I’m always on the lookout for general business news and research that seems relevant to the video game industry, and there was some good stuff in the latest issue of MIT Sloan Management Review. In particular, let me draw your attention to Is Creativity a Foreign Concept?

To summarize: a team of researchers from INSEAD and Kellogg conducted a series of tests on graduate students who had and had not lived abroad for a significant period of time (at least six months). They found that having spent time abroad increased the chances of finding innovative solutions to tricky problems. An even bigger boost was demonstrated by students who had lived abroad for at least two or three years. From the article:

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My friend Ben Mattes, a very talented producer for Ubisoft, made a great comment on my previous blog article which I’d like to unceremoniously lift out of context:

When I worked at Gameloft I invested significant energy into creative motivational ‘events’. When I left, the guy who replaced me continued this tradition and came up with (what I thought was) a great idea to help beat the heat in the summer. Instead of a traditional 5-7 with beer and chips, he brought in an ice-cream ‘team’ from the local ‘Ben And Jerry’s’ to serve cones and sundaes to the team after an important meeting. I liked the idea and tried it with my team shortly after starting at Ubisoft.

At the time no one said anything negative. They all had slightly bemused smiles on their faces and got in line to dutifully collect their ice-cream. Some even went back for seconds.

Months later, though, I learned that I had made an awful impression with this act. The team immediately questioned whether I “belonged” if I would favor ice-cream over beer (the stable for such events).

To this day whenever I bring the team together for beers the ice-cream fiasco comes up (all in good fun, I hope).

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I’m subscribed to a producers’ mail list that recently hosted a discussion about the pros and cons of milestone-related monetary bonuses for employees. Perhaps unsurprisingly, there were a broad variety of opinions. I thought it might be interesting to share some quotes (plus my own thoughts, of course!)

There appeared to be consensus on the long-term ineffectivness of this type of bonus. A number of well-known research studies [example] have had similar conclusions. All the more interesting, then, that this form of compensation remains widely in-use (not just in the video game industry, but many others as well.) Comments from the list:

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One thing that seems to be neglected at a fair number of game companies is the tuning of organizational processes (OP for short). OP relates to a wide variety of issues, including but not limited to: organizational structure, decision-making, corporate politics and culture, incentives and goal-setting, hierarchy, hiring, etc. Tuning OP isn’t simply a question of implementing, monitoring, or enforcing policies. and it is relevant to all managers, not merely HR professionals.

Unfortunately, I could write a few more paragraphs and you still might wonder what I was yammering about. So instead, I’ve decided to list some of my favorite readings from my old OP bschool course and summarize them for you. Hopefully, it will be immediately apparent why this stuff is useful! (Unfortunately, none of the readings are available for free — some are books, and some have to be purchased from Harvard for a few bucks.)

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Recently, an interesting discussion regarding the value of an MBA ensued in the IGDA Production SIG mail list. Most of the discussion revolved around two issues: what do you get out of an MBA, and is it worth the time and money? One thread, suggesting that producers pursue a “personal MBA” (i.e. find 30 good business books and read them in your spare time), finally spurred me to write the following response:

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Danc over at Lost Garden has an interesting post (in a multi-post series) analyzing the development model currently favored by most game studios. Lots to read in there; he does a good job of explaining how/why studios are pouring ever-more funding into licensed IPs, art, and “more of the same technologies”, why studios think this is actually a good risk-reduction strategy, and how this arms-race will hurt everyone in the long-term.

Juxtapose this with the latest unhappy news: a survey found that 80% of teens intend to cut back on time spent playing video games, and 70% said they are “losing interest” in games altogether. (Oddly, the survey-taker calls this a “stabilization”, since last year 75% of teens reported declining interest in games. Why does this fail to make me feel better?)

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If you haven’t already read it, I’d like to direct your attention to an absolutely fantastic book called Wisdom of Crowds, by James Surowiecki. In it, Surowiecki argues that the decision-making and predictive power of diverse groups of people greatly exceeds that of most individual “experts”. The book is remarkably comprehensive and convincing, and the case studies in it will inspire and amaze you.

Wisdom of Crowds opens with a nice example: 800 people at a livestock exhibition participated in a contest to guess the weight of a live ox (on display) after slaughter and preparation. Some of the 800 were butchers and so-forth; people who should make a good guess. Many contestants were ordinary people with less “relevant” knowledge. But no expert within the competing pool beat the average guess of the group as a whole, which came within one pound of the true weight (1,197 lbs instead of 1,198).

