作者：Paul Culp

很多年前我和同事一起创办了一个游戏图像分包王国。好吧，并不是王国，应该说是一间取得了一定成功的工作室，主要是为其它开发者提供制作游戏图像的新方法。这是发生在SuperGenius出现，以及Johnny Cash（游戏邦注：美国传奇乡村歌手)生前的事。

让我们回到Johnny Cash依旧风光的80年代，那时候我和我的同事辞去了在一家落败的游戏开发公司的工作，开始着手改变游戏图像的制造方法。我们离开的那家公司一贯以高开销著称，这也在我们心中留下了深刻的印象。

我们相信自己想出了解决高开销的方法，所以我们便决定围绕着这一点展开我们的业务。我们将在整个创造过程中确保开发者与我们自己的低成本投入。我们的工作室名为Art Resource Studio。那时候“分包”还只是一个外来词汇，所以我们还不会以此来凸显自己。但是直到现在这个词却仍然深深地埋藏在我的心里。

我们当然知道一个由各地美工人员所组成的分包团队所面临的重重障碍，但是我们却在自己的第一个项目中体会到分包的作用，并也因此克服了各种困难。我们一直在努力完善它，事实上我们也做到了这一点。

我们通过使用各种现有的应用程序而构建了一个系统作为我们各地分包团队的虚拟工作室。我们不断地设计，构造，优化并完善这一虚拟工作室，直到它真的能够做到我们所需要的那样。我们将其当成是可以销售的经营权一样。

我们不仅想要销售它（事实上我们真的在这么做），我们也同样希望它能够作为一个产品，一个经过优化的软件应用产品而发挥作用。如果我们是面向一个完全陌生的人去创造这一系统，我们便需要优先确保它的功能性和用户友好性。系统本身就是一种业务。如果使用得当的话，肯定会有更多人希望能够运行它。

这应该是只有初创企业的创始人才有的乐观精神吧。硅谷中更是不乏带有这种想法的人。对他们来说虚拟现实将取代购物商场，Segway（游戏邦注：一种电力代步车）将取代走路等等。你喝你自己的酷爱，而我们则希望将自己的酷爱运用到你身上帮你实现目标。

我们为美术科学下了定义，我们是科学中的革命分子。我们将把人类元素完全移出图像中。单是听到这个句子还是会浑身起鸡皮疙瘩。但是我们真的十分热爱我们的“酷爱”。我们也不会对自己的行动负责。人们难免会失败，会犯错。而人们也拥有太过广阔的解释空间。如此看来系统便非常完美了。因为如果系统出现了错误，我们便能够在此修改过程，完善其中的部件等。并最终再次看到一个完善的系统。与之相比人类真的复杂多了。

我们最大的目标便是美术指导。这是一种难以取悦的情感。这是我们新的美术科学的工作。我们将美术指导系统化。我们的防御目标便是根除像“再加50%的灰色”或“只要创造出更具城市样貌便可”这类来自传统美术总监的评论。这些都是来自于我的记录本中的真实评论。所以我们迫切地希望能够纠正它们。

最终它发挥了巨大的功效，而我们也围绕着它创造了一个较为成功的业务。即我们为许多游戏创造了大量的图像。我们取得了成功。但是我们却始终实现激情。

举个例子来说吧，我们从未意识到激情这一问题。我们也不清楚问题的关键在于什么，我们甚至未猜到激情会成为问题所在。激情并不属于科学原理。所以它并不存在于我们的世界中。当我们在面对困境（也就是难以解决问题）时，我们只会更加努力地完善我们的系统，将其当成是一个酝酿中的奇想，而绝不是像激情那样的古怪情感。我们并不能将激情系统化，因此它并不能成为我们业务中的一员。

what-is-passion(from langwitches.org)

当我们前往南加州拜访一位高端客户时，我们深刻意识到了激情问题的存在。我们与对方在一部大型电影中展开了合作，而他们的设计团队更是由一些世界级人才所组成。他们很满意我们所做的一切。我们也承认虽然我们做的不错，但是却还不够好。而与之相反的是对方则做得非常出色。他们的作品不仅具有较高的质量，同时还有很强的凝聚力，这也是我们做不到的。但是对此却不存在任何科学的解释。我们使用的是相同的纹理，我们甚至还使用了他们的一些配件。但是我们却未能敲定各种功能或技术。虽然我们彼此都看到了我们的缺陷，但却没人能够修正它。这是我们系统中的一大漏洞，但是我们却对此无计可施。

