Why Things Aren't Getting Better

Read Time: 7 Minutes

In The Trenches

You’re pushing hard to meet a milestone objective. There’s a sense of urgency permeating your studio, and everyone is doing their darndest to get through the work that you all knew was probably too ambitious.

Despite that, you press forward. You cut everything from your schedule you can. You stay up late a few times too many. You’re burning out, but at least you’re not alone. The milestone looms. Nowhere to go but forward.

With a few days to go, you admit you’re not going to make it. A bit of grief sets in, and with it a mix of despair and resolve about the next milestone. You don’t stop trying exactly - and neither does anyone else - but you know it’s going to fail. There’s a sad resolve as the clock runs down.

The milestone date arrives. 

Disappointed but not defeated, work is rolled forward. The resounding call is, “We’ll do better next time!” Yes, it was tough, but you and your team have more in the tank, more to give.

Leaders and managers go about focusing on getting people to work more efficiently. “Extraneous” interactions are reduced and scorned. If you’re going to catch up, you need to focus on delivery. You need to put your collective heads down and get “stuff” done.

The cycle continues.

Ignoring The Problems

Does this story seem familiar to you? I’m guessing a lot of people, in game dev and outside of it, can relate.

There’s a lie that somehow got embedded in our brains that working hard is the way out of every problem. We believe that if we and those around us can just get enough focused time we can overcome every obstacle. 

What often gets ignored as we rush from one phase focused on efficiency to the next focused on delivery to the next focused on execution is that the problem may not be any of those things.

Further, the actual problems are likely staring your studio in the face. If you were to go and ask your devs what would help them go faster, or what tends to get in their way, they might have great answers. 

But no one has time for that. The devs who spot the problems are overwhelmed to the point of not being able to take the time to fix them or even articulate what’s wrong. The leaders are doing everything they can to keep people from being “distracted” by negativity or meetings that might slow a key contributor down.

Someone knows what’s wrong, but the right people do not, and no one has the time to do anything about it anyway. 

We are unwilling to stop, or slow down, and figure out what’s happening.

Learning Takes Time

In game dev, there is a constant need to be learning. The world is always shifting around us, for better and for worse. The systems, organization, process, vision, and culture we’ve built need to adapt to that changing environment.

Without deliberate learning, those changes either don’t happen or happen randomly. I know we love to think we’re picking up and applying valuable lessons as we go, but the reality I see is that game devs may be individually learning about what works and doesn’t through experience, but none of those changes are being fed back into the system to make it better.

In other words, you don’t get the benefits of what you learn  in your current role. You only hope to bring them to your next role.

And why? Why do we ignore all the wisdom we’re accumulating?

Because it takes time.

If one person on a team realizes there’s a better way to do something, but never gets to talk to the team about it because there’s never a good time, it won’t get fixed. Perhaps everyone had the same thought, but in the absence of space to think and talk and take a step back together, you’ll rarely see a change implemented.

Leaders face the same struggle. There are always a million things to be doing, and the idea that I’m going to STOP for a moment and think about what’s actually going on, or spend some time asking people what the biggest risks are, isn’t something I’ll prioritize. This goes double for those organizations where every leader seems to be in back to back meetings eight hours a day, five days a week, already barely able to keep up with the barrage of tasks they’re responsible for.

Unfortunately, learning, continuous improvement, adaptation, whatever you want to call it, is not optional. If you fail to adjust to the ever-changing environment, you will fall out of step with it. That’s a path to failure.

Committing To Learning

The way out is the one no one wants to hear. I don’t believe in magic bullets. This will take time. But, as I’ve said before and will say again: 

If you don’t have time to solve the problem of not having enough time, you need to stop.

Not forever. Maybe not everyone.

But you need enough people to stop attempting to execute their way out of the situation you’re in to make some changes and see if it improves things.

This is another thing that makes stopping and learning hard. There is no guarantee that the solution you come up with will be better, now or later. Maybe everyone takes a couple hours to pause and try to make some improvements, only to have no effect. Maybe it even makes things worse. 

