122 THE GAME PRODUCTION HANDBOOK, 2/E
Warning Signs
Unhappy employees will exhibit warning signs that show their discontentment
with their working situations. If you see any of these warning signs, address them
quickly. Unfortunately, by the time these warning signs manifest, the problem is
likely to be fairly serious and will require a lot of effort to address in a satisfactory
manner. Some of these warning signs include:
Excessive or unplanned absences and tardiness: Is the employee show-
ing up and leaving work on time? Are they taking a lot of sick days? Do they
request vacation time-off at the last minute? While absences can be related
to personal issues at home, they also might indicate that an employee is
unhappy with their work situation. If an employee’s personal life is impact-
ing their ability to do work, they should notify their manager in order to
work out a temporary work solution. However, if an employee is generally
unhappy with work, they may be looking for employment elsewhere, which
is why they are absent or tardy. There are many reasons why they could
be looking elsewhere, and if you take some time to figure out what these
reasons are, you may be able to prevent a star employee from defecting to
a competitor.
Commitment: Do they readily commit themselves to a long-term assign-
ment (for example, working for the next six months to create the networking
infrastructure for a game)? Are they hard to pin down about future vacation
plans? If you feel that someone is not committed to being on the team for
the long term, you need to find out why.
Complaints: Do they overtly complain about management or other team
members? For example, “This guy isn’t useful, he doesn’t know anything
about ...” Proactive complainers eventually move to another company, the
less proactive ones won’t, but their complaints will create a negative work
environment. This is turn will create more dissatisfied employees.
Lack of Effort: Are they productive? Do they miss deadlines or not care if
they are late? Do they use their time efficiently? Or do they spend time away
from their desks, chatting with other employees? Note that this behavior can
also indicate that employees are overwhelmed by their tasks and are wasting
time because they are unsure of how to tackle their work and so they waste
time in the hopes the problem will go away. This may also indicate that the
employee’s work load is not sufficient and they don’t have enough work and
responsibilities to keep them busy for eight hours a day.
Apathy: Are they actively involved in the project, or do they just come to
work and put in their eight hours without any comment? If people are not
excited about the project they are working on or the role they have on the
TEAMS 123
project, they will become apathetic and less effective employees. Additionally,
if people have been extremely involved in the past but suddenly become
apathetic, you can bet that some specific incident has triggered this. Apathy
can quickly spread throughout the team if it is not addressed.
Unfulfilled Requests: If an employee has requested tools to let him do
his job better (like a new computer), but this requests is not addressed in
a timely fashion (or at all), the seeds of dissatisfaction will be sown. If the
request is something that can be easily fulfilled, it is a great way to build
goodwill with the employees and show them that management cares about
their needs. If the request can be granted for whatever reason, take time to
explain the reasons why to an employee and discuss if any compromises can
be made.
By the time these warning signs manifest themselves, the situation may be
difficult to salvage and turn into something positive. A producer who is constantly
gauging the mental health of the individuals on the team might catch some
of these warning signs sooner, before the situation can get too out of control.
The producer must know the employees and their work habits. For example,
some people who are constantly late might just be really bad about waking up
on time.
TEAM MORALE
Stuart Roch, Executive Producer
Activision
If your development team is demoralized, you’re certainly going to know it.
Productivity can sag; team members will seem less jovial than you remember them
being; sick and personal time might increase; and you’ll hear about the water cooler
grumbling through underground channels. The trick of the proactive producer is to
make sure that the team doesn’t get demoralized to begin with. Managing a project
correctly from the start and being organized with a regular schedule and feature
reviews can make the difference.
When a team is demoralized, there is often very little you can do to lift them out
of that. Offering financial bonuses has little effect, as does pep talks in the regular
team meetings. The thing that gets a team demoralized, more often than not, is a
project that is significantly behind schedule, causing a death march, or a product
124 THE GAME PRODUCTION HANDBOOK, 2/E
Addressing the Warning Signs
If you spot any of these warning signs, you want to talk with the employee about
it right away. One of your responsibilities as a manager is to ensure that your
employees are satisfied and productive. If you ignore these signs, the problems
will only get worse and the employee may end up lowering team morale or leav-
ing the company altogether. If someone is having personal issues that affect their
work, you will deal with them differently than someone who has work-related
issues. But you need to find out the cause of the problem so it can be properly
addressed. Ask the employee leading questions to pull them into a conversation
about the issue, don’t get confrontational or make accusations. Questions like—
what would you do in this situation? How do you think the project is going?
—are good starting points for a conversation. The employee’s answers will reveal
useful information about why they are unhappy and what can be done to what
can be done to improve the situation.
Keep communication open in order to spot and address these signs. If some-
one keeps coming to repeatedly about the same issue, it is likely the root of the
issue has yet to be addressed, so you need to do some additional investigating to
figure out what the real problem is so that it can be addressed. Keep in mind that
you can’t fix everyone’s problem no matter how hard you try—some people will
never be satisfied with what you do. However, many employees will appreciate
the efforts you put forth to address their issues and create a pleasant working
environment for them.
TEAM MOTIVATION
Melanie Cambron, Game Recruiter
If a producer has a team that is falling apart, he needs to make it a priority to
get the team members motivated. A locker room half-time type pep talk can have
a hugely positive impact. If teams aren’t being informed of what is going on with
that just isn’t fun, causing a general malaise rather than passion from the core team.
When the project is behind, producers will have to deal with the demoralized team
in many different ways, depending on the situation, with the understanding that
at that point, there might be little that can be done to get the team fully energized
again.
TEAMS 125
Showing Appreciation
Another way to improve morale and to create a more pleasant working envi-
ronment is by showing your appreciation to the team on a regular basis. This
feedback lets them know you view them as people, not just resources on your
project schedule, and that you are aware of the sacrifices they are making to
create a great game. Even though some of these gestures seem small and silly,
they do not go unnoticed, even if no one on the team comments on them. Some
examples of simple gestures that mean a lot are as follows:
Provide food during crunch time: If the people are working late, buy
them a healthy dinner. If working on the weekend, have lunch catered. Also,
go to Sam’s Club and stock up on candy, pretzels, and other snacks (healthy
ones, too), so there is something for people to nibble on during the day. The
team appreciates the free meal, and there is less downtime if food is avail-
able at the office.
Celebrate monthly birthdays: Once a month during team meetings, bring
in a cake or ice cream to celebrate birthdays for that month. People always
find this activity fun and like knowing who is celebrating a birthday with
them.
Celebrate project milestones: The development team works hard to hit
milestones on time, so show your appreciation by bringing in a cake to cele-
brate or by providing free movie tickets to the team. Better yet, give the team
a few hours off during the day so you can all go see the movie together.
Launch/ship parties: When a project is complete, organize a final celebra-
tion to celebrate the project’s success. If there is enough money in the bud-
get, arrange to take the entire team out for a nice dinner.
Say thank you: Remember to tell your team “thank you” for a job well
done. This appreciation can be done in the team meeting, via email, or both.
This simple gesture lets the team know their work is appreciated.
Sharing Vision
If the team collectively understands the vision of the game, they will have a bet-
ter idea of how their work contributes to the game as a whole. Therefore, it is
the game as a whole, they have a tendency to spiral outward, instead of inward and
together. Even though they are only working on a small part of the game, they need
to know what is going on at the company level. Make the team feel like they are truly
a unified group, working together toward a common goal.
126 THE GAME PRODUCTION HANDBOOK, 2/E
important to keep the team informed of the game’s vision, especially when this
vision changes. A shared vision means the team understands the overall goals of
the game, what the game’s major features are, how the storyline and characters
fit, and who the target audience is. For the team to best understand these things,
the producer needs to inform the team when critical decisions are made and the
reasoning behind these decisions. Knowing this information helps them to adjust
their work so that it fits within the new vision of the game.
Strong, clear, and open communication is key to establishing a shared vision
with the team. A simple way to do this during pre-production is to post the ini-
tial game concept and vision on the website. Continue building on this concept
with design documents and prototypes so the team can participate in the game’s
evolution from concept to gold master.
During production, set aside time during the weekly team meetings to demo
the latest version of the game. Point out what new elements were added to the
game since last week and call out who contributed these elements to the game. As
the game gets more stable, set aside times for the team to play test the game and
participate in multiplayer sessions. Additionally, publicly post key information
about the game in the team rooms. This information should include concept art,
mission summaries, control schemes, and anything else that helps communicate
what the game is.
Team Survey
If the development team seems to be suffering from low morale, the producer’s
job is to find out why and remedy the situation as quickly as possible. However,
if the whole team seems to be unmotivated, discovering the cause of it is more
difficult as you must figure out why a group of people is dissatisfied, instead of
just an individual.
One way to do this determination is to conduct an anonymous team survey.
The survey asks questions about how well people understand the project’s goals,
how well they understand their deadlines, and how confident they are in the
project’s success. Also, ask questions about how to improve communication,
what issues are of concern, and what elements of the game are most exciting
to them. It is useful if you set up a numerical rating system for the answers, as
this system makes it easier to collate the information and prioritize what areas
people are most dissatisfied with. On free-form questions, ask things like “What
are the top three things that excite you about this game?” or “What are the three
things you are most concerned about on this game” so that people can provide
specifics on each answer. This allows you to collate the responses and see what
specifics are mentioned most frequently.
An anonymous survey is effective in uncovering unidentified problems.
People are more honest with their opinions if they don’t have to worry about
..................Content has been hidden....................
You can't read the all page of ebook, please click here login for view all page.