole creative refresh and kind of figuring out your like distressing and figure out your place in the world and like throughout the entire conversation there were so many great things mentioned but I just really want to go hiking yeah like like hardcore hiking like Appalachian Trail hiking or go to the park I got family in South Dakota so I'm just gonna flat out holes and go up to Harney Peak yeah it's great I got horny peak Harney Peak tell me about Harney Peak it's a high mountain with the view yeah yeah I think it's a old fort is built I used to

be like a fire watching for it but now it's just some old cool castle that you have to walk for three hours up a hill to get and it's really refreshing so I can relate to that point yeah Jen so after talking to grant basically you're going to take a six-month sabbatical from Gamasutra yeah I'm just gonna go straight a while in a slack and I'll be on a mountain somewhere I guess watch to discuss that later yeah but it's so good it's so good to catch up with somebody like that guy mm-hmm that guy he's seems very in touch with how people operate yeah it's interesting to get the perspective of someone who has been and game development isn't like in the in the thick of it now but it's still in the industry in a way doing especially the consulting stuff you have a unique perspective on that so I kind of like capture that and dig into a little bit was a super interesting conversation yeah and that's got to be difficult too just going into I don't know basically if someone calls 911

11 somebody to fix like it slightly heroic in a way like billowing in the wind as you swoop in to fix all of their production this rugby shirt just billowing billowing in the wind yeah oh I know I want to just point out that like usually when you talk about crunch it gets like this this sombre mood kind of sweeps over whenever crunch comes up but that was a really good summary of issues that lead to it and productively how developers can kind of work through it work past didn't understand it and I think that was just really good to have - yeah it is because it is something easy like you get rightfully fired up about it and then talking to someone who has to solve those issues on a practical level and then just I don't know like been there in all the different situations different Studios their own projects projects they've consulted on so it's yeah really useful information I'm glad to be a part of that yeah me

too Alyssa so okay well this is where we tell you to subscribe smash the subscribe button or is that like the tap is it do people click and even tap it mash it you can mash the subscribe button if you're on a touchscreen device on your phone and we promise to bring more fascinating guests right now we're trying once a month you know we don't want to you know burn ourselves out here and you know I'm kind of lazy yeah yeah but we may ramp up from that depending on how things are going so thanks everybody for listening again I'm Chris Kraft i'm alyssa McAloon and mash that subscribe button with your thumb and if you love us written review see you next time thanks everyone [Music]

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