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Schell Games谈工作室文化是解决加班问题和冲突的良方

发布时间:2020-04-27 09:02:07 Tags:,

Schell Games谈工作室文化是解决加班问题和冲突的良方

原作者:Rebekah Valentine 译者:Vivian Xue

2004年,Schell Games的首席执行官Jesse Schell和几名朋友同事共同创立了一家承接外包项目的工作室——15年过去了,他和4位初创者仍然留在公司。

这4名初创者包括现任艺术副总监Reagan Heller,设计部首席经理Shawn Patton,首席工程师Jason Pratt以及高级工程经理Robert Gordon。在他们和Schell的管理下,公司制作了众多外包项目,也开发了自己的IP,旗下约有125名员工。

在以变化著称的游戏行业内,Schell Games开辟了一条成功之道:依靠外包收入开发自己的IP,打造更具雄心的项目。Schell表示公司的外包项目占70%-80%,原创IP占20%-30%,这种模式的优势是非常稳定。

这种稳定性成了Schell Games夸耀自己的资本,这家公司成立至今从未裁员,正如Schell说的,“我们付不起工资(招那么多人)”。

他继续说到:“许多工作室优先考虑的不是稳定性,开发下一个大项目更重要。很多工作室大量招人,其中一半的岗位缺乏保障,希望靠这种方式推进项目。我们不这么做。我们先存钱,再招新员工。如果项目进展不顺,没有问题,因为我们有足够多的项目和资金储备。”

Pratt补充说道:“外包和原创IP项目的比例是降低风险的关键。不要把鸡蛋全放在一个IP篮子里,外包项目的风险小得多。你可以有把握地认为签订合同的那一刻,这笔收入就到手了。”

pubg(from gamasutra.com)

Schell回应道:“是的,传统发行合同要求你投入大量资源,同时承担巨大风险,若项目进展不顺,你会遭受重创。我们从来不签这种合同,我们签外包合同。不过我想说明一点,外包项目也有风险,但如果你能管理好这些项目,这种风险要小得多。通过良好的项目管理,我们降低了风险,并且我们可以自主发行自己的项目。但如果项目管理没做好,我们会陷入麻烦。”

对任何行业来说,稳定是发展的关键,但对Schell Games来说,稳定的意义不仅在于保住工作。与我交谈过的5位管理者一致认为,保持稳定的主要目的是尽可能保持内部团队的稳定性。

“我们坚信团队会随着时间的推移越来越强大,”Schell说,“典型的游戏公司每三年裁员30%,每当这个时候,人才和知识也随之离去。但对于留下的团队来说,真正的问题在于——他们不仅受到了冲击,开始担心工作不保,更糟糕的是,他们与曾经的同事建立的合作关系失去了价值,他们必须和其他人重新建立这种关系。”

“如果保持团队不变,随着时间的推移,成员之间的交流合作将不断强化。因此我们不像别的公司那样冒险,我们会衡量自己所能承担的风险,这样即便情况变糟了,我们也不用辞退员工。”

Patton补充了一个理由:“假如你在投标项目,你在估算完成项目的时长,如果你有一个合拍的团队——成员们了解自己的长处和短板——你就可以更准确地估计项目的预算。”

Schell Games以团队为核心,Schell认为“好团队才能做出好游戏”以及“友善对待他人者是最佳的团队成员”。他摒弃行业内割裂团队、让同公司不同团队甚至团队内部互相竞争的做法,强调团队建设和冲突调解是公司文化的核心。

Heller说,这意味着团队合作是公司招聘时的考察重点。

“我们向应聘者了解他们之前是如何处理人际关系冲突的,他们希望如何进行团队合作,通过让他们谈自己喜欢的工作方式,考察他们是否符合我们的期待,”她说。“这些问题能透露许多信息,这对于艺术设计部门来说尤为重要。没错,我们需要优秀的艺术家,但我们需要善于合作,而不是以自我为中心的人。当我们拥有一群愿意合作的人才时,他们能够创作出伟大的作品,团队会越来越强大,因为成员们的关系不会变得紧张。”