Hence the commitment to learning. Committing to learning is committing to giving up cycles from your devs and your leaders to be able to reflect on how they’ve been working so that they can apply what they’ve learned right away and to the benefit of your team, rather than at their next gig after the studio gets shut down.

The “lost” cycles are a short-term hit to “efficiency.” But if you allow learning to be applied consistently, your organization may be able to focus on the things that are stopping you from succeeding. You may actually make progress towards a cohesive game, rather than just more productivity.

Overcoming Anxiety

It is a travesty that the retrospective/AAR/post-mortem is one of the first rituals I see teams cut when times get tough. It’s like curing a hangnail by chopping your arm off.

Certainly, some continuous improvement practices aren’t effective and perhaps aren’t creating value right now. But when you remove them entirely rather than fixing them, it sends a cultural message about what’s important, and what’s not.

And when times are tough, it creates anxiety and stress. Both of those things shut down critical thinking in high doses. It puts people in a place where they want to TAKE ACTION, not THINK. Highly stressed people who are just trying to work their way out of the problem will be incredibly frustrated and annoyed at someone asking them to stop for a moment, take an hour or two, and think about what we could be doing better.

This is exactly why it must be done. Game development is inherently creative and uncertain. We NEED the abstract, thinking parts of our brain. We have to grapple with the complexity of what we are doing, not pretend it’s simple because it alleviates our anxiety. We have to think in order to learn.

Prioritizing Learning

The good news? You have the ability to change your approach, even if it’s just you.

The bad news? If the culture isn’t there, you may get some backlash for asking questions when everyone else is trying to execute their way to success.

For the individual contributor in that situation, here’s what I’d recommend:

1. Create space to think.

Block some time to step back and look at the big picture. Give your own brain a space to process everything that has been happening. What have you been doing over and over that hasn’t been working? What’s the thing that you keep putting off because there’s so much work to do? Who have you not talked to and stayed aligned with that you should’ve?

Just spending 30 minutes giving yourself time to breathe every week or two can get you out of bad habits. Take a long lunch, book some time at the beginning or end of the day, find a spot to pause and reflect on what’s been going on. This can also reap huge personal benefits as you also get to think about your own work and career. We neglect that too often.

2. Use 1:1s or other conversations with your leaders to go big picture

In rushed organizations, every 1:1 or conversation tends to be about tactics and execution. Break that trend. Use your 1:1 to ask some bigger questions and stay connected to the higher level goal. If the leaders you talk to don’t know what that is besides, “faster, sooner, quicker” that’s a great sign that the org has lost self-awareness. That can be valuable to know.

3. Suggest a change that would help the org

I wish I could tell you what to suggest (maybe some of these ideas about creating space for learning?) but in every part of every org that exists there are opportunities to be better. Use your space to think and 1:1s to think of and test ideas that could make things better. Then, take the risk of suggesting the change.

You could bring the suggestion to your team, or your discipline, or your manager. Maybe it’s something you can do on your own, and you just want to let others know you’re trying it and you’ll let them know how it goes. Whatever it is, throw it out there. Sometimes everyone knows something needs to change but no one has the time to suggest an improvement. Be the person who suggests something. Unless your workplace is insanely toxic, the worst you’ll hear is “no.”

For the leader in that situation:

1. You can do everything the individual contributor does, a couple of changes based on your distinct role:

• Create even more space to think. Shoot for an hour or more a week. You are there to align people, to do that you need to be grounded in what matters and not caught in the trap of urgent work. The higher up you go in an org, the more time you’ll need to process and think about how you’ll solve the problems facing you and your team.

• Rather than simply suggesting a change, you may have the power to implement one. When people are in a rush, they may not want to hear about your new idea, so I’d start small and frame it as a quick two week test of something new. Then see if you can improve things one bit at a time. Choose something that you’re pretty sure will work and make things better for the team, it will build trust for future improvements.

2. Create and/or hold onto whatever continuous improvement practice(s) makes sense.

Whether it’s a pull system where people can make suggestions via a slack channel, or recurring retros with the whole team, or post-mortems on every feature/asset that’s created, spend your own and the team’s cycles trying to make things better. Compound interest is an insane force, little 3% improvements stacked over time can lead to an amazing team.

