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行业顾问调查分析游戏制作人员对公司改进空间的看法

发布时间:2011-04-09 17:27:07 Tags:,,,

游戏邦注:本文原作者是游戏制作顾问Keith Fuller,曾在该行业从事14年的程序员、经理人和制作人工作,现已自主创业,帮助更多团队完善游戏开发工作。他通过一项针对游戏行业制作人的问卷调查,分析了这些制作人对其公司、工作室的强项和劣势等方面的看法,为各游戏公司完善自己,提高竞争力提供了极有价值的参考意见。

Keith Fuller表示,从职业角度来讲,他很有兴趣去了解各个游戏工作室应该改进的方向,但从个人角度出发,他一直很困惑为何游戏工作室的运营状况还没有为大家所认知。

游戏程序员和美工有许多可完善自身技能的去处,比如传授专业技术的讲习班、在线论坛等,但令人不解的是,游戏开发的项目管理人员所发挥的作用,却并不为人所重视。

针对这些问题,他设计了一份简短而匿名的调查问卷,通过他的企业网站、个人博客、Twitter、Gamasutra网站、Facebook和IGDA(游戏邦注:International Game Developers Association,国际游戏开发者协会)的邮件列表,邀请了业内许多制作人员、工作室主管参与这项调查。

该调查没有对游戏种类、发行商合作关系、地理区域或其他特定条件进行归类,他希望通过自己对每个问题的分析,更好地帮助工作室完善和改进游戏开发过程。

改进过程

这里的“改进过程”是指任何一项有助于提高产品质量、缩短交货时间、减少浪费、降低成本的单项举动,或者循环性的措施。

调查的第一个问题主要考察受访者改善特定项目、公司或常规事务的积极性。

问题1:你是否积极参与改善特定项目、整个公司,或者常规事务的工作进程?

Chart_Question1

Chart_Question1

83%以上的受访者称自己积极参与特定项目的改进过程,约半数人员表示对整个公司事务皆是如此,还有三分之二称对常规事务也不例外。由此可见,后面这17%并不参与特定项目改进过程的人员,几乎都在不同方面表现出了对公司事务的关心。

从第1个问题的调查结果可以发现,每5名人员中至少有4名人员在制作过程中致力让项目更加有效地运行,有一半人员努力让整个公司更完善地运营,几乎所有人时常保持这种状态。

“改进过程”的定义十分广泛,但这个结果却至少可以表明,大多数与游戏制作相关的人员都在习惯性地改进项目和公司事务。这些制作人员不但执行标准的项目管理(例如检查设计师的美术效果、程序员创建的工具等),而且还会想方设法让大家提高工作效率。

企业成功之处

这里主要考察制作人员对企业是否成功的看法,首先要说明的是“企业成功”在这里指现有项目或整个团队所实现的终极目标——从根本上来说,指的就是公司的赢利能力。

虽然制作人员可能不清楚自己的工作与销售额有何直接关系,但很了解它会对项目发挥多大作用。

例如:如果你创建了一款FPS游戏的DLC地图数据包,你的公司很可能因为及时发售了高质量的游戏内容而大获丰收,所以改进自己工作的领域,也就是在增加企业获得成功的机率。

问题2:列举出贵公司的最为成功之处。

Chart_Question2

Chart_Question2

因为这份调查主要受访者是制作人员,所以出现“制作”这一领域的投票者最多这个结果并不令人意外。在所有的8个选项当中,选择“制作”的受访者接近三分之一,排名第二的是“创新性”,其比重约四分之一;

还有将近六分之一的受访者选择的是“工作/生活平衡性”,这个结果倒确实出乎意料。

还有一些人员提交了例如“政治立场”等非主流的答案,不过剩下的多数人选择的分别是“前期制作”、“产品润色”、“交流”这三项。

值得注意的是,多数受访者认为其工作室最成功之处是“制作”、“工作/生活平衡性”,但实际上这一行业经常传出因公司不及时支付加班费而导致项目推迟的消息,所以这一个结果确实让人困惑,究竟哪一者才是这个行业的真相?

