Play Your Way to Higher Pay: What Leaders Can Learn from Game Designers

Amazing game developers, thank you so much for coming. You know how hard it is to lead in the video game industry. First of all, you're dealing with people and I would don't want to indict all game developers, so I'll just indict myself. I got into video games not cuz I loved people so much, but because video games were more fun and predictable than people. So, it's possible that some of the people you lead in video game development are not the most people-oriented people. Furthermore, you're leading multiple disciplines doing immensely complex projects. Anyone worked on a project that never shipped? Yeah, lots of us have. Newbies, be glad you haven't been through that yet. It's painful. So, leading in the video game industry is extremely difficult. The problem that I am here to focus on for the next hour

is disengagement makes your hard work harder. When people are disengaged, everything you're trying to do as a lead is harder. Few of you might know I spent over 6 years at Intel. When I started at Intel, there was a guy just down the hall from me who had a poster up in his cube from despair.com. You know what despair.com is? Few of you, those who don't, despair.com mocks the beautiful inspirational posters that were trendy maybe in the '90s. You know, the the real ones had like people rowing and climbing rocks and lighthouses and inspirational images and quotes. Well, despair.com mocks those. So, this guy had a despair.com poster up in his cube that said across the top in big letters, "Apathy." And then it had a picture of a leopard lying in a tree with no expression on its face at all. And down below it said, "It takes 47 muscles to frown, 13 to smile, but zero to sit there with a

totally stupid look on your face. That's apathy, that's disengagement, and that's really what we're here to focus on, is how can you better engage people? According to Gallup, if your organization is typical, and I can't imagine a game development outfit being typical, but if you're typical according to Gallup, two in 10 people you work with are actively disengaged. That means essentially trying to get away with as much as they can. They're almost working against you. And as bad as that sounds, according to Gallup again, five in 10, fully 50% of workers are basically meh, somewhat engaged. Sure, they want to do a good job, but they're not willing to give you their all. Massive gains to be had if we can earn more engagement from some of those people. So, that's the problem, it's disengagement. Fortunately, science and experience tell us how to engage people by delivering more of what video games deliver. So,

these are some of the sources for today's talk. Sorry for the image overload, but wanted to very quickly share a bunch of sources. At the bottom, perhaps least important, are clients of mine. Since I founded Happy Brain Science, I've had the pleasure of working with a number of fantastic game companies. The two rows above that are games that I have made in my career. So, yes, I have led video game development. As you can see, lots of kids and family titles. There's an iPhone game there, some console games, and even a card game that I just released for Happy Brain Science. But, as much as I am excited and proud of that experience, I'm trying to use as little of that experience as possible, and rely on science and data as much as possible. As I mentioned, I spent over 6 years at Intel. The former CEO of Intel, Andy Grove, had a quote that was oft repeated in the halls of Intel. The quote was, "Everyone has an opinion. Some people have data." Okay. Hungarian accent, by the way. I'm

terrible with accents. Forgive me if you're from Hungary and I just mangled your accent. Anyway, so I'm trying to give you as little of my opinion as possible and as much grounded in science and data as possible. And that's what the top row represents. Books, journals, science. What does all that science tell us? Think for a minute at a macro level. So, get out of the details, up at a higher level. What is it about games that engage people so well? According to science, the keys are captured in this acronym ARMS. So, I'm encouraging you to play your way to higher pay, master giving ARMS each day. ARMS stands for autonomy, relatedness, mastery, and surprise. I'm going to work through each of those as we go through today's program. By the way, pardon the cheesy title, play your way to higher

pay. I wanted to be very clear with you all. It's not actually money that motivates me. It may not motivate you much. I mean pay in whatever the payoff is for you. Making great games, having lots of people play your games, being a great leader, whatever the pay is, I hope you'll get more of it by learning to master or take the next step in mastering your ability to deliver ARMS, autonomy, relatedness, mastery, and surprise. I want to practice what I preach. So, this session is a game. I will give you points. Like a lot of games, the points don't actually matter that much, but they're still kind of fun. So, I'll be very clear with you when you have an opportunity to earn points either as an individual, part of a small group, or perhaps a whole group, starting right now. I think showing up and focusing your attention on the important stuff is a huge part of success in life, and you all have chosen to come and spend an

hour of your valuable valuable time, and I hope attention, with me, and I am honored and grateful. So, please give yourself three points, the most you will likely get at any moment during this talk. Give yourself three points for showing up and paying attention to me. I wanted to pass out paper that you could keep score on, but I was told under um threats, so to speak, don't pass any paper out. So, you have to hold your score in your head, or maybe write it in your phone. Anyway, we will use the honor system for you to track your points. Three points for showing up. Autonomy. You've already heard this from me in my little pre-exercise warm-up. Autonomy is a massive motivator, so let me make this 100% crystal clear. I work for you this hour, not the other way around. You do whatever you want this hour. I will offer you some choices, I will make some suggestions, and I'll explain why I'm making those suggestions, but you decide what you want to do. Relatedness. I want

