作者：Moo Yu

五年前，我住在洛杉矶，供职于Insomniac Games。不久，我就决定同另一位同事另谋出路。

那时我还不清楚往哪发展，然而我却到了伦敦，并找到了我一生的事业。

当时我的同事刚从欧洲旅游回来，他决定搬到伦敦，为新兴公司Media Molecule工作。我追问其原因，他简单地答道：“他们只有20名员工。”

我们两个的经历非常相似。我们俩都以程序员的身份进入了Insomniac Games，在那里见证了公司由几十号员工发展到几百人的规模。

我们都被提拔到管理层的位置，但是我们却都难以适应这种工作环境，即迫于多个部门和中层管理层的压力而办事。

金发姑娘的烦恼

那时，我认为员工人数是一家公司最重要的因素，那句“他们只有20名员工”足以让我买下第一张飞机票，将我的人生交付给大西洋彼岸。

自那以后，我效力于多家规模不一的公司。

曾经，我效力于自己只有2.2名员工的初创企业。曾经，我远程服务于一家只有20名员工的公司。现在，我发现自己的独立项目只有一个单人团队在战斗，白天我在Mind Candy工作，这家公司也已迅速由几十个员工成长到几百人的规模。

我觉得自己有点像电子游戏行业中的金发姑娘，我希望能找到“刚刚好”的规模。

这种规模偏大

在Insomniac的经历是不可思议的。

这是我在电子游戏行业的第一份工作，他们待我极好。我负责的游戏销量很好，评价极佳，且充满乐趣。

虽然，我需要努力协调上百位员工的创意尝试。当你发现一台机器由许多零件构成时，你需要大力士般的能耐才可以让所有齿轮密切配合、共同运转。

你需要提前做好大量计划。你无法满足系统中每个齿轮的创意，其中包括如何工作，或者认为机器应尝试做些什么。

你在这个系统上做得越多，你就更有可能成为特殊的齿轮，带着特殊目的不停地运转。

这种规模偏小

ring fling(from pocketgamer)

最近我在iOS平台上发行了《Ring Fling》。我想说，这是我自己制作的第一款游戏，但是我需要朋友陆陆续续的帮助来提高它的下载量。

这种模式最棒的地方就是让我获得解放。

无论我的大脑弹出什么想法，我只是想做出来。我不必安排任何会议。不必编写文档。甚至不必告诉任何人。我只需打开电脑，把它做出来。

另一方面，我意识到了所有其它齿轮在机器中的价值。

没有美工，我不得不用圆圈和星星来代替美术设计。没有设计师，我得使上所有力气让一切井井有条。没有市场营销团队，我就只能被动地寄希望于Twitter，祈祷新闻记者们能够发现我的邮件值得一读。

尝试如此多的事情让我特别兴奋，但是最终结果却不够谋生。

这种规模刚刚好

现在，我发现自己又回到了起点。如今我效力于一家成功的公司，在我刚进来时只有几十位的员工，现在已经发展到上百人了。

但是发生了一些变化。

无疑，有100多个人在Mind Candy名义下工作，但是如果你稍微深入了解，这是10-15个团队，且每个团队都发挥着很大的作用，他们可以自己做出决策，决定如何把事情做得更好。

在这场战争中，我们每个人都有各自的战役要打。可能是moshimonsters.com团队找出了下一个重要功能，或者任务团队策划了《Super Moshis》的进程。也可能是我的移动团队创造了Mind Candy移动设备上的优质体验，或者成为负责最高机密项目的团队之一。

moshi monsters(from pocketgamer)

关键是，这些团队的规模都不够大，它们只是大型机器中的一个小齿轮。

所有团队的规模都较小，人人都需要思考往哪发展，做什么。

然而，你仍然拥有合适的专业营销小组，出色的程序员、美工等等。

我想利用小团队的优势从事大型的成功项目，这似乎有些贪心。如果世上不存在这种好事，那我可能确实是活该。

可是，我个人仍然崇尚这种“小小大公司”的理念。（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）

Mind Candy’s Moo Yu on why team size matters

by Guest Author

Five years ago, I was living in Los Angeles, working for Insomniac Games. It wasn’t far off from this time of year when I decided to grab lunch with a coworker.

