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Ted Price分享如何有效地领导一支创造性团队

发布时间:2014-02-12 11:17:02 Tags:,,,,

作者:Christian Nutt

在今天的游戏产业中,要想领导一个创造性团队需要具备哪些条件?

Insomniac Games(《瑞奇与叮当》和《Resistance》的开发商)的首席执行官Ted Price说道:“这主要归结为一个词:‘勇气’。”

Ted Price(from officialplaystationmagazine)

Ted Price(from officialplaystationmagazine)

在今年的D.I.C.E Summit的一次谈话(“信任和Ballz”)中,Price向人民解释了他在领导自己工作室的心态。

Price说道:“在这个大多数竞争者都加入更大的公司或选择一起离开的产业中,我们仍然是个独立的个体。我们也很幸运地获得了比失败更多的胜利。”

Price是公司的首席执行官,但他表示需要不断提醒自己不能去干预那些已获得创造性角色授权的开发者的创造性过程。来自公司中的开发者的一些评论彻底动摇了他的想法。

他表示,当领导最初的《Resistance》面向PlayStation 3发行时,他对自己在与团队合作时所获得的反馈感到惊讶。其中一个开发者说过:“我不知道为什么你是这个项目的创意领导,你完全就是在阻碍我们的发展。你应该作为首席执行官并思考一些长期发展策略。”

于是他决定从创意决策中抽身,但却发现自己已经不能停止干预了。最终,创意领导找到他并说道:“我什么都不在乎。你只要告诉我需要我做些什么便可。”

Price说道:“那些我所委托任务的人变成是被剥夺了权利的人。领导害怕我插手并在事后批评他们。我并未意识到的是自己剥夺了我所授予的创造性权利。”

Price继续说:“如果我的评价会改变游戏,那么创意领导必然会恼羞成怒。当我越来越脱离创意部分事宜,我的真正角色便趋于表面化:这将让你能够扫除创造性的障碍。”

信任

Price认为,缺少信任将“荼毒任何创造性努力。”以下是创建信任的三种秘诀:

创造透明度。Price说道:“我们每天都努力传达着创造性决策以及为什么要做出这些决策。”团队已经尝试了许多方法去做到这点,而以下是他的主要提示:“在今天,使用电子通讯设备进行视频交流便是传达要点的最有效方法。”

培养诚实的交流。Price问道:“人们是否只是出于礼貌或只是说着我们想要听到的内容?寻找一种合适的方法去鼓励人们诚实地做出回应是非常重要的,特别是关于创造性问题。”Insomniac便为创意领导组织了一个群组会议,要求团队成员直接地说出自己的想法。

允许犯错。Price说道:“不满下属犯错的公司文化绝对会对创造性造成破坏。如果你因为他们犯错而给予惩罚,你便会陷入不必要的麻烦中。”Prcie便提到自己身上的一个故事,即关于他在《Resistance 2》中所作出的一个创造性决策但却遭到玩家和评论者的讨厌。他告诉团队:“如果你认为自己搞砸了,不要担心—-我搞砸的事比你还多,还严重。”

他告诉自己的团队:“去尝试并经历失败。尝试创造性风险并没关系,这是像游戏开发等业务需要付出的。”

Ballz

尽管其它词会是更好的选择,但Price最终决定使用“ballz”去代表勇气和意愿。这需要怎样的戒律呢?

责任感。Price说道:“当人们搞砸了一些事时你总是很难去与之交流。”这是他每天都在努力做的事。“许多人不想面对这种情况。但是如果你不能让那些未完成工作的人对此负责,那么那些完成工作的人便会选择离开。”

果断性。当提到作为一名创意领导时,“你将坚定地说着,‘这是我们正在做的事。它们希望你不要在这胡扯。’”在游戏开发中,他认为:“我们会花大量时间去做出决策。我们会陷入僵局。我们都很熟悉制作游戏的‘创意汤’,而当你身处这一‘汤’中,你便很容易避开决策制定的任务。”

脆弱性。Price表示,为了创造出能够实现上述所有要点的文化,你就需要成为一名脆弱的领导者。这是什么意思?“脆弱性意味着能够受到任何事物的挑战。这意味着当你犯错时会去承认它。”关于正在制作的游戏,团队每周都会进行游戏测试,并获得来自团队中所有人的各种反馈。领导“希望具有脆弱性并且自己所做出的决策能够受到挑战—-但一切的前提还是作为领导者的我们愿意这么做。”

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

Ted Price explains the Insomniac approach to creative leadership

By Christian Nutt

What does it take to lead a creative team in today’s game industry?

