Production: Working at the Heart of the Team

[Music] now that we got that out of the way let's get going hello everyone I'm grant frankweiler I'm your moderator and your first speaker today I'm a producer at Epic Games and but before I start with my first chapter I wanted to talk a bit about what we're talking about today production at the heart of the team is the title of our talk I noticed this panel and you guys were coming expecting to see a panel but it's actually one talk with each one sharing the chapter so we're gonna kind of interweave and it'll be a little weird but you'll like anything well each of us has our own chapter written mostly in our own words we are sharing stories from each other and people who aren't on this stage so when one of us tells a story and may or not may or may not be something that actually happened to one of us the names and places have been changed to protect the innocent so to speak as you may have figured out or read in the guide our talk is about the field portion of being a producer we believe in order to maintain the health of a project producers must constantly be iterating on Team Dynamics

once processes are in place the producer must have their finger firmly placed on the pulse of the team and be able to diagnose and that situations often call for drastically different solutions we're going to go over some of those situations and solutions today but we are producers so we must have an agenda for everything we do so let me go through the agenda for our meeting I mean session today I'll start out and I'll talk about what is a team and how to get one started and then that'll go over what to do what you do and everything goes sideways Michelle will then talk about some of the tools for surviving and Greg will ended up with how to get yourself ready to thrive then we'll do some Q&A if we don't talk way too long all right so time for my chapter this is the part where I reintroduce myself my name is Graham Chong Wylie I've been in the industry for about eight years five of that as a producer ever cons fallen big teams making small and big games I worked at mega touch in software and I'm currently at Epic Games working on a game called fortnight before I did games I ran entertainment show

production teams so I have about 15 years experience running entertainment teams to start us off on our journey I felt like we should talk about that word team so what is the team is this the team yeah how about this is this a team I'm in a bright yellow shirt if you're looking for me yeah this is also a team this is Media Molecule and this is its software and they were a great team as well this is also a team it's a little bit different than what we're talking about today but I thought it was important to keep in mind the dictionary defines a work team as a group of people with a full set of complementary skills required to complete a task job or project alright definitions done now it's time for a story now imagine if you will you're a producer that was brought on to a new team what do you do let me share one of our stories which I'll tell from the producers perspective I was asked to form a new strike team to take on an overwhelming task I was told who I could have and what the work was that needed to be accomplished during the first meeting on the team some of whom had never worked together before I saw the camp's performing and there would be

problems moving forward but I didn't head it off at the start as days went on I tried to work with individuals there's all the problems but it was clear the divisions had formed and it was hurting both the team and her output I knew something extra would be needed to bring them together remember this slide from earlier the reason I love this definition of a team is because it clearly shows how a team must work together if that big guy on the left stops walking or tries to go to the right then the other fellow will go the wrong way or stop just like the team in this story without unity they can't move forward so what did the producer do they got the team together and had everyone do a presentation on themselves to get them to connect on a human level and it worked people on the team started to learn lots of things they had in common like being born in another country having a father in the military or a crazy raver past I use this with my teams as well it's an idea I got from the amazing Scott Crabtree if you've never heard him speak I highly recommend it his website is there he has some amazing talks it is to take on the Pecha

Kucha talks but instead of 20 slides 20 seconds each we do 10 slides 10 seconds each and they're talking about your career other than what inspired you to get into games I'm gonna go through mine a little bit quickly as an example I was born just outside of Cincinnati Ohio that's right there yes I'm a Reds fan it was in that area i plied my trade as a child and youth I was always an avid gamer and sports fanatic but it wasn't until I messed up my buddies pokemon red that I thought about making games I was so infuriated by both my mistake and the lack of ability to fix it in the game that I sat down with my friend to write our own game you know because we could do that we worked for hours on the design dock that would eventually turn into pokemon killer an arcade shooter where you killed every Pokemon that's not our art we weren't that talented after working on it for a few weeks we sent the doc to Sony because you know they're not Nintendo and they responded which was amazing thanks we don't want to be sued so no thanks with our dream smash we moved on to other things I started modding and making levels for Warcraft 2 in tribes too and I loved adding my own story people liked my

levels but what they didn't like was in the loading screen I had to ramble through my whole story and explain to them what was happening around that same time as well I started working in the music industry yes if you are doing math that's child labor I've worked with hundreds of bands you have never heard of and maybe two or three you have but I learned a lot in that profession did a lot of random jobs during that time I also played sports until I discovered my one true love Oh wrong way rugby that's actually from my first game it's also a picture of Braveheart which has dominated my life ever since earliest at one point I didn't want to do the music industry thing for a career and it is then I realized hey this game dev thing I've been doing as hobby I guess that could be a career and I'd remembered reading about full sail for music while I was doing that and they had a game program and I was like that could be interesting it turns out it was outside of work I spend as much time as I can with this wild bunch my nieces and nephew they are crazy I also like to read travel bike and watch films if you're looking for me outside of work I'll probably be doing one of those things no that was just an example for you all but it also worked