她还谈到通过招聘和员工训练鼓励团队合作,并注重直接沟通和软技能培养。

其他人也同意这些是调解冲突和保持以团队为核心文化的关键。他们说,冲突调解本身是极具挑战性的。在大公司里,矛盾往往要等到发酵甚至爆发时才能被管理者注意到。为了避免这一点,Schell Games建立了反馈机制和管理结构。

“我们同时进行很多项目,我们有一个团队结构,每个项目团队有一个监管者,”Schell说,“但是向谁直接报告、谁是你的经理、谁为你的职业生涯提供支持,这些往往不受该结构束缚。你的经理不一定是项目团队的监管者。我认为这种结构的好处是它提供了其它解决问题的途径。当你需要上级的支持时,你可以寻求来自你的团队以外的支持,我认为这很有帮助。”

“化解冲突方面最重要的是不忽视冲突。你得花时间和相关方沟通,你必须鼓起勇气进行这种令人不舒适的对话。更艰难的是你得让每个人感到自己受尊重。这需要大量的工作,但它能建立信任,长远来看是值得的。”

“人们常常憎恶大公司里的勾心斗角。某个人想指出另一个人的问题,但他们往往无法当面提出,因为他们不想引来不必要的矛盾,因此他们会告诉其他人。公司里的各个小团体总是谈论着彼此,而不想互相交流。我们避免这种情况的产生。”

具体来说,Schell采取的方式是设立一个反馈机制,员工可以向经理反映他们所在团队的积极面和消极面,以及他们觉得最需要帮助的地方。公司还设立了一个意见箱,员工可以匿名直接向Schell提意见,而Schell将回复这些意见。

他们告诉我这些对防止工作室陷入加班常态很有帮助。

“避免加班首先要避免使加班常态化,”Patton说,“我知道我们在采访过程中提到了不鼓励加班。在制定项目时间表时,我们会预留足够的缓冲时间,做好应急计划,这样当事情出差错(并且总是会出差错)时,我们可以在无需加班的情况下解决它。我们会向客户表明我们不希望加班,如果客户提出加班,我们会想办法说服他们。与加班做斗争,需要整个公司形成这种文化,并做好计划。”

Heller补充道,“公司领导会经常和团队领导公开谈话,询问他们的项目进展到哪个阶段,帮助团队做艰难的决定或者调整项目范围。”

Gorden总结道“我们鼓励团队领导和成员定期进行一对一的面谈。这些会谈的目的之一是了解项目进展,员工是否感到压力。让员工离开办公桌,谈论他们目前工作之外的内容,也给了员工反思的时间。”

“当加班真的发生时,我们会把它看作项目出现了问题,我们会寻找问题出现的原因,如何在未来的项目中避免它。忽视它就等于默许它。”

Patton还提到常规会议不仅是为了了解某个项目的进展,还有该项目进展过程的效果。

“这种一对一会谈的主要目的是解决项目中可能恶化的问题,”他说,“它不一定关于某个人现阶段的工作,而是基于这一点探讨,进而发现许多其它问题。并且我感觉我们谈论的加班、冲突调解、个性等等,这些在我看来都是文化问题。我们面临的挑战是保证工作室文化的活力。”

反思工作室文化、避免加班和冲突调解这些问题时,Gorden重申了以人为本的重要性。

“我个人有一个不成熟的理论,我认为人们获得工作激情的来源有三个。第一是产品,第二是工作本身,第三是与他们共同工作的人。我从许多员工身上发现,随着时间推移,共同工作的人对他们来说最重要。”

“刚开始,人们会对自己为之工作的产品感到兴奋,但随着时间推移,他们更加重视同事的价值,以及与同事之间的交流互动。这似乎是Schell Games运作的基石。”

Patton总结道,“虽然项目一个接一个,但你的同事仍在那里。”

本文由游戏邦编译,转载请注明来源,或咨询微信zhengjintiao

In 2004, Schell Games CEO Jesse Schell gathered a few of his friends and colleagues together to form a work-for-hire studio — 15 years later, he and four of those original executives are still there.

