Improving the Culture of Critique: Communicating Across Disciplines

Today is improving the culture of critique, communicating communicating across disciplines. It's a companion talk to talk I gave last year. I'll talk a little bit more about that in a moment. But why is this needed? Why do we need to talk about critique? Why we need to talk about communicating across disciplines? You know, both both of these things are part of our daily life in game design. But they're often things that we don't really focus on. This is also true often in art school. As both a student and teacher, I often found that we assumed a lot about critique without ever really focusing on it. I'll talk about that in a minute. But when we don't focus on it and when it goes poorly as unfortunately it all too often does, our efficiency goes down. Morale certainly goes down. And especially when we think about communicating across disciplines, we start to lose good ideas that aren't being communicated. Ideas that come from

elsewhere, from other from others, from otherness that that we miss. And when we miss good ideas, the quality of our work goes down. So these issues are really important and they're issues that are certainly very dear to my heart. Before I was a started working at Harmonix as an artist, I spent about 10 years as a teacher. I taught at the Rhode Island School of Design. I taught at the New York Academy among other schools. And during that time and since that time I've continued teaching in lots of workshops at places like the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Fisher-Price, Turbine, also at Harmonix. And throughout all of this teaching, one of the things that has been was always really important to me and something I loved thinking about was critique. How do we assess each other's work? How do we talk about each other's work? It seemed to be something that a lot of other art teachers didn't focus on. They tended to have a kind of throw the students in the water and just see how they swim, uh approach. That's I I don't want But that's not the case of

everyone. There are certainly a lot of art professors and teachers who also think about this a lot. But it was something I really uh enjoyed thinking about. And it was something that uh I brought over as I when I started working uh at Harmonix. So, and over the last uh 8 or 9 years, I've had the the real pleasure to to first start off as a character artist on Rock Band 3. Um I was the lead environment artist on Fantasia: Music Evolved. I returned to some character work for Rock Band 4, and then back doing uh environmental uh stuff with some wonderful abstract musically reactive abstract sculptures in Harmonix Music uh uh VR. And more recently, I've been doing some UI work on SingSpace, the the karaoke game from Harmonix that'll be coming out really soon. It was it was being demoed down on the in the Unity booth. Some of you may have may have had a chance to try it this week. Um In addition to that, outside of work, I've been uh co-found I was a co-founder of a group called Secret Portal. Uh we're really interested in finding in using VR in public spaces, and really finding ways for people in physical and virtual worlds to uh interact with each

other. And we've done a number of installations and and uh uh theatrical performances at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston over the last 3 years. Um So, last year I gave a talk called Maximizing Critique. And that talk focused really focused on strategies for giving and receiving feedback kind of on individual levels. And really focused on this idea that everyone is responsible in this conversation. If you're giving or receiving, there are ways to make that conversation more valuable. Um This year, I'm I'm expanding from that and having a companion piece to that, which is pulling the camera out a bit and looking at the overall culture of critique, especially how we communicate across with disciplines other than our own. Um there'll be a little bit of overlap, uh but they're really companion pieces. If you It would Was anyone at my talk last year? So, you remember. Oh, great. Thanks for coming back. Um there'll be a little bit of overlap, but not much. I'm really trying to cover a lot of uh new ground. Um and if you were at the talk last year, you don't need to. They're not neither is a prerequisite for the other. Um so let's talk a little bit about communicating across disciplines. Um we we're all in our own disciplines and

here's a kind of variety of them that exist in most game studios. And within that there's a lot of areas where we overlap, where it's easy for us to communicate. We share common ground. But there's a lot of places where we don't overlap. We may have different languages for describing the same thing. We have different kinds of experiences, different points of view, and that is when it's really hard to communicate. In many ways it's almost like we're communicating across cultures. And that's when communication can break down. However, it's during those moments that communication is the most important for us to have because that is when we bring our differences to the conversation, our unique point of view. So, ironically, the most difficult conversations are the most important to have. Maybe that's not ironic. Maybe that's just part of life. But in any case, it's certainly the case here. And so now here's a little bit of review from last year. I'll kind of go over it not too long, but I just want to make sure we're on the same page on a couple things. Well, as a as a teacher, I used to always ask my students, especially our freshman students, what is a crit? Cuz we that's what we

call it in art school. We call it a crit. We don't call it a And I said, "What is a crit? What's it short What is this thing short for that we're about to engage on?" And many of them didn't know. Many thought it was well, is it crit short for criticize? Some thought that. Some tried to Some thought it was short for critique. And for me that I was a it's a very important distinction between those two words. And it gave them a chance as a begin at the very beginning of their semester, at the very beginning of their freshman year, um or sometimes in their senior year when this would come up even, what is that difference and why is it important? Well, criticize from my point of view is about more personal preference. It's about judgment being more judgmental. It's about a first response. It's very surface, all right? It's very subjective. Um whereas critique is much more objective. It's about being more analytical. It's about taking a thing apart, looking at all its parts, finding out how they work together, and then maybe trying to put it back together again. That's critique. And you know what? Critique doesn't even need to be judgmental. You don't even need to be judgmental to have a great critique. If you take something apart and understand how it

works, you've served a great that's a very valuable act. Um but you can also then be reflective on that process. And and in being reflective start to think how is this thing working in the ways it can, how is it not being working in ways it should. And then you can start to be not so much judgmental as assessing. How is this thing working? And and it that's where the judgments come out of, but those judgments are then based on a foundation of knowing the thing on its own terms. That's critique, right? That's then is very different than criticism. And as I talk about critique throughout the rest of this the my talk today, that's the type of activity that I'll be thinking about and referring to. One last thing from last year, we often think of critical conversations as being a kind of one-way street going from a giver to a receiver. And I think that's very much not the case. It is a two-way street. Everyone needs to be involved. Everyone is responsible for how the conversation goes. If you're receiving the information, you need to figure out how you're receiving it well and what you can do to improve that information you might be receiving. I covered a lot of that in my talk last

year. And if you're giving the recei- giving the the information, you also need to be thinking about how is this person receiving it. Am I am I presenting it in a way that's the best that it will help them understand it most clearly. Um and so you need to be thinking about how your work will be received. Let me give you a quick example about a time at Harmonix where I wasn't doing that as well and we we needed and it became a problem. That was in the early days of Fantasia Music Evolved, we created all of these gray box layouts which we found a really fast way just literally using gray boxes to create them in engine so we could really be experiencing them with the Kinect. And it was great for us, but nobody outside our team could understand what the hell we were showing them. It was completely abstract. We knew it, but they didn't. And so we couldn't get good critical feedback from them because they didn't know what they were looking at. So we had to make sure we brought in a concept artist to draw do a wonderful draw over on them so they became clear and then we could start getting great feedback cuz people understood what they were looking at. But just a quick example to talk about this idea of thinking from the other point of person's point of view. How are they going to be receiving information and have you given them enough information

