Mike Swanson opened his session with a very cute memory: he had dreams of becoming an insurance underwriter! (I couldn’t help but think of the Monty Python skit for the Vocational Guidance Counselor).

Thankfully he got pulled into Games through a golf game and 18 years later here we are. Got his first introduction into managing artists at EA in Canada, and later learned more as an art department manager at LucasArts. LucasArts had the unique vision to train all their artists in managing.

What does Next Gen mean to an artist?

• Prettier graphics (normal mapped geometry, bloom, dynamic lights, complex shaders)
• Speed (push huge amounts of polygons, complex simulations on animations, physics)

Who should manage artists?

• Experienced managers vs. experienced artists: it’s really about combining the analytical management skills with understanding artists and the “art process”
• Specialization of management: studio art managers, art managers, art outsourcing managers, art production managers, etc.

How should you manage artists?

• Junior artists tend to over-identify with their art – wrap their ego/validation into their art
• Next gen assets take longer to create – giving artists more time to get attached to their art-in-progress. Example: 5 years ago it took 2 hours to make a cup (texture map and cup), now it takes 8 (texture map, physical properties, opacity, specular map, normal map, fluid dynamics if you can drop it off a table, water shader, etc.).
• Communications is key (just like the communications breakdown presentation yesterday). Acknowledge their creative process and training, different levels of passion by discipline, and establish a common understanding of what we are viewing and what the limitations and expectations and when “good” is “good enough”. (quote from George Lucas: “my films are never finished, just abandoned”- you can noodle for ever but at some point you say “stop”).
• Manage the process – not the art.

Managing outsourcing

• Artists fear outsourcing will jeapordize jobs, but the opposite is true: it frees up resources to work on more projects and focus on higher-value-added activities
• Artists worry about maintaining quality – response is incorporate testing into the RPF or QA
• Artists worry about the added management and workload – fair concern, hence the creation of art manager role.
• Artists worry about losing control – set expectations that you won’t get to stand over their shoulder, that it is a different way to work.
• Management is worried about cost, quality and schedule. Learn from
  Hollywood, where special effects and animation have been outsourced for a long time.

Factoids:

• 40+ game outsourcing studios in
  China, with over $35M in revenues this year
• studios all over the globe including
  United States

He also covered why and how you would outsource art but that was also covered in the outsourcing presentation yesterday.

(blogger aside: I suddenly feel very old…the entire presentation I had to push my glasses down low over my nose, so I use them when I’m typing but looking over them when I’m watching Mike on the podium or his charts.)

Questions:

Listed art management roles – do you see the need for art directors who are hard-core asthetes as well as managers? A: yes, a lot to learn from
Hollywood in that respect.

We experience problems with cross-discipline managing, but haven’t outsourced – does that dialog continue within an outsourced environment? A: when you outsourced be really focused; have your concept art and model done and they can work on the realization of the concept, not concept creation. Unexpected benefit: forces you to focus on getting that concept done and not be fuzzy about it.

Roadblock to outsourcing seems to be cultural differences – how do you deal with art that’s being created that might not resonate with your core audience? A: many outsourcing studios are hiring people from
North America to help bridge the gap. The other is don’t use cultural references anecdotally – must be clear. If you’re going to use a movie or film reference, you have to make them WATCH the movie.

Have you had a bad experience with outsourcing and if so how did you solve it? A: no, not yet, but I’ve been quick to pull the plug honestly and forthrightly if the level of quality wansn’t there. Work into contracts how you can back out, keep lines of communication open.

This session was from the mind of Tim Gerritsen, Founder of Big Rooster.

Tim started by saying his lecture had “a rather pretentious and silly title” – befitting a designer. He threw us all into bewilderment asking us to stand up, raise our hands, clap, and hop. I admit I didn’t really hop! But the audience pretty much complied, laughing a bit. Tim asked us why we did this so willingly. He told us “Because it was simple, we were all capable, and the instructions were clear.”

Ah ha – a short eureka moment – this is exactly what and how a manger should communicate to his team.

Here are a few choice quotes from Tim in his introduction:

1. “All humans are creative – we crave direction and focus.”

2. “If I told you how to vote or what car to drive – we’d have an argument.”

3. “Creative people like to impact the world around them.”