The four are VP of art Reagan Heller, principal design manager Shawn Patton, principal engineer Jason Pratt, and senior engineering manager Robert Gordon, who along with Schell are responsible for a company that does a mix of work-for-hire projects and original IP, and employs around 125 people.

In an industry known for volatility, Schell Games has found success in relying on its work-for-hire roots to support more ambitious projects using its own IP. Schell says the breakdown of the studio’s work is something like 70% to 80% work-for-hire and 20% to 30% own IP, which “has the advantage of being very, very stable.”

That stability has afforded Schell Games the ability to brag that it’s never laid anyone off because, as Schell puts it, “Uh oh, we couldn’t make payroll.”

“Stability is not a priority at many studios,” he continues. “Getting to the next big hit is much more important. There are plenty of studios that put half their jobs on the line and just hope it works out. We don’t do that. We like to save up our money first, and then bring in a new person. And if it doesn’t work out, that’s okay, because we have enough work and savings to take care of it.”

Pratt adds: “I think that ratio — work-for-hire versus owned IP — is key to mitigating that risk. That work-for-hire is so much less risky than putting all your eggs in the IP basket. You’ve signed a contract, so you know you’re going to get this revenue stream at that time.”

Schell replies: “Yeah, the expectation with a traditional publishing deal is that you put in significant resources of your own and take significant risk, and if it goes badly you’re going to suffer significantly. We haven’t done those traditional publisher deals. Instead, we do work-for-hire deals. There is risk with work-for-hire deals — I want to be really clear about that — but if you manage them well there’s a lot less risk. Managing those well can help mitigate risk, and self-publishing when we are going to do our own stuff. But if we weren’t excellent at project management, we’d be in trouble.”

Stability is important to strive for in any industry, but for the folks at Schell Games it goes beyond just wanting to keep their jobs. All five developers that I spoke to agreed that the main reason they wanted to keep things as steady as possible was because they wanted to keep their internal teams together for as long as they could.

“We have a strong belief that teams are stronger over time,” Schell says. “I would say a typical number in the games industry is maybe 30% layoffs every three years, and when that happens you have talent and knowledge walk out the door. But the real problem is [with the remaining team] — not only are they sort of shell-shocked and now worried about their jobs, but worse than that, all the expertise they built up working with those people now has no value, and now they have to build it with other people.

“If you keep a team together, they build up this ability to communicate with each other over time, and to build that, you have to defend them. So we haven’t taken some big risks that some other places have taken, but we try to take some more calculated risks so that if things go really badly, it’s not going to make us have to let go of people we really care about.”

Patton adds a practical reason for this desire: “If you’re making a bid for a project and you’re estimating how long and you have a team that works together particularly well — they know what they’re good at, what they’re not good at — you can sort of predict the budget for the project that you’re bidding on more accurately.”

The focus on its team-oriented structure is key at Schell Games, with Schell noting that “good teams make good things” and that “people who are kind to other people are the best team members.” He rejects what he suggests is a tendency in the industry for teams to be fractured and competitive both within themselves and against other teams at the same company, and emphasizes team building and conflict resolution as core components of the company culture from the very start.

That means an emphasis on teamwork in the hiring process, according to Heller.

“We talk to people about how they handle challenging relationships they’ve had, how they want to work as a team, just ask them to walk us through their preferred practices in development to see if they like to work with people the way we do,” she says. “That really reveals a lot, and is especially valuable here in the art department, because yeah, you’re a great artist, but you’re a really great teammate, and you work through things and you’re not going to have an ego. When we get a bunch of people who want to work together and who are talented, they’re going to do good work and they’re going to be stronger because they aren’t going to have tense relationships with each other.”

She also adds that this is encouraged throughout training and employment, with an emphasis on direct communication and soft skills across all teams.