in my favor right from that example you found something to have in common with me or we have in common and now we're relating on a more human level it's obvious once you studied the science why this works so well hi hi partha states humans are conditional hive creatures we have the ability under special circumstances to transcend self-interest and lose ourselves temporarily and aesthetically in something larger than ourselves the hive switch we're all searching for a calling that we can only find as part of a larger group the high switch is a slider you increase the feeling of a family don't bring focus on differences focus on similarities shared values and common identity people are warmer do people or like them so do things that help them find similarities it's important for you and your team to realize they are a group of human beings with different backgrounds coming together to accomplish something great but also that more than likely they have something in common the most important thing you can do to build your when building a new team is to help them build a emotional connection and bond with you and each other so what other things a few years

ago we took for Tejeda on a road show we went to cities all over the world and showed off the game we had people play the game and give us feedback we would send the fewest amount of people teach show you know to cut costs and also make sure that people were still making the game but we quickly realized something after the first event it's hard to stay on point and excited for eight plus hours straight so one of our programmers got the idea to do a sports style pump up I have a video of it here yeah video games okay so that's not us but we we thought we were like that and it worked we did it at the start of each day moving forward it brought the team together little bond and got us excited this is actually us we're not we weren't quite as in sync as we thought we were in his book in his book the righteous line Jonathan Haidt talks about the science behind this a bit and has a great quote people who move together feel more together if you ask people to sing or tap out some beats together it makes people more willing to help each

other out if you've seen wolf of wallstreet you also understand what this means if you have ever been at a sporting event or church or sang together it's kind of like that so what we were saying is have more dance parties do karaoke synchronicity builds trust another thing you can do is to create a healthy competition between groups but not between individuals as game development studios this may be the easiest one for us play games have your team's take breaks and play PvP games or board games against each other or even set up a competition surrounding your own game but remember to frame these competitions around fun and not around a bonus of some kind because then you change the incentives when we started doing company play test at Paragon we saw that teams were forming a lot stronger together in fact our like animation team walks around is like a gang now it's kind of terrifying one thing that will not only help to build the trust on a new team but will prepare you for a high-pressure situation is to put the team into a fabricated high-pressure situation escape rooms are pretty much the 21st century version of the trust fall or the

ropes course I don't know if any of you have ever done one of those but they work really well they put you into a high-pressure situation where you're forced to work together as a team we've also used a variation on the game jam idea basically we worked really hard for a week to bring our bug counts down and then we told the team hey you have a week to add anything that you guys think will make the game better in your area both of these manufacture both external and then internal pressures to be great as a team they're of course obvious team building ideas like throwing parties going out for drinks going to shows movies concerts sporting events playing sports together and of course celebrating each other's successes in life hopefully with wild abandon like my dear friend Kermit there as well as there's many more that you've tried and I would love to hear about remember that you as a producer can be the single biggest change transformer on a team's collective happiness and excitement you can lead the team to greatness Kaiser Hogan and Craig had this to say about leadership transformational leadership changes the way followers see themselves from isolated individuals to members of a larger group

transformational leaders do this by modeling collective some collective commitment through self-sacrifice in the use of we instead of I imply emphasizing the similarities of group members and reinforcing collective goals shared values and common interest because I love rugby I must talk about this man the great coach Eddie Eddie Jones had an amazing year last year his team from Japan went into the Rugby World Cup ranked 16th with only one top tiered professional player on their entire squad but they went on to have three major wins including the greatest upset in the history of the sport against South Africa basically if you imagine the New York Yankees losing to the UCLA baseball team it was kind of like that after the World Cup was over he said the team is the sum of the whole and not an individual and it was made a whole by the support staff to summarize teams come in all shapes and sizes and are made up of diverse groups of people similarities build unity synchronicity builds trust competition build strength external internal pressures build cooperation and producers build teams thank you

okay so this being one talk it also means that this is an interactive talk because I like this now if you're willing to enable I would ask that you all stand up and turn to the nearest person near you and take the next minute to talk about takeaways that you could have from this talk all right everybody it's time it's time stop talking I know this is really exciting don't worry you'll get to do this again at the end of each of our segments now you have a friend in the audience hopefully you know each other a little bit but Matt's gonna go ahead and go through his part now all right thank you very much grant this is so that's

pretty good we plan yeah yeah so hi everyone my name is Matt Charles and I'm here to talk about what you can do when things fail because something inevitably will so I'd like to share some tips on diagnosing some common situations and some different solutions grant you're broken again there we go so real quick before I jump into that I'm a senior producer over at gearbox software I've been there for about eight years now ten in the industry and I love everybody I work with a lot here Buck's have been a producer or a senior producer on the Borland's franchise for a while and I'm currently working on an unannounced title and I promise it's not what you think based on the titles out there I also was a soccer referee for quite a few years which gave me great experience at being wrong all the time and being told that so that was very useful so before I can talk about problems you might encounter on a team we need to first understand what they ideal scenario actually is so the ideal scenario of course is one