you to relate to me, I'm going to relate to you, and I want you to relate to each other. So, I'm going to ask you to participate at several times. Again, what you actually do is up to you, due to autonomy. Mastery. I want to help you take the next step in mastering your ability to effectively lead other people. And surprise, I hope to have at least a small surprise for you along the way. Back to mastery. For me to really help you master this material, it will help me know help me if I know a few things about all of you. So, if you're willing and able, again, autonomy is vital. If you're willing and able, I'm asking you to get on your feet if you have worked in game development for one day or more. This should be all of you or at least 99%. Why am I asking you to get on your feet and not just raise your hands? The same reason I'm asking you to do anything I ask you to do today, because solid science suggests it may be helpful to

you. Specifically in this case, studies suggest that bodies in motion have brains that produce more of what scientists call BDNF, brain-derived neurotrophic factor, which long nerdy scientific story short, you can think of as learning aid. And I want you not just to hear me today, but to remember, burn this into long-term memory circuits, and act on all of this. So, I'm going to keep asking you to stand up, sit down, talk to each other, self-test, things like that, because solid peer-reviewed science suggests it's going to be helpful to you. Please stay standing if you have worked in game development for 1 year or more. Thank you, new people. 3 years or more, stay standing. 5, 7, 10, I can see the math going in some people's brains. 15, 20, ladies and gentlemen, the veterans. Thank you, veterans. You can all take a seat if you would like. That is awesome. Now,

please do me a favor and stand up if you officially manage other people. If you you are somehow responsible for their raises or performance evaluations, or whatever. Thank you. Please stay standing if you manage three or more people. Five or more people. Seven. 10. 15. 20. 25. 30. 35. 35. 40. 40. 40. 45. 50. 50. Do I have Thank you. You can all sit down. Some of you are managing huge numbers of people. Wow. Okay. Uh please do me a favor. I know this feels a little bit silly, but please stand up if you're one of the people who does not officially manage other people. Why? Because I want you to learn every bit as much as the official managers, and I want to tell all of you who don't yet officially have management responsibilities that a recent SHRM survey, that's Society for Human Resource Management, surveyed thousands

of people and asked them to identify a leader in their organization. And 85% of those identified were not officially managing other people. So, all of you standing are leaders as well. Thank you very much. You can take a seat. And finally, to help me help you, please stand up if you did not grow up speaking English. If English is not your first language, he said slowing down from his nervous frenetic talking pace. Wow. Welcome, everyone. So glad you're all here. Is I will try to slow down a little bit. Anyone need anything else to understand what I'm saying? Tell Tell me if there's anything I can do to make this more comprehensible to people who perhaps were not raised speaking English. Thank you. You can all sit down. And finally, last thing I want you to do for me, please, is stand up if you have ever read any academic research about what makes games so compelling

or academic research about leading people. Awesome. Thank you very much. You can all take a seat. That is super helpful. Thanks for helping me help you. Uh by the way, there'll be multiple multiple opportunities for questions. We're going to try to take those at these two mics. You can go to a mic anytime you want to ask me a question. And again, I'll explicitly state when we're going into Q&A as well. So, unless anyone has a burning question or comment now, we'll dive into play your way to higher pay, master giving arms each day, starting with autonomy. So, first a quick definition. Autonomy is simply self-governance, doing what you want to be doing, being in charge of your own life and work. Please stand up if you like being micromanaged. Yeah, nobody does. And yet we do this to each other, right? Are you programming

that the right way? Hey, is that the way that texture is supposed to Hey, that animation could use a little more We get into the details if we're not careful. Science recommends we don't do that because autonomy is a massive motivator. So, the easiest and simplest way to give people autonomy is to give people choices. Who is willing to shout out some ways that you can give choices in your role as a game development lead? Is a non-rhetorical question. Task selection. Task selection. Thank you, that's one point for you. People can select their own tasks. Good. How else can you give people choices? This is the problem, you figure out what the solution's going to be. This is the problem, you figure out what the solution's going to be. Excellent, point for you. What else? Please. Ownership of the problem. Ownership of the problem. Yeah, people who should fix the problem are the people who know the most about the problem, so get out of their way and let them fix it. Point for you. Great.

Anything else to add about giving people choices? Open questions. You started first. Please go again. Let's do it the way you're going to be satisfied. Do it and be satisfied? Yeah, okay. Point for you. And? Open questions. Open questions, yes opposed to yes and no questions. Point for you. And? In a similar vein, get them to generate the options. Get them to generate the options. Love it. Okay, thank you all. Good participation. Yes. So, we set up a team culture. You can follow or you can choose what to follow, but if you don't to follow it, your life will be miserable. You set up a team culture where people choose what to follow? Yes, you can follow or you can choose what to follow, but if you choose not to follow, your life will be miserable. You can choose to follow or choose not to follow. Okay, good. There's interesting and controversial science about choices that suggest we do

better at engaging people if we give them limited choices. So, I apologize. I have no free gifts for anyone. I'm prohibited from giving you things like products, but if I said this part of the room gets a free game that I brought you. Again, sorry, I don't have one for you. Don't want to disappoint you, but if I said you all get this free game and the rest of you I said, "Hey, I brought these 10 games. You can all pick whichever one you want and I'm here through late on Friday. So, if you change your mind, come back, find me and I'll swap out your game for you." There's some evidence to suggest that you all would like your game better initially and for the rest of your lives. Why? Because when you pick a game, there's nine games you didn't get. Oh, maybe I should have gone with the shooter. Ooh, that strategy game looked good. Maybe You know, I love puzzle games. Why didn't I pick the puzzle game? When you offer people a lot of choices, there's a lot of things they don't get when they pick one. This is summarized in a great book by a professor called Barry Schwartz, called