so that they can understand it in order to give you some good critical feedback. Which brings me to the big theme of not the day. I don't know how the rest of your day has been. The big theme of this hour and and that theme is empathy. You need to be empathic when you Oh, see this is John. And that's not empathy. That's not it. He's That's wrong. Empathy is not being overly sympathetic, caring about someone, bleeding heart. Those things are important, but we have those sort of a role in our life, but that's not empathy. It's not empathy at all. So that raises what is empathy? Empathy is the ability to imagine from another point of view. So if you think, you know, if John here is thinking about this the person in the painting, in their world, in the world of that person, how would they see other people? What would those other people look like? Trying to see from that point of view, but however, we can't ever really fully do

that. We try to do that the our imagination is blurry, the image we have. Often's even missing pieces when we try to see something from someone else's point of view. And that's an important part of empathic communication because when we realize that we're trying to see from another person's point of view and we are failing to do that, there are holes in our image, we are then in an inquisitive mindset because now we're ready to start asking them questions to fill in those missing holes. That's the core of empathic communication. Trying to imagine and trying to improve that image through the act of engaging with another person. Um and so in the course of preparing for this talk, I spent some time talking to many of the different departments at Harmonix. Um, and my goal was to find out, you know, how do we feel we are perceived by others? Because often that perception shows some of the um, some of the ways in which we are misperceived by others. The the ways in which we are seen that we don't care to

be seen by others. Um, that are actually false. Um, the kinds of ways that are not good to think about when we actually enter into a conversation. So, here are a few of those that I found as I talked to people around Harmonix. The artists often felt that people feel it takes us too long to make our work. The designers often felt that they just are creating work for others. They don't feel that way themselves. That's how they feel others other people see them in a pejorative way. The producers felt they don't that people don't care that people think they don't care about quality. That they only care about the deliverable. Programmers felt that sometimes people think they just are there to kill good ideas. QA said, you know, people around Sometimes we feel that people think that we're just unskilled slackers. People in operations and you know, in in my course of talking to people around Harmonix, I at one point I realized, wait a minute. I've been talking to a lot of people who are involved in my initial team, the creative process. But there's a lot of other people at this company that I also involve in critical feedback on critical feedback on different levels. And operations is one of them. People in the IT department,

people who are admins. They deal with critical feedback all the time. Let me bring them into this conversation also. Um, and they felt that, you know, other people often see them as people who do things that are trivial and easy. And the executives um, often felt that, you know, people see them as just giving disruptive directives. You know, they they want to just be helpful, but people when they say something, people think, "Oh, it came from an executive. We've got We got to stop everything and just do that." Um, and that's that's they So, the way in which they they feel that they're misrepresented in the way that people see them. Now, so these are the ways that often people feel that they are seen, which probably shows there's some kind of truth in there. Probably means a lot of people do see people that way. And if that is the case, and if we go into a conversation with someone from QA, with a designer, with an executive, and we have this notion in mind, no empathic communication is going to happen. Empathic communication has already failed. We've already failed to have a a really productive conversation. But rather, we should start thinking about how people want to be seen. So, it was my second question I asked people when I

was talking with them. How do you want to be seen by people other people? And the artist said, you know, we want to think in terms of aesthetics and experience. And the designer said, well, we are really able to help contextualize our work. You know, these are the ways that people that people want to be seen. They're also the things that people from different departments feel they bring their unique perspective to to us to the creative effort. The producers said, you know, we really facilitate process. We want people to see that in us. The programmer said, we want people to think to realize that we think in terms of systems. It's a really unique and special way of thinking that is helpful for everyone to understand. Um QA said, we want people to understand we actually have a robust understanding of the game across all disciplines. So, we're a great resource for everyone to really help understand how things function in lots of different ways. Operations said, you know, we really work to create a better work environment so that everyone can be working more efficiently. And the executives said that we enjoy contributing to the process. We want people to understand that. We want people to understand we we're just contributors. We aren't actually being directive uh necessarily. But sometimes

we have to be directive. We need to find ways to clarify that the exec is is the executives told me. So, these are ways that people want to be seen. And if we can go into our conversations thinking that way, how does this person want to be seen, and seeing them in that light, then right away a lot of the empathic communication is going to take care of itself. Um because empathic communication is vital to everything I'm going to talk about over the next rest hour. It's vital to to to efficient critical feedback. It's vital to communicating across disciplines. But there is a shortcut. So, get this and then you can if you leave No, don't leave. But here's the shortcut that is really helpful to also help kind of go over all the other strategies I'm going to talk about. And that is that remember the behavior is shaped by a wish to be respected, be heard, and be valued. Um one of the things that used to really annoy me and scrape against me when I'm

or teachers do it when I was a student or hear of other teachers doing it when I was a teacher uh in art school was they would say to the students, um "Okay, we're going to have critique today. You got to leave your ego at the door." And in some context that might work if it's a context in which that teacher has given those students strategies to to effectively leave their egos at the door. But often often that's not the case. Often they're just putting the whole onus on the student. And here's why that I hated that. I I don't use the word hate lightly. I really dislike that because it put the students in a position where now, you know, we care about our work. Everyone cares about their work. It is hard to hear that your work isn't working well, right? That's the case for everyone. You know, if you love if if that makes you feel giddy to hear that your work stinks, then you're some weird exception. And but so wait, it hurts, right? That's just the way it is. Now, if you have been told you need to leave the ego at the door, what's going to happen? You hear

your work isn't working efficiently, and now you feel bad because your work is failing, but you also feel bad because you're feeling bad, right? Oh, I'm supposed to leave my ego at the door. Everyone else here can do it. The teacher told me I should do it. I shouldn't feel bad, and now I feel bad about feeling bad, and my brain is all in this, and guess what I'm not hearing? I am not hearing the feedback. It's not coming through. It's not being communicated. And so, you know, these things aren't just about being a bleeding heart. Oh, we got to care about people's feelings. We got to think about them. Which is true. But that that's not the reason for this. The reason for this is if we're not thinking about these things, if we're not validating people and making them feel heard, then they will be unable to hear the really vital feedback that we need to give them. When you do this, you can be harsher in your critique than you can if you don't then then you can are able to if you don't. So, this isn't about just being nice. It's actually about being harsh in your critiques and rough in your critiques, but having the foundation upon which that can be accepted and understood.

