This part is dedicated to something I was both unfortunate and fortunate to experience during my second project which is, as the title states, a group disharmony. You can also call this simply an unhealthy working environment. In retrospective, I realise that there were many things that I could have done about this situation, but I choose not to act or dismissed my thought as a product of a coincidence. This is the type of a failure that the teachers are talking about. Once you get burned this hard you will remember the lessons learned for the rest of your life.

This topic is something that the producers (project managers) are supposed to be experts at because that is their domain. They are to monitor the working environment and to make sure people are happy. Happy workers are productive workers. In our group, we lost our producer halfway into the production cycle so it could be partly the reason why so many problems appeared. When I told this to a relative of mine, she pointed out that the role of the producer was needed to be filled in by one of the of the other team members to avoid the problem. And it’s true, but my ignorance prevented me from seeing that, so now I know better. One of our team members was aware of the potential danger zones where the problems could arise, but he chose not to share that information with me personally (see 1.3 Blacklisting), and in my ignorance, I didn’t see the evidence of the problems, so now I know better.

I planned to discuss the disharmony and the unhealthy environment in one post, but I decided to cut it in two – the detection of the disharmony and the examples of what may cause disharmonies in the first place.

Let’s talk about the 2 ways of identifying the general state of the environment that I can see in my mind:

Correlations and patterns in the people’s behaviour. Remember how I told a couple of times that people aren’t special snowflakes or a mystery? Well, they aren’t. If you spend time with someone, you will notice their habits and tendencies. And if you notice something that strikes you as odd, don’t dismiss it. Approach the person or the other team members about confirming or disproving these mental queues. What you think is nothing could be a dangerous or straight out destructive behaviour that puts your project in danger. Such behaviours, if not corrected could cost you (personally you, the reader!) greatly in terms of your mental health and the final product of your team. This is an empiric method for tracing dangers. Take notes of something that causes you to feel strong dissonance. If you put on paper several of such occasions, you have a valid proof, that can later be taken to the group and the person in question.

The sense of “something is wrong” / The Intuition. It isn’t always possible to identify problems because they aren’t always apparent. The sense of unease is often shared by several members of the team. Why is this happening? I think this is our subconscious detecting patterns that are too obscure for us to note consciously. This could be a sum of many small things that our brains put together into warning signs and are trying to get this information through to us. If you hear the same confusion from several members of the team about one subject then there is a problem. Don’t dismiss intuition that is nagging at you and the others. Try to confront the subject in question to flush out the hidden issue that is causing the dissonance. Call for other parties to judge the situation. The earlier this is detected the better.

Here is a visual presentation of the two methods – evidence versus intuition. First, we have the scenario of the frog thrown into the boiling water. The frog detects this as a clear difference in the temperature and jumps out of the pot. As we detect obvious disharmonies with ease, we can eliminate them.

And then we have the frog that sits in the pot that is slowly getting heated. The frog cannot detect the difference because of its physiology and slowly boils. The frog and the pot is an easy example that also applies to the mental health of the group.

In this second part of my notes, I’m moving onto the territory of the interaction between us, the students and the team members, on a much more intimate level. As you can imagine, working with the same people for 8 weeks on a small project creates dynamics that are much different from the interactions of a big group of people. I’m going to tell about my impressions of the things that create a positive working environment or as I call it – harmony. And the things that create a negative working environment or as I call it – dissonance. I will also talk about an aftermath of a project in the end of part 2.

Clear identification of the roles in the team. Who is what and are you a group that clearly separates roles or are you a potluck? This has to be decided directly when you are forming the group (duh…). But there are also two aspects to this that I find important (there could be other things I’m not aware of, so share your opinions!). The two aspect are these: leads and specific roles.

Leads (lead artist, lead designer, etc.), while not that important in our student projects, are an important part of the real industry and of big teams. Someone simply has to have the last say in a discussion if a consensus cannot be reached. I find leads less important on a small scale because there is too little of an actual competition within the field of discipline for there to be a clear need for the lead. Plus, a lead someone doesn’t necessarily have to be a person within the discipline, but we don’t know much about one another to entrust a lead in a domain which isn’t the person’s speciality. But I do understand what is the main point behind leads.

The specific roles have to do with our fields of expertise. While it is obvious who the artists and the programmers are, the role of the producer (or “project manager” as they called for some reason in this education) and the designers was not so clear when I started this education. Also, note that there was initially a confusion of everyone thinking that they are game designers, which isn’t true. I will argue my point about this in part 3 of my blog. You must establish the understanding of these roles as soon as possible before confusion and disorder arise.  This is to be the first thing that you discuss as a group.