4. “Good leadership works whether you lead creative or noncreative people.”

5. “All management comes down to communication.”

He then went on to ask us how many of us have slept under our desks – and about 1/3 of the people raised their hands – he laughingly asked where the rest of the audience worked!

Remember that hilarious Terry Tate video, “The Office Linebacker?” He showed that to us and said “Nobody runs their company that way but geez I wish I had Terry Tate sometimes!” Me too, Tim, me too.

Tim introduced us to the “trust -> focus -> clarity” cycle, and said that “You earn trust by giving trust.” He went on to say that you should hire people smarter than you are, tell them what you want, then “get the hell out of their way.”

Here are a few good quotes from Tim about trust:

1. “Creativity is boosted by limitation. It is far easier to make something when you know what the limits are.”

2. “You define the box (the limitations) – let your employees define what is in the box.”

3. “Get to know your team – what are their strengths and weaknesses. Play to their strengths, and use your team to compensate for their weaknesses. “

Tim then took a short sideline to discuss some stuff he’s reading – he guesses that this is the kind of thing he’s supposed to do in a lecture like this! That makes me feel a little conscious about my lecture in the next hour – and it even turned out I got a question about what I’m reading! I guess Tim was right!

Here’s what Tim has read and suggests to us:

1. Made to Stick – good ideas about how to pitch ideas.

2. Built to Last – a standard, or even bible about how to build companies.

He went on to talk about trust as it relates to creating systems and processes that will help your company even survive without you – and while this seems like a career imploding idea it is really the right thing to do. I look at it another way – if you create systems and processes that you, the head of the company, don’t have to do anymore, you can do other more important stuff!

Tim also suggests reading Illusions by Richard Bach. Yes, this is the same author that wrote Jonathan Livingston Seagull – wow that’s a blast from the past. Jonathan Livingston Seagull! Seriously, it is a good book about self-empowerment.

Tim moved on to talk about focus.

He said the four most dangerous words in game development are “Why Can’t We Just…”- everyone is a designer. He went on to show us a television remote – one of the simple ones, then the Logitech 880 with 1000 buttons, and used that as a metaphor for overdesigning something. Tim said, “I want that phone for old people – the one with the big buttons.”

Tim said the same thing happens in game design – and publishers are guilty of adding things into the mix when they really aren’t benefiting the design. They don’t want Tetris, Tim said, they want it with HDR lighting, multiplayer online, and spinning blocks in three dimensions. Then it isn’t Tetris anymore and it isn’t fun either.

Another example Tim cited was analog buttons on next-gen controllers. The console manufacturers would ask developers to make use of the analog buttons, and Tim reacted, “Have you actually TRIED it???? There’s a gerbil in Germany that understands that difference (in pressing and half-pressing buttons)”.

Tim observes that focus creates vision, and shared team vision results in much higher productivity and job satisfaction. “We all like to know what the hell we’re doing.”

Something that helps focus priorities is knowledge of the business side of our industry. “We want everyone to be entrepreneurs – we’re not making fine art – we’re making commercial art. Everyone should know the company burn rate – get your team to understand cost impact (of changes and new features).” Tim showed an example of putting in a new weapon in their FPS – ½ month each for modeler, texture artist, animator, programmer, and 2 months to balance it. @ 10,000 mm this will cost $40,000 !

Other reading materials from Tim’s library:

1. Ogilvy on Advertising

2. The Foot Book – Dr. Seuss. Kid’s books are focused! Consise….avoid the licensed crap – kind of like video games. LOL.

Tim also talked about clarity.

“Be honest and direct (to your team). If their work sucks, they probably already know it! You are not squishing their soul. You are not killing them – tell them how they can improve. “

“Confront! Do it! The first time is the hardest.”

Tim observed that we all screw up – that’s how we learn. Always praise in public, criticize in private. And you should guard against becoming the harbinger of DOOM, always criticizing and never praising. You can’t have favorites – it’s like raising kids. Spread the love.