Um so, we're going to talk about two two different strategies, uh two different areas of strategy types of strategies um over the rest of the talk. We're going to divide it into kind of two parts. One part will be things we can do before the conversations involve critical feedback, and then it'll be about things we can do uh during the actual conversations themselves. Um so, before the conversations, I'm going to kind of go over three types of of strategy areas that we can do before we have these conversations to help lay the groundwork for effective communication. One is we can create inclusive structures. So, these are things that happen more on a structural level uh within a within a uh company. Um one is we can start to work have kickoff meetings as part of our structure for whenever we're working together. Um there was a time uh when we're working on uh um on Fantasia: Music Evolved where uh the concept artists were down the hall and they were making these amazingly beautiful concept artists they were work drawings they were working with a narrative designer. And at the other end of the hall, those of us who are on the environment team were doing more uh proper prototyping of

gameplay ideas with the the gameplay designers. And we had never talked to each other really clearly at the beginning. So, the design the narrative is in Actually, let me pause for a minute. One thing this example also shows is inner disciplinarity often is within disciplines itself, right? The concept artists, uh modelers, and uh technical artists. Even within art, there's lots of different disciplines involved, and the same is true, I know, of other departments. But in this case, we had designers, one type of designer down the hall with the narrative, and the concept artist, another type of designer down the other end of the hall, uh with us on the environment team, and we were all doing this wonderful work. We were making these great interactive toys, interactive environments that had all these wonderful rules about how you had to interact with them, and the people down the hall were designing all these wonderful, beautiful art things, but we weren't talking to each other, clearly. And there started to be a lot of tension, like, who is driving this cart here? Are we supposed to be listening to them and driving our gameplay? Are they supposed to be listening to us and and doing narratives that overlay the gameplay? And, you know, it's it would be possible to work in parallel, but in

this case, we really started to diverge, and we started to have tension with each other, because we never had a kickoff meeting. Say, who is responsible for what? How are we going to be doing this? How are we going to be working in parallel successfully? It hadn't been defined, and created a lot of tension uh that was unnecessary. Um and what also would have happened, or what would have been helpful for us, would have been if we could have had a regular communication throughout that process. If we would have been meeting regularly to uh talk about how things were going, so we could kind of stay in the loop with with each other's work. And one great way to do that would have been to have regular group critiques. Um group critiques are a great way to share work, but it need they need to have a struct need to be part of the structure. And what's even better is if you can have a structure for the group critique itself. So, you're not just throwing people into the water and asking them to swim. Um what I'm going to share with you now over a couple minutes is a technique that I found incredibly helpful as a teacher, um and there might be parts of it you can you can pull to use uh in the studio environment. We've I've used it successfully in studio environment at Harmonix many times. Um

but it's it's one way to do critique. The reason I'm presenting this to you is it gives you the example of a of a way to structure critique. It's by no means the only way. You need to find your way that it, best for you and your your context, but I just want to share with you once you understand the idea of what it means to structure a critique. And this is a pretty rigid way of doing it, to be frank. This This way of uh structuring critique has two parts. Part one, you got to get to know the damn thing, right? All too often when we go to critique something, we start talking right away. We feel the need to start judging it or assessing it right away, right? But that doesn't make sense. You don't do that at your You know, you meet someone, you know, and you just start as you're taking their hand, you say, "Gosh, I really think you're not a very nice person." You know? Or gosh, I you're You don't judge that person right away. You We realize we got to get to know them. The same is true before we we give the critical feedback. And here are the steps that I do in this process to get to know it. First, we spend some time just describing it objectively. This water bottle is about 4 and 1/2 inches tall.

It's about 2 inches in diameter. It's clear plastic. Just the basic objective qualities are there. What's the purpose of this? It gives us some time to not be judgmental. Not judgmental at all. It buys some time to just be with the damn thing and just look at it and not think about what we whether we like it or not. We're just with it. Second part, describe your subjective reactions to it, you know? Gosh, when I look at this water bottle, it makes me feel a little thirsty. Which is good because I can drink out of it. Um when I look at this water bottle, I think you know, I It makes me feel big because it's it's smaller than a regular water bottle. It's making me feel big. That's what I'm raising these issues of scale. So I'm just starting to describe and again, non-judgmental non- non-judgmentally, what's happening inside of me. When I look at this water bottle, it reminds me of the water bottle they used somewhere, you know, sort of Or that makes more sense, right? When I look at this When I'm looking at this, it reminds me of a of a of an Andy Warhol painting or something, right? What's What's happening inside my brain? What's

happening inside my body? Just describing it objectively. Again, getting to know it, getting to know it on its own terms. What is that thing doing before I try to judge it or assess it. Then part two, analyze it. Begin by analyzing by finding out what's the goal of this thing. What was it trying to achieve? You know, that that might be a larger goal within the art direction or within the gameplay. What's the goal of this thing? Um second part, what were the makers' intentions? How was the maker trying to achieve that goal? What were they trying to do with this? And now, you've got all the parts you need. You now have experience. You've taken the thing apart. You spent time with it. You understand how it works on its own terms. And now you have the objective criteria you can use to assess it. And that's the last thing. How does it work to achieve its goals or fall short? Right? Now you can do that. That's, for me, a great process of critique that's worked really well for me for many many years um and has had great success. But one key word here is that word how. Not just is it achieving its goals or is

it falling short? How is it falling short? Right? What are the way ways it's doing that? Again, it's an idea of assessing it and really figuring out how it's working on its own terms and by its own system. Final way that you we can be inclusive on a structural level in our companies is to by brainstorming. Um and bringing people from diverse departments and and uh disciplines in together to brainstorm around a problem to get all of their points of view. If that's part of the structure, things can go really really well and really efficient. Everyone gets to buy in and feels like they're part of the same uh solving the same project problem. Um this worked really well in um The Beatles uh in the rock band Beatles game where they had to create all of these wonderful um uh uh dreamscapes. And so, they but they the tech there was all kinds of limitations. They brought artists and engineers and the designers and everyone got into a room and they started to brainstorm solutions. And before long, they came up with a great way that became a really successful solution. But was it worked really well because everyone from all the different disciplines was in right away and had it

had a stake in it. They were they'd been involved in making that decision. So, we talked about some ways to create inclusive structures we can do before a conversation, and those are things that often happen happen on a structural level. But, now we're going to spend some time talking about ways we can prepare before the conversation that are more individual. You know, thing I can't Maybe I'm not in a position that I can change the structure of my company, but there are things I can do individually that it will help these conversations go well before the conversation even take place. One is by researching ahead of time. Uh this is something that I still continue to this day to work on and uh which is and before I go ask an engineer, "Hey, guy, you got this problem with the shader graph. Can you help me?" spending 10 minutes, half an hour, doing some research on my own. Maybe I can find the actual answer and not have to bother him. Or, at least I now understand the vocabulary that's specifically related. So, if he starts talking about, "Oh, you need to use a dot product there." Now, I've already done some research. I know what a dot product is. I don't have to have him explain that. So, I've kind of done some background on myself myself ahead of time. It's going to help the whole conversation go well. Another is