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Yes, I know that GDC has been over for a couple of days, but I spent the weekend blissfully pretending that game development is a figment of my imagination. So sue me.  ;-)

Anyway, on Friday I attended a lecture entitled: “Creating Stubbs the Zombie with the Wideload Model”. Stubbs the Zombie is a moderately successful, humorous FPS. Wideload is the developer; the “Wideload model” is basically using a very small core team to manage many independent contractors. You may have read about this in Game Developer Magazine. For those who didn’t:

Wideload had a core production team of about ten people. Despite professing to some rather astonishing mistakes (for example, not hiring a single producer), Wideload managed to get Stubbs out the door just a few months behind schedule. The model, which they plan to stick with in the future, had the following benefits:

• Maintaining a very small core team made it possible to turn down undesirable contracts that most other developers would ultimately be forced to accept.
• Contractors were paid a fixed price for assets, not an hourly rate, so project delays were less of a problem than normal. [Sounds great — but delays can negatively impact marketing campaigns, not just development budgets. I’d like to know how Wideload dealt with that.]

There were a fairly large number of bumps in the road, many of which (but not all) can be rectified in future projects:

• Stubbs was based on a proprietary (and undocumented) engine, which made life much more difficult than it needed to be for contractors. Next time: go with a popular engine.
• Wideload didn’t create a variety of reference assets before selecting contractors, which meant that contractors weren’t sure what was expected of them. Unsurprisingly, some contractors proved unprepared to meet Wideload’s standards.
• Potential contractors weren’t tested thoroughly enough prior to signup … again, resulting in sub-standard work.
• Wideload did not attempt to ascertain whether contractors were well-managed and well-funded enough to remain solvent throughout the life of the project. Due-diligence.
• Development was afflicted by longer-than-normal feedback delays [probably inevitable with so many different parties working independently of one another].
• As noted earlier, not nearly enough dedicated production talent within the core team.
• Contractors were expected to “crunch” when under pressure, the way full-time employees do. No such luck.
• Assets required substantially more post-production polish than normal. [Multi-project relationships and better processes may reduce this problem over time, but it is unlikely to ever disappear.]

The last time I wrote about the subject of relatively low entry-level wages for producers, some very knowledgeable readers made the following arguments in support of the status quo:

1. Production is a role that demands experience. Entry-level producers are not capable of making a “significant enough” contribution to a game’s development to justify higher wages.
2. There are tons of people willing to do anything to become producers; why pay when you don’t have to?
3. Academic degrees (even game and/or engineering-centric degrees) are nice, but ultimately irrelevant without multi-year project experience. “You can’t teach production skills.”

There’s something to be said for every one of these arguments. Nevertheless, I’m going to do my best to express a logical alternative point of view. Does this mean I think wages for entry-level producers should skyrocket? Not necessarily, no. But it does mean I think there’s room for nuance — that the industry’s current blanket approach to entry-level production isn’t appropriate for every case and candidate.

Read the full editorial here!…

I’ve been chatting with a few undergraduate MIT students who already have full-time offers from video game companies. Most had summer internships with one of the large publishers, and all appear to have worked on video game-related projects, in and/or out of class. I thought some of you might be curious to know what those offers look like.

Students who applied for engineering jobs seem to be getting offers in the 70s — in some cases, the high 70s. The same students got offers approximately 10K higher from companies in other industries; i.e. Oracle, Microsoft, etc. So the gap between game company offers and non-game company offers appears to be narrowing for engineers. In general, I was amazed at how high the offers were!

On the other hand, students who applied for production jobs (even students with a double major in computer science) seem to be getting offers in the 30s. I find this to be completely bizarre. I mean, yes, I understand the laws of supply and demand (there are more wanna-be producers and designers than well-trained engineers). And yes, production skills are harder to learn outside of the work environment. But are talented entry-level producers really worth only half the equivalent engineer? Even when they have the same academic training? (After all, a solid grasp of programming is useful to both producers and designers, not just engineers!)

I think this exposes one of the industry’s most fundamental flaws. Producers are expected to keep game development on schedule and under budget. They are expected to act as the bridge between the various development groups, the mouthpiece to the outside world, and the interface to marketing and sales. They facilitate (and in many cases participate in) the creative design process. In other words, producers are the oil that keeps the machine running smoothly — indeed, keeps it running period. If entry-level salaries are any indication of how much (or how little) the industry values its producers, it’s no wonder so many games run over schedule and over budget!

Update: many people have asked where the job offers came from, since location obviously affects salary. I haven’t had a chance to reconnect with every student I initially spoke with, but it appears the majority of the offers were from studios in California and Seattle.

2nd Update: As promised in the comment thread, I’ve posted a followup editorial (which has been reprinted with permission by Next Generation.