另外调查还发现,有四分之一的选项一票未得,没有人认为自己的团队在“企业领导”或“指导培训”这两个方面最成功。因为调查对象的主体是制作人员,所以他们会忽视企业对的员工培训这一点并不难理解(不过任何一个拥有助理的制作人,都应该更加重视这个问题)。

但甚至连“工作/生活平衡性”这个公众对游戏行业的普遍恶感,得到的票数都超过了“企业领导”,为何这个选项如此不受待见呢?作者对此提出了他的两个看法:

1.公司各个领域的成功,必有其出色的领导所发挥的作用。换句话说,你可能看不到领导的直接贡献,只知公司在“制作”和“创新性”具有突出表现,但不可否认的是,这些成功其实离不开幕后的领导。

2.那些未能取得成功,甚至已陷入失败的团队,很可能得归咎于他们的领导人管理无方。

游戏工作室的领导人是一个很尴尬很棘手的角色,他们得两面处理好与开发者、股东的关系,选择正确的领导人对每个团队来说都十分重要。

假如你是一个拥有许多平级同事的领导,那么你就得与他们进行开诚布公的交流。如果你是一个权力顶端的首领,那就更有必要让决策更加透明化,并不断调整和完善自己。所以工作室的主管们一定要牢记,假如你无法不断完善自我,这一点将影响到员工和公司的表现情况。

优势领域对企业成功的影响

问题3:根据问题2所选答案,用1到5这个范围的分数,判断这些优势领域对公司获得成功的影响。

例A:我的团队在“交流”这一点上最棒,但它与销售额增长并无直接关系,所以我给它评2分。

例B:我的公司最富有“创新性”,这也正是用户购买我们游戏的原因,所以我给它评5分。

Chart_Question3

Chart_Question3

这个问题的调查结果呈现了贝尔曲线的状态,我们也因此可以得出一些结论:

首先,原来得票较多的领域,在这个环节中的得分也相对更高;其次,每个领域在这个环节中平均得分是3.38;他们认为公司的优势领域,对公司成功的影响作用极大。

公司需改进的方向

问题4:希望看到公司的哪些方面得到改进?

Chart_Question4

Chart_Question4

根据问题2选所答案,受访者对公司各个优劣势领域都进行了投票,其中有两个要点值得注意:

·这个环节中几乎每个领域的票数都很接近;

·只有“企业领导”得票最高,几乎是其他领域的两倍。

由此可见,绝大多数人最希望看到“企业领导”这个条件得到改善,它正对应了问题2中无人认为“企业领导”最成功的调查结果。

不过,这项调查并没有要求受访者说明理由,所以暂时无从获得有效的解决方案,唯一的结论就是:游戏工作室要提高运营效率,极有必要重视领导人的管理能力。

改进劣势对公司的影响

第个环节的调查实际上包括两个层面,一是要求调查对象先选择出公司需要改进的领域,二是判断该领域获得改进后,它对公司所产生的影响和作用。

问题5:根据-5到5之间的分值,对团队或公司的劣势领域进行评价。

Chart_Question5

Chart_Question5

结果显示,各个领域的平均得分是-1.64分。有些受访者对各个领域的评价都比较乐观,但多数人认为,公司需改进的缺陷,已经对企业成功造成了很消极的影响。

问题6:根据上述答案,以-5到5之间的分值,判断这些劣势领域获得改进后,它对企业成功所带来的影响。

Chart_Question6

Chart_Question6

这个调查结果很乐观,没有一个领域的得分在0以下。几乎所有人都认为,这些劣势领域得到改进后,必定会促进公司的健康发展。每个选项的平均得分是3.36。将问题5和问题6的答案合并后,我们就可以得到以下结果:

·公司需改进的各领域平均得分为-1.64

·劣势领域得到改进后,它们可促进企业成功的平均得分为3.36

·各领域全部改进后的总分为3.36-(-1.64)=5.0分

·评分范围是-5至5,由此可见恰到好处地补缺补漏,可以为企业成功带来100%的积极影响

从这个调查结果可以看出,如果工作室领导听取普通制作人的意见,并由此及时弥补团队的不足,不但可以将劣势转为优势,而且还能让它为企业成功产生100%的积极作用。

为了更全面地讨论这个问题,我们可以先返回到问题3:用1到5这个范围的分数,判断这些优势领域对公司获得成功的影响。当时各个领域的平均得分是3.38,而问题6的平均得分是3.36,这两个结果十分接近。因此还可以得出一个重要的结论:

