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开发者称大型团队依然具有绝对优势

发布时间:2011-09-02 16:43:53 Tags:,,

游戏邦注:本文作者为Tim Heaton,他是英国工作室The Creative Assembly的主管,该公司曾推出备受赞誉的PC游戏《全面战争》系列。

The Creative Assembly的Tim Heaton表示,自由很美妙,但团队协作也有其优势。

看到个人和小型初创公司纷纷涉足手机和下载游戏,颇令人高兴。

现在是尝试的好时机,虽然其中也存在大量风险;每个成功的背后总是存在众多失败者。有时我会觉得他们是出于不想加入大型团队,渴望自由。

我觉得这将错过业内某些美好经历。

有些行业需要几百人共同合作,共同朝某目标奋斗1年。

这就是所谓的大项目(游戏邦注:耗费上千人工月、数百万资金,成败取决于团队协作效果)。

更复杂的是,这些团队通常来自不同文化背景,拥有不同兴趣爱好。

虽然普遍认为这些团队的程序员和美工相互交错,但其实这些团队蕴藏着许多富有创造性的程序员和优秀美工,包含其他团队所体现的特点。每个团队都包含众多风格迥异的成员。

gathering from develop-online.net

gathering from develop-online.net

全球聚会

The Creative Assembly雇佣不同文化背景的人员。他们来自各艺术学院和大学,或在业内有20多年经验,或直接来自学术界,不确定自己是要选择在大城市中的谷歌,还是初创公司。

但他们都带着相同的目标来到Creative Assembly:制作杰出作品。他们加入高效跨文化团队,大家都雄心勃勃,渴望创新,担当领导角色(游戏邦注:合理组合要素,整体效能要远超乎部分之和)。

全球化和跨职能开发带来显著成果。聆听程序员、美工和设计师的跨职能交谈就像观赏一场精彩业内交配舞。“这不可能”,“这个可以,但那个不可能”,“这个想法很糟,且听我细细道来”,这些观点最后变成共识,然后是引人注目的创造性成果。

整个过程中,大家都在向具有不同优势的其他成员学习,学习以不同角度看待问题。想要获得成功,你就需要拥有开阔视野,要懂得如何协商,如何解决问题,如何清楚表达。这些都是非常重要的技能(游戏邦注:不仅就工作而言,工作之外亦是如此),这些都是依靠学习获得的技能——向身边怀有同样热情的人士学习。

discussion from develop-online.net

discussion from develop-online.net

视野开阔

这并不是说高效团队限制成员表现自我;其实恰恰相反。它促使大家有所专攻,让个人能够从事更多自己喜欢的内容,而非那些无法发挥优势的任务。

通过开发建立起来的密切长久关系能够强化成员之间的信任和理解,创造良好沟通和期望,获得超越日常工作方式的成绩。

不良团队非常可怕。这会导致项目进展受阻,要重回轨道非常困难。这些问题通常都是由缺乏共同目标,缺乏明确分工,或个人自由造成。这自然会促使成员寻找其他工作方式,或自立门户,或和1、2个伙伴合作。但一个健全的团队就像个发电厂,是个好去处。

优秀团队存在共同目标,成员各司其职,各显才华。

共同目标意识能够产生杰出成果,而成员相互学习,学会以不同角度看待问题则在如今我们所处的变化迅速环境中扮演重要角色。随着手机和下载游戏的日益复杂化和扩大化,团队规模似乎也会逐步扩大——这是个正面效应。(本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译,如需转载请联系:游戏邦

Why big dev teams still matter

By Tim Heaton

Freedom is fantastic, says The Creative Assembly’s Tim Heaton, but there’s something magical about working in a team

It’s interesting to see the current crop of single-person and very small start-ups making mobile and download games.

It’s a good time to try that, although there’s considerable risk; for every success, there are significant numbers who don’t win the lottery. Sometimes I think it’s driven by the wish not to be part of a team; freedom.

It seems to me that it misses out on one of the best parts of working in the industry.

There are few industries that require sometimes hundreds of people to work together, with a single aim, for a year or more.

These are big projects by anyone’s standards – thousands of man months, millions of pounds, and the success of most is bound to how well the team works together.

And just to complicate matters, these teams are often made up of people from different backgrounds with different interests.

Although the stereotypes of engineers and artists mixing like cats and dogs might ring true occasionally, teams have plenty of creative programmers and logical artists, and characterising elements in the team like that doesn’t really stand up to inspection. But there is a hugely diverse set of people working within each team.

GLOBAL GATHERING

We at The Creative Assembly employ people from many countries and backgrounds. They’re from art colleges and universities, have twenty-plus years in the business or are straight out of academia and wondering whether to work at Google, in the city or at a start-up.

But they come to Creative Assembly with a common objective: to make great games. They join high-performance multicultural teams, people who are ambitious, driven and keen to innovate and lead. Get the ingredients right and the whole is much more than the sum of its parts.

Collaboration and cross-functional development lead to really great things. To watch a feature-development discussion between a programmer, an artist and a designer is to watch one of the great mating dances in any industry. ‘It’s not possible’, ‘you can have this but not that’, ‘that’s a stupid idea, let me explain why’ spiral into common understanding and then to compelling invention.

And all the time people are in an environment where they can learn from other team members who have different sets of skills, and possibly different ways of looking at a problem. To be successful you need an open mind, you need to learn how to negotiate, how to problem-solve, and how to communicate clearly. These are vital skills, not only in the office but out of work too, and they are learnt skills – learnt from the people around you who are similarly motivated.

THINKING BIG

That’s not to say that an effective big team discourages virtuosity; in fact, it’s exactly the opposite. It allows deep specialisation, allowing individuals to do more of what they enjoy and less of what takes them away from their skill set.

The close and long-term relationships that grow during development also mean that significant amounts of trust and understanding build up between staff, allowing clear communications and expectations that can exceed the normal day-to-day methods of working.

A dysfunctional team is a scary thing. Progress can halt entirely, and getting back on track is hard work. These problems are often caused by a lack of common purpose, lack of individual accountability, or lack of individual freedom. It’s no surprise people would want to look at other ways of working, possibly by working on their own or with just one or two associates. But a healthy team is a powerhouse, and a great place to be.

One that shares a common purpose, where individuals take responsibility for their actions and where a team is structured to allow people with talent to do the work they have an affinity for.

The camaraderie and sense of common purpose are incentives to great work, and the ability to learn from others in close proximity, and to see how others understand issues differently, are vital in the rapidly changing environment we work in. As mobile and download games grow in sophistication and scope it’s likely that team size will grow in those areas too. Make sure you know how to scale – it can be a very positive thing.

Tim Heaton is studio director at The Creative Assembly, the UK-founded studio behind the acclaimed Total War series of PC games, as well as numerous other works including original and licensed products.(Source:develop-online


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