preparing with quick prototypes. Um this is a prototype I made uh for the early versions of Harmonix uh music VR for the trip sequence that involved kaleidoscopes. I just slammed together some tech we already had just to see how kaleidoscopes felt. Um we knew it worked We helped us to see that it worked really well before we went into uh critiquing it. And then we were able to build out the systems we needed to create this more complex kaleidoscopic system that was in the shipping uh uh experience. Um another way we can prepare ahead of time is with uh visualizations. Um this worked really well as I was working on UI on Sing Space. Initially, I wanted to make sure we had this tablet which had all kinds of information that you had to read uh and to to choose your songs, to make all kinds of selections. Um and I wanted to feel like this machine that could this like wonderful contraption that would open up almost like a Swiss Army knife. Could unfold and fold back in. And so, I made this paper prototype so I could start showing people really quickly, "Hey, here's how I want to imagine it working. Here's how I imagine it flipping around." So, we had this

visualization we could then talk about, which was really helpful. Um because then we could help the critical feedback go really fast having that. Then, um as we continue to work on it, the uh uh the designer that was working through this with me, Brian Chan, did these wonderful, wonderful just illustrations whenever he was doing the UI design for it, which were just great and helped us talk about it a lot easier. Um and also made it easier for me when I was when I was scrolling down the design document to find things I wanted to find cuz I could see them visually. I didn't have to like skim over a bunch of text. And those things ended up resulting in this this tablet that we have in Sing Space, which ended up achieving kind of all my goals at the beginning. It really It's this fun thing to play with in addition to uh in addition to being functional. But, that's that's And that's that's an objective opinion. That's an objective fact, actually. It's not my not my opinion. I hope you find it fun to play with. Um So, another thing we can do is we can prepare we can prepare by defining problems uh

before we go into before we have a critique. Um and one issue again came up in Sing Space was we had this HUD, which I had fallen in love with with you know, I wanted to have the HUD as this robot that would follow you around and all the song lyrics would be on it. And it it was was great, interactive, but you know, we realized that it just wasn't working. And so, before we had a critique about it, we realized, "Okay, what's the what's the problem we're trying to solve?" So, we can really focus this. The problem here was that the HUD needed to be more flexible. It needed to be able to fit in more specific spaces rather than kind of dominating the whole space. And so, we were able to by having that focus and defining the problem, we were able to really quickly start talking about solutions for it during the critique that ended up with this other version of the HUD. It's more like a movie screen or slide screen that kind of opens and closes around the space. So, a third area of things we can do before the conversation are we can do things structurally that help build relationships. So, some of these are structural, and some are are individual. Um one thing we can do is just share your appreciation and respect for someone. This seems like a little thing,

and I almost didn't even put it in this talk, but I have a little I have a little thing for this. It's when you see something, say something. Meaning, you know, if somebody did something that you really like, just let them know. You know, there was a time we were working when we were working on Rock Band 4, I was working on the crowd figure assets, and one of the lead designers uh Greg LoPiccolo came by and said, actually the creative director or whatever, I think he was the creative director on that project. Um he said, you know, "Hey Jeff, I noticed you were working uh those character assets are looking really wonderful. They're I really appreciate they I was really enjoying them the other day." And that meant a lot to me. It was like, "Wow, first of all, Greg actually was noticing the crowd. That's awesome. And he knows how he actually knows what I've been doing." It meant a lot. And but later, when we actually had to have a critique about those crowd assets, and they actually weren't working as well as we needed as we needed, I was there was a great foundation for that, because I knew that uh Greg was already coming from this place of actually appreciating them. It's now that they actually weren't doing what he needed them to do, uh it was a lot easier for me to hear that, uh because I knew uh kind of where

it was coming from. Um so, these things are just little things you can do that that help build a relationship, so then when you do need to have the critical feedback later, you've already got a strong foundation for that to happen. Um another is just asking for help. Here's another thing I did recently. You you think I would know these things better since I'm talking about it, but this is I do this recently. It's a lesson I haven't even fully learned myself, which was um I've been working in the animation in uh on this project, and uh often in Unity, those of you working on Unity may know this thing where if if you re- if you re-animate something af- uh if you re-parent something or move it around in its hierarchy after you've animated it, it get it it's broken. The animation keys don't work anymore, and I've been suffering with that for a long time, complaining about it, but finally I mentioned it to the designer uh to the uh engineers on the project, and the lead engineer uh said, "You know what? I I We've got a tool to fix that. It's been there all the time. I just didn't know. I'd never asked about it. I hadn't vo- I hadn't reached out across disciplines to say, 'Here's this problem I'm solving. Can you help me do that?'" So, here's why this is important, and here's why it's relevant to this talk.

By reaching across disciplines asking for help, two things can happen. One, you can save a lot of time cuz things may already exist that to help you, right? But two, it's another way to build relationships. By doing that now, by helping each other, we're building stronger relationships. So, when we do need to give critical feedback to each other, we've we're doing it on a stronger foundation. So, these are all ways of building relational foundations so that when we do need to give critical feedback, we we have a much stronger foundation for it. And the last thing is, you know, we can do organized events. We do a lot of these greater harmonics. We go bowling together once a year. We have game jams once a year. I'm sure you guys do things like that often. In other companies, if you don't, I strongly suggest you do. But here's why I put it in here I put this here, too. I almost took it out, also. I put it in here because I was remembering that often when I go to bowl, I just get so into the bowling and loving it that I'm forgetting, "Hey, this is also an opportunity for me to be meeting a lot of other people in the company that I don't normally meet." And talking to a lot of other people I don't normally talk to. And the that's what these these things are for. And so, when

your company does these, really taking full advantage of that and to using it a chance to really build relationships um outside of the the ones you usually have. So, these are the three things that are really helpful for doing things before uh conversation starts. Um they're they're not the things. There are some things that are good examples, and there there are many more. It's not an exhaustive list, but some things I thought would be helpful to talk about today. Now, let's pivot a little bit and talk about the second chunk of things, uh ways of strategies and techniques. And that is things we can do during an actual conversation uh that's involving critical feedback uh across disciplines. Um And the first thing that's helpful to ask here is what helps conversations go well in general, especially conversations when they're across cultures, right? Um, well, if we think about it, if when people are talk communicating, if there's someone uh from China negotiating or having conversation with someone from from the United States or across cultures, what's

really helpful in doing that? That's right. It's a moderator, right? Moderators are people who come in and they help to facilitate and path of communication. They do that by helping to focus the critique, helping to clarify the communication. They help to see converse and they're able to see the conversation from the outside. They have an objective point of view and they can really then focus on how the communication is happening, right? That's great, but why is that relevant to this talk? Because when we're you know, we can't bring moderators in to our company just to help everyone talk, certainly when it's one-on-one talk. One-on-one we can't. And the answer to that is that anyone, anytime, can be a moderator. That's right. You can be the moderator. Even if you're in the conversation, you can be inside of it and outside of it at the same time, acting as a moderator in the own conversation to kind of help facilitate that conversation as it's going on. Let's talk about some ways that we can be moderators of our own conversations. One is by helping to define your own unique perspective.