“It all boils down to one word: ‘courage,’” said Ted Price, CEO of Ratchet & Clank and Resistance developer Insomniac Games.

In a (very unfortunately titled) talk at this year’s D.I.C.E. Summit, “Trust & Ballz,” Price explained his mentality for leading his studio.

“We’re still independent in an industry where most of our competitors have become part of larger companies or moved out altogether,” Price noted. “We are fortunate to have more wins than losses.”

Price is the company’s CEO, but claims he has to constantly force himself to not meddle in the creative process of the developers he’s delegated creative roles to. Some comments from developers under him have shook him to the core.

When leading the original Resistance for the PlayStation 3 launch, he said, he felt amazed by what he had achieved along with his team. But this is the feedback he got: “I have no idea why you’re the creative lead on this project, you’re a total bottleneck,” said one developer. “You’re supposed to be the CEO and thinking about long-term strategy.”

He decided to step back from creative decisions, but found himself unable to stop meddling. Eventually, a creative lead came to him and said this: “I don’t care anymore. Just tell me what you want me to do.”

“Those I had delegated to became disenfranchised,” said Price. “Leads were terrified that I would step in and second-guess them…what I didn’t realize was that I was stripping away the creative authority I delegated.”

“My comments resulted in changes to the games that drove the creative directors up the wall,” says Price. ” As I do less and less on the creative side, my real role has become apparent: That’s removing roadblocks to creativity.”

Trust

A lack of trust “poisons any creative endeavor,” says Price. Here are his three secrets to building trust:

Creating transparency. “We struggle daily to communicate creative decisions and why they’re made,” says Price. The team has experimented with many ways to do so, but here’s his main hint: “In this day of electronic communication face-to-face communication is often the most effective way of getting your point across.”

Fostering honest communication. “Are people just being polite or are they just telling us what we want to hear?” Price asks. “Figuring out a way to encourage honesty, with creative issues especially, is really important.” Insomniac has instituted a group meeting for creative leads where “bluntness is a requirement.”

Allowing mistakes. “A culture where mistakes are frowned on absolutely crushes creativity,” says Price. “If they’re punished for failure, you’re screwed.” Price related a story of a creative decision he made on Resistance 2 that players and critics hated. He told his team, “if you think you screwed up, don’t worry — I screwed up bigger than you have.”

He tells his team “Go big and fail. Taking creative risks is not only okay, it’s required in a business like games development.”

Ballz

Though most any other word would have been a better choice, Price stuck with “ballz” (“with a Z”) as his word for courage and willingness to act. What precepts come from that need?

Accountability. “It’s really hard to tell people when they’re screwing up,” says Price. It’s something he struggles with daily. “A lot of people hate confrontation,” he notes, but there is a major challenge here: “When you don’t hold people accountable for not getting the job done, those who get the job done leave.”

Decisiveness. When it comes to being a creative lead, “you’ve got to be the rock, and say, ‘Here’s what we’re doing,’” says Price. “They’re looking for you not to waffle.” In game development, he says, “We take too much time to make decisions. We get gridlocked. We’re all familiar with the creative soup that is making games, and when you’re in that soup it’s really easy to avoid making a decision.”

Vulnerability. To create a culture where all of the above is possible, says Price, you need to be vulnerable as a leader. What does that mean? “Being vulnerable is being able to be challenged on anything. It means being able to admit it when you’re wrong.” The team has weekly playtests for its in-production games, with blunt feedback encouraged from everyone on the team. The leads are “willing to be vulnerable, and be challenged on the decisions they’re making — but this only works if we, as leaders, are willing to do it.”

Price shared these thoughts as part of a presentation at the D.I.C.E. Summit in Las Vegas, which runs through tomorrow.(source:gamasutra)


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