Just remember, whoever you involve in these practices or meetings should feel like they are working. Nothing more frustrating then going to a retro that’s supposed to help, only to have it be something where only the leaders talk and the action items never get done. I recommend picking ONE thing and seeing if you can make it stick as a team, then move to the next. More is rarely better when it comes to simultaneous change initiatives.

3. Ask questions that encourage thought rather than immediate action

This one might seem dumb, but the way you talk will have a huge impact on the culture you create. If something didn’t go as expected and you always say something like, “Got it, what are you doing about it?” or “What’s the next step?” you are biasing people to KNOW WHAT TO DO in all situations. Instead, asking, “What did you learn?” or “How could we avoid this in the future?” gets people stepping back to look at the overall situation instead of diving into another desperate solution. 

Don’t get me wrong, sometimes there is a time to act quickly and you want to encourage that. But I would argue that most orgs bias so strongly towards doing the next thing people eventually start to believe thinking isn’t really something that’s expected of them. Train your team to think.

For the senior leader:

1. You can do everything the ICs and leaders are doing, with the following changes.

• EVEN MORE time to think. There should be multiple slots every week where you’re pausing and making sure you’re not caught in the weeds. What’s the goal of the company, how are you communicating it, what are the risks we’re ignoring, what is the deep truth you know that no one is talking about at the senior layer? Give yourself time with questions like these, and often.

• Suggesting changes shifts slightly for senior leaders. You have massive authority in the org. But you also don’t want to be a wrecking ball of chaos. Be specific about what you change, and don’t overdo it. An email that takes you 5 minutes to write can take the next layer of leaders multiple days to digest and take an org weeks to implement, and that’s in a highly effective org. Be self-aware and recognize that you will think at a rate much faster than the organization can change. Don’t whiplash everyone.

2. Ground yourself in reality

There are a plethora of games that were supposed to succeed but did not. The senior leaders were often unbelievably optimistic and able to rationalize why. They were also wrong. This happens over and over and over again, and one cause of that is how distant senior leaders can end up from the reality of what’s going on.

To avoid this, find ways to stay connected to what’s happening on the ground. Surveys might help with this, or even - if you can make it non-threatening - finding time to grab lunch or have a quick 1:1 with people who are doing the actual work. 

In game dev, stay close to playtest feedback and always be looking back at the vision and whether you’re getting closer or further away.

Above all, you need to be doing everything you can to disabuse yourself of the notion that you know what’s going on at the org. That’s not your job, and it’s not possible. If you’re in a studio of even moderate size, you are aware of a small fraction of what’s happening and where the problems are. The challenges ARE KNOWN, but by the layers below you in the hierarchy. 

Your job is to create space for them to tell you what’s actually happening and wrong, and also to create and maintain alignment to where the org is trying to go. 

Ego and confidence are your enemy. Cultivate curiosity and humility. You have immense power and can move worlds, but it’s much easier to mess things up than it is to make things better. Be cautious and open to learning from unexpected places.

3. Hire people who are good at learning and improving

Don’t chase every pedigreed expert the world has to offer when you need a role filled. Find people who demonstrate flexibility and applied learning. Turn down the person who has the perfect game dev background but can’t tell you a good story about how they improved themselves or the team they were on.

You (and your peers) define the culture. Who you hire is a big part of that. If you want an adaptive, learning org, hire people who are comfortable learning and adapting. 

Closing Up

Learning is not optional if you want a sustainable game dev studio. Everything around us is changing all the time. 

Don’t get trapped kicking all those reflective and improvement oriented practices to the side when the going gets tough. If the car engine is broken, it doesn’t matter how hard you press the gas pedal. 

Whether you’re an individual, a leader, or someone in the C-level, spend the time and accept the overhead of thinking and learning and improving. In a much shorter amount of time than you’d think, you’ll be outperforming the individuals, teams, and studios that try to outwork every obstacle.

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