Um, uh these are some images of Wes, uh the drummer from rock band VR, uh that was made by the uh Shawn Witt, this wonderful artist we have at Harmonix. Um, and I I just I love that drawing. It's uh um I'll I'll okay, I'll look at it more after the talk. But um the um but but one of the things that Shawn was he was is he was working on this character, he always works on characters, was able to bring uh to critiques when the people would have critiques about the characters, how they fit into the rest of the game, is that Shawn's able to say, "Look, as my perspective as a figure artist, I really understand the narrative background of this of this character. I really understand his psychological makeup, I understand his personality, and therefore I understand that his he should have a certain kind of voice when we give him the voice actor for him, or I should understand certain other things because of my point of view. He has that unique point of view that he can bring to this kid situation. And that's what we can all focus on that. What is your unique point perspective? And you can identify it. Don't just start talking before you say, "Here's the perspective I'm coming from." And sometimes you might be coming from perspectives that aren't your normal one. You might say,

"You know, as a player, when I'm playing through this game, I find X, Y, and Z to be the case." You can define that perspective that makes your feedback unique. Um And why is this helpful? There's actually another thing we can do is we can also invite others to do the same thing. So, in the course of a critique, say, "Hey, you know, Brian, as the designer, how do you see this issue? Or or or Sully, as the engineer, how do you see this issue?" So, we can invite people from their unique perspective to offer their input and advice. It establishes the value of all points of view, and it really helps to be moderating these conversations in the very act of having the conversation itself. Another way we can act as moderators in the middle of a conversation is through reflection. Um and that reflection is when we kind of rephrase and reflect back something that someone has said. Um this is a wonderful painting that uh Gianna Ruggero did uh when we were in the in the uh pre-production process for Harmonix Music VR. It was for where the dance scenes could take place that are

part of that experience. Um and some of the feedback was, "You know, it it just doesn't look like a very musical place." Now, in Gianna's point of mind, it was a very musical place. You could have musical bushes, you could have musical trees. It was very musical. And so, this is where reflection gets to be very helpful because um because Gianna could say, "Well, what I hear you saying is that we this place is is a place that doesn't have elements that can be musical at all." And that gives then the the she was talking to, uh the the designer, a chance to say, "Oh, no, no, that's not what I meant. Okay, okay, they could I you could have musical bushes. What I mean is that we need to find a different place itself." Which then gave Gianna the chance to be reflective again. She said, "Oh, what I hear you saying is we need to find a place that something about that place itself is musical, a place we associate with music." She said, "Ah, yes, yes, that's right. That's So, you can see that idea of reflecting back, re- rephrasing, and reflecting. In this case, we ended up placing it in in a gymnasium, like a high school dance, with a place itself

that was a place where we go to enjoy music and dance. Um so, some things to remember about uh moderating through reflection. First, rephrase, don't just repeat. Um second, it's an amazing, excellent way of translating, especially when we're working across disciplines. You know, people who are coming at this from an engineering point of view or from a design point of view, you know, they may be using words that mean something different to them than they than they mean for us, because different disciplines often speak about thing the same thing in different ways. And so, reflecting is a great way to make sure that we're all on the same page and understanding uh together. It's also a great way to show that you're listening, right? So, it suddenly helps to validate the people you're talking with. They feel listened to, they feel heard. Um it shows that you care, right? And why is this important? Because it helps others hear you, right? Especially if your feedback is going to be harsh, right? If they're saying something and you're able to reflect back to them you've understood what they're saying, you really are on the same page with them, but I understand what you're

saying, but we just can't do that in this case because of X, Y, and Z. And then if you want to be super awesome, you can say, "But that was a wonderful idea, and you know what? Why don't you help us figure out the next solution? Let's all work on this together, right? Validate, incorporate, get people involved, make people feel invested, and it's just it those are all super helpful things to do. Another thing we can do to moderate uh when we're in the course of a conversation is you can moderate by asking questions when we're giving feedback. Um uh example of that uh was uh we had these um this new cloth physics that had been designed for the characters I was working on uh giving uh hair physics of to for Rock Band 4. And it was a new system, and the initial the engineer who did it initially had um made it so that the the these top joints there were were not constrained. It was different than our old system, and so it wasn't working the way that I was used to working it. It wasn't working the way that that uh the old system had. It

wasn't working the way I designed all the assets to work with it. And you know, I could have gone to him and said, "Hey, this is wrong. It's not working, right?" But I decided I stopped myself, and I said, "Wait a minute. I'm going to ask him some questions first before I give that feedback." You know, so I said, you know, "Why why did you do that? Why did you design it so that that's the default?" And he told me, and he actually was an interesting way. He actually in an in another for our next game, maybe we could design the assets to do what he had in mind. But unfortunately, I hadn't designed them that way. So I was able to say, "Oh, I see that. That's an interesting way. Maybe next time we could do that. Let's do some R&D after this to to figure that out. But right now unfortunately, the assets are designed to have the top joint constrained, so could you please make that the default?" And he said, "Oh, yeah, sure, no problem." And he did it, right? So asking questions before giving feedback is really helpful because we have to assume that our assumptions are right? And and this was actually something that um uh it also learned from one of the engineers in during while I was meeting with the engineers, um an engineer one of our engineers said, Fitzy said during the our feedback, he said, "You know, I when I'm talking to

an artist, I have I just have come to come to understand that I'm going to be wrong at at least three times." You know, the first thing I'm going to think is going to be wrong. And he he he just come to understood understand that his initial assumptions are going to be false, and that's fine. He understands because we're working across cultures that the way he's thinking about something isn't the same way the artist is thinking about it. Um it also saves energy and time by asking questions cuz we could suddenly get to the of the issue right away, and it certainly saves energy because you imagine if I'd gone to this engineer and said, "Hey, this is a system's broken." Now suddenly he's upset, I'm I've got all this anger, we're all angry. There's a lot of energy being wasted, right? So this saves a lot of energy. It also helps people feel included and valued, like a lot of the other things we're talking about today. They get to say they get to the core of empathic communication. Um but you can also moderate by asking questions when you're receiving feedback. All right? So if you're recei- And this is a a pre- pre- story for this. This is one of my favorite stories of of this of this talk. Mitch Fletcher is one of the artists that I've worked with for a long time.