The Paradox of Choice. Now, as I mentioned, there's some controversy about this science. Does that Paradox of Choice show up everywhere under all circumstances? No, it doesn't. So, it's tricky, but generally the science suggests provide limited choices to people. Maybe four, three, even two choices, and the chooser will be happier with the choice they might make. You might even present just one choice. What? One choice isn't a choice, dude. That's forcing someone to do something. Yes, but science tells us you can preserve autonomy even when you don't give people choice if you get their buy-in. If you want to be doing what your leader has asked you to do, if they have sold it to you so that you get it, and you're committed to doing that thing, even if you have no choice, you still have autonomy, according to science. So, let's see how many TED Talks you all

watch. I'm going to say 1 2 3, and then if you know who this is, I'd like you to shout out his first and last name in that order. 1 2 3 Simon Sinek. Simon Sinek has one of the most popular TED Talks in the world. It is fantastic. It is about how leaders engage people, and it is about the power of Y. Y M gets buy-in. So, cheesy reminder through rhyming, but I want you to think, if you need buy-in, give Y N. Very experienced senior producer I was talking to last night told me, without prompting from me, he said, quote, "Telling people what to do is easy. Telling them why they need to do it is the challenging part. As leaders, focus on that why when you can't deliver options and choices, and you will preserve autonomy even when you're not actually giving someone a choice. I would like to give you a choice now.

For the next minute, I would like you either to sit right where you are, think, "What have I heard, and how can I apply this?" You might write about it. Or if you'd prefer to talk to somebody, then I'm asking you to get on your feet and talking with somebody else on their feet. People who stand up, don't ask the person sitting next to you to talk to them. They don't want to talk to you. They're introverted. They want to sit and think. For the next minute, please stand up if you want to talk to somebody, sit and think if you want to sit and think. What have you heard? How can you apply this? Nobody's going to stand up and talk? Okay, a few people are going to stand up and talk. Okay, wrap up, please. I know these bells were not necessary given how few people we had talking, but I'm going to get you all talking coming up, and the only way I'm going to get you back is with that sound. So, when you hear that sound, that means please come back and sit down and return to one conversation. If you participated in that, either talking or thinking, give yourself another point. If you were like, I'm

going to think about this and then opened up your phone and went through Twitter, no points for you. So, point for participating if you participated. Next up in arms is relatedness. Quick definition of relatedness, it's simply feeling that human connection. That familiarity, being part of the same tribe. I feel a bit of relatedness with all of you cuz we're all game developers. It's so awesome to be back at GDC with all of you. Relatedness is a fundamental human need. Now, it's probably easy for all you game developers to see how games deliver autonomy, tons of choices, lots of buy-in. But you may be thinking, relatedness? I play games usually by myself. What the heck are you talking about, Crabtree? Well, not all games deliver all of these motivators. Not all games satisfy our needs for autonomy, relatedness, mastery, and surprise, but the games that satisfy more of these

tend to do better as games. There were a lot of word games before Words With Friends came out and became a smash hit. And I would submit to you it's the with friends part that added relatedness that made Words With Friends a smash hit. So, people need autonomy. People need relatedness. And when you satisfy those needs, you engage them, whether it's a game or leading people making games. Let me show you my favorite tool for building relatedness on a team. It's called a PechaKucha presentation. Anyone here from Japan want to help me pronounce that better? It's really PechaKucha or something like that. I'm sorry. I I'm just ignorant and that's why I don't know how to pronounce it. Anyway, this is simply a presentation format. Comes out of the Japanese architecture design community. Original format was 20 pictures on 20 slides, 20 seconds each on auto advance. It's a way of getting people to quickly share visual

information. So, quick story about using a PechaKucha presentation. I started at Intel and was very happy managing my team of engineers doing outreach to the video game industry. And then I heard a word that many of us at Intel learned to dread, reorg. Reorg, what does that mean? It means reorganization. It means I'm getting new peers with strong personalities. Anyone worked at Intel? Wonderful company, very competitive culture. My new peers and I were competing my bosses' praises and raises. That competition turned to conflict. That conflict turned ugly. We were not relating well to each other. So, I went to my boss and I said, "Hey, boss, bet you've noticed some of the tension on the team lately." And he said, "Oh, yeah. What do you want to do about it?" So, we talked about team building and together we arrived at these PechaKucha presentations. So, we modified these for a couple of ways to build relatedness on our team. First of all, we're performance

optimizing people. We cut the number of slides and the duration per slide in half. That's four times the performance, people. Do you realize? We also made a rule for our team building that you could not show anything about your career. Had to be about you as a human being. So, my new peers and my boss and I all created these and presented them to each other. Mine went very roughly like this. I was born and raised in Massachusetts. Born in Western Mass, raised mostly in and around the town of Andover, where the Red Sox infection comes in the hospital. It's going to be a good year for the Red Sox, my friends. I was specifically raised on the campus of this fancy pants boarding school where my father, a PhD, taught math for 30 years. I grew up on campus, went to the school for 4 years, learned countless things, one of which was some people seem to have a lot more money than we do. Went from there to Vassar College in Upstate New York, turned coed in 1969, in case you're wondering. Vassar is where I got a degree in cognitive