如果你及时修补了不足之处,原来的劣势领域最终也会产生与优势领域等同的积极作用。

总结

这份调查原来共有10个问题,但由于另外4个问题更具主观性,所以作者只截取了其中最有价值的6个问题进行分析和研究。

这些调查对象是来自大小工作室的制作人员,他们以匿名的方式回答问卷,总体调查结果如下:

·大部分制作人员都很积极地参与改进团队、工作室事务的过程;

·多数人认为自己的公司的出众之处是“制作”,没有人将“指导培训”和“领导”视为公司的强项;

·受访者均认为改进公司的劣势领域,将使其发挥与优势领域相同的作用。

这一结果也产生了一些值得我们深思的问题:有这么多人自称正努力改进工作室的状况,为什么业内还有这么对公司前途表示消极的声音?既然大家都看清了公司的劣势,也认为改进不足有助于企业成功,那么为何不采取应对措施?各工作室究竟该如何克服“指导培训”和“领导”方面的短板?(本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译,转载请注明来源:游戏邦)

Improving Your Studio: What Your Producer Told Me

[Production consultant Keith Fuller surveys the industry to find out what producers really think about their studios -- both their strengths and what's holding them back -- and shares the results with Gamaustra, drawing compelling conclusions.]

I’m Keith Fuller, a production consultant for video game developers. After 14 years in the industry as a programmer, manager, and producer, I decided to start my own business to help as many teams as possible get better at making games — with the goal being to hit your deadlines without resorting to overtime.

Obviously, it’s in my best professional interest to learn more about where studios need to improve. But from a personal perspective, I’ve also wondered for years why there isn’t more public knowledge sharing in the realm of production practices.

There are all sorts of venues available for programmers to better themselves and for artists to improve their craft in skill-specific workshops and online forums. Why has the project management aspect of game development been neglected by comparison?

As a first step toward addressing all of the above, I decided to offer a brief, anonymous survey to production personnel throughout the industry and find out from them what their company processes are like and what steps could be taken to improve them.

I advertised on my company website, my personal blog, Twitter, Gamasutra, Facebook and on the IGDA production mailing list, inviting anyone and everyone to take part, from production coordinator up to studio leadership.

No restrictions were made or implied regarding genre, publisher affiliation, geographic location, or any other distinguishing factor. As an incentive to garner more participation I even offered a free studio consultation to one lucky respondent. (See the Postlude for more on this.)

The results of most of the survey questions are presented herein for public review, as I promised in my advertising. I make no claims at any level of expertise in the realm of survey analysis, so feel free to ignore my conclusions and draw your own. But I think many of the findings are fairly clear and I hope that they generate meaningful discussion, preferably leading to industry-wide improvement in how games are made.

Process Improvement

To help people get into the right mindset I prefaced this section with the following:

For this question, consider “process improvement” to mean any single act or recurring practice designed to increase quality, reduce delivery time, reduce waste, or lower costs.

Basically I was trying to find out how many people are out there purposefully improving how they do what they do. I then asked:

Question #1: Do you actively engage in process improvement for a particular project, for the company as a whole, and/or routinely?

More than 83 percent of the participants said they actively engage in improving processes for a particular project. Of those, about half also improve processes for the whole company while about two-thirds also engage in improvement routinely. Further, of the 17 percent who don’t seek improvement on a per-project basis, almost all of them try to improve things in some way at their company.

To restate those findings, more than four out of every five people in production are trying to make their current project work more efficiently in some way. Half of those same people are working on something to make the whole company operate better. And most of them are doing so on a regular basis.

The definition of “process improvement” was pretty broad here, but the results still indicate a very healthy number of people involved in production are routinely trying to improve their project and, to a lesser extent, their company. So these folks are out there not just performing standard project management — checking that the designers are getting their art and the tools programmers are helping the animators — but these producers are also looking for ways to improve how the people at their company do what they do.

Company Success

In this section I wanted to find out what producers think about their company’s success. What does their company do well?

I started off with this explanation:

For the following questions, consider “company success” to mean the top-level goal of the current project or the organization in general — essentially equated to profitability.

In your position you might not know how your work directly impacts sales figures, but you do know how success is ultimately defined for your project.

Example: If you’re creating a DLC map pack for a popular FPS, your company success is likely to be based on timely delivery of high quality, robust content — improve in those areas and you improve your company success.

Having established a definition for company success I asked:

Question #2: Name the area in which your company excels the most.