Amazing, wonderful guy. Um uh He was working on Sing Space with us. He's the environment artist. Um he'd gotten some feedback from in a in a in a bug from someone in QA, and that feedback was, "The art looks unfinished." And Mitch said, "You know, um in years past, I would have been I would have been angry and I would have said, "What the What the What the heck does he know what he's talking about? I'm the artist and he would But he said, "You know what? I've come to realize there's something there. If he thinks the art if if that person thinks the art is unfinished, other people are going to think the art is unfinished. And this game is not for artists, this game is for everyone. And that's a good piece of feedback. Now I And so I need to start asking him some questions to clarify it. So I can say, "Wait, you know, I can send back a comment on the bug. What What is it about it that feels unfinished?" And he'll kind of try to get more information, right? But that bit back, even though it wasn't phrased well, was important because it was like a it was like a a piece of coal that hadn't been crushed into the diamond, right? There's a diamond in there, some really good feedback that could be really good

helpful, but he needed to ask questions to pull that feedback out. And he did, and then he ended up really doing this wonderful redo of this musically reactive art that's up in the sky as we're singing in Sing Space. Um And so a couple notes about this process of asking questions when you're receiving feedback as a way of moderating. One, just remember that non-artists often find it difficult to talk about art. Um and that's the case, you know, this this talk is in the art track, but I'm hoping everything is kind of relevant for a lot of people who aren't just artists. So, you can apply that to whatever uh discipline you're in, you know, non-whatever you are often find it difficult to talk about whatever you do. Um and so, but that doesn't mean that they don't have good ideas and opinions about it. And so, sometimes they need you need to ask questions to get to the core of what they're trying to express. So, we talked um about a number of things uh that are you can helpful do during the conversation. Just a quick review of them. Be participants and moderators at the same time. Um that in some some ways

to do that are defining your unique perspective and helping other people to do to define theirs. Rephrasing and reflecting ideas back. And making sure to ask questions. Um certainly this isn't an exhaustive list. There's a lot more, but I think those start to get at the idea of what things you can do to act as both a moderator and a participant at the same time during a conversation. Before I close, this is one thing that came up as a question a lot when I was presenting this is, you know, sometimes we just disagree. Um sometimes, you know, I want an apple and you want an orange and we're just never going to agree on that, right? And so, the question was, well, what do we do then? How do these strategies help us to solve that problem, right? Well, one thing that can be helpful is you can find a way within your company to create a have a structure in place that will help you to deal with that situation when it when it happens. And um earlier in the week, I can't I can't stress this strongly enough. Earlier in the week, there was an amazing talk. I think it

was on Monday. It was called Managing Conflict on Small Teams. Uh it was by Rebecca Saltzman from Finji. And she went over some of the strategies that they'd use at Finji for dealing with this this specific issue when there's conflict. I would strongly suggest you take a look at that. Um you might find some great ideas for that. But you can also work the the over the overall thing that's important is having a structure in place um either on your small team or on the larger teams. So when there are complete disagreements, that people will be able to know what to do. It won't be on them to figure out what to do at that point. All right? That's they will have a structure and something that they can do in that moment. But even just using all the stuff I've talked with you about today, uh coming with focusing on empathic communication, um when you when we get to those points where we just disagree, we can often find that the strategies I've talked about today, we can find ways to disagree with respect and understanding, you know? If I've started to understand your point of view even though I still disagree with it, I at least understand it and I can still respect you. We can still We're not going to get into a big

fight over um if we use a lot of the strategies and techniques I've talked about today. And in fact, and this next point that I'm about to to swipe to comes out of lots of talks with my wife. My wife uh Jane Hesser is an amazing artist and she is also an amazing therapist. And one of the things that she has taught me is that, you know, the metaphor the analogy is this. When you break a bone, it's stronger in the place where it heals. And that's true also of emotional relationships. When our emotional relationships break, they are stronger after being healed, right? We can all probably imagine that. You know, having an argument with someone, getting through it, finding it We're we're we're stronger in our relationship having gotten through that, right? And so when we have these moments when we disagree and we use this you know strategies like I've talked about in this talk or others that you can think of um to to find ways to get through those disagreements, then we can not only just be but not get along, we

can actually use it as a way to bond. Our relationships can actually really improve through this process. So in closing, um here's just a quick slide that summarizes some of the things I talked about today. Uh I've already reviewed a number of these at each point, so I won't read through them all again. But, the most important thing with all of these is to remember that you need to behave with other people's experience in mind in order to give feedback effectively, especially when communicating across disciplines. And you need to do that, you need to focus on empathic communication. And empathic communication is entirely based on the ability to have empathy, and empathy is that ability to try to imagine something from someone else's point of view, recognize that you're unable to do that, that there are holes in your image, and that you need to become inquisitive and try to ask questions and fill in those gaps. Um Thank you very much. I hope uh I hope

you all enjoy thinking about this stuff as much as I do. Um these are I think super important things for us to think about as an industry. Um and I I would love to keep this conversation going. Uh please take down my email, uh talk to me afterwards, um and I would love to find ways to keep this dialogue moving forward, and to keep talking about these issues and finding even more ways that we can be incorporating this uh as an industry. Uh thank you all very, very much. All right. So, I designed this to be plenty of time for questions. Um and so, we've got a good chunk of time. If anyone has questions, you can please uh just use the microphones that are in the room. Yeah. Hi. Great talk. Um when you get together with different uh people, do you ask them to prepare in any way? And I'm asking this because when we have reviews, I often notice that a lot of people come to the meeting and are all busy. They didn't get a chance to review

any a beforehand. How do you deal with different people and at different levels of preparedness? Okay, so that the We're asking when people come and to a meeting, how do I make sure that some everyone's on the same level? Some people Some people might be more prepared than other people. Yeah, how do you avoid doing work in the meeting and having people people prepared beforehand? Oh, having people prepared before the meeting. Um that's a really good question. I think um often in the case with with art. And so this may be different for different disciplines. But often in the case of art, if we're dealing with a critical feedback, we want we want to have a critique about something, it's often not so vital because we're kind of you we come to it we're not going to we're going to part of the critique itself is to have time to experience it and that gets us all on the same page with it. Um but there are times if that art has very very specific design constraints, Yeah. then then some people don't understand that then they're going to be less So, I think the the thing I try to do in those cases is before the meeting is kind of

goes into the preparation process, figure out okay, what are the essential elements that everyone needs to know? If there're design constraints that people need to know, if there's art direction constraints that people need to know, let's just make sure we have that out right away so that people understand those issues and try to find a succinct way of telling what those issues are. Um and that works I found that it worked really well in an art context. Um in non-art context, I can't speak to. Uh what what which are you an artist or are you Uh I do a lot of different things. Okay. It's it's different expertises. So it's indeed different for different levels. so I imagine it would be very different from And that's one of the reasons I I would love to start expanding this conversation out to non-artists so we can start talking about some of the strategies that are helpful in other disciplines for doing these kinds of things. Cuz I would imagine that, you know, in an engineering meeting uh that is the the level of prepa- preparedness people need to have is much greater coming into the meeting. But I can't speak to that because I don't I don't have that experience. Yeah, no, that but that was helpful. Thank you.