science and became really enthralled with brains and what makes us tick and not tick so well between the ears. Moved from Upstate New York to my beloved Oregon. That is my own beloved wife and I on the Oregon coast. This is my father holding my daughter short of my first daughter shortly after she was born over 7 years ago. My wife likes to crack the joke that new babies and old men look alike, so we've always found this picture amusing in that way. Here's the rest of some of my family. From left to right, that goes sister, brother, mother, niece, nephew, brother, daughter, sister-in-law, and wife. I love making music. Any musicians here? Awesome. I play lots of instruments, been in lots of bands, made many CDs, got a royalty check from BMI in the mail in the past couple years. Super exciting lifetime goal achieved, even though with that royalty check I could buy any two of you a beer. It was still exciting. Also love nature and backpacking. I am not compensated by the Oregon Department

of Tourism when I tell you this is Jefferson Park, maybe the most beautiful place I have ever been. If you like nature and backpacking, go to Jefferson Park in Oregon. It is stunning. We get really terrible family shots, even hiring a professional photographer. I am putting on my multiple chin display here. Althea on the right grown up is like, "I'm smiling as hard as I can. How's this?" And Zinnia, my youngest, looks a little bit like, "Please don't squeeze me to death, Daddy." So, we created and presented these to each other and our relatedness immediately improved. I would predict and hope that you can relate to me somehow better now than you could before I showed you that slideshow. You too are from Massachusetts or you too grew up where there's snow or you too like baseball or camping or whatever it is, you found some way to relate to me. When your need for relatedness is satisfied, it is compelling. You want more.

I mostly teach the science of happiness to people. Science of happiness says the quality of our relationships with other people is a massive factor on our happiness. And happier brains do better work, do better game development. So, to build relatedness, to boost relationships, to boost happiness and therefore productivity, I highly recommend creating and sharing these Pecha Kucha presentations with each other. You can learn more about someone as a human being in under 2 minutes than you can in 2 years of typically working with someone. We have a PowerPoint template that makes it easy for you to put these together, drag and drop, and present them to each other. If you want that PowerPoint template, you can find it on happybrainscience.com. You can email me. I'm [email protected]. You can tweet me. I'm Scott Crab. And I'd love to get you that free PowerPoint template so that you can create and share these Pecha Kucha presentations with each other and boost your relatedness and become a more engaging leader by satisfying that core intrinsic

need for relatedness. Very quickly, of course, this goes multiple ways. It's not just about getting people reporting to you to relate to you better, you need to relate to them better. So, pay attention when you see their Petcha Kutcha presentation. Take time during a one-on-one to ask them personal questions. I got so results-focused that I stopped doing this. I stopped getting together and saying, "Hey, how was your weekend?" Or, "How's your mom doing? You said she wasn't doing very well, she was sick last month." That personal connection is not a waste of time. Solid scientific evidence suggests personal connection, relatedness, boosts the bottom line through satisfying needs that engage people and building happiness. I also want you to give your people a chance to relate to each other. My favorite tool for team members to relate to each other is to encourage

people to go on walking one-on-ones. I vastly prefer walking one-on-ones, that is, two people going on a walk together for a meeting. That's together for a meeting, not together, sorry. Two people walking together on a meeting is a great idea for multiple reasons. One, science suggests that when you are walking, your brain works better. You have better coordination between the two hemispheres in your brain, you're also increasing blood flow. Your cognition improves when you're walking. And as I alluded to earlier, the physical activity produces more BDNF in your brain, so you might remember that walking one-on-one better. So, I want to take a risk and send you all on a walking one-on-one. Up to you, but I'm encouraging you to leave the room and come back. Why am I encouraging you to leave the room? Because science says that memories are formed attached to physical locations. And you will remember this content better if you learn it here and out in

the hallway than if you just learn it here. So, we have only 4 minutes from the for this and I'd love you to come back. So, I'm going to run out into the hallway ahead of you. You can kill my mic in just a second and when you hear me going like this out there, that means please come on back so that I can give you more points and we can continue. So, if you choose, it's always up to you. Find a person, go on a walk. Up to you whether it's inside or outside of this room and come back in exactly 4 minutes. That is 4:02. Walk and talk. What have you learned? How can you apply it? And no need to wait. I can start questions while people are coming back in. I I got a question. Yes, thank you. be some uh management things that we've learned not to do over the last, you know, 50 whatever years of learning to manage. What are What are some do nots? What are some do nots for what we've talked about so far? Great question.