where on the team you have perfect communication everybody's best friends cooler heads always prevailed during disagreements and the team is in control of their own fate well as many as you know the producer is the captain of the project and you're responsible for all of these things and a lot of what I'm about to say will be obvious to you especially if you've been doing this a long time but greatness takes discipline and constant reinforcement so there was a time looking back a couple of years ago where I thought that when I first started being a producer I was actually better than you know four or five years in because I hadn't yet developed any bad habits so I've tried to fix all those but that takes reinforcement and daily discipline regardless as a producer it's still better to be Captain Obvious than captain hindsight so when something goes wrong here are the three things you must do well okay the first thing you might do is panic a little bit and it's okay to panicked a little bit but if you're gonna panic try to do it internally because remember that the team looks to you for emotional

cues about how to react to a situation regardless of if you panic the next thing you have to do is figure out what actually happened somebody may come into your room screaming about smoke but is it a fire or just somebody using an e-cig with regards to diagnosis I find this trick very very important very helpful ask why and then just keep asking why be a curious five-year-old essentially and then you'll get to the root of the problem pretty quickly Toyota actually developed a five why's technique which is employed exactly like you'd expect and that's traditionally very effective at getting to the root cause of a problem last but not least do you take time to communicate about to others about what is going on how you're handling it and what you plan to do get in front of the issue as much as possible otherwise the rumor mill is gonna do what its gonna do and you may end up with an even bigger problem on your hands so now I'll cover five pretty common issues that I hear about or I've seen or

you know hear about frequently and also just some responses and ways you can deal with these things keeping in mind the three things I just mentioned so the first one probably the most common is just simple miscommunications so these questions are telltale signs that a miscommunication has occurred and you've probably heard something like this you probably hear something like this weekly or at least monthly right and the key in managing this type of problem is actually embedded in the question that comes up here it's the phrase I don't understand so when you hear somebody say I don't understand listen for that and address that first especially since you might be in the same position this might be the first time you're hearing about something as a producer you might not also understand why somebody did something so then you can immediately empathize with that person so a good way to handle miscommunication of course is with the response such as you know I I don't know either maybe he didn't know his change would affect you I can think of some other reasons why this might have happened but why don't we go talk to him and find out if this

happens consistently you might want to skip to the abbreviated version and just say you know I don't know have you asked him so the person can you know take the hint they need to be proactive in solving communication issues but the lesson here is that I don't know as a financier but do you communicate what you're gonna do about it another common issue is with personality conflicts turns out not everybody just gets along naturally to each other with each other you don't need everybody to be best friends of course but you should be aware of any signs that things might be headed in a potentially bad direction so first diagnose what you're gonna what you're actually dealing with some obvious signs are eye rolling or people being Curt to one another consistently and the response here is pretty straightforward like first okay remind people to be professional we're not in high school anymore then the next thing you need to do after you've addressed that and hopefully that goes away is still understand that there could be some underlying cause that's a symptom not the root of the problem that you need to seek out and resolve some subtle signs

of personality conflicts or people not getting along or you know ascribing negative motivations to somebody's behavior the so called like casting somebody is the devil you know assuming the worst about why somebody did something constantly somebody constantly disagreeing with somebody else maybe outside their typical roles or responsibilities and some subtle campaigning as well this this unfortunately happens on some teams it's it's a real thing you have to deal with these are much harder to spot unfortunately and oftentimes people aren't even aware that they're doing these things so that makes it even more difficult you have to approach these with a bit of caution because these can be more difficult to deal with usually actually counter-intuitively the best fix is to get those people to spend more time with each other so that they can better understand each other's goals and motivations they might not come out of that agreeing on a mutual direction to head but at least then you understand okay everything's out in the open we're not agreeing on this point now we can

solve for that rather than people just avoiding each other or you know not making eye contact or any of the other personality conflicts symptoms I mentioned I've tried both paths and more often than not putting people together more frequently to resolve this results the issue results the the route conflicts way more often than separation which tends to actually like entrench people and make things even worse so this one's fun another issue I see is when a team loses control of their own destiny or their own fate or of some major aspect of the project right it's when some outside force creates a change in circumstance for the team such as the dreaded mandate from above so obviously I you know we won't name any products or any games but twice in the past couple of years I have seen in the industry significant changes made to the product requirements for example adding an entire gameplay mode like multiplayer campaign or whatever to the game with

less than a year to ship so this is pretty yeah this is pretty I'm seeing some nods from everywhere so yeah it's it happens right so how do you how do you respond with this as the team lead but not necessarily the company lead you're in a difficult position well first remind people the owning a company means that as an owner they do actually get to make calls about the nature of the product so first of all that it is entirely within their purview second challenged people to come to a different solution given the same information these proposed big changes almost never happen on a whim they're probably they're almost always necessary in response to something that you or the team just simply aren't aware of yet so when that information is laid out everybody can understand why a change or a decision is being made and then you've resolved or helped to mitigate that conflict if it's an isolated incident things will probably blow over if a pattern is developing that's probably a