Okay, great. And that also reminds me of one little thing that um you know, I had all my bubbles in the different departments. My bubble for engineering initially said coders. And then in the course of my meeting with them, I said, "Oh, wait a minute, you guys. I've been meaning to ask you for a long time. Do you guys like being called coders?" Cuz I just And And I found out that a lot of them don't. You know, a lot of them think it's like it's like calling you a pixel pusher. I'm like, "Well, yeah." And so So, I said, "Well, And so I found out, what do you like to be called?" And so I changed it to programmers. Yeah. Uh and then it wasn't the case. Some of them thought coders are fine. Well, but some of them didn't like Some of them didn't like it. Yeah. Hi. Um so, as you know, especially working on a on a big team, um this is a journey, and the journey is sometimes fraught with pitfalls. And um And I think sometimes I've encountered um situations where there is a loss of respect, and then therefore like a loss of trust. And with that comes baggage, especially if you have the dev cycle's long. And so I guess um from your point of view, from your past experience, what has been the best way to resolve um you know, these more like

in ingrained and deep-seated issues have taken a while to kind of like formed that ball of Oh, yeah, that's a great question. So, So, the question is, what what can we do when over a course of the time people haven't been paying attention to all these issues, and therefore things have festered, and now people have lost respect for each other. How can you repair that once it's happened? That's a great question. I think I mean, the the There's the easy answer, and there's the hard answer. So, the easy answer is to kind of negate the foundation of your question, and say, "Well, the best thing to do is to start making sure you have a culture in your company of doing these types of things early on, so things don't fester and get to that point, right?" So, that's the easy answer, but that kind of doesn't help you in your question at all, right? Cuz you might be still in this this specific case right now. Um and I think that the best way to do that is Gosh, I don't know. I'm just kind of talking off the top of my head now. But, if If in that situation, I would try to to to find a way to get as many people on the team to recognize what's happened as possible, to be transparent about it. Say, "Look, we have developed a problem

here. We're not communicating well." You know, try not to personalize it if it's an issue with one person or another. Don't personalize it. Don't say, "Hey, you've really gotten to be angry here and we don't like your anger." You know, right? That's not going to be helpful, right? So, try to find ways of what we aren't communicating as well as we can. This is and it acknowledge that the structure has been the problem. Blame the structure, right? It's like, "We've had a really horrible structure for the first half of this project. There are a lot of things we haven't done that we should have done, and that was a mistake, right? And what we need to start doing now is finding some ways that we can fix that because we don't aren't trusting You just list what's happening. We find that we're not trusting each other anymore. You know, list that out. Acknowledge this happening. Blame the structure for it. And then say, "Bring everyone in." And say, "What can Don't say, 'Okay, and here's what we're going to do to solve it,' right? Say, "Okay, as a group, we need to start figuring out how we're going to solve these problems. Help Let's Let's all start thinking of ideas for this." And then maybe some of the ideas in this talk can be things that can get that conversation going, but they the conversation itself should be a

participatory process. So, everyone's invested. And once everyone's invested, it's going to be a lot greater chance if it was their idea, right? There's going to be a lot better chance or that they will do it going forward. Is that helpful? Yeah, that was very helpful. Thank you. Okay, thanks. Hi. This is a kind of in a similar, you know, thought process of Is there anything you guys do specifically to educate, like, team-wide how to implement these techniques and have an effective conversation and uh or anything you do team-wide to help establish that process and structure, whether it's like just having a mini workshop on site or or or things like that? Is there anything specifically you guys implement to educate the team? That's a great question. It's like The question is like, "What can we we on site as well What are some things we can do to implement this? And just kind of get it um ways that we can make sure everyone's on the same page with these ideas. Um Well, uh last year a a couple things. One, um Harmonix over has has periodically brought in outside consultants to run workshops uh with

lots of people around the company about facilitating uh communication and um that's been super helpful. Um another thing uh last year after my my previous GDC talk on maximizing critique, um after that um I gave the talk for the whole to the whole company so that that's another way of kind of making sure we're all on the same page with that. Um and then in the process leading up to this, and this has been a little bit more just kind of individually motivated on my part, but I've but I've actually been you know going around and and getting feedback and getting input from all the departments, which has really been helpful in kind of already starting some of these these conversations. Uh or you know, and and I don't want to say that I was these conversations a lot of them were already happening, right? And and they it wasn't that I started these conversations at Harmonix at all, but but as I started talking to the different departments about it, it helped to like, you know, bring those conversations out and help other people start to talk about them. So, so that's been really helpful. And in fact, I think that um you know, talking to individual departments has in many ways been as or more valuable than talking to the company as a whole because we can have these nice little individual conversations. So, some combination of

that. Um does that help? Does that answer your question? Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Hi. Hi. Um you talked about uh like for certain things where people just disagree and um there's it it's not a matter of miscommunication, like they're just kind of butting heads against fundamentally different things. Um and you mentioned like processes for um dealing with that situation. Uh what are some examples of that? Um well, one which I if you have access to the vault, that talk I mentioned it from my last Monday and I'm not going to Rebecca Saltzman's talk was amazing and she gave some great great ideas for that that they they use really well. Um Uh and um uh So, I would really suggest you suggest you that would that's a kind of a whole big other topic and I think you if you I can't recommend highly that you enough that you watch that. I I was I was blown away by her talk on Monday. Rebecca's Rebecca Saltzman. S A L T Z S