The importance of a logo and a team name. I feel that the logo (and deciding on the team’s name) should be the first thing you craft as a group. And the artists, not someone else, need to do this, obviously with the input of other members. Crafting this makes people feel more connected to each other, makes you feel unified. Don’t put this off until the middle of a production cycle or, even worse, the end. Do this as a first thing and have everyone pitch in with their thoughts and vision. The best scenario is to create a prototype version directly and return later to it for polishing at a later time. Same goes for the team name. You want you member to say that they are team [something] without hesitation and be able to explain why they are team [something].

People, WORK TOGETHER. I can’t stress the importance of this. No “I’m going home to do this”, no. Tie yourself to the fucking chair and work on the spot. This might seem like an obvious thing but this has a vital role in a success of a project. It really is that simple. While you work together, you get a better understanding and a feel of those that you work with. If you just want to escape home to do your assignments you don’t give people a chance to truly get to know you AND you don’t get to know them. Trying to isolate yourself while in the group (f.ex. by working at a separate corner/table) isn’t a good thing either. The usual scenario is that people will talk about random stuff for a bit and then delve into their assignments. This is when you are free to listen to your music and be alone while in the group. Unnecessary chatter beyond a reasonable amount of time should be controlled by a producer. There is also an obvious practical application to working in the same physical place – you save on time. It takes less time to point out to something with your finger and say “what the hell is that?” than to write a message that would communicate precisely your thought on the first attempt. It takes more time for the person to reply and there is also the downtime between the sending of the message and checking for the message. The verbal communication is superior to the messaging, period. It saves our most precious resource which is time.

Mutual awareness when using someone else’s assets. While this is most accurate about art assets, this is also true about code/text assets. When you start to fiddle with someone else’s baby, you better damn well ask the permission or inform the person of your intent. Otherwise, this could be interpreted as laziness, unnecessary work or even stealing. So, ask people, tell them of your intentions and inform them of what you have done to avoid confusion and the unnecessary tension. Iteration can and should happen on a group level, but if not handled properly it can cause an interference within the workflow. Too many of these interferences result in a catastrophe for the project.

Elaborate on your thoughts if you feel that you might be misunderstood. This ties to the communication. If you are sensing that your message isn’t hitting the target, then it is crucial to ask questions and give more details. This is also why verbal communication is superior to messaging because it saves time to do those things at once, rather than type out everything. It’s better to be safe than sorry and be forced to remake something half-way into the process.

Measuring the health of the working environment. This is essentially something that is the responsibility of a good producer. But it is could be hard for one person to keep the track of all these parameters. So, everyone in the team must be open to sensing problems within the group. This topic is about the identification of the problems within your working environment and I will go into this in details in part 2.2 and 2.3 of my blog.

The importance of high moral and it’s diminishing due to various reasons. Almost the same as my previous thought but this time we deal with the positive side of the group environment while my previous thought was about the negative side of the environment.

Extra credits has a great episode that deals with both this question, so go check it out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnhlDwCRwkU&t=5s

Noting the attempts at improvement and acknowledgement of the progress. This is a duplicate of something I mentioned in 1.1 about the Calling. In our line of studies, we deal with a variety of skills including some that aren’t even a part of our education. If someone finds something that you know about that makes them curious, please show them what you know and teach them. This might be the talent or the passion the person is looking for or never realised their potential with a particular skill. As they start to experiment, check on their work or progress and give them critic as if this was a real thing. Being taken seriously when making baby steps is a great boost to learn and try more. At least it is for me, personally.

Public speaking? Make a recording of it. You might have a cringe moment when you watch it. If you are planning to be the speaker of the group then you should know your weaknesses. There were some great speakers during the first year and some potentially great ones, and some that weren’t that good at all. I guess one needs to keep practising. But the best way to improve is to watch yourself from a side. It might turn out that there is a glaring issue that you weren’t aware of.

And sometimes people need to realise that addressing a public isn’t one’s strong side and that is ok too. Perhaps you are good at making great presentations, so just hand it over to someone who has a voice of a Greek god or has the ability to use their words much more eloquently and fluently.

I must say, that I didn’t think I will be able to even get this far in my train of thought, but it does feel good to continue making notes on my experiences. Okay, onward! This part is about us interacting with each other on a scale of around 100 people in the same lecturing room. I have never participated in an activity that would constantly maintain an amount of people that big (my personal record would be 30 people at most). And this brought out a somewhat different dynamic than the one I was used to.

You know what helps in a group of around 100 people? A nametag! I’m horrible at remembering names. This way, maybe, I could at least stand a chance! Or just start shoving your phone into people’s face so that they can Facebook you on the spot? This is especially true for us, pour souls, with the exotic foreign names. And as far as the Facebooking goes (and it pains me to admit this…) – use your damn face as your profile picture. I know we are all special snowflakes with deep personalities, but if I talked to someone and then I go “Hey, I should probably send a friend request to that guy/girl/Apache helicopter”, finding them by their profile picture is what I will try to do. I was one of those people with an avatar picture instead of my face at the beginning of the first year. Then someone pointed that out to me and I was extremely annoyed at first. But then I realised that this complaint was legit. And if you feel that you aren’t photogenetic or anything, there are plenty of people around who can take your photo in a great way! Leave your avatars to the gaming forums or until you have established yourself as someone who is known to everyone.

If you have no voice – you have no face. This is an unfortunate truth. In a group of around 100 people, those who are quiet among us will mostly go unnoticed. Even in a small group of 20 people, like in my design class, I still don’t know some of the people as well as I would like to. And by “knowing” I mean that I have almost no impression of them. I could have gotten that from hearing them voice their opinions in the class. This is partly my fault for not reaching out, but those people could have left this impression by simply participating in discussions more. Now, imagine the teacher’s perspective! They need to process several hundreds of students each year. If you don’t take initiative to talk to them, voice your opinions and questions or discuss things, you will remain a blank face in the sea of faces.

Networking? Duh, you dummy… I know this is obvious, but I’m guilty of not embracing this because of my personality. So, talk to people, I guess? There are many interesting personalities that possess different knowledge and expertise. Expose yourself to that knowledge to gain a wider understanding of the world, to reinforce or weaken your opinions. This is especially important for designers (the designers I will talk about eventually in the end of these series) but also to grow as a human being in general.

Recognise the veterans (second and third-year students). These people have already seen some shit and know about a lot of traps and tricky spots on this bumpy ride. Talk to them, ask them for an advice or guidance. You don’t have to become their best friends or anything. My general impression left me with a feeling that older students like to mentor noobs on their way to a great game. So, don’t be shy. The worst-case scenario is that you will get bitten. No big deal!

In a hindsight, I think this was the point of the scrum masters during our first production. But, I guess it didn’t work out exactly as planned. Again, a lot of confusion was caused by the title “scrum master” itself. This wasn’t what they needed to be, they needed to be our mentors instead of … whatever the hell they were.

Artists, share your art. I mean it. Start making silly looking portfolios to use them just in our courses. And several of you already have some heavy guns on the display (not mentioning the names, hehe). The sooner the better. I, personally, want to see what you people are capable of if I’m to work with you. You are showing your strong and weak sides this way, but also the progress you make on your journey. And this goes for the workflow as well! Show the team your work in progress, it will most likely make it better. Seeing people work on things is inspiring, to say the least.

Game jams. Go to game jams! Those are a great way to learn the interaction between each other inside of the game development process. Unfortunately, the game jams within the university are badly adjusted for THE designers and the producers. Only the artists and the programmers are fully functional in those events. My impression was that people were unclear on what producers and designers are for. Another reason could be the format of the event where the main accent falls on the creation of assets in a short time frame, which leads to a diminished significance of the design and workflow. Just guessing here. Still, this an opportunity to develop a secondary skill in the art or programming department if you just warn people about your level of skill. I am grateful to the people who let me join during the two jams I visited this year. The funny thing was that both times the teams took home Best Interpretation…

The show of respect and the recognition of the team’s work. This idea has a high chance of backfiring in my face, but I will voice it anyway. When something is created, no matter how bad it is, it deserves recognition. One must learn to show the respect for the collective effort of another team. One must also learn the ability to see past the bad form and into the idea that people tried to realise. Bad execution doesn’t necessarily mean a bad idea. Also, most people are aware of the flaws in their creations. A word of praise or encouragement can help them get to the next stage of the journey. This is easy to observe during an event like GGC (Gotland Game Conference http://gotlandgameconference.com/2017/ ). Please note, that I’m talking about the collective effort, not the individual effort.

Pre-emptive profiling. Once again, if you think that you are a special snowflake and a complete mystery, then I would like to try to try and disprove that. At this point in time, most of us left a digital information trail which is just a click away. Even more so, when it comes to the game development sphere since many us are active internet users. People can google you, people can find your social media profiles. Be aware of what is there, an opinion can be formed from just a quick browsing through your drunken party pictures. You might brush this off in the context of the college studies, but already most employers do the same thing. Do you really want those embracing pictures there when you are applying to [insert company name here]? I’m not saying you should start keeping a full track because this is highly subjective, but just be mindful of this.

Person’s rating, Blacklisting and venting. Our actions and behaviours in any social context dictate what people will think of us. And people will observe and take mental notes. It’s is in our best interest to be on the positive side of this rating if we want to work in a good group now and in the future.

The third worst scenario is to be a talented individual with a horrible personality. This turns you into a high-risk investment. People might choose someone mediocre that doesn’t disturb the peace too much over you, who is talented but also is a drama queen.

The second worst scenario is the people with both a bad temper and little to no talent. These should be cut from teams for obvious reasons and are easy to identify.

And the worst-case scenario of them all are the people with nice personalities and no productivity. Why are they worst, you might ask?  Because their personality might obscure their productivity. The fact that they are nice could play on your fillings, making you want to give them a second chance, a third chance etc. But know, that their low contribution will backlash at your projects in awful ways. Especially in the production cycles, where the wasted time is something we can not afford.

Blacklisting is a mental list of people that end up on the bottom of a possible team member at the creation of a new team. Or the people with whom individual refuses to work together completely. This is something subjective which varies from one person to another. This encompasses a whole spectrum of personal abilities. But I assure you, you are being rated by other individuals the whole time you study and your flaws will be revealed with time. So, don’t do stupid things like openly announcing your laziness and such. You think people would want to work with you?? Absolutely not. Do yourself a favour and shut up. Or don’t. It will make it easier to spot you at once and not waste our time figuring you out for what you really are.

So, what about venting? Venting the way for us to share the rating with others. Once the project is over people will talk about it with others and will voice their opinions about the individual effort of the team members. This is how we know with whom we should strive to work with and whom to avoid. Most of your flaws will be apparent to the team members by the end of the production cycle and the word of the bigger flaws will reach the ears of those who are interested in this type of information. For that reason, you need to able to compensate for your flaws with other talents. For example, it can be excused that you are lazy if you deliver great things at the last minute.

The end of the year as the time for personalities and characters to emerge. Summing up the things I have mentioned above, by the end of the first year most of those who have made the journey to the one year milestone will be profiled, their strengths and weakness will be known to those who keep their eyes and ears open to this type of information. It is inevitable and I can only hope I’m not hated by everyone at this point =D

This concludes the first part of my notes that was centred around some more broader subjects that I got to experience over the year. The next set of my blog posts will touch the subject of working in a smaller group. As always, all comments are welcome and thanks for reading!

One of the most important things in this education, besides working in the groups, is how you handle the ideas. I have to say that being creative is something I missed during my time in linguistics. While an open mind was welcomed, the creativity was highly impaired. If you couldn’t support your train of thought by a reference to already existing works, you’d have some hard time. Only a tenured professor who is steps away from retirement was excused for having crazy ideas. But here, anything goes, while you can communicate it properly. I’m an artist now! So, let’s talk a bit about how I view the ideas and how to handle these fragile things.

A simple image is worth a thousand words. Everyone needs to take up a pen and a paper and start sketching. Don’t say that you can’t draw. Cavemen couldn’t draw either but it didn’t stop them! It doesn’t matter if it’s just stick figures, we aren’t putting your work on a display stand. You just need to get a message through and a crappy picture is usually better at this than a wall of text or works are a great compliment to the wall of text.

Forming an idea and shitty ideas. Let ideas be born. Slowly, but surely. Any idea, no matter how laughable at first, can be iterated and moulded into a genius by a right set of hands and minds. There are rarely bad ideas, rather there are bad interpretations. It is a typical case in the movies when someone does something stupid and then explains it by saying “It seemed different in my head…”. This is the point of iterations, the process of changing and adjusting until the garbage is away and only a great core remains. And this core can be executed with ease. This is especially important for the artists and the designers.

Single ideas and surges of ideas. This ties together with the point of carrying a notebook of being able to note down things at all times. You can be anywhere when diarrhoea idea strikes. And if you are in the situation where you can’t stop to ponder on something, you need to take a note of it. Even more complicated is the case of having a surge of different thoughts that all have a discussion value. At this point, all you can do is keep putting down the strings of thoughts on paper with as many details as possible in the hopes of being able to decipher them later when the storm calmed down. And don’t expect to understand everything you have written down either.

Creative drunk (with a disclaimer). I’m not advertising alcohol or consumption of any types of drugs here. However, if you find yourself in a state of a clouded mind and suddenly realise that you are pondering some weird idea – jam it down on paper or tell it to someone who is sober, to remember it for later! The ideas of a drunk mind are the things that might never come to a sober mind and this needs to be examined. Not only could it be a crazy idea, but it could simply be something you didn’t dare to voice while you were clearheaded. “The drunk mind speaks the sober heart”

The choosing of an already finished concept. Warning: rant and a high level of saltiness! One of the weirdest moments in the education were the 5 minutes we were given to choose one of the finished concepts for Shoot ‘em Up game. One of the biggest opportunities of the first year was squandered away, sadly. Of course, people would go for the most articulate and flashiest concepts for obvious reasons but that isn’t the point here. I commend the groups that did their job well at creating a solid idea. But there were so many other ideas that got thrown into the void at a whim.

Let’s examine the result of this scenario. We ended up with how many Witch, Fish, Echo games? It was excruciatingly boring to sit through the mandatory presentations where you get to see the same concept over, and over, and over again. Furthermore, it created an unnecessary scale of comparison of the same games. Don’t you think it was painfully clear which Witch (ha!) was the best? It was. Do you think that other teams with the same concept weren’t aware of their inferiority? They probably were (and if they weren’t, God bless those innocent souls). How do you think felt the people whose concepts weren’t picked? Probably like crap. As a result – unnecessary mental burdens everywhere.

What was to happen if the concepts were to be simply drafted? People who got the “good” concept could have made their games while focusing more on the production. The teams of the other concepts would have been faced with a challenge of interpreting the less articulate concepts into a proper game. Isn’t that a great exercise, to take someone’s embryo of an idea and realise it into something fully formed? That way there wouldn’t have been any unnecessary comparing of games. Everyone would have been happy to see their concept being realised. And watching the presentation of the progress in production would have become something to long for. There are two other key experiences that were missed by so many groups because of the different scenario playing out, which I will bring up next. An overall great opportunity for a unique high-value experience for every group wasted, in my opinion.

Letting go of your idea. Partly continuing the rant above, something that all needed to experience, but didn’t. Once you have formed your idea and it is handed over to someone else it is super important to let it go. The people will examine it and create something they see through their own eyes. Which is why I think, it is irrelevant to ask someone “is this how you saw this game?”. It doesn’t matter how they saw it, they weren’t the ones making it. As the concept is handed over into other hands it stops being your concept. All you have left is an echo if the idea that can manifest as basically ANYTHING. Learn to let go of an idea and most certainly don’t try to impose your vision on the team working with your concept. Same goes to the team working with the concept, don’t try to follow the vision of someone else to the letter. This is now your playdough and you get to do what you want with it.

Deconstruction of a concept. Another thing that many people didn’t get to experience was the option of taking a badly formulated concept and recycling it into something good. I am a firm believer that there are no bad ideas, only bad interpretations and executions. When faced with a poorly formulated thought the only scenario is to search for the essence of the thought in the text. Some repeating pattern, a word that is used many times. Searching for a diamond in a pile of refuse can be quite an adventure in itself. And once you’ve done that and produced something – you will feel great. And chances are that those who didn’t manage to deliver the idea 100% will be also happy at seeing their vision interpreted and brought to life. I know, I would be happy for sure!

Getting burned once might impair the creativity. Just like in real life getting burned once makes one avoid fire. Someone, who’s idea was bad might not ever push themselves into creating a new idea. But to approach this problem you simply need to reassess the situation. Reflect on what went wrong last time and take it into your calculation. But just because you failed last time you shouldn’t tune down on your ambitions, rather you should scope them better. To under-scope could be as harmful as to over-scope. Search for the right balance. And just as we were told in the lectures, how many games did those guys from Angry Birds made before finally scoring big? It’s about failing and learning and failing. Not failing, getting crippled and not wanting to fail again and thus not try properly.

Embrace the games in their creation (a.k.a. playtesting). Once the journey has started it is important to keep the imagination engine well fed. Once the playtesting begins and you get to experience the creations of others don’t be scared away by these rough-cut diamonds. While some devs are eager to show their progress, other are more reluctant, almost uncomfortable about their babies. Don’t flee at the sight of something that has no graphics, or looks wonky. Get the feel of it, talk to the creators, ask them to elaborate on what they are doing and what are they planning. You can usually get a good picture of their ideas even from an alpha build. And they will appreciate your interest, I’m sure. It will also help them since they will ned to articulate their plans and destinations and might realise flaws in those. So, if you playtest – playtest politely, but playtest hard!