The Game Outcomes Project, Part 3: Game Development Factors
游戏专案为何成功系列之三：游戏产业的独特要素
网志版：http://wp.me/pBAPd-qp
原文网址：
http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/PaulTozour/20150113/233922/The_Game_Outcomes_Project_Part_3_Game_Development_Factors.php
缩网址：http://tinyurl.com/m7kmuzf
撰文：Paul Tozour
繁体中文翻译：NDark
20150113
译按：本文是一篇统计学专业文章，若有翻译不正确的文句，请以原文为主。
This article is the third in a 5-part series.
Part 1: The Best and the Rest is also available here: (Gamasutra)
(BlogSpot) (in Chinese)
Part 2: Building Effective Teams is available here: (Gamasutra)
(BlogSpot) (in Chinese)
This article is part 3, and will soon be updated on BlogSpot and
translated to Chinese.
Parts 4-5 will be published in late January 2015.
For extended notes on our survey methodology, see our Methodology blog
page.
Our raw survey data (minus confidential info) is now available here if
you'd like to verify our results or perform your own analysis.
The Game Outcomes Project team includes Paul Tozour, David Wegbreit, Lucien
Parsons, Zhenghua “Z” Yang, NDark Teng, Eric Byron, Julianna Pillemer, Ben
Weber, and Karen Buro.
本文是系列五篇中的第三篇。
第一篇请连以下文章 (Gamasutra) (BlogSpot) (in Chinese 繁体中文)
第二篇请连以下文章 (Gamasutra) (BlogSpot) (in Chinese 繁体中文)
第四，第五篇将在2015年一月下旬释出。
想要知道问卷的方法论，请参阅部落格页面 "Game Outcomes Project
Methodology":http://intelligenceengine.blogspot.com/2014/11/game-outcomes-project-methodology-in.html
我们问卷的原始资料在此，有兴趣的朋友可以拿去分析。
"游戏专案为何成功"团队成员包含Paul Tozour，David Wegbreit，Lucien Parsons，
Zhenghua “Z” Yang，NDark Teng，Eric Byron，Julianna Pillemer，Ben Weber，及
Karen Buro。
The Game Outcomes Project, Part 3: Game Development Factors
游戏专案为何成功系列之三：游戏产业的独特要素
The Game Outcomes Project was a large-scale study of teamwork, culture,
production, and leadership in game development conducted in October 2014. It
was based on a 120-question survey of several hundred game developers, and it
correlated all of those factors against a set of four quantifiable project
outcomes (project delays, return on investment (ROI), aggregate reviews /
MetaCritic ratings, and the team’s own sense of satisfaction with how the
project achieved its internal goals). Our team then built all of these four
outcome questions into an aggregate “score” value representing the overall
outcome of the game project, as described on our Methodology page.
游戏专案为何成功的问卷计画是在2014年十月开始，针对于团队合作，文化，制作，以及
领导方面大范围的研究。问卷是基于一百二十个问题项目对数百位游戏开发者的调查，我
们透过一连串的要素与量化的专案产出分数（包含专案延迟，专案利润，网页分数，内部
满意度）相对应做出的关联性分析。我们问卷团队把四个产出分数总和为一个产出分数，
代表游戏专案的总和产出，如我们方法论部落格所提。
Previous articles in this series (Part 1, Part 2) introduced the Game
Outcomes Project and showed very surprising results. While many factors that
one would expect to contribute to differences in project outcomes – such as
team size, project duration, production methodology, and most forms of
financial incentives – had no meaningful correlations, we also saw
remarkable and very clear results for three different team effectiveness
models that we investigated.
此系列先前的文章（第一篇，第二篇）介绍了"游戏专案为何成功"此计画目前惊人的成果
。许多我们所预期的要素会影响游戏产出。其中团队大小，开发时程，制程方法论，许多
种奖励都没有显著的关联性。我们也看到许多值得一提的数种团队效率模型对我们产出的
影响。
Our analysis uncovered major differences in team effectiveness, which
translate directly into large and unmistakable differences in project
outcomes.
Every game is a reflection of the team that made it, and the best way to
raise your game is to raise your team.