sign that you should have a chat with whoever is making these mandates from above or whatever the case is and and let them know that that can have a real impact on the team and the productivity of the team in the two cases I mentioned one hard to say the other one actually worked out for the best so it's also not the case that the mandates from above lead to negative results just like any other change you know they have mixed results so now on to outbursts an outburst is a sudden release of emotion perhaps caused by some of the issues I mentioned earlier these also usually don't happen for no reason whatsoever and the way you deal with this is to remind the person that their emotion can come across as bullying to other people and it'll shut them down so that person needs to work with others way more constructively than they then they have been for example you know you can say you might be right but the way you're presenting your message is really getting in the way of the message try to

get them to refocus on the issue at hand and think about solutions rather than emotions or emotional posturing a preventative measure that might be the most brilliant thing I've ever seen done in any meeting to make sure a meeting and future meetings didn't get too heated was when an art director brought a shake weight to the air critiques yeah that thing turns out it's actually impossible for tensions to rise when somebody's using that in a room it it's just the impossible and the point was obvious it's actually okay to have a laugh during even serious and important discussions sometimes unfortunately outbursts or other conflicts can build into loathing or somebody writing somebody off completely this is very unfortunate but it does happen and of course as a producer what you want is to try to turn this into this so what's a dead to me situation what do I mean well they're kind of obvious it's when something like this is said like Oh F that guy right hopefully nobody's had to deal with this situation but again it does happen it's also important to

understand how it happens and this is the worst because it's it's the most damaging to the team and yet it can happen so so easily yeah at first people are all on the same team and then something will happen that might prompt someone to think that there are multiple teams or competing interests or multiple silos or groups and once anybody starts to believe the team is fractured bad stuff happens as an example of how easy it is to get into this state look at this it's so true thanks to Zach an extra fabulous comics for that that's so perfect so how you deal with this is to first recognize where it's coming from was there a single blow up that people harbor resentment over it has it been a series of miscommunication issues is one or more people actually incompetent like remember the Steve Jobs quote be players discourage the a players and it's it's a

real phenomenon that can breed resentment in your team communicate the stakes to those involved as I mentioned the team can't function divided and everybody needs to be reminded to that so challenge the people involved to find some common ground for the good of the product so to recap quickly identify if you're dealing with a small issue or a big issue ask why emulate a five-year-old don't be afraid to communicate and respond appropriately and try to remain calm and be the best producer you can be and that's me [Applause] alright alright it's time again for you all to stand up and talk to each other about what you learned from Matt's brilliant talk I I know this is really exciting and we learned a lot but sadly we do have to eat lunch at some point so please please sit down stop talking thank you thank you thank

you all right Michels up hi molecule and I'm gonna talk you through three tools that I use day to day weeks week that I feel kind of helped me as my anchors basically the things that I go to whenever I kind of come up against any problem I usually basically just like revert back to one of these before I kind of feel like I'm totally freaking out so first one is the overview tracker second one is creating a weekly rhythm and the third one was talking I like talking but first let me give you a really quick summary of my background so I've been working the studio for eight years I joined back in March 2008 but before I joined mmm I studied literature animation I worked in the film industry I six years as a casting associate the

casting director a little bit of promo for the new bands on small record labels and and basically from there I kind of went into games but and the skills that I developed over the years working on projects here and also my own projects transferred really well into the games production but working in the film industry didn't fully prepare me for working with creatives and programmers in the games industry I felt like I had a lot to learn really really fast but I managed to adapt really well I was really hungry to learn and challenge myself and really push myself in areas I just wasn't familiar with and there's a lot for me to figure out and I felt like I was acted really well and then new terminal resume processes pretty well too and our exes were amazing they basically trusted me and let me really run with things and I was given the rooms fill it all out make mistakes and basically get better in all the years

I've been a producer and I feel like I've been able to develop those skills and understand basically the tools that I feel that I'm gonna talk to you about today but basically like I'm continuing to optimize my workflow and use the tools that I've used on these projects and they work they usually help me from save me from spiraling out of control in the sometimes chaotic environment that I reckon not always but and so the first at all is the overview tracker and basically what is that that is the big picture of the project it's the project overview and so that basically has information like having key milestone dates in there we have the high-level schedule in there broken out person by person area by area there's demos master in builds team holidays public holidays basically all the information that seem like it's important information that we just need to be aware of like when we're

looking like what we're gonna need to do to ship and what we need to maneuver around so I create a simple timeline in Excel I say it's important to me that's really simple basically and it helps me understand how much time we have in the week and I usually create a sheet that covers the whole year and that way I can look at it and I can freak out by just the fact that we don't have a lot of time in year and I note down all those key events it's all presented back in here and it's usually based around the beats and kind of like the flow of like what we're trying to aim to work towards as a team on the projects that were working on and because they're only 52 weeks in the year 52 cells it when I look at the work that people have to do and I've said that a nice tutorship it basically looks terrifying and all of that information is basically gathered like the team information gathered from doing like one-to-one ketchups with people and I'll go over like how we do