Let me try to get everyone to hear your question and the answer. So, we're doing Q&A. Welcome back. Thanks for walking and talking. The question was, you've given us some do's. What about some don'ts? Well, the easiest way of killing autonomy is to micromanage people. So, tell them what to do, exactly how to do it, check in on them daily, give them no freedom about how to hit that goal, right? So, somebody wisely said over here, give them the goal, but don't tell them how to do that goal, how to reach that goal. If you want to kill autonomy, get in there and tell them exactly how to do it. Especially, get your programming style, for example, on there. So, hey dude, you're not commenting, right? The bracket goes on top like that's a personal choice. Don't micromanage people that way. Offering people no choice. Kevin, you'll be doing the UI remapping control screen. You want to find out what to do. The If you give someone no choice about what

they're doing, that's that doesn't help. Now, I know you're all leaders in game game development. You have to give people tasks. Sometimes you have to give them no choice. My 4-year-old, little older than you saw her on screen there. My 4-year-old has to take baths, but I can sometimes trick her with a little bit of false choice. Zinnia, would you like to take a bath in two, three, or four minutes? Anyone else a parent in the room? Don't think I'm an evil person if you're not a parent yet. When you're a parent, you'll understand just how freaking hard it is. And I know you're not managing 4-year-olds, but you can still add choices even if you don't have choices, right? So, Kevin, I need you to do the the UI remapping controller you remapping interface. You decide whether you want to do that before or after you work on the audio enhancements that we talked about, and you tell me how long it's going to take and what your due date will be. So, you're not giving them a choice about task, but you're getting some

other choices in there. Relatedness, some don'ts to do for relatedness. Don't make my mistake where you get so results-oriented. It's all We're under crunch time when you results, results, results. You stop being human with people, right? It's like you just you're so focused on the work, you never ask, "How are you? How's it going? How was your weekend?" That's That's another don't. Uh separating people so they can never work together, that's another don't, right? Relatedness comes through pair programming, co-design, code reviews, things like that. Does that help? And I can probably come up with more if you give me more time, but there's someone else at the mic, so I'll take the next question, please. Yeah, can you talk about reconciling um autonomy for poor performers. Autonomy for poor performers. Why'd you have to ask me such a hard question? That is a really, really hard question because the temptation when somebody's not performing well is to get in there and manage them more, right? Now, they

might need that. We're actually about to go into the section on mastery where we're going to get some ideas around how to maybe make things easier for someone who is struggling. So, if you will allow me to partially postpone my answer, there's some information coming there. Otherwise, I I I you can I think you can get more involved with someone who's struggling if you get their buy-in through Y and right? So, Hey, Kevin, I'll use Kevin over and over again, so I'm not discriminating. Uh hey, Kevin, I got to be completely candid with you. Your performance is not as good as some of your colleagues here, and some of us are having concerns. I really want to help you. How could I help you boost your performance? Let them start providing answers, right? And if they don't give you something that you want to do, say you want to have Kevin do pair programming with a senior programmer one day, and they're not into it, give that

Y and give give more reasons. And by the way, your reasons don't even have to be that good. There's an amusing study about uh people people are lined up at a copy machine, right? Somebody's making copies, and then a research assistant comes along and says one of two things. They say, "Hey, can I jump in the middle here and make some copies?" Or they say, "Hey, can I jump here in the middle of what you're doing and make some copies because I really need to make some copies." That's a content-free reason, right? You didn't tell them anything except because I need to make some copies, and yet people who get because I need to make some copies are much more likely to let the person interrupt and make copies. So any reason is better than no reason and good reasons are better than bad reasons. If you give a lot of why and get buy-in, maybe you can get more hands-on managing while still preserving autonomy. That plus what you're about to hear coming up in mastery if that's okay. And uh happy to go deeper on that answer

later after the session as well. So that's relatedness. By the way, if you participated in the relatedness exercise, please give yourself a point. Thank you very much for participating. Mastery. Virtually every game in the world delivers mastery. If you have ever felt one more time, you have felt the pull of mastery. Research calls it different things. Research sometimes calls it competence. Competence is not a very sexy word, so Daniel Pink rebranded competence as mastery in his book Drive, which is about these same internal motivators. Anyone read Drive before? Yeah, if some of this sounds familiar, you're not mistaken. Drive is based on self-determination theory research. So is a lot of the research based on what makes games so compelling, also based on that same root research research that talks about autonomy, relatedness, and

mastery. So competence, self-efficacy, whatever you want to call it, mastery is progress, improvement on something that matters to you. It is extremely compelling. How can you give more of this to your people? You can learn from what video games do. Who knows this term rubber banding for adjusting difficulty? I think some of us do, but it's not a universal term. I learned it in the context of racing games. So imagine a racing game and imagine an invisible rubber band between you and a computer-controlled car. If it's your first time playing and you're heavily intoxicated, I don't mean to be inappropriate, but some people play video games heavily intoxicated, and you're crashing back and forth back here, what happens to that computer car? It starts driving very badly ahead of you so that you have a chance to catch up. And conversely, if you are awesome and zip through that course, wee, that computer car is right there behind you because closer races are more fun races.

I've been playing lots of Rocket League any lately. Anyone here make Rocket League by chance? You can confirm or deny this for me if you are, but I believe when I'm playing against the computer, not other real human beings, but when I'm playing against the computer, if I am down a couple goals at the end of the match, it's amazing how often the ball ends up right between me and the opponent's goal in the last minute. Thank you very much, rubber banding, for making this game more fun. And conversely, if I'm up by three goals, my computer-controlled teammate will literally sometimes take the ball and drive it into our own goal. What are you doing? You're rubber banding so that the game is more fun. You can do the same thing, adjust difficulty for people so that it's right at the edge of their ability. How can you do that? Let's get a contribution or two if you're willing. Something's too hard for someone. How can you make it easier for them? Coach them on how to resolve it. Coach them on how to resolve it. Excellent, that's a point for you. And?

