GDC 2018 - Art Leadership Roundtable - Day 1

For the first day of the Art Leadership Roundtable, I asked the attendees to share experiences around the topic of "creative autonomy."  I was inspired by Andrew Maximov's talk a few days beforehand, and this seemed like a good starting point for the conversation.

One attendee shared a bit about their how their own role evolved as a studio moved from 40-60 employees; they had to shift away from content creation towards leadership.  I realized that I had phrased the topic poorly, and instead encouraged individuals to share any problems that they had experienced with "creative ownership" and then offered the option of sharing solutions if their studio had found useful changes.

Another participant chimed in that their studio had grown from 300 to 500 employees.  As the studio was building more art teams, they identified the need for more leads.  However, these leads had to also absorb more production work during the studio's growth.  Unfortunately, there was no training for those who found themselves in new leadership roles.  Sadly, this is a common statement at the roundtable, an issue that many studios seem to be facing.

In response to this situation, the studio implemented new processes for artists and leads alike.  Obvious processes included documenting career paths and ensuring one-on-one feedback.  Moreover, leads were encouraged to develop more "motivational understanding" in order that they can identify opportunities for creative ownership.  However, the participant also referred to areas of "resistance" from within the organization.  Naturally, all of this represents change and some amount of resistance is not unreasonable.

The topic of resistance was worth exploring further, so we talked about how resistance was addressed when and where it was encountered.  One of the first tools in addressing resistance was leveraging manager influence.  Managers provided employees an opportunity to express their frustration/concerns/resistance and, where possible, managers could reframe expectations and/or goals.  Second, the studio recognized that establishing cultural touchstones was just as important (maybe more) than documenting career paths.  Establishing a shared culture aids alignment.  In addition, the leaders actively worked to reinforce individuality where the work or the group might feel more like a "cog in the machine."  Lastly, where possible, HR was used to reinforce the changes to structure and culture.

As a final note on the topic of ownership vs. cog-in-the-machine, the production team was also instrumental in aiding the studio's shift.  For one, the production group worked to reinforce the vision and values of the creative leadership.  More importantly, production made sure that the creative decisions were coming out of this group and actively avoiding an environment in which it felt like they (production) were making development decisions independently.  It was implied that the studio's rapid growth had led to employees feeling as if this were the case.

We next talked about strategies on how to shift a studio away from top down (assuming that is your goal).  Many attendees chimed in and offered this variety of options.  Actively moving away from micromanagement is critical.  In some cases, studios are delegating ownership over the work and allowing the team to define the work/solutions and then the leadership influences the conversations around the broader goals.  As such, the studios work to shift conflict to discussion around the goals rather than conflict around the solutions.  Other studios have set aside time for experimentation, which in turn has led to new features.  In another instance, a studio invests more up front time in the brainstorming, to previz, to prototype approach to development.  Those who shared seem to be moving away from spec documentation and instead focus on rapid R&D at a very high level.  Consistently, the studios who are attempting this approach are embracing a creator-centric environment that focuses less on paper-design and documentation (and knowingly accepts the cost).  Referencing back to the earlier topic of resistance, these studios consistently recognized resistance as a key contributor in wasted development time.

Another attendee shared their studio's specific approach to creative development.  This studio used the term of "cutting the diamond" as a metaphor for iteration.  They still retain some top-down approaches such as planning weeks led by project directors.  However, the target of those planning weeks are to enumerate the high-level goals and the criteria for success.  From that, the teams then extrapolate the mid-level goals for themselves.  The biggest hurdle they faced in this approach was creating clarity around high-level goals with becoming too prescriptive in how those goals were to be achieved.

At this point, the conversation diverged into some specific scenarios for creative ownership.  The attendee who voiced this question was coming from a smaller studio with virtually no titles.  As such, everyone had peer relationships and no defined authority over others.  As such, they naturally relied on influence, a pure meritocracy of ideas.  So, ownership is present, but the organization has to be careful that it doesn't slip into a "loudest voice wins" culture.

Another attendee shared in this experience, coming from academia.  This person was frustrated with the bureaucracy of their institution, which in turn was leading to a de-evolution of authority and ownership (both for faculty and students).  Academia is critical in training developers who move into studios.  At the same time, the only person who has any true authority is the instructor (which is why team projects can be a mess at times).  Likewise, there is no market upon which to assess the success of the work.  Students have ownership, but instructors and academia have to evolve the same type of creative gates that most studios contend with regularly.

With the roundtable having reached a pretty good pace of conversation and flow, we then opened the floor to a new topic.  In response, one attendee asked what the focus should be for the Art Director between creative vision and production (creating art).  There were a variety of responses along these lines.  Unsurprisingly, in smaller studios, the Art Director is still expected to create content.  In fact, there was a lot of flexibility expressed on the amount of art content creation.  However, there was very little flexibility around owning the creative vision -- the AD is consistently expected to retain that responsibility.  In addition, several people spoke to their evolving understanding of the AD role over the course of their career.  For more junior developers, the assumption is that the AD spends the majority of their time and energy on the creative aspect of the role.  It's worth noting that most of the ADs I speak to each year wish that were the case.  For more experienced developers, there is the realization that the AD really spends the majority of their time in meetings, developing plans, resolving conficts, and thinking about how to keep the team aligned.  What is also worth noting is that, regardless of how the AD chooses to balance their work between creation and vision development, the most important thing is that balance is found rather than the constant back-and-forth reaction, and this is most often achieved by having a good support structure (comprised of leads, producers and peer directors).

Another attendee asked how art departments were managing their way through severe organizational changes.  A small period of time was spent talking about adding more focused layers into the organization, such as art managers and associate art directors in support of primary art directors.  Ultimately, the most critical component across those who contributed was the need to "keep the team together" and not losing sight of human capital.  In the end, the structure is only one tool that reinforces the alignment of the department.  Preserving the culture of the team, assuming that is desired, should drive any decisions in organizational change.

One of the final attendees to speak up asked how an Art Director interprets all of the input/feedback they are bombarded with on a day-to-day basis.  A few chimed in with some clear high-level thought processes:

• Know what needs to be done.  It's not always what you want.
• Know what the team needs.  If they don't have it, they won't achieve what needs to be done.
• Know what others love.  Leverage the individual strengths of the team members.
• Understand different career paths.  To clarify, this might be more specific to an Art Manager than an AD at larger studios

Related to the concept of defining the career path for artists, there are some pitfalls to help others avoid.  Some critical topics of conversation include:

• Think of yourself as a game developer first, and an art specialist second.  Apply this same rule to your peers in other departments.
• Disincentivize others from leadership roles by not having them tied to financial gain.  Leaders should be drawn to the roles by the challenges of leadership, not by paycheck.
• Clarify that the Art Director role is not the top of the career ladder.  Ensure that there are other paths for craftspeople that are not interested in leadership roles.

It was clear from the conversation that the person speaking had encountered a challenged AD.  We spent a small amount of time exploring what created the challenge.  I won't rehash the details here; however, I strongly encourage any interested readers to go back to previous years' roundtables where we explored this topic in greater depth.

Speaker Evaluation

Art Leadership Roundtable: Day 1

Wednesday, March 21 at 2:00PM

Room 215, South Hall
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Total Headcount: 143

Roundtable Session Ranking within Visual Arts Track: your session is ranked 14 of 14

Roundtable Session Ranking within GDC 2017: your session ranked 288 of 435

Session Totals (This Session)
Response	Count	Percentage of Responses
Excellent	16	62%
Good	6	23%
Poor	4	15%
Terrible	0	0.00%

Comments

• No issues
• I didn’t know that other people would be able to talk about their experiences, but it was amazing. A lot of us are in the same boat at our jobs and we all have the same questions and experiences. It made feel like I was not alone. 
• Really great way to exchange ideas solutions and contact.
• Unfortunately in this case actions speak louder then words thus this almost seems like a waste of time. Not sure how to make this roundtable more practical. Though I must say the host did the best he could, he was engaged and listening, participating. But to me 90% of the words spoken by the participants were...unnecessary.
• Fascinating, and slightly reassuring to hear that the same studios have suffered from similar issues that I have experienced. Wish I had not missed the first half, would have liked to have been able to attend the other sessions on this topic. 
• Interesting Roundtable session. Well organized and well balanced - everybody was welcomed in the discussion. Also, I love that the notes will be shared^^
• I think the moderator did a good job keeping people on track on the conversation flowing. However the conversation did get scattered at times, and I think it could still use more focus. It was nice to have all art leads in one room and I think that was the best part. I suggest an art lead happy hour for networking.
• Very interesting