Perhaps unsurprising given the respondents I pursued, Production was the favorite among the eight options, taking home almost a third of the votes. Intriguingly, the first runner up was Innovation — not what you might expect a quarter of the producers to say about their companies. Nearly one-sixth of the participants gave Work/Life balance its third place ranking — another result I would not have guessed.

There were a few wiseacres who gave miscellaneous responses like “politics”, but most everyone else divided their votes amongst Pre-production, Polishing, and Communication, leaving all three of those near the bottom.

In summing up the overview of these results, I have to point out the disparity between what the survey indicates studios are good at (Production, Work/Life Balance) and the bevy of war stories passed around about projects coming in late and even then only due to huge amounts of unpaid overtime. I’ll leave it to the reader to ascertain whether or not the survey participants are the same people writing the postmortems.

What stood out most to me in this section was the fact that one quarter of the categories received no votes at all. Nobody who took this survey thought their organization excelled at Company Leadership or Mentoring. Keeping in mind the body of respondents, it’s conceivable that fostering the personal improvement of employees might go overlooked (although any producer working with associate producers should take a hard look at this area).

So while I don’t intend to minimize the importance of Mentoring in an organization, I’m prepared to let those results slide. But I want to stop and look at Leadership for a moment.

Even Work/Life Balance (a.k.a. Quality of Life, or QoL), the public perception of which indicates a subject of near-universal disgust in the industry, garnered infinitely more votes than Leadership. Why did this area get short shrift in these results? I’m going to propose a couple of theories.

Theory 1. Good Leadership is camouflaged behind any other area of success. In other words, you may not see what your leaders are doing behind the scenes; you only see the outcome as good production or above average innovation. But the quality that’s evident in those areas is a result of the leadership that enables it. Personally, I’d really like to believe this is the case, mainly because I would prefer not to seem as though I’m badmouthing the leaders of studios anonymously represented in a simple survey. Nonetheless, I also have to propose the flipside of the coin which is…

Theory 2. Teams are achieving whatever their level of success may be despite sub-par leadership. Or the even darker possibility: teams aren’t achieving success because of leadership that isn’t up to snuff.

Game studio leadership is a tricky, tricky role to play. I’ll be the first to admit that being the immediate layer of protection between developers and stakeholders is not easy. No part of my analysis should be taken to imply suit-bashing. Rather, I’d like to take a moment here to emphasize the importance of having quality people in leadership roles in every organization.

If you’re a leader and you have peers, opening yourself up to their examination is key. If you’re alone at the top of the pyramid, transparency and willingness to adapt and improve is even more important. Dr. John Maxwell said for good reason that everything rises and falls on leadership. Studio leaders, if you’re not willing to continuously improve yourself, your people and your company will reflect that.

Quantizing the Impact of Success

From the number of people who skipped the following questions it seems I lost some folks at this point, but what I was hoping to do was move the participant from a fairly abstract observation (“What is your company’s strength?”) to an examination of measurable success (“How valuable is your company’s strength?”)

In my experience, if you really want to convince management of the importance of something you need to be able to express it in numbers, preferably prefixed with dollar signs. So I asked the following:

Question #3: Regarding your answer to the previous question, on a scale from 1 to 5 how much of an impact does that area of excellence have on company success?

Example A: My team rocks at Communication, but that really doesn’t drive sales at all. I’ll score it a 2.

Example B: My company is awesome at Innovation and that’s why people buy our games. I’ll score it a 5.

To rephrase what I was asking: go back to what you said your company was good at (recall that more people said Production than anything else) and now assign a value that shows how much that area impacts your company’s bottom line. The results here are somewhat bell curve-ish — as you’d expect since the available values were 1 through 5 — but I’d like to draw your attention to a couple of points.

First, the more positive or beneficial upper end of the range had more responses than the lower half. Secondly, the specific average value here was 3.38. Whatever people think their company excels in, they feel it has a pretty good impact on overall success.

Where Would You Like to See Improvement?
This is the sort of thing that most participants were probably hoping to see — that same list of areas from question #2, but now you get to pick which one you most want to see improved.

Question #4: In which of these areas would you most like to see improvement at your company?