Break down tasks. Change the scope of the task. Change the scope of the task. Excellent, point for you. And there was another one I didn't hear? Break down tasks. Break down tasks. Yes, great way to emphasize progress and therefore mastery anytime you're making a goal, if you're co-creating a goal with someone, don't give them the goal that's a year out, right? Give them the goal that's eight months out as measured by these 10 milestones along the way. Break it down, get them some help, get them some mentoring. What do you do if it's too easy for someone? Give them more responsibility. Increase the difficulty, give them more responsibility, challenge them to do it faster, see if they can write more beautiful, easy-to-maintain code as they get the feature done. Whatever it is, you want to adjust difficulty through rubber banding to keep people right at the edge of their ability so that you satisfy their internal intrinsic need for mastery. Give immediate feedback and celebrate

progress. You all know how this happens, right? You're playing a game and it's bing 10 points, 50 points, woo, new set of armor. Hey, look at now you're a level three wizard. We're constantly giving players feedback and information about progress and celebrating progress. Do the same thing as a leader. If you are constantly communicating as a leader, you might be doing enough communication. You want to adjust difficulty to get people into flow. Hands up if you already know about flow. Good, cuz I have hardly any time for it. So, for the those of you who didn't put your hand up, forgive me for going very fast and consider this a pointer to information. Flow is optimal experience in life discovered and documented by a psychologist named Csikszentmihalyi who found the very peak of life is not relaxation, which is what we predict. The peak of life is being intensely challenged, having a high level of challenge, but also a high level of

ability to meet that challenge. If a task is too easy for you, you end up bored or variations of bored. If a task is too hard for you, you end up anxious or variations of anxious. When you are right at the edge of your ability, you are in a delightful, super productive zone where everything is clicking cuz you focused completely. Hear me multitaskers? You focus completely for 20 minutes or more on something challenging but possible. You're getting feedback about progress. Your brain says, "That's it. I'm on the right track." Everything starts clicking for you. Time disappears. That's flow. When you are in flow, you are satisfying your need for mastery. When you give your people undistracted, uninterrupted time to focus on a challenge that is just at the right level of difficulty for them, right at the edge of their ability, you deliver mastery to them. I want you to master this material. So, here's why I'm suggesting you get in

groups of three or four now and talk for the next couple of minutes right here. No need to leave the room this time. What have you heard in this talk so far? How can you apply this to your game development leadership? Autonomy, relatedness, mastery. How can you apply what you've heard? Discuss for a couple of minutes, please. Please wrap up those conversations. Please come back to one conversation together so that I can tell you how you can earn more points. I know that was really rushed. I apologize. I wish I had more time. You can all obviously talk with each other after this session. So, there's your other group of talking opportunity. So, this time you don't get a point from me or you don't get a and you don't get a point from yourself, but you can give a point to one of your discussion partners. So, if you felt that one of your discussion part You have only one

point to give away. So, if you felt that one of your discussion partners was especially helpful, please give them a point by pointing at them. Pointing at them gives them a point. And thank you so much for playing along. So, play your way to higher pay master giving arms each day autonomy, relatedness, and mastery are all core intrinsic psychological needs. According to research, they are the three most important needs we have as human beings. Games satisfy them. You can satisfy them, too, as leaders. Next up and finally, surprise! Surprise is not really a core intrinsic need, but it is a device to keep people coming back. So, I hope it's okay that I say this. I was at Blizzard years ago giving a workshop called this is your brain on

game development, and I said to a classroom full of Blizzard people, quote, "Hey, look, I'm a game designer, you're a game designer, we know how to get people addicted to things." Guy in the back raises his hand and said, "Uh we prefer extremely compelling." Okay, extremely compelling. But, if you want people extremely compelled to follow you as a leader, exceed their expectations. When you manage expectations, you are managing brain chemistry. Very loosely speaking, this is how this works. Skipping over a few of the details of neuroscience here, but basically, when you set an expectation, or if you have an expectation, and the world meets that expectation, your brain releases slight bits of dopamine and serotonin that tell your brain, "Yep, I expected this to happen, that happened, that was cool." Certainty is very comforting for us. We like to know what's going to happen, and then have those expectations met. If you expect something to happen,

and reality comes in way below your expectations, that horrible disappointed feeling you get is a big drop in dopamine and serotonin that tells your brain, "Ow, we didn't expect this and this sucks. Let's not do this again." And if you have an expectation and the world exceeds your expectation, you want to watch me alienate 80% of the crowd in one moment? If, as a Patriots fan like me, you think the Patriots are going to lose this Super Bowl and then they win in the greatest comeback ever, I know you can all hate me later, it's all fine. They're the greatest of all time, whatever, we're all arguing in the hallway. But, when your expectations are exceeded, your brain essentially gets a big hit of dopamine and serotonin that hits your reward center and tells you, "Whatever this was, this was awesome. Let's do this again." Right? Games do this all the time. All the way back to pinball. You're playing with one ball

and then multiball. Woo! Exceeded expectations. This was awesome. Let's come back and play pinball again. And you've certainly done this in games you've made. Set up one expectation and then boom, jackpot with a chest filled with all kinds of gold and armor and weapons. When your expectations are exceeded, your brain basically says this was awesome. Let's do this again. And it's part of what compels us to come back and play games and it's part of what you can do to compel people to stick with you and be loyal team members who follow you when you go from project to project or even company to company. So, real quick, how can you exceed expectations as a leader in game development? Bake cakes. Say that again. Bake cakes. Bake cakes. Awesome. Point for you. If you baked me a cake, I would not expect that and I would follow you around forever. Yes. Exceed my expectations.