A L T S M A N Okay, thanks. Um, and yeah. Yeah, it was on Monday. And I I can give you more reference to that. And you you can come back up there. Any other questions? Hi. Hi, thank you so much for your talk. Um, I actually am an assistant producer and I do a lot of feedback gathering for artists. But I do it across multiple different offices. So, we'll do Chicago, France, Russia, and here in San Francisco. The biggest issue I have is getting all these people from all these different offices on the same page regarding what they want to go in the general direction for the artist without inundating the artist with million different ideas and concepting, you know, 16 different things. Yeah. Do you have any great suggestions on trying to get all these different people in all these different time zones on the same page? Oh, that's a tricky one. So, yes, we did at my office we we've been doing a lot of people have been working remotely and we can all kind of talk. We use Skype a

lot, which has been super helpful, but we're not working that remotely. We're kind of we're we're some of our people are like 3 hours apart. We're kind of spread across across the United States. As we're still able to kind of be with each other at least once a day. It sounds like are you the struggle you're having is people are like oh globally like people Yeah, we usually do a global conversations via Skype to try and capture all these things, all the ideas and stuff like that, but it's always the hardest part is getting the very first foundation and then building up from there. And I we try not to get the artist involved because we tried doing that initially and it just became 16, 17 different concepts that took weeks on end to do. Um, and we're trying to not have them do that. So, try to figure out the trying to define what the initial goals are. Right. you can disseminate to everyone else. And who is involved in that initial conversation of defining what those Uh, usually it's our marketing, production, uh, high tier, uh, usually. Okay, and what would some of those kinds of things be? What would be the product that you that

that team would would be figuring out? Uh, usually these are like key art. Um, so I work on uh, World of Tanks for console, and we do like splash screens for when you load into the game. We do uh, news article, things like that. We'll try to use the art in multiple different uh, ways. Yeah. Um, things like that. That's a tricky one. And there's a certainly So, so the good issue is like a lot of the key art and things that need to be done done done for marketing, how can that be integrated as part of the team's development? Right. Yeah, that's just that's a tricky one. And it'd be it'd be because it often needs to happen independently, but the stuff you're doing is really how or this team who's been so invested in the work that they've done, this is how the world is going to see their work. And and unfortunately often the way the world's going to initially see their work isn't the way they want the world to see their work after being being invested in it. And a lot of tension can be created there. And um, and I I I just I if there's some way and I see you you you to find a way to make people feel

engaged and part of that process without then what you said, like having all these different concepts involved. I think that you know, maybe it's a question of having something you've done and then asking opening up for feedback on it in a very constrained, you know, like not open feedback, but saying, "Here's what Here's what we have, and we need some feedback on your Here are the things we are concerned about." So, people But that is an issue that I think happens at a lot of companies, and it's a something that is is something to really work on because I think people, you know, a lot of those artists and people who have spent so so of their time on the work and then feel that the way it's being publicized is is out of sync with all the work they've done, that can really create a lot of morale issues. And so I think that finding ways either from the beginning or toward the end to incorporate the feedback of the artists and not in a way that like ask them to do the work themselves cuz that could also you know, but in a way that like somehow asks their feedback so they feel as though they're part of the process. I think it's really important. Like a preemptive meeting with the artists

themselves away from the others. Perhaps. I don't know. Every company would need to do it different ways and maybe different companies are different sizes. And so I don't know the specific strategy that would be great for your company. Um, but uh, but I the goal that I what I do understand is the goal I think would be great. And the goal would be to help everyone as as po- as many people as possible feel invested and involved. And that would be the goal. But so I'm not sure what specific strategy would be helpful, but often having the goal is the key because the strategies often end up falling out of from that goal, right? It's like even that answer I didn't the question I didn't answer so well a moment ago. Like what do you do when people really just disagree, right? And well, what's your what's your goal for that, right? Is the goal Our goal is to have come up with a strategy that works in our company that we can that all agree on that when we disagree, here are the steps we're going to follow, right? And so that's the goal and I think every company can start to find its own way to implement that. Um, so I kind of answered both questions at once there. But did I answer your questions? I give you a sense of how to Yes, you did. Thank you. All right, thank you very much. All

right. I thought Oh, yeah. Um, thank you for the talk. Uh, so in our team professionally when we're discussing our own work, we tend to try to implement these processes, but we backslide a lot during social hours. So specifically like if we're playing games together, people can just get really like brutal and when I double down and like oh, well, why would they have made that art decision like that shitty and that looks like crap and having that ends up creating backslide during our own critiques. Do you have strategies for discouraging that kind of behavior when it's not in a specific work situation, but it's affecting work? Yeah, that's a tricky one, right? Because we can't That's a great question. So, the question as I understand it is, you know, it's one thing to make sure you can have a structures and language at work that everyone kind of follows to stay on the same page, but often outside of work people start to use really derogatory or insulting or harsh language about things that then starts to leak leech back into the

relationships at work. Is that Yeah. Um Yeah, I think um That's the kind of gets just kind of back to the larger cultural thing. You can't tell people what to do outside of work, of course, but what you can as a company start to really encourage is, "Hey, these are efficient ways to work, but they're also great in our regular life." I mean, if if these ideas are presented in that way, you know, like, "Hey, you might find that this stuff is not just helpful for you at work, but it's also helpful for you outside of work." You know, you just suggest that is a way to kind of encourage people that this is not just a culture here, but it's a culture to behave in life that's helpful. And and then also even outside of work catching that. If people are talking that way, standing up and say, "Hey, no, that that's really not helpful when you talk about it that way." You know, I think if if if just if if individuals can take that on themself to realize that you know, it's it's it's like a lot of other kind of touches on a lot of other issues going on now, right? Like, when we when stuff's going on in society and

you see people behaving in some horrible horrible ways, is it you know, can you just ignore it or is it your responsibility to kind of say, "Hey, that's not that's not awesome." And this is what you're saying is not nearly as bad as what's going on outside this room, but if you find ways you know, to take it even outside of work. If you see that happening, say, "Hey, that's that's not really helpful when we talk about it that way." Even even here, you know, or you can even or instead of judging it, you can just turn it and say "Well, you know, what was one of the examples you said that they would say like that?" So, if you're like like if we're playing games together at lunch, that somebody might start like bragging on the art style. Yeah, like well, the art style is that art that art that art that that that that style book really sucks or you have then you can say "Well, what what is it about it that you don't like?" Just instead of telling them they've done something wrong, you can encourage them to rephrase it. Like "Oh, what is it that about it that you don't like?" And if they continue to you just start kind of pulling from them until you've pulled out from them helpful

language about it. Even if it's not affecting you, you can just be using what you're doing then is you're starting to give them a moment to learn how to rephrase things are helpful. And if you just kind of start doing that all the time, other people might start doing it, too, and then people start to really learn better ways of speaking. That's one strategy, but it's a tricky situation. Is that helpful? Yeah. Yeah, thank you. Awesome. Let's do our last question. I'm going to be up here as long as I as I can, and then I'll also be in the hall, but depending on how many people it is, if anybody wants to stay, I will stay as long as anybody wants to talk about anything. Uh so, we may end up in the wrap-up room uh that around the corner. Thank you all so much for coming and thanks for staying.