that and move it and it's like gathering all that information and presenting it back in a really high-level way but there are also like different ways that I kind of present back that information in more of a granular way so some people have completely different working styles and they want to see like what their what their work looks like in different ways so I kind of use various different tools kind of presented here to kind of present that back to people to the producers as well and so in summary basically this is what the project picture looks like as a producer I need to be able to make big broad decisions based off of like what's going on I need to be able to discuss them and having the project view helps me do that it enables me to make strategic decisions and it helps the producers on the team basically understand what the bird's-eye view of the project is and helps us analyze like what's going on week to week so my other tool that I use is creating weekly rhythm and flow as a team so it's the picture of the week

it's the realistic view of what is happening day to day week to week we're more like doing today and so the structure of it is that we have like from Monday to Friday and we basically have days where we go and we collect the information from people so we check in like we go and sit down with somebody and do one-to-one catch ups between Monday and Wednesday before we do that though we have an a studio meeting and basically we kind of set out like what is the plan for the week what the goals get everybody together and just run through that after that we kind of like break out like we can't start with people we do the big important meetings that might need to happen but basically we're just like with gathering information we're taking information from people where it's catching up with them updating their schedules one to one and we're finding ways to kind of present that back that one goes back into the big overview tracker but basically having a weekly rhythm helps set an expectation for the team they understand what's going to happen day to day and there's like a little bit of

structure for them too basically for us to fall back on but we'll say for them to fall back on as well and so Monday to Friday and Monday to wednesday is basically collecting information Thursday and Friday and this is just an example of like how we work and and those two days are basically set aside for like production days we like take all that information put it back in to our reports our reports are really useful because they're actually presenting back everything that we've taken on throughout the week and basically presenting that back to our directors and to Sony our publisher so having that weekly rhythm and flow actually it can break down sometimes like real humans I think might crop up something might kind of make that just not work out we might not be able to do a studio meeting at the beginning vehicle we might not be able to do those ones one catch lots of people and the the weekly rhythm isn't rigid but it's a really good backbone for us to have and to fall back on if things just get a

little bit messy okay it's like my third tool which is talking I like talking and I feel like I've got like really good rapport with people on the team I love talking to them what I love helping them and it's basically like one of the things that just helps me get through day to day and so the first one the first thing that I'm going to talk about is basically being the person that your team members can come to you so letting them know that if they have a problem if they have an issue whether it's work release and what they can just come to me they can say I just need to kind of take your size and just basically air out concerns that they have or issues that I have so making yourself available to be that person well I make myself available to be that person so I say okay if I'm looking like I'm really busy is okay just come over and say you need some time and then we can sit down we can just talk through whatever problem that you might be having and so during the week basically like gather all that information like from people shed rules

from what's going on day-to-day with them maybe it's work-related maybe it's not but basically we're just like taking all of that in and whatever we take in will have to in some way or like it will impact what the what is happening in the overview tracker so basically it does all come back to what does the project look like what's the health of the team but also of the project because whatever comes out of that I must need to change like there'll be something that might impact Innes we processing all of that information will have a price emotionally for me for our other producers and finding the right people to go to to help us zoom out and actually just kind of get a little bit of perspective on what's happening is really important it's really important not to go down the chain if you've got like big things that you want to talk about that actually need maybe a little bit more like experienced people to kind of help you take that step back and zoom out it's

not cool to offload on somebody who might take things the wrong way and basically overwhelm themselves and get themselves in a bit of a spin because you've basically just pushed that emotion and that back onto them and they might not be able to handle it so don't do that I usually go to one of our directors for support depending on what I need to talk 3 and so it's like a technical issue I'll go tell them technical director if I'm like freaking out maybe a little bit about like how code shows wrong I need to kind of take a bit of a step back and figure out how to problem-solve there and but basically it just really helps get perspective and zoom out so talking through issues with somebody who can help do that is really important or just being able to find people that and this is team members that anybody in your team that you've got like a really good relationship maybe who can you can just sit with that can just hear you out and so finding people to just sit and listen someone that you can talk to our programmers call it rubber ducking I've never heard of that before but that's the term we're using that it's really

handy to hear yourself say the words out loud and for me personally it helps me problem-solve if I'm actually just saying what the problem is and I'm trying to like figure out like how I'm gonna solve it but I usually can get to the bottom of things just by saying those words and and it helps me move forward basically if I'm stuck on something and that person might actually just say oh hey why don't you do this I'm like yes maybe I can do that but yes saying things out loud is good I'm a really emotional person I have got feelings I hold all of this information of like projects information but also team like the team kind of coming up to me telling me what their problems are as well I love doing it but it can be really overwhelming and some homes I can feel really really stretched and like I'm just going to completely melt and I find that like I actually need to find ways that I can offload as well so breathing hugs playing my ukulele reading going for a walk and things can feel really frustrating at

times but like it's really important as a producer to kind of like regain perspective so taking a break is good just putting things down stepping away and maybe coming back to whatever the problem is later but sometimes actually like I just want to scream and finding a room in the studio to scream is really handy and actually I recommend Audio rooms they're soundproof but just don't do it if you're any of your audio team are in those rooms because you'll freak them but like I've totally done that and like walked out just okay afterwards but yeah it's useful and so basically being the person that's just exposed to all of that information can be an emotional burden and so actually one of the most important things is if you need help ask for it we're all human like we will break down at some point and so these tools are really useful for me and it's going from basically like the big pictures to the granular and then coming