但是直到几年后，当我因为一些不可调和的矛盾离开了这间工作室而来到一间传统开发公司，我才再次能够以清醒的头脑去看待这个问题。重新回到团队环境中让我能够从一个全新的角度去思考我们一直所做的事，并更好地分析是哪一环出现了差错。

虽然我曾因为这个新团队缺乏工作流程而一度很沮丧，但是我却对他们创造出来的高质量作品和团队成员深厚的友情印象深刻。这是分包团队不可能拥有的氛围。和谐的内部团队有助于团队成员更好地完成工作——即使缺少流程。另一方面，分包团队很容易造成混乱的场面，所以便会要求有一个流程去控制这种场面。但是我们却一直以一种错误的视角去看待整个过程。

缺少流程或指南的分包团队总是会创造出一些怪异且不协调的作品。他们没有办法将这些分散的内容组合在一起，所以只能将它们捆绑成一个不协调的成品。而来自同一个团队的的美工人员则能够将自己的所有想法凝聚在一起并以此创造出具有凝聚力的作品（并且不需要任何外部力量介入）。

脱离帮助一直都是分包文化的重要体现。分包商经常是以分包业务去补充自己的收入（即他们同时也会继续自己的日常工作）。并非所有人都是如此，但是至少大部分人是这样的。分包商面临的是艰苦的生活，甚至还会遭遇饥饿。作为分包商你的最大目标便是尽快完成工作而拿到回报。

当然了，你也想要维持自己的名誉并且希望出色地完成工作，但这却永远比不上养活自己和家人，并支付房租。因为受到各种物质激励所驱使，分包商们只能采取最快速的行动，但却不能投入额外时间去做自己真正感兴趣的事。如果缺少足够的能力，我们便难以优先考虑产品的质量；并且当我们不断地纠结于能力流失的同时，我们也很难再专注于手中的工作了。

而内部团队中的美工则面临着相反的情况。即使你很难做到收支相抵，但是在一整天中你却有大把的时间能够专注于自己的工作中，而不是各种账单上。除此之外，你周边还围绕着许多与你情况相同的同事，你们共同致力于创造一些优秀的作品，并且彼此间有效地合作着。你是一个大团队中的一员，很多人依靠着你而进行工作。你不能避开这种关系。工作是让你能够分散其它注意力的最佳手段，特别是当你真正热爱自己工作时。

我知道这并不公平，但是这里的确存在着能源因子。公司内部的美工团队会展开长达数月的全天候并肩“作战”。他们会与团队成员们共同协商而选定一些额外的想法。这种过程是无形的，但是其结果却是有形的。这不仅是一种资源共享，这甚至比书面上的图像指南，样式参考还有效。这是整个团队成员共同引导的一种能源，甚至超越了其它影响元素的总和。

也许对此存在着一种科学的解释。也许这是团队协作的发展优势。也许这种协作能够压制你的个人思想，让你能够100%专注于团队项目。也许对于团队成员来说团队内部各种对话会影响他们的注意力。或者说这是一种神奇的现象，主要取决于你想要生活在何种世界中。但是不管怎样，合作更能造就激情，而激情则能帮助你创造出更好的作品。

而在我之前的工作室中，我们的分包团队成员分散于美国各地。我们彼此间并不能在一起工作。所以这便是大问题所在。甚至我们还从未见过其中的某些成员。虽然我们的美工都很优秀，经验十足，并且始终遵守着我们的指导方针而工作，但是他们最终所创造出来的作品却都及其分散且不和谐（当我们将其与客户的高质量作品相比较时）。虽然我们创造了一款好的作品并且能够围绕着它组建一个“成功的”业务。但是这主要还是取决于你是如何定义成功。对于我认识的大多数人来说（也包括我自己），通过一款平庸的作品取得经济上的成功其实是一种巨大的失败。

startup-team-work(from futurestartup.com)

所以我们便决定重新开始，即从另一面开始做起。我们组建了SuperGenius，并创造了一个内部团队，一个非常优秀的团队。即不用任何外部干预该团队便能够独立创造出高质量且极具凝结力的作品。如此我们便创造了过程，并且这一过程始终都只是围绕着团队而发展。

随后我们开始定义创造性，协作和自我完善的文化。在此所有成员都将努力推动自己与其他伙伴更加努力地工作。而这也是取决于文化而非过程。团队想要做好工作的动机是来源于内部而非外部（如一列规则）。为了让整个团队能够充满上进心，团队成员们就必须完全专注于自己的工作并对此充满激情。他们必须将自己在团队中的位置当成是一个目的地，而非跳板或收入的补充。他们必须拥有想要在这里工作的决心和恒心。

比起将所有精力投入“科学怪人”式的技术解决方法，我们希望能够将工作室打造成人们真正想要在此努力工作的场所。你必须拥有一个优秀的项目，一个舒适的场所以及8至12个小时的工作时间，而与此同时你还需要找到最合适的成员。即那些愿意忠诚地对待同个团队伙伴的人；那些充满活力且能够推动整个团队更好地工作的人；那些真正投入于自己的分内工作并创造出惊人成绩的人。这是一种从下至上的文化。并不是CEO的口头陈述也非遵循着某一个流程。如果这种文化在你们的工作室中扎根越深，你们就越不需要管理的作用。

但这并不意味着我们是扁平结构式公司。扁平结构可能适用于Valve等公司，但并不适合我们的团队。我们总是需要一张组织结构图以配合业务管理。但是我们会尽量降低其使用，因为我们并不希望因为管理而影响像产品的质量等元素。我们的最终目标是建立一个基于自我组织和集体构造（像大学那样）的工作室。但是如此却会引起一些持有不同观点的人对于质量，技术以及如何创造更好的陷阱战术等问题的争议。这种对话主要是关于一个业务，甚至是一整个产业的进化，特别是像游戏这样的创造性产业。毕竟我们所面对的是一个较新的产业，且拥有能够改变全世界的无限潜能。这是一块非常有趣的领域，而我们所谈及的只是一些表面问题。

完美是一个宇宙级的目标，并不是短短的3年就能够达成的。但是只要我们能够朝着它前进，我们便算站上了一条正确的发展方向。而不管我们是出于何种原因开始这趟旅程，我们工作室的首要目标便是尽可能帮助我们的客户创造出最优秀的游戏。我不清楚是工作定义了文化还是文化定义了工作。我将它们当成是一个闭合环路，每一面都推动着另一面的发展。而它们之中的任何一个都都不能离开团队而独立存在。

基本上来看，组建内部团队也就意味着领导将能够腾出更多时间，无需编写各种评论或进行装饰，并等待着之后的内容发行或更新。这也意味着团队成员将更加专注于做好自己的工作。而因为所有人都同步地面向同一个项目，所以团队也就拥有了更具凝聚力的美术指导。这同样也意味着我们能够做一些之前从未尝试过的挑战。即面对更多内部引擎，技术工作，关卡设计，视觉效果以及最重要的动画（直到现在这仍是我们所面对的最复杂的工作）。只有不断壮大才能够推动着我们创造更多有趣的项目，并因此推动着我们继续发展。而现在我们开始重新与其它公司联合开发一款游戏，并且比起之前作为一家美术工作室来看，我们现在所做的都更加深入。而如果我们没有自己的内部团队的话我们便不可能做到这一点。

可能10后我将不再记得自己创建过SuperGenius这间工作室。我认为这种模式最终将被打破。我认为它将成为一种全新的游戏开发制度的初篇。在这里我们都清楚合作是促成一个共同目标的重要力量。在这里我们的技术将会获得不断的进化。不论我们是在创造最佳外观的游戏还是推动游戏进行各种尝试，它终将整合2个以上的成员一起投身于共同的工作中。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

The Evolutionary Advantage of Hunting in Groups and the Pleasures of Proximity

by Paul Culp

Many years ago a colleague and I built a game art subcontracting empire. Okay, it wasn’t an empire but it was a moderately successful studio and a new way to produce game art for developers. This was before SuperGenius. It was before Johnny Cash died. My life is broken into two major segments. Before Johnny Cash died and after.

Back in those days, when Johnny Cash was still singing and airplane hijacking was something that happened in the eighties under Reagan, the aforementioned colleague and I left our tumultuous jobs at a failing game developer and set out to change the way game art was produced. The company we left was consistently plagued with high overhead and it made an impression on us.

We believed we had come up with a solution to the overhead problem and we set out to build a business on it. We would help developers keep overhead costs down and do the same for ourselves in the process. We called ourselves an Art Resource Studio. Outsourcing, at the time, was another word for overseas call centers and it didn’t occur to us to label ourselves as such. It is still a term that gets under my skin.

We generally knew the obstacles that come with subcontracting a large team of offsite artists, but we got a full taste of it on our first project and it put us on a path to conquering every one. We were obsessed with making it work, and we did okay.

Using a variety of off-the-shelf web applications we constructed a system that worked as a virtual studio for our offsite subcontracting team. We designed, constructed, tweaked and polished till it did everything we needed it to. We approached it as if it were a franchise that we would eventually sell.

This wasn’t so much because we wanted to sell it – although we did – as much as we wanted it to function as a product, with all the polish of a slick software application. If we were building it for someone else to run, a complete stranger, we would make its functionality and user-friendliness a priority. The system itself would be the business. If used correctly, anyone would be able to run it.

This is the kind of wild-eyed optimism that only the founders of a startup can have. Growing up in the Silicon Valley I saw it all the time. Virtual reality would replace malls. The Segway would replace walking – that sort of thing. You drink your own Kool-Aid. Hell, in our case, we mainlined our Kool-Aid it into our eyeballs.

We were defining the science of art. We were science revolutionaries. We would take the human element out of art, entirely. That sentence alone still makes my skin crawl. But we were high on our Kool-Aid. We weren’t responsible for our actions. People were fallible, anyway. People made mistakes. People left too much open for interpretation. Systems, on the other hand, can be perfected. If mistakes were made, you tweak a process here, tweak another one there. Eventually you have perfection. People are a bit more complicated.

Our biggest target was art direction. It was too touchy feely. This was clearly a job for our new science of art. We systematized art direction. In our defense, our goal was to eradicate typical art director comments like “make it 50% more gray.” Or “Just make it more urban looking.” These are actual quotes I had documented in my notebook. Could you blame us for wanting to fix that?

It worked though. It actually worked and we built a fairly successful business on it. We produced a huge quantity of art for a lot of games. We were winning. There was just one nagging problem that wouldn’t go away. The passion problem.

For one, we didn’t know there was a passion problem. We didn’t know what the problem was and passion just wasn’t on our radar. Passion was unscientific. It had no place in our world. When we were faced with the nebulous – the problems that just couldn’t be pinned down – we just worked harder on the system, figuring it was a kink in the pipeline, not something flaky like passion. Passion could not be systematized, therefore it had no business in our business.

The passion problem was most notable during a visit to one of our high end clients in Southern California. We were working with them on a big movie tie in and their art team was world class. They were happy with the work we did for them, which we did a lot of. The quality was good. But not great. Their work, on the other hand, was beautiful. It had a certain quality and cohesiveness ours did not. There was no scientific explanation for it. We were using the same base textures. We even cannibalized some of their mesh. We could not nail it down to a number of features or techniques. We could not duplicate it. They saw it. We saw it. No one could fix it. There was a bright spotlight being shown on the hole in our system and we couldn’t do anything about it. We never did.

It wasn’t until years later, when I had walked away from the studio due to what I would call irreconcilable differences and started work at a traditional game developer that I was able to look back with a clear head and see what the problem was. Being back in a team setting gave me a new perspective on what we were trying to do, which was wrong on many levels.

I was frustrated with this new team’s lack of process but really impressed with the quality of work they produced and the camaraderie of everyone on the team. There was a good energy there that wasn’t possible with an offsite team. The in-house team setting was naturally conducive to producing good work, even without a process. On the flip side of that, a scattered team of contractors was naturally conducive to chaos, requiring a process to rein it in to something coherent. We had approached the whole thing from the wrong angle.

Without any process or direction, a group of scattered subcontractors will produce disparate, incoherent work, naturally. They have nothing holding them together. So you have to work to bind them into a single cause. A team of artists sitting next to each other, however, will assemble of their own will and produce something coherent, without any intervention. You can see which direction would be better to start from.

Not helping things is the culture of subcontracting. Subcontractors are usually supplementing their income or working between salaried jobs. Not everyone, but most. It’s a tough life, the subcontractor has. It usually involves starving. As a subcontractor your biggest priority is getting your work done as quickly as possible so you can get paid.

Of course, you have a reputation to maintain and you want to do good work, but reputation will always take a backseat to feeding yourself and your family and paying rent. You’re incentivized to move quickly and not take the extra time for love. I’ve been there. It’s hard to prioritize quality when your power is about to be shut off. It’s also hard to concentrate on the task at hand when you are constantly thinking about said power being shut off.

As an artist in a studio setting, you aren’t doing so bad. Even if you are having trouble making ends meet, there is a huge portion of the day you are focused on work, not bills. Not only that, but you are surrounded by others like you, working to make something great, and who need your help. You are part of a larger team, where there are people counting on you. You can’t avoid that. Work is a great distraction. It’s an even bigger distraction when you love what you are working on.

I know it’s very unscientific, but there is also the energy factor. An in-house art team works side by side, all day long for months on end. They pick up something extra, being there in the room with each other. It’s something invisible, but with tangible results. It is more than just the sharing of resources. It is more than a well written art bible. It is more than style reference. It is some kind of energy they collectively channel, making them more than the sum of their parts.

Maybe there is a scientific explanation for it. Maybe it’s an evolutionary advantage we have when hunting in groups.  Maybe the collective has a way of suppressing your personal concerns while you are in its company, allowing you to focus one hundred percent on the hunt. Maybe the solo hunter, by contrast is plagued with internal dialogue which makes concentration more difficult. Or it’s a supernatural phenomenon. It depends on the world you want to live in. Either way, the collective is more conducive to passion, and passion is necessary for making things great.

At my old studio, our team of subcontractors was scattered all over the United States. We did not work alongside them and they didn’t work alongside each other. I think that was a big problem. Many of them we never even met face to face. Our artists were experienced, highly talented and working within our very specific and thorough guidelines, but the work they produced seemed fractured and inconsistent when put side by side with some of our higher-profile client’s work. We produced good work and we were able to build a “successful” business with it. But that depends on how you define success. For most of the people I know, myself included, financial success with a mediocre product is a big fat failure.

So we started over. We hit it from the other side. We formed SuperGenius with a team in place. A good team. A team that without any outside intervention could produce high quality, cohesive work. From there we created our processes, but they existed to serve the team, not the other way around.

We then set out to define a culture of creativity, cooperation, and self-betterment. The kind of place where people push themselves and each other to do better work. Not by process, but by culture. The team’s motivation for doing the best work possible needs to come from within, not from an outside source like a list of rules. In order the team to be self-motivated, they have to be engaged and passionate about their work. Their position on the team has to be a destination, not a stepping stone or a supplement to their income. They have to want to be there for it to work.

Instead of putting all our energy into some Frankenstein technical solution, our goal is to focus on making our studio a place people want to be. This has to involve good projects and a comfortable place to be eight to twelve hours a day, but it also means having the right people. It’s the people that bond and develop loyalty to each other. It’s the people that develop a dynamic of pushing each other to do the best work. It’s the people who want to do their part in the collective to produce something amazing. This is a culture thing and it comes from the bottom up, not the top down. This is not something that can be dictated by a CEO or followed like a process. The more of this kind of culture you have, the less management is needed.

This does not mean a flat company. A flat company may work for a company like Valve, but it doesn’t work in a business like ours. We will always need an org chart involving management. We just want as little of it as possible. We don’t want management to have to enforce something like quality. Our ultimate goal is to have a studio that self organizes and works under a collective constitution like a University. An institution where varying, even opposing opinions can be voiced and debated regarding quality, technique, and how to build the better mouse trap. These kinds of conversations are how a business, and even a whole industry evolves, especially a creative industry like games. After all, we do work in an industry that is very new and has the power to change the world at a fundamental level. It’s a pretty interesting playground and one that we have still only scratched the surface of.

The ideal may be just that, ideal. But it’s a cosmic goal, not a three year one. As long as we’re working towards it, we’re working in the right direction. And anyway, the reason we started this, and our first priority as a studio, is doing the best work possible for our client’s games. I don’t know if the work  defines the culture or if the culture defines the work. I imagine it’s more of a closed loop, each side powering each other. Neither of which would exist without the team.

On the ground level, an in-house team means more time for the Leads, without the need to write so many critiques and do paint-overs, then wait for the next asset delivery or update. This means bandwidth for focusing on doing better work. This means more cohesive art direction since everyone on the project is in sync. It also means we can do the kind of work we weren’t equipped to do before. More in-engine, technical work. Level design. VFX. And most importantly, animation, which until recently, was one of the hardest things to send out of house. Being robust has led some very interesting projects that have pushed us to the limit. We are currently codeveloping a game from the ground up, doing much deeper work than what we have traditionally done as an art studio. This could not be achieved if we didn’t have an in-house team.

Ten years from now I don’t believe I’ll remember SuperGenius as that studio we built after Johnny Cash died. I think the pattern will finally be broken. I believe it will be the origin story of a new kind of game development institution. A place that always recognizes the power of people working together towards a common goal. A place that is dedicated to the evolution of our craft. Whether it’s making the best looking game or pushing the boundaries of what games can do, it will always involve at least two or more people working together in the same room.(source:GAMASUTRA)