There are two noteworthy points about the responses to this question:

Every area has a very similar number of responses…

…except for Leadership, which had twice as many as any other category

So when given the chance to select any part of their company for improvement, somebody would choose any given area, but twice as many want to see their leadership improved. Remember in Question #1 when nobody said their organization excels most at leadership? It seems a fair number of folks would like to see that addressed.

I didn’t provide a text field for people to enter a reason for their choice, so I don’t know that we can glean many meaningful solutions from this. There is perhaps only one particular conclusion we can come away with — leadership needs to be considered a key target for improvement.

Quantizing the Impact of Improvement

In an earlier question I wanted to put a measurable value on each company’s area of excellence. Now I asked participants to do the same thing for their preferred area of improvement. I explained the value scale thusly:

For the following questions, please use a scale from -5 to +5. If you feel that a particular area is lacking for your team or your studio, it might actually be having a negative impact on company success.

It’s really a two-part investigation. First, tell me the current impact of the area you want improved, then tell me what that area’s impact would be if it was improved as much as possible. The first part was:

Question #5: Regarding your answer to the previous question, on a scale from -5 to +5 how much of an impact does that area have on company success (right now, without improvement) ?

Noteworthy here is that the average value was -1.64. Some respondents gave positive values, but most people said the area that needs improvement at their organization currently has a negative impact on company success (which is a point worth pondering in and of itself).

Now the second part of quantizing improvement:

Question #6: On a scale from -5 to +5 how much of an impact could that area have if it was improved as much as possible?

There were no negative responses here. If you were to improve anyone’s selected problem area, the worst that would happen is you’d take a negative impact up to a zero. And the average of all the responses here was 3.36. If you combine the information gleaned from questions 5 and 6 you can see the following:

Average impact of all areas in need of improvement = -1.64

Average impact of all areas if improved maximally = 3.36

Impact of improvement = 3.36 – (-1.64) = 5.0

Given the scale is -5 to +5 (e.g. 100 percent awful to 100 percent awesome), fixing what needs fixed will have a 100 percent improved, positive impact on company success.
Obviously you don’t want to read too much into the numbers on any survey, especially when you’re averaging a set of responses, but just think about that last statement for a moment. If you take your average producer at her word and improve just one particular area of your organization as much as possible, you’ll not only turn what’s currently a negative impact into a positive one, you’ll gain a 100 percent positive improvement on how that area impacts your company’s success.

To make one last observation on this topic, let’s revisit the response to Question #3 in which the participants were invited to assign a value to their studio’s best aspect. How much did people say their company’s success is impacted by what they do best? On average, 3.38. Compare that to what they answered in Question #6 when asked about the impact it would have on success if maximum improvement occurred in an area, which was 3.36. The values are nearly identical. To rephrase these results:

If you fix what needs fixing it will have as much of a positive impact on company success as the area in which you already excel the most.

For those who may have been on the fence regarding the value of improving their production practices, I would think this provides a compelling reason to seek out ways to better your studio.

Summary

This survey comprised ten questions and I’ve only delved into the first six in this analysis. I won’t get into the remaining four just yet as they tended to be more open-ended, blue-sky queries. They were enlightening nonetheless, but not as easy to extrapolate general action items from as the numerical topics I’ve just covered.

I hope to leave the reader with a big picture view of the importance of improving how your studio does what it does. This survey invited production personnel from studios of all sizes to give their responses anonymously on a wide array of topics impacting the efficiency and success of their organization. To generalize the average feedback, the participants indicated the following points.

A large majority of producers are actively engaged in improving their teams and, to a lesser extent, their studio.
More producers feel their company is better at Production than any other area, whereas none feel that Mentoring or Leadership are strong points.
They also believe maximum improvement in any area would have as much positive impact on company success as their studio’s best attributes already do.
Several meaningful questions arise from these points. If so many people are already striving to better their studios, why the bevy of negative responses about current company status? If the need for improvement is clear and the benefit of improvement has great potential, what’s preventing a solution from being implemented? What steps can be reasonably taken to address deficiencies in areas such as Mentoring or Leadership?

Some of these questions are answered in the remaining 40 percent of the survey that wasn’t covered in this analysis. I plan on reviewing those responses publicly at some point in the future. For now, I’m happy to leave these questions and others with the reader and I invite their discussion. As a production consultant it’s my goal to help companies improve in all of these areas, so feel free to send me email or follow me on Twitter as I seek to uncover and implement solutions for the benefit of the industry as a whole.(source:gamasutra


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