back out to the big picture again they all work really well as a trio we use them like always home in our projects and if any one of these tools is missing it breaks down basically they're my anchors and the process helps bind the team we're a very people focus to do we care about like what is happening with people in work out of work we're here to help like accommodate for anything we're very flexible everyone is really amazing at what they do at the studio we make amazing games together I really love the projects that we work on and that we continue icon to work on together as a team these tools are really important because they help with the choreography of the week with the expectation as well people know what they're doing that people know what to expect that like when things are going to kind of if a random thing is like thrown in we basically have something to fall back on the projects the projects that we're back on that can be really tough but you know we're

problem solvers we're making amazing games these tools really help us to basically ship them here's some reference material and like these books are amazing that my production Bibles I really recommend them shabam recommends the couple to me as well I hope it was helpful thank you very much for listening all right all right now before we do this break everybody go ahead and stand up but before you start talking I want to go through something that Michelle talked about so each of us has a burden that probably impacts us at work and we're probably frustrated about so I want you to think about that thing and then on the count of three I want you all to scream okay and we're just gonna get it out there and then we're gonna talk about it okay ready one two three all right I feel better okay now take take 30 seconds each and talk to your neighbor again about what you can take away from Michelle

alright alright alright alright alright or as Matthew McConaughey says our ad alright alright sit down Nate stop talking sit down Nate thank you thank you thank you alright Gregg bring us home thank you alright well hi my name is Greg stone I've been in game development for 14 years and a producer for 8 years I worked at backflip Studios is the produce at senior producer out there overdragon belle world I live in beautiful Boulder Colorado with my beautiful daughter Allison and my wife Bonita as producers we often talk about the best practices for managing projects but we seldom talk about the preparation required to manage the pressure of producing a game I want to share with you guys my story and attempt to open up a dialogue on this

not the subject what I was promoted to the position of production director at a previous studio I inherited a number of problems we were trying to find a success that had been eluding us and pressure was mounting I spent most of my waking hours in the studio listening to people's feedback and trying to react I took every comment to heart and cared deeply about solving the problems the more I listened the more problems were drafted my feet I internalized the stress and an attempt to keep it from projecting onto the team as I became overwhelmed I didn't have the coping mechanisms in place to properly handle the burden my anxiety continued to build up the stress manifested itself into a number of ailments I had panic attacks hypertension heart palpitations high blood pressure shingles and weight gain stubborn and a little dumb I push forward one night when I was driving home from work I started losing control my body the stress had built up to the point where I was my body was attempting to shut down I pulled off to the side of the road and slowly drifted out of consciousness that's the wrong way

sorry unhealthy overweight and stressed beyond my body's capacity to handle it I decided drastic changes were necessary this became the catalyst for what has become a self as a fascination with self optimization I began to modify my behaviors to improve my action distress I read everything I could on the subject of stress management tried various workout routines practice intermittent fasting dabble the neuro tropics to improve brain performance put my body into ketosis for months I experimented with eating only meat beans and spinach and every meal I do not recommend this just for the record I got really sick played with caffeine and taken sources to optimize mental alertness tried every major form of meditation and measured every body metric I could recently be getting gained access to three years later I've drastically improved improved my response to stress for the point where it no longer plays a factor in my health and well-being more importantly it has allowed me to thrive in the

fast-paced high-pressure world of game development I want to share with you guys my practices I found to make any producer better and more effective underneath stress I called this hose hopes is the acronym for a routine that is tailored to bring a better version of herself some time of stress well this may sound like an infomercial I promise you guys this is entirely based in science first a huge disclaimer I am NOT a doctor or psychologist I'm just a guy with obsessive tendencies I've channeled into self experimentation please check with your physician before doing anything that could impact your mental or physical health now let's dive down the rabbit hole so how do you prepare how do we prepare ourselves for the long hours constant demands and mental challenges that come with being a producer the first step is a healthy diet we literally are what we eat this rabbit hole goes so deep that I could talk about this subject for hours what you really need to know is that our diets tied to our energy levels our outlook cognitive ability and capacity to manage stress the abilities are critical to being effective producer but

we often sacrifice our diets due to our busy lifestyles don't fall victim to this trap adopt a healthy diet and bit and make your meals at the beginning of the week to ensure you have enough when you need it I recommend the thus low carb diet which is detailed in the 4-hour body in the 4-hour chef if you're more adventurous I would look into the ketogenic diet which is detailed in the bulletproof diet exercise but it has been improved to include increased energy reduce stress proof sleep boosts brain power enhance immunity ramp up productivity increase self-esteem and more like diet it is a linchpin to our success and maintain control of ourselves from pressures mouth to get the full benefits of exercise try to get at least 3 hours of moderate physical activity every week spread this across five days and don't sacrifice the habit when we get busy the busier we are the more I the more critical exercise becomes to helping us maintain our effectiveness do whatever exercise you enjoy but if you're looking for a if you're relatively new and