I didn’t know it then, but this lunch was going to lead to me picking up my entire life and moving to London.

He had recently returned from a trip through Europe and informed me that he intended to move to London to work for a little upstart called Media Molecule. I asked him why and the answer was simple: “They only have 20 people.”

The two of us had very similar stories. We were each hired as programmers at Insomniac and saw it grow from a company with double digit headcount to triple digit headcount.

We were both promoted to management positions, but each struggled to adapt from a world of just getting stuff done to a world of departments and middle management.

The Goldilocks problem

Back then, I saw headcount as the single most important thing about a company and the words “they only have 20 people” were enough to get me to buy my first plane ticket to transport my life across the Atlantic.

Since then, I’ve worked in a number of companies of varying sizes.

I worked in my own start up of 2.2 people. I worked remotely for a company of 20. And now now I find myself split across my indie projects as a team of one, and working my day job at Mind Candy, a company that’s rapidly grown from a double digit headcount to a triple digit headcount.

I kind of feel like I’ve been the Goldilocks of the video game industry and I’m hoping that I’ve found “just right.”

This one is too big

My experience at Insomniac was incredible.

It was my first job in the video game industry and they treated me incredibly. I worked on games that were sold well, reviewed well, and were a lot of fun to make.

The thing I struggled with, though, was coordinating a massive creative endeavour across a hundred or so people. When you’ve got a machine with so many pieces, it takes a Herculean effort to get all the gears synchronised and meshed together.

You’ve got to plan everything massively ahead of time. You can’t really afford for every cog in the system to have its own idea of how it would like to work or what it thinks the machine should be trying to do.

And the more you work in this system, the more you become a particular cog with a particular purpose spinning over and over and over again.

This one is too small

I recently launched Ring Fling for iOS. I like to say that it’s the first game I made by myself, but I actually still needed to get loads of help from my friends for bits and pieces here and there.

The great thing is that it was liberating.

Whatever ideas popped into my head, I could just do it. I didn’t have to schedule any meetings. I didn’t have to write a document. I didn’t even need to tell anyone. I just opened my computer and made it so.

On the other hand, I realised the value of all the other cogs in the machine.

With no art, I had to make a game about circles and stars. Without any game designers, I had to just do my best to make something coherent. With no marketing team, I was at the mercy of Twitter and would just have to hope that journalists would find my emails worth reading.

It was exhilarating to try so many things, but the end result was definitely nowhere near enough to make a living wage off of.

This one is just right

Now I find myself to have come full circle again. I’m at a successful company that was double digits when I joined and has grown into triple digits.

But there’s something different this time.

There are definitely a hundred something people marching under the Mind Candy banner, but if you take a slightly closer look, it’s ten or fifteen teams that each have a role to play, but can make their own minds up about how they get things done.

We’ve each got a battle to fight in this war. It might be the moshimonsters.com team figuring out the next big feature, or the missions team plotting the course for Super Moshis. It could be my team, the mobile team, creating Mind Candy quality experiences on mobile devices or might even be one of the teams on top secret projects.

They key is that none of these teams is big enough that you’re a little cog in a big machine.

All the teams are small enough that everyone needs to be thinking about where we’re going and what we’re doing and where you’ve got to operate outside your comfort zone for a decent chunk of your working life.

But still, you have the might of a proper professional marketing team and incredible programmers, artists and the like.

It may seem to be a bit greedy of me to want to work on big successful projects with all the benefits of working on small teams and I’d probably be served right if there were no such thing.

But I, for one, definitely believe in the idea of a LittleBigCompany.（source:pocketgamer）