The others agree that these are critical in resolving conflict and maintaining the company’s team-oriented culture. Conflict resolution, they say, is challenging both in and of itself, and because often in bigger companies those in positions to help sort out issues are unaware of those issues until they’ve escalated to a tipping point. To mitigate that, Schell Games has a number of feedback systems and other structures in place.

“We have a lot of different projects going on at once, and there is structure to the project team, and you have different discipline directors working with them, and then people working under them,” Schell says. “But in terms of direct reports and who your manager is and who is managing those aspects of your career, that is often outside of that structure. Often your manager is not necessarily someone you’re working with on the team. I think one advantage to that is it gives you this other avenue of working out issues. Your boss, who you need to support you, is not necessarily having conflicts at the team level. The support structure outside the team you’re working with I think is helpful.

“The main thing to do in terms of conflict resolution is not to ignore the conflicts. You have to take time to communicate with the people involved in the conflict, and you have to be brave enough to have uncomfortable conversations. And even harder, you have to do it all in a way that makes everyone feel respected. It’s a lot of work, but in terms of the trust it builds, we always find it worth it in the long run.”

“Something people hate about working in organizations is politics. And when you think about what that means, it’s always a situation where someone wants to tell someone about a problem, but they couldn’t because it would create a conflict they don’t want to deal with. So instead of telling them about the thing, they go and tell somebody else. And now there are factions talking about each other and not talking to each other. So we’ve tried everything we can to not let those situations arise.”

Specifically, Schell describes a feedback system in place for employees to comment to managers about both positive and negative aspects about the teams they work with and the places where they feel they need the most help. There’s also a suggestion box that goes directly to Schell and allows him to reply to suggestions made by employees, but retains their anonymity throughout.

Those same processes, they tell me, are helpful for keeping the studio from falling into the habit of crunch.

“Avoiding crunch starts with not normalizing it,” Patton says. “I know we mention not encouraging it during the interview process. We do our best to schedule projects with enough buffer time and contingency so that when things slip — and they’ll always slip — we can absorb it without crunching. We work closely with our clients to set expectations about not crunching and we push back if they encourage it. It takes a whole company culture and lots of planning to combat it really.”

Heller adds: “The company leadership also openly talk with team leadership regularly about where they are at in development, and help make hard calls or adjustments to scope along the way.”

Gordon concludes: “Project leaders are expected to touch base with folks on their team in one-on-one meetings periodically. One of the goals of these meetings is to ask how the project is going and if someone is feeling overwhelmed. Getting folks away from their desks and talking about the project beyond their current task gives them time to reflect.

“When crunch does happen, we make an effort to call it out as a downside of a project and look into how it happened, and how we could avoid it on future projects. To ignore it is to tacitly endorse it.”

Patton also mentions that regular meetings don’t just address the progress of a certain project, but also how well the processes for getting that project done are working.

“The primary objective of those one-on-ones is to root out issues that may be festering within the project,” he says. “It’s not necessarily to talk specifically about the work someone’s doing. They just have a conversation in that setting where things can be brought to light. And I feel like all these things we’re talking about — crunch, conflict resolution, personality stuff — it all to me falls under the banner of culture. The challenge that we rise to is to make sure we keep doing the work to keep the studio culture alive.”

Reflecting overall on the ideas of culture, avoiding crunch, and resolving conflict, Gordon reiterates the importance of the human beings at the center of it all.

“A pet theory I’ve been working on is that people derive their passion for what they’re working on from three different areas. The first is the product; what are we building? The second is the work itself; the nuts and bolts. And the last is the people you work with. And over time, a thing I’ve seen in so many people that I manage is that the thing that’s most important for them over time is the people they work with.

“Initially, they’re really excited about the product they’re working on, but over time people come to see the value of the people they work with, the day-to-day interactions they have with those they enjoy being around. And that seems to be a cornerstone that we build around at Schell Games.”

“Projects come and go,” Patton concludes. “But the people you work with are always there.” (source:Gamesindustry.biz

 


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