Other random musings:

1. Don’t hire just because you need butts in seats – hire the right person – even if you have to wait.

2. Don’t be afraid to fire. An ongoing failture can bring the entire team down.

More reading material:

1. Mythical Man Month

2. Toilet Graffittti

3. The Exit Sign (no really – it was just an exit sign)

And finally – regarding a subject clearly near and dear to Tim’s heart, Quality of Life:

1. It is a leadership issue

2. “18 hrs / day for 6 months SUCKS.” We don’t have to be the industry that kills everybody”

3. “You need to stop and refuel their soul.”

4. “This is a hard hard industry on marriages. My wife is a SAINT.” (To Tim’s wife – he really said that – cool huh!)

5. “Is there really a good reason why we need our teams working on weekends.”

6. “Send your people home if they can’t see the problem themselves. Go HOME – you have a LIFE.”

7. “It is not a badge of honor to be living here.”

8. “Productivity goes UP when you fuel your soul.”

This is near and dear to my heart, too. And I’m really glad Tim takes such as hard line on it.

“Let’s schedule realistically or not schedule at all. If we were forced to pay overtime, we’d figure this shit out in a hurry.”

My favorite question that followed Tim’s session was, “How do you convince higher ups that we shouldn’t work weekends?” Tim’s answer – “Vote with your feet.”

Way to go, Tim.

Mike’s presentation was quick detailed summary of his approach to understanding and managing engineers.  It was a good talk, but perhaps too short to cover many of the points in depth.  I can identify many of the traits and signals that Mike describes in engineers, but I would love to hear more about Mike’s approach to dealing with those signals.   Sometimes a shotgun blast of information is good.  I’m sure many in the audience will be digging deeper.

The last slide dove into Mike’s take on Scrum.  Mike is a big fan of the daily Scrum meetings but the idea of a backlog scares him.  He prefers having the entire project’s task like scheduled out in Microsoft Project to insure they can deliver projects milestones and final deliverable.  If MS Project planning gives someone that¦power to them!

Trent Oster gave a very valuable and information dense presentation of BioWare’s Agile Implementation. As with every BioWare presentation you get a sense of how well thought out things are at BioWare and how closely they pay attention to what is happening with the teams on a day to day basis. It makes sense based on the values driven culture that we heard about on the first day of the forum.

The presentation was in three parts:

1. An overview of what BioWare did to adopt agile
2. The problems they encountered
3. What they did to fix the problems

Adoption
BioWare made great use of a coach during their adoption of Scrum. Trent brought Mike Cohn in and said that they benefited greatly from his classes. BioWare formerly trained almost everyone on the team about Scrum. Teams were 3-10 people in size. Daily Scrums were run by-the-book with stand-ups, war-rooms and task boards.

Problems & Solutions
Trent covered the five significant problems and their solutions that they encountered adopting Scrum.

Technical Debt
Technical debt is any technical work on the project that isn’t “done done”, which Trent defines as proven in the game. Addressing technical loose ends has been a challenge for their releases (multiple sprints leading to a demo). BioWare has implemented improved goal communication and allowed for the last sprint of the release to be dedicated to addressing technical debt.

Technical and Architectural Oversight
BioWare identified the need for their princliple programmers to meet daily to discuss the technical vision and goals for the team programmers. This addresses the problems of having programmers distributed across multiple teams and the reduction in communication this causes.

Long term scheduling oversight
BioWare has maintained a “waterfall like” approach to long term schedules using Scrum releases. The problem they ran into with this approach was that their long-term schedules were not maintained well enough to match the reality of an agile project. To address this, they have allowed for frequent revisits of the schedule and have migrated from a large schedule to “rolled up deliverables” that are more easily maintainable.

Clear Acceptance Criteria
When they first started using Scrum, some teams didn’t go a good job defining what would be delivered. As a result, teams felt that they delivered early while customers felt they undelivered. To fix this, they introduced several practices:

• Short planning documents for each feature are written
• Meet to discuss the end user facing features.
• Write it up briefly and circulate for all parties
• Set up a review meeting before the work was started.

Optimistic Planning
Some Scrum teams were consistently overestimating the work they could accomplish during a sprint and consistently missing their sprint goals. While BioWare leadership understood this desire, they wanted the teams to be a bit more realistic rather than accepting failure. They used historical data to influence the team yet still allowed the team to drop work ahead of the deadline to still get a level of success.

Conclusion
BioWare has realized many benefits of agile and Trent’s talk was a very honest and informational description of their adoption.