booya! you go, s&s!

That sounds likea bonzer idea! After the month is up and all napkins have been tallied, spend some time as the group on each topic. Not only does that solidify your cross-pollination and team integrity, but it also allows everyone the satisfaction of knowing that Everything Was Discussed. After that it is just like you would read in a better PostMortem, where the team basically gets together on Friday, has lunch together talking about work, and letting it trickle into an open forum. This should be your Official Time for Feature Creep, and later, becomes your office-wide playtesting time, mmmmmm....

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-WarMage
...chinese fooooooood, may I take your order?

and theeeen?


and theeeen?


and theeeen?

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Our project leader doesn''t know much about programming either. (non game project) But he does know what our customers want/need and consistantly has good ideas how to bring them to light. I think, for a lead designer, knowning a bit about programming is better than knowing a lot or nothing at all. That way you understand the need for logical steps, but can still let your imagination run free. It''s just a matter of counting your coders to give you some feedback.

If there''s already a leader, the best way to take the position for yourself is to make the decisions that they can''t / won''t make themselves. If you''re right more often than not the developers will prefer to come to you.

As far as discussing decisions, the only things that really say when they''re not up for discussion is when time or money becomes an issue. If there''s money involved, the person whose name is on the cheque pretty much always gets final say unless there''s more time to try to pursuade them to your side.

quote: Original post by sunandshadow
Ok, here''s how it is - I want to be the lead game designer, but I don''t know enough about the programming half of making the game to feel capable of overseeing that. Also, I want to include my team''s ideas in the game design - it''s only fair, and my projects always turn out better when I have more people''s input than just mine. I think the process of idea exchange and cross-polination is half the fun of doing game design. Do you think it would work if I told my team that everyone was free to come up with wild ideas for a month, but at the end of the month I would make a final decision about all suggestions and we would implement them as I chose?

You dont need to be a programmer to be a designer. Thats why you have a lead programmer. You dont need to define a free-for-all period followed by a total lockdown either. You just need to establish early on what the various positions entail. Actually write down in a doc what the Lead Designer, Lead Programmer, Junior Designers are responsible for, and who reports to who. Make sure that you place the role of the Lead Designer as the person in charge of the vision of the game, the person that has the authority to put a new feature into the game.

In a perfect world this would be enough. In reality though, you also need a lot of diplomacy skills. The "idea locakdown" concept isnt so great, because not all of your design issues are going to be resolved in a month (things always crop up that you didnt think of), and you will want everyones opinion. It can also breed negativity in the long run. You need diplomacy because you want an open environment where people feel free to voice their opinions, but dont feel negatively towards you when you decide not to incorporate their idea. Lets face it, if you come up with an idea, you love the idea. When someone else tells you that its not such a good idea, its far easier to call them an idiot than admit that maybe your idea aint so crash hot after all As Lead Designer you need to be able to make people still feel fantastic about their idea and themselves, but not put the idea into the game "Its cool...it just doesnt fit this genre" or "I love that idea! Lets sit down next week and work out a new concept based around that! Oh, no its much too good to put into our current game...".

So, to wrap up, define the positions clearly, and be careful how you approach letting people down. We are all incredibly creative, talented, cool (did I mention egotistical? ;P) people. We need to be treated with diplomacy on occassion. (man that makes me sound like a freakin egomaniacal idiot).





Drew "remnant" Chambers
Game Designer
Relic Entertainment

Has anyone considered Valve''s Cabal Design process? I was really surprised at the success they achieved from it, in the form of Half-Life. I read about it in Game Developer, but I''m not sure if it''s on Gama Sutra.

Basically, they said there was no lead designer. No dictator, etc, etc. Instead, they seemed to accept ideas from everyone (even the secretary, I think ) and worked in groups to figure out how to meld all of the ideas together. IIRC, they worked in groups on successively more detailed problems, even breaking up into smaller groups then getting back together again.

This may work when one person doesn''t have an overriding need to go anywhere, design-wise. Then, because everyone has ideas and everyone wants to participate, what''s created is more of a synthesis.

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Just waiting for the mothership...

From what I remember of that article, Valve turned to the cabal system out of, well, desperation is probably too strong a word but something like that. After completing the first game that was HL, they realized that it was no fun to play, so they had to revamp the game in a hurry and it seems like the cabal was their answer to this problem. I think having input from all areas of the game dev. team is vitally important, but I also think you still need a captain to steer the ship. As with many things, what makes this particular person work as a leader probably has more to do with their personality and the personalities of the team members than it does with them following some arcane organizational system.

Just my 2 cents...

R.