looking for something I recommend looking into the book bigger leaner stronger for men and think thinner leaner and stronger for women have you ever been around someone with unshakable optimism their attitude is infectious optimistic people make great leaders because everyone wants to follow someone who believes that any obstacle can be overcome cultivating optimism isn't just an innate ability some people have like any skill it can be mastered with the right techniques to make ourselves more optimistic we can employ the power of positive thinking creating a positive mindset is it's as simple as thinking positive thoughts a good practice is to think about three things you are grateful for every morning write them down in a journal and truly think about how grateful you are for those people places and things take the time to appreciate how amazing the world you live in is and how fortunate you are even now in this room most of us are alive healthy have access to the world's information at our fingertips are fed sheltered and clothed life is

good keep this perspective and you will maintain your optimism your team will come to depend on that optimism when they need someone to reassure them that everything will be okay I use the five-minute journal as a really quick way to reinforce the habit of positive thinking it can be purchased online it was an app and it'll soon be an app again they're making a new one a patient producer is the rock that teens lean on they take the time to listen to their team members when they need to talk in remain calm they know the pressures of today are temporary and will eventually be a memory he patted keeping a level head rather in remaining patient is also a skill that can be cultivated to do this we must train our minds to be less reactive in whatever needs our attention now meditation is the most effective way to train your brain to be patient and calm meditating every day will train your brain to be less reactive allowing you to stay cool under pressure my recommendations for meditation would be the app calm in the book creative visualization to start you on your mindfulness journey if you're rolling

the splurge you can pair this with a muse headset to ensure you're getting into a really deep meditative state try to meditate for at least 10 minutes every day all right when pressures mounting in stress Rises our bodies release three chemicals to respond to the perceived threat these chemicals are adrenaline Nora nephron in a cortisol adrenaline and norepinephrine earth are released first these two chemicals they are a response to our narrow decision-making ability to get us to make one of two choices fight or flight this limits our ability to think rationally cortisol is even more dangerous cortisol is the response the body produces when the perceived threat lingers lingering threats happen all the time and game development because our problems take time to resolve and cortisol elevates blood pressure and depletes blood sugar levels over time this leads to high blood pressure hypertension and even weight gain as producers we need to keep our wits about us to make effective decisions so our focus must be placed on returning ourselves to a state of calm to return to calm quickly our brains

needed a set of operations during stressful situations when stress is triggered first breathe deeply in red in regulate your aim to regulate your anxiety rather seven seconds in through your nose seven seconds out through your nose count the seconds in your head but if you're in front of other people don't make it weird you should be able to do this without other people noticing next take inventory on yourself look inside are you all your primary needs being met if yes you have everything you need to solve the problem there is nothing to run from this will help you stay calm and lower the amount of cortisol and neuro print Efrain that are being released in your body gain perspective 5 years from now you probably won't remember buy it while you're stressed maintaining perspective will help you stay focused focus on problems you can only solve now nothing spikes cortisol levels dwelling on problems that are too big to tackle all at once only spend your time

on the problems that you can solve you are in control of your own mind nobody else ignore items outside of your control and don't get worked up about the what-ifs if you run this set of operations every time you're presented with a stressful situation you will significantly limit your body's natural response to stress I recommend the book Crucial Conversations for advice on discussing difficult subjects with difficult people the obstacle is the way for an intro to stoic philosophy in mindset for improving your internal dialogue and governing beliefs to master all these skills practice and time is necessary but how you implement is just as important as what you implement my wife hates that I weigh myself every morning she thinks I'm obsessed with my ways the truth is I weigh myself as weighing myself as my keys don't have it a keystone habit is one habit but all other habits are built off of waiting myself in the morning when I first wake up gives me the motivation to stay on track with my health goals I don't want to wake up tomorrow and see my progress evaporate and that might motivates me to

go to the gym and eat healthy eating healthy and going to the gym keeps me disciplined in that discipline spreads to the rest of my day my weight is also a metric by which I can gauge progress when I first started working on improving my habits I didn't I eliminated soda from my diet when I succeeded at this I got overly excited and tried to implement multiple habits at once it was too much for me and I failed miserably so I went back to trying to implement one habit at a time this allowed me to focus on making new habits stick I have noticed that there is no easy way to predict how much time it takes to reinforce a habit some habits will take hold immediately and others will take a long time give your give your new habit time to take hold in your life before moving on to the next one be aware of how you're reacting to and you have it if you dread performing that habit every day try something different to achieve the same effect build your habits into routine by doing the habits every day when something becomes a routine it takes very little willpower to maintain this

will come in handy during prolonged times of stress like crunch if you build the hopes routine you will come to rely on power in your daily life while most days will be it'll be easy maintain some days will be more trying than others fight the urge to give up the routine because when it starts to erode it's hard to get back on track routines thrive on momentum so don't let anything disrupt your rhythm I recommend the book the power of habits on how to form or on how to make habits tick in the app momentum to help you build your habits into routines thanks for listening I'm always I'm always looking for people to talk to you and like-minded individuals that's feel free to contact me already it's break time again alright everybody stand up talk to each other for a few minutes and then if you have a question we'll have a little bit time for Q&A

all right I hope from our talk you have realized that as a producer we work at the hearts of the team not just at the heart of the team now we don't have a ton a ton of time for questions we have about five minutes but we will take a few and then as soon as we're out of time we'll step out into the hallway so if you have any questions feel free to come up to the microphone and ask them if not we'll all sit and stand here awkwardly for the next few minutes there's a microphone back there and over there go ahead hey I'm wondering about the synchronized movement you were talking about what to do with team members that are shy or not comfortable doing anything like that yeah most people are really uncomfortable doing it the first time right so what I found is I'm just like really goofy about it and really kind of act like an idiot and I'm like hey guys check this out and then like you start doing it and then people kind of will get into it so it's more of kind of putting yourself out there and being like hey just try this once with me and

then people will kind of start to get into it karaoke is like really the most extreme case right especially for someone shy that is like a nightmare as much as it was for the four of us to get up here and open ourselves up so I would start with just very simple movement things and stuff like that okay thank you thank you I have a hypothetical for you are you ready yeah all right everything you've just talked about but your entire team is spread all over the planet and very rarely gets to see them as each other in person what do you do anybody have any thoughts on that basically he was asking how do how do you do this if you have a just team all over the world so so I've done this a bit the first thing I did was I went basically everybody so I flew out to other countries and got to know people I basically spent a week with the team and just sat in a room and they came and talked to me kind of like what Michelle was talking about having synchronised meetings one or two a week is really

good and having that time the you know sharing time not just we're going to talk about what work we're doing but we're going to share a little bit about ourselves one when I originally talked about the kind of Pecha Kucha stuff I've talked to a few studio where every meeting like team meeting they have they do one or two people and go through that way so that could be part of how you do that and so for Terry unfolded we actually were like half of our team were based in Sweden and half were mm sorry breakfast another studio like all on the same code base so in order to kind of like keep her weekly rhythm and like community communication was like the biggest thing because like we've there was only a one hour time difference but we try to find tools that would actually help us kind of get together and kind of make it feel like we're actually all in the same room so we use Skype Skype was actually awesome because we could do like screen sharing group chats basically we just did things like we had like an iPad that was in the

room with like one of our guys who's based in Paris like one of our level designs that mm is based in Paris so we always have him like connected in some way and then for the team that are in Sweden like we always have them on on skype in some way and it's really hard to actually did break down at times but it's basically really important to try and keep that moving and keep the visibility email as well but like email can be really distracting when people just kind of like use it as a way to kind of like have conversations and kind of go off on tangents so just like bringing that back and right as a producer kind of like trying to make sure that everybody has the right information so presenting it back to them and keeping well I'm just gonna use our weekly rhythm and play because actually like it really really worked with like making sure people knew what to expect and what was happening and but yeah it's just something work look happy cool okay hi I'm Caroline thanks all for your talk they were really good thank you I've got a bit of a personal question for Greg about what you just

presented that must have been scary how did you deal with it to your team how did you communicate it to your colleagues did you keep it for yourself or did were you just openly about it and how long did that take for you to get back on your feet well guy I guess grant you probably answer that as bad as good as I could because we were working together at the time but um I'm pretty sure I kept most of that to myself I don't think most of that was where most people were aware of that and it really came down to you trying to make sure that I wasn't panicking the team okay thank you no problem sorry the world isn't made for adults that are five feet tall I so I have a question and I think it may be mostly directed towards Michelle just because you sort of spoke to it so I'm a huge huge huge advocate about just really being in touch with your team in terms of like how they're feeling and things like that because you have a way better sense of

what they'll be able to accomplish in the timeline that you have based on like interpersonal and all that kind of stuff and like I am that person that they can come to you so I'm sort of a little bit of advice in terms of like if they come to me and they have a problem like it will personally affect me and all that kind of stuff but it's like working and then being sort of interrupted to talk to them which I'm fine to do but sometimes when I sit back down I have a hard time like getting back into what I was doing do you guys have any like advice for just like getting right right back into it because often like my thoughts will just linger a bit and sometimes it distracts me when I'm getting pulled away breaking your flavor and I like personally like I find writing a list for myself every single morning is really really useful and I basically used to keep notebooks that I would just keep writing everything down in and then I've managed to kind of reduce that down to having a page add a diary and it's just really handy beginning of the day as soon as I get in get my coffee I sit down I go through my wrist my list or I rewrite my list I'm

constantly rewriting my lists crossing stuff out and if anything kind of crops up like I've always got that that's like my one thing that all right so we're actually out of time but we will be out in the hallway talking first off I want to thank all of you for coming I want to thank a few people for the help that they gave us siobhan ready garthdee Angeles Kim Swift and everyone else who listened and gave us feedback I also want to thank the awesome CAS who worked today's session Cody Josh Renee and Keith and of course the amazing AV team thanks again and we'll be out in the hallway if you have any questions you [Music] you