Good. What else? Give immediate feedback. Give immediate feedback. Yeah, if you're not expecting that and you get immediate feedback, you're like, "Whoa, this guy is awesome. I love working with this guy. He gives me immediate feedback." Point for you. And Keep a note of all their personal, like, not too personal, but personal details. For those who couldn't hear for the recording, it was, "Keep a note of their personal" Well, not all their personal details, but some of their personal details so you can remember to ask them about their mom who is getting sick or their kid who is struggling in school. Yeah, awesome. Good. Point for you. And Make them coffee or bring them coffee. Love it. The little things. We pay people so much money to make games, and I'm telling you the slice of cake or the cup of coffee or the immediate feedback means so much to us, doesn't it? I mean, more than the salary often. Yes. Public recognition. Public recognition. Yes. General guidance. Praise in public, criticize in private. Culturally dependent, so be careful, but yes, point for you. And finally Being in anticipation of future sales

Yes. I'm not encouraging you to sandbag, but if you think you might ship the game on this date, I would tell them a little later. If you think you're going to sell this many, I'd tell people, "Well, we probably are going to sell this." So that if you actually sell that, you've exceeded expectations. Awesome. Uh not much I could do to exceed your expectations in this context, but I hope you will exceed expectations to get your people hooked on you. And the only thing I could think of to pleasantly surprise you is to write an ebook for you about this content and give it to you for free. So, I have or will have really soon when I go back to my hotel and finish it up, uh a free ebook on what leaders can learn from game designers. It's essentially an elaborate handout for this talk. If you would like that, please text happybrain with no spaces to 444999.

I want to be crystal clear because I don't want to disappoint you. This will add you to my Happy Brain Science mailing list. That's how I'm going to get you the ebook. It is one click to unsubscribe. I will not hassle you if you unsubscribe. I send tips on the science of happiness and employee engagement at work. If you don't have a US-based phone, this probably won't work for you. So, if you have a phone that's from outside the US or you just prefer email me at [email protected] and I would love to get you that free ebook. That is surprise and that is play your way to higher pay master giving arms each day. Please step up to a mic and tell me what questions or comments you have. Thank you. Uh You're very kind, but I'm I'm not actually 100% done. Let me just peel the curtain back a little bit and tell you why I'm doing Q&A now and not at the very end. I don't do Q&A at the end

because of what's known as the peak end rule of memory. Peak end rule of memory says you don't remember things equally, you remember the ending of things more than anything else with the possible exception of an emotional peak. So, if I end on Q&A, I'm taking my best learning opportunity and giving it to the randomness of questions. Now, I'm sure I'm going to get insightful questions from you and others that stand up to the mic, but I want to be I want to take my key points and give them to you in the final minute of this program. You should do the same thing in team meetings. If you want people to remember things, say the most important thing last, even if you've already said it. If you're doing a demo and you really want to impress a publisher, show them your best feature last. Memories are not created equally. Final memories are stronger memories. That's why I do Q QA in the middle-ish, not at the very end. Sir. Yes, uh thanks for the talk first. Um in your own mind or knowledge of things, would it be okay in a case of the

previous guy questions or in a case of mentoring someone, you know, to grow up in a role to reduce a lot the autonomy but keep the old three at the like at the maximum? Is that something we usually do? And I have a side questions like, what is the best season for Jefferson Park? Sorry, I missed the side what is the best season in your own opinion for going to the Jefferson Park in your own opinion? What's the best way to get to Jefferson Park? What's the best season? Oh, season. Certainly summer. Jefferson Park is a hanging valley, so you're halfway up Mount Jefferson. That whole picture you saw is at about 6 or 7,000 ft. Your only choice, unless you like snow camping, is July or August. Uh the bugs will be terrible. Hit me up with other questions about Jefferson Park. We won't get those on the rest of the people, but you asked a question before that, memory memory, which was Oh, how What do you do Can you take away autonomy and still engage people? Let's ask these wise people. Let's say that I'm your manager.

