Leadership *
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The development of a game is a collaborative process where leaders should not afraid to say they don't have all the answers and are willing to hear the answers of other team members to fill the blanks.
Although a leader might have knowledge of how the work should be done, his main focus should be on creating a team that can do its work without his direct input. This will allow a Leader to focus on preparing work for the team instead of spending time micromanaging it.
A leader should be the person whose work focuses on directing the team efforts by pointing short term goals and how each of this goals is moving the project closer to the end product.
The leader should be able to identify and fill any gaps that appear between the "original vision", the "vision in progress" and "final needed vision" of the game. To do this he should try to regularly hear the feedback from everyone involved with the game (ex. clients, developers, testers), and formalize it in discussions to identify needed changes and create work tasks to handle them.
What if you were to look at your indie game the same way? What if every feature in version 1.0 has to be super-valuable to avoid being labeled “do it later?” What if every job has to be super-critical to success, or you’ll postpone filling the position? What if every item you buy with precious cash has to be a “can’t do without” purchase? What if every major task on your to-do list has to be “mission critical?”
Goes way beyond "Art Director" or "Video Games", but is a perfect analysis of people in (corporate/collaborative) workplaces being 'lifted up' from their comfort zone and craft to doing 'management' for the first time in their lives. This is a life-changing experience and deserves more attention, unless the Darwinian "swim or die" ... corporate 'culture' is in place. Can be quite expensive. Literally. ()
Great talk! Worked on a good number of projects like that in mobile and PC quality assurance. I found the companies that listened to their testing teams got much further in the long run. I also like the 'you need to stick it to your boss' segment. 100% agreed. Most of the newer companies in silicon valley had documents that had assignments and tasks and who they were assigned to. All members of the team, including the producer, manager, etc. The accountability goes a long way. ()