colombia 3.0

1. Leveling
Up Your
Creative
Process
JAMIE GOTCH
SUBATOMIC STUDIOS

2. Who Am I?
 10+ years game industry experience.
 During that time, I have worked on a
variety of games:
 Real-Time Strategy (RTS)
 Massive Multiplayer Online (MMO)
 First-Person Shooters (FPS)
 Action
 In 2008, released a Tower Defense
iPhone game called Fieldrunners.
 As a result of Fieldrunners’ success, I
formed a mobile game company
called Subatomic Studios.
 Why is this relevant?
 All of these companies shared a very
common problem!

3. Setting the Stage
 We have all been part of a group where a group decision
was needed but there was a strong disagreement as to
which decision to take.
 How did the final decision get made?

4. Setting the Stage
 Building a creative, innovative work is never easy.
 Innovation is highly subjective.
 Innovation requires iteration—something that makes planning
difficult.
 Statements I hear all the time:
 “The designers are terrible! They keep changing their minds!”
 “The designers don’t know what they’re doing!”

5. Some Background
 In the beginning:
 There was no process to
resolve creative conflicts.
 In the absence of a process,
conflicts were resolved by
whomever “shouted” the
loudest.
 The best idea did not always
get chosen, leading to lots of
unnecessary iteration.
 The frequent iteration had
large negative effects on
team morale.

6. Some Background
 Over time:
 New ideas and opinions were no longer being communicated
because they were not “worth” the argument.
 Team members became complacent, worn down by having to
put up a fight for their ideas to be heard.
 This indirectly led to a creative dictatorship.
 With the team less involved in the creative process, there was
less communication, leading to more mistakes in
implementation and requiring even more iteration that could
have been avoided.
 This put a lot of pressure and responsibility on the creative
dictator, occasionally leading to rash decisions and, ultimately,
more mistakes.

7. Some Background
 Over time:
 In an effort to improve team morale,
and to reduce unnecessary iteration
time, the process was changed.
 All designated team members
would discuss and vote on all
creative decisions.
 Unfortunately, due to trust issues
between the creative dictator and
the creative team, many team
decisions were overruled.
 Thus bringing us back to the old
creative dictatorship.

8. Some Background
 Eventually:
 We hired someone with experience in establishing creative
processes.
 After reworking our creative processes:
 Team communication drastically improved. Everyone was better
informed and understood the game they were building.
 Because everyone had an opportunity to voice their ideas, morale
increased.
 Bad ideas were filtered out early, avoiding lots of unnecessary iteration.

9. Some Background
 This is not uncommon in the creative industry.
 Many companies struggle to define and enforce
a strict creative process.
 If the leaders or the team members do not trust or
follow the creative process, it will not work.

10. Various Ways to
Make Decisions
 Brute Force
 Autocratic
 Consensus
 Democratic
 Delegated Experts

11. Brute Force
 Team members argue
until everyone gets tired
of arguing and gives up
the fight.
 The most aggressive
person typically gets
their way.

12. Autocratic
 Leader takes control and responsibility of the final
decision.
 Team members are not included in the decision.

13. Consensus
 The leader gives up complete
control and responsibility of
the decision.
 All decision-making is left up
to the team members.
 Everyone must agree and
come to the same decision.
 This may take a while but the
decisions are among the best
since it involves the ideas and
skills of many people.

14. Delegated Experts
 Decision makers cannot be experts in all fields.
 The decision maker delegates full or partial responsibility
to an expert on the team.
 The participative leader retains the responsibility of the
final compilation of the draft responses from the experts.
 Can be a disaster when applied incorrectly.

15. Democratic
 Involves a democratic leader that “delegates authority, encourages
participation, and relies on personal power to manage subordinates.” –
Wikipedia
 Team members take a more participative role in the decision-making
process.
 “Researchers have found that this learning style is usually one of the most
effective and leads to higher productivity, better contributions from group
members, and increased group morale.” – Wikipedia
 For this to work effectively, it requires a strong leader and good
communication skills.

16. Democratic
 The biggest risk with this approach occurs when it is poorly executed and
management continually overrules the team decision. I have personally seen
this happen most of the time!
 Design by committee—“A disparaging term used to describe a project that has
many designers involved by no unifying plan or vision.” – Wikipedia
 The process does not replace experienced and qualified professionals.
 E.g., Kasparov versus the World

17. Disadvantages of Participative
Decision-Making
 Disadvantages:
 One person in the group can pressure others
to conform.
 Timing to come to a final decision.
 Good ideas might get overlooked due to
meeting time constraints.
 Negative outcomes:
 High-costs
 Inefficiency
 Indecisiveness
 Incompetence

18. The Wisdom of Crowds
 According to Surowiecki, not all groups are
“wise”.
 E.g., mobs, or crazed investors in a stock
market bubble.
 The key criteria that separates wise crowds
from irrational ones:
 Diversity of opinion – Each person should have
private information even if it’s just an eccentric
interpretation of the known facts.
 Independence – People’s opinions aren’t
determined by the opinions of those around
them.
 Decentralization – People are able to specialize
and draw on local knowledge.
 Aggregation – Some mechanism exists for
turning private judgments into a collective
decision.

19. Our Creative Process
1. A problem is presented with clearly-defined goals.
2. Team members submit proposals to solve the problem.
(Diversity of Opinion/Decentralization)
3. Once all proposals are collected, the team reviews and
votes on those proposals in secret ballot fashion.
(Independence)
4. A meeting is scheduled to review the results with all voters.
5. Votes for anyone not present in the meeting are discarded.
6. The proposal scores are unveiled, and averaged.

20. Our Creative Process
7. All proposals are sorted from high-to-low by their average
score.
8. The top-rated proposals are kept; all other proposals are
discarded.
9. The discussion starts with the proposals that are in most
disagreement. Team members with the lowest and highest
values try to convince the other team members to change
their vote.
10. The highest vote by a substantial margin at the end of the
meeting determines the solution. (Aggregation)
11. If there is no clear winner, the conflicting solutions are
further developed. Repeat from step 3.

21. Our Process Criteria
 If an idea is not written down, it does not “exist”.
 The meeting must end with actionable items.
 When prototyping is necessary, implement most minimal viable
version.
 JSI RSO – “Jam Stuff In, Rip Stuff Out” – Big Huge Games

22. Case Study - Design

23. Case Study - Design

24. Case Study - Art

25. Case Study - Art

26. Case Study - Art

27. Case Study - Art

28. Case Study - Art

29. Case Study - Art

30. Case Study - Art

31. Case Study - Art

32. Case Study - Art

33. Conclusions
 There is no perfect solution, find what works best for
you and your team!
 Please learn from our mistakes, and the mistakes of
many others!
 Trust the process!

34. Questions &
Answers