I am now going to micromanage you because I'm concerned about your performance, but I'm going to give you as much relatedness as possible, and I'm going to tell you that I'm going to help you master what we're doing. We're going to do it together, and I'm going to try to pleasantly surprise you by bringing coffee, but I'm going to sit down next to you and say, "I you missed a semicolon. Uh no no no, don't do it that way. Do it this other way." You would feel I'm going to give you two choices uh three choices, good, bad, or mixed. I would feel good about that? So, the survey says, "Don't do that." I'd feel bad about that? I'd feel mixed about that? Y- You know, this is very complicated. Not all games satisfy all these needs. Not all managers satisfy these needs. I think you can keep someone decently engaged without autonomy if you give them lots of relatedness, mastery, and surprise, but I think you get the most engagement of all by satisfying all four and giving them arms. Engagement is a slope, right? You can be totally disengaged, somewhat engaged, more engaged, or heck yeah, I'm going to

give it my all. The beautiful thing about engagement, by the way, is it is win-win. This is not extracting more work out of people and ruining their lives. The scientific evidence is that people more engaged at work have better lives, including better personal lives. If your people are more engaged at work, they will have better marriages at home, the data suggests. Their kids will behave better in school if their parent is more engaged at work. So, this is not win-lose. The more of this you can do, the more you can engage somebody, the more everybody benefits. You, the person you're engaging, and outside. Uh, does that help? Yep. Thank you. Thank you so much. Question over here, please. Uh, thank you for the great talk. And sorry about my poor English, but um, I, as a person game designer, I feel really same as you. And I think we can make game fun. So, why don't we Why can't we make the job fun? But,

uh, every time I think about that, I feel that So, making game is really hard. So, the making job fun is also hard. So, uh, maybe we can do uh, that you said like um, give feedback to your um, colleagues and give relatedness. And but, that is good for the other guys, but it is hard to make that. It's same thing. I think it's a kind of meta problem. So, who actually making um, the game maker job fun? I'm so glad you brought up fun because I meant to say this earlier. When you think about what makes games compelling, you probably think fun. That's what I thought. That's what fun is what makes games great, right? Fun is a very fuzzy concept for scientists. They're like,

"Fun? What is that where it we we don't know exactly what that is." When scientists systematically go after what make games so fun, they arrive at autonomy, relatedness, mastery, and surprise. So, my suggestion to you is game development, no, it's not playing a game, but games that are really easy are not fun, right? Games need to be right at the edge of your ability to be fun. They need to be challenging to be fun. They need to satisfy your need for challenge and mastery. Game development can be just as fun if you deliver autonomy, relate to people at a human level. Most of all, get that mastery just right so that it's right at the edge of their ability. If it's right at the edge of their ability, they will be deeply immersed in game development, and they might even not want to play a game so that they can spend more time making a game. It can be just as fun if you take care of these intrinsic needs. Fair enough? Um but the the man uh who deliver autonomy and

relatedness and other things uh that job is I think uh cannot be fun. The job of delivering autonomy, relatedness, mastery, and surprise can't be fun? What to do that? So Try this on for size. I I'm short on time, but I'm going to try to make a long story short. I was working in game development. There was a guy I will call Brad. Brad was an artist and not a very good artist, right? So, but Brad loved games, so we were trying to figure out what to do with Brad. So, okay, you're you're not a very good artist, let's have you be sort of an art asset coordinator. Okay, that didn't work well. Let's try making you a designer. Well, that didn't work very well. Let's try making you more of a community. Finally, after years and years, we let Brad go. Should have been done earlier. All of us felt really bad for Brad. Oh, poor Brad. Brad lost his job, right? This was a long time ago, back in the days of renting video tapes from Blockbuster, right? So, he gets a job at

Blockbuster behind the counter saying like, "Yeah, these movies are due back Tuesday." And all of us were like, "Oh, poor Brad. He's working in a video store." In under a month, this boss noticed that every time somebody came up with a game, he knew tons about the game and engaged with them about the game. So, in under a month a month, he made them he made them the corporate buyer for that store. And in under a month after that, he was promoted to director of corporate buying for video games for Blockbuster, a huge chain for those who don't know. He went from struggling job that he really didn't enjoy with us to a dream job by us firing him. If you have someone who doesn't enjoy making games, who doesn't find it fun, if you give them autonomy, relatedness, mastery, and surprise, and they still don't enjoy making games, maybe they're in the wrong industry and you could do them a favor by letting them go. Some of the enjoyment has to just be because you love making games. Fair enough? Thank you. I apologize I'm out of time, but we can continue afterwards. So, what am I going to do now? I'm going to use my final minute to summarize the most important

information for you. After I challenge you for a few seconds to think about where, when, and how you will apply what you've learned. Why am I asking you to be so specific? Because science says the more specific you are, the more likely you are to follow through. So, if you say I'm going to make a personal connection with Kevin, great, you might succeed. If you say I'm going to make a personal connection with Kevin during a walking one-on-one Thursdays at 3:00 when we have our meetings, you're more likely to follow through. So, please think for a few seconds when, where, and how will you apply what you've learned. Before I let you go, I would be remiss if if you enjoyed this talk at all, I'm speaking again Friday at 3:00 on collaboration through candid conversation. Would love to see you there. Sorry for the shameless self-promotion. Play your way to higher pay master giving arms each day. The problem we were here to focus on is disengagement. People not giving you their all in game

development. Experience but much more importantly science and data suggest solutions. What does all that science tell us? You can play your way to higher pay by mastering giving arms each day. Satisfy core intrinsic human needs for autonomy, relatedness, and mastery. Add surprise and you've got loyal followers for your career. Thank you so much for your time and attention.