我们的分析揭露了团队效率模型之间的差异，以及对团队产出造成的差异。
每个游戏都是团队独一无二的成果，要提高游戏品质，就先从提高团队品质做起。
In this article, we look at additional factors in our survey which were not
covered by the three team effectiveness models we analyzed in Part 2,
including several in areas specific to game development. We included these
questions in our survey on the suspicion that they were likely to contribute
in some way to differences in project outcomes. We were not disappointed.
在本文中，我们关注问卷中没有在团队效率篇章提及的额外要素项目，特别是游戏开发相
关的项目。由于我们认为这些问题可能对我们问卷有贡献，所以把这些问题纳入我们的问
卷中，它们并没有让我们失望。
Design Risk Management
First, we looked at the management of design risk. It’s well-known in the
industry that design thrashing is a major cost of cost and schedule overruns.
We’ve personally witnessed many projects where a game’s design was unclear
from the outset, where preproduction was absent or was inadequate to define
the gameplay, or where a game in development underwent multiple disruptive
re-designs that negated the team’s progress, causing enormous amounts of
work to be discarded and progress to be lost.
设计上的风险管理
首先，我们先探讨设计上的风险管理。与这篇"用一个影片来说明那些被取消的专案"相同
，我们亲眼目睹很多专案在开始时的设计不明确，前置作业不足以解释游戏玩法，或是开
发过程中不断打掉重练，造成工时的浪费。
It seemed clear to us that the best teams carefully manage the risks around
game design, both by working to mitigate the repercussions of design changes
in development, and by reducing the need for disruptive design changes in the
first place (by having a better design to begin with).
明显地，优秀的团队都很小心地处理设计面的风险，试图减轻开发中规格变动带来的影响
，或是在开始时就直接舍弃不良的设计（直到找出真正好的企划案才开案）。
We came up with a set of 5 related questions, shown in Figure 1 below. These
turned out to have some of the strongest correlations of any questions we
asked in our survey. With the exception of the two peach-colored
correlations for the last question (related to the return-on-investment
outcome and the critical reception outcome for design documents), all of
these correlations are statistically significant (p-value under 0.05).
我们设计了五个相关的问题，在下面的图一显示。它们对我们问的其他问题都有强烈的关
联性。除了最后一个问题两个粉红色的区块之外（针对开始的文件与专案利润的关联），
其他的关联性都有强烈的统计表征（小于0.05的p值）。
Figure 1. Questions around design risk management and their correlations with
project outcomes. The “category score” on the right is the highest
absolute value of the aggregate outcome correlations, as an indication of the
overall value of this category. “Not S.S.” indicates correlations that are
not statistically significant (p-value over 0.05).设计面的风险管理及专案产出分
数的关联性。最右边的字段代表四栏中最高的绝对值关联性。Not S.S.代表没有统计表征
（大于0.05的p值）。
Clearly, changes to the design during development, and the way those design
changes were handled, made enormous differences in the outcomes of many of
the development efforts we surveyed.
显然，根据我们的问卷指出，开发中改变规格，或是如何改变规则，会对团队产出造成重
大影响。
However, when they did occur, participation of all stakeholders in the
decision to make changes, and clear communication and justification of those
changes and the reasons for them, clearly mitigated the damage.
然而，假如规格真的改变，团队成员的参与讨论，清楚的沟通，及改变的原因，都会减轻
伤害。
[We remind readers who may have missed Part 2 that negative correlations (in
red/orange) should not be viewed a bad thing; on the contrary, questions
asked in a “negative frame,” i.e., asking about a bad thing that may have
occurred on the project, should have a negative correlation with project
outcomes, indicating that a lower answer (stronger disagreement with the
statement) correlated with better project outcomes (better ROI, fewer delays,
higher critical reviews, and so on). What really matters is the absolute
value of a correlation: the farther a correlation is from 0, the more
strongly it relates to differences in project outcomes, and you can then look
at the sign to see whether it contributes positively or negatively.]
请记得在第二篇中我们提到，负向的关联性并非坏事；相反地，那是因为问题是以反向的
方式设计，例如：询问对专案可能发生的问题是不被允许的，这问题就应该对专案产出有
负面的相关。也就是回答偏向于比较低方向，其实是对专案的产出更好（更好的利润，更
少的延迟，更高的分数等）。真的重要的是专案产出的绝对值，而读者应能明显看出那些
问题的方向。
Somewhat surprisingly, our question about a design document clearly
specifying the game to be developed had a very low correlation – below 0.2.
It also had no statistically significant correlation (p-value > 0.05) with
ROI or critical reception / MetaCritic scores. This is quite surprising, as
it suggests design documents are far less useful than generally realized.
The only area where they show a truly meaningful correlation is with project
timeliness. This seems to suggest that while design documents may make a
positive contribution to the schedule, anyone who believes that they will
contribute much to product success from a critical or ROI standpoint by
themselves is quite mistaken.
意外地，我们关于设计文件的问题只有非常低的关联性，少于0.2。甚至还有几个关联性
（利润与分数）没有统计表征（p值大于0.05）。这结果真是令人意外，也就是设计文件
其实比我们期待的还要不重要。此项目真正影响的其实只有专案时程，若有人认为专案文
件应该会带给我们巨大利润或网站分数就是犯了大错。
We should be clear that our 2014 survey did not ask any questions related to
the project’s level of design innovation. Certainly, it’s much easier to
limit design risk if you stick to less ambitious one-off games and direct
sequels. We don’t want to sound as if we are recommending that course of
action.
我们必须坦承本次的问卷并没有问到关于专案突破或是新颖设计相关的问题。假设我们执
行续作专案或相同类型的专案时，当然很容易就会限制设计风险。此处我们也必须强调我
们并非透过上述问卷得到的结果来鼓吹不需创新。
For the record, we do believe that design innovation is enormously important,
and quite often, a game’s design needs to evolve significantly in production
in order to achieve that level of innovation. Our own subjective experience
is that a desire for innovation needs to be balanced against cautious
management of the enormous risks that design changes can introduce. We plan
to ask more questions in the area of design innovation in the next version of
the survey.
我们强调，我们相信创新是很重要的，游戏的设计需要在制程上不断进化来达到设计上的
创新。我们主观的看法是设计的创新是需要小心管理非常多设计可能带来的风险。我们希
望在下一版本的问卷中能够带入这些设计创新方面的问题。
Team Focus
Managing the risks to the design itself is one thing, but to what extent does
the team’s level of focus – being on the same page about the game in
development, and sharing a single, common, vision – impact outcomes?
团队专注力
管理设计上的风险之外，在同一页针对游戏开发的问题中，接下来我们谈团队的专注力，
及团队有单一共通的信念，是否会影响产出。
Figure 2. Questions around team focus and their correlations.团队专注力关联性
的问题
The strong correlations here are not too surprising; these tie in closely
with the design risk management topic above, as well as our questions about “
Compelling Direction,” the second element of Hackman’s team effectiveness
model from Part 2. As a result, the correlations here are very similar. It’
s clear that successful teams have a strong shared vision, care deeply about
the product vision, and are careful to resolve disagreements about the game’
s design quickly and professionally.
强烈的关联性就如同设计风险管理的段落，及第二篇我们提到哈克曼团队效率模型的"明
确的方向"一样并不令人意外。也就是得到一样的结果。显然成功的团队内都有强烈单一
共通的信仰，关心产品的方向，小心但迅速又专业地解决对于游戏设计面的歧见。
It’s interesting to note that the question “most team members cared deeply
about the vision of this game” showed a wide disparity of correlations. It
shows a strong positive correlation with critical reviews and internal goal
achievement, but only a very weak correlation with project timeliness. This
seems to indicate that while passion for the project makes for a more
satisfied team and a game that gets better review scores, it has little to do
with hitting schedules.
值得一提的是这个问题"大多数的团队成员都关心游戏的方向"，在不同字段中得到了不同
的关联性。在内部满意度与网页评分中关联性很高，但对专案时程的关联性很低。这似乎
指出团队对专案的热忱会造成满意度高的团队，也会获得比较高的网页分数，但对时程没
有影响。
Crunch (Extended Overtime)
Our industry is legendary (or perhaps “infamous” is a better word) for its
frequent use of extended overtime, i.e. “crunch.” But how does crunch
actually correlate with project outcomes?
加班
对这个产业来说，加班文化颇获盛名（或说是恶名昭彰）。到底加班对产出的关联性如何
？
Figure 3. Questions around crunch, and related correlations.加班的关联性
As you can see, all five of our questions around crunch were significantly
correlated with outcomes – some of them very strongly so. The one and only
question that showed a positive correlation was the question asking if
overtime was purely voluntary, indicating the absence of mandatory crunch.
如你所见，五个围绕在加班的问题都与产出有负面的关联性。唯一有正面关联性的问题是
在自愿也就是没有强制规定下的加班。
Even in the area where you might expect crunch would improve things –
project delays – crunch still showed a significant negative correlation,
indicating that it did not actually save projects from delays.
当我们预期加班会解决问题，也就是减少专案延迟。结果反而有负向相关，也就是加班并
不能帮助专案赶上进度。
This suggests that not only does crunch not produce better outcomes, but it
may actually make games worse where it is used.
同样地加班也不能帮助产出更好的结果，反而可能更糟。
Crunch is an important topic, and one that is far too often passionately
debated without reference to any facts or data whatsoever. In order to do
the topic justice – and hopefully lay the entire “debate” to rest once and
for all – we will dedicate the entirety of our next article to further
exploring these results, and we’ll don our scuba gear and perform a “
deep-dive” into the data to ferret out exactly what our data can tell us
about crunch and its effects.
At the very least, we hope to provide enough data that future discussions of
crunch will rest far less on opinion and far more on actual evidence.
加班是一个值得探讨的问题，复杂到我们不能跟只用数据来探讨它。因此为了揭露它的真
相，希望能够一劳永逸的讲清楚这个问题，我们决定把它留到下一篇来深入探讨。我们会
准备好面对这个敌人，从背后找到它所带来的影响。
Team Stability
A great deal of validated management research shows clearly that teams with
stable membership are far more effective than teams whose membership changes
frequently, or those whose members must be shared with other teams. Studies
of surgical teams and airline crews show that they are far more likely to
make mistakes in their first few weeks of working together, but grow
continuously more effective year after year as they work together. We were
curious how team stability affects outcomes in game development.
团队稳定度
大量的管理研究都说有稳定成员的团队会比频繁调动或互相支援的团队来的有效率。对外
科团队或空服团队的研究也说合作的第一个礼拜会容易犯错，但逐渐会越来越有效率。对
于游戏制作团队稳定度与产出是否相关我们产生了好奇。
Figure 4. Questions around team stability and their correlations to project
outcomes.团队稳定度与专案产出的效率
Surprisingly, our question on team members being exclusively dedicated to the
project showed no statistically significant correlations with project
outcomes. As far as we can tell, this just doesn’t matter one way or the
other.
意外地，只做一个案子的团队并没有显示出对专案产出有关联性。
However, our more general questions around project turnover and
reorganization showed strong and unequivocal correlations with inferior
project outcomes.
相反地，对于换人或重组的专案却对专案产出有负面的关联性。
At the same time, it’s difficult to say for sure to what extent each of
these is a cause or an effect of problems on a project. In the case of
turnover, there are plenty of industry stories that illustrate both: there
have been plenty of staff departures and layoffs due to troubled projects,
but also quite a few stories of key staff departures that left their studios
scrambling to recover – in addition to stories of spiraling problems where
project problems caused key staff departures, which caused more
morale/productivity problems, which led to the departure of even more staff.
因此，很难说任何一点直接造成了专案的助力或阻力。以换人来说，业界已经有很多案例
告诉我们在困难专案会遇到的裁员与离职，更有关键的团队成员离开工作室，这造成了连
锁效应：士气更低，更多人离职。
We hope to analyze this factor more deeply in future versions of the survey
(and we’d like to break down voluntary vs involuntary staff departures in
particular). But for now, we’ll have to split the difference in our
interpretation. As far as we can tell from here, turnover and
reorganizations are both generally harmful, and wise leaders should do
everything in their power to minimize them.
我们希望能在未来的版本更进一步分析这个要素（把自愿离职与非自愿离职的要素分清楚
）。但目前来说，我们只能解释，换人或重组造成伤害，明智地来说应该减少这种现象。
Communication & Feedback
We included several questions about the extent to which communication and
feedback play a role in team effectiveness:
沟通与回馈
我们列了几个关于沟通与回馈在团队效率方面的问题：
Figure 5. Questions around communication and their correlations.沟通与产出的关
联性
Clearly, regular feedback from project leads and managers (our third question
in this category) is key – our third question ties in very closely with
factor #11 in the Gallup team effectiveness model from Part 2, with virtually
identical correlations with project outcomes. Easy access to senior
leadership (the second question) is also clearly quite important.
从专案领导者与管理层来的定期回馈（第三个问题，与第二篇盖洛普团队效率模型的第十
一个问题雷同）很清楚地与专案产出有关联性。能够与管理层沟通是很重要的。
Regular communication between the entire team (the first question) is
somewhat less important but still shows significant positive correlations
across the board. Meanwhile, our final question revealed no significant
differences between cultures that preferred e-mail vs face-to-face
communication.
团队中持续的沟通（第一个问题）虽没那么重要，但仍有正面的相关性。顺带一提，最后
一个问题，也就是是否面对面工作却完全没有显示任何相关联性。
Organizational Perceptions of Failure
组织对于失败的态度
A 2012 Gamasutra interview with Finnish game developer Supercell explained
that company’s attitude toward failure:
在2012年Gamasutra对芬兰游戏开发者Supercell的访问中说到关于公司对于失败的态度：
"We think that the biggest advantage we have in this company is culture. […
] We have this culture of celebrating failure. When a game does well, of
course we have a party. But when we really screw up, for example when we need
to kill a product – and that happens often by the way, this year we've
launched two products globally, and killed three – when we really screw up,
we celebrate with champagne. We organize events that are sort of postmortems,
and we can discuss it very openly with the team, asking what went wrong, what
went right. What did we learn, most importantly, and what are we going to do
differently next time?"
我们认为在这间公司中最大的优势是文化... 我们鼓励失败。当游戏做得好的时候我们庆
功，但当我们砸锅，譬如要取消专案的时候我们更开香槟庆祝。我们用某种解颇的仪式来
透明的探讨那些潜在问题，我们在哪些地方犯错了，而哪些地方做对了，我们学到了什么
，下次我们该怎么做？
It seems safe to say that most game studios don’t share this attitude. But
is Supercell a unique outlier, or would this attitude work in game
development in general if applied more broadly?
Our developer survey asked six questions about how the team perceived failure
on a cultural level:
似乎大多数的工作室并没有相同的做法，Supercell是否这么特别？如果我们将这样的态
度推广出去有用吗？
我们的问卷中就问了六个关于团队文化是否接受失败的问题。
Figure 6. Questions around organizational perceptions of failure and their
correlations.组织如何看待失败的关联性
These correlations are quite significant, and nearly all of them are quite
strong. More successful game projects are much more likely encourage
creative risk-taking and open discussion of failure, and ensure that team
members feel comfortable and supported when taking creative risks.
These results tie in very closely with the concept of “psychological safety”
explained Part 2, under the “Supportive Context” section of Hackman’s
team effectiveness model.
这些关联性很显著，几乎全部都很重要。成功的团队都能在创造时鼓励承担失败与谈论失
败，这样确保团度成员有安全感，感觉创造时有后援。
这些结论与第二篇哈克曼团队效率模型的支持信仰所提的心理层面的安全感十分雷同。
Respect
Extensive management research indicates that respect is a terrifically
important driver of employee engagement, and therefore of productivity. A
recent HBR study of nearly 20,000 employees around the world found that no
other leader behavior had a greater effect on outcomes. Employees who
receive more respect exhibit massive improvements in engagement, retention,
satisfaction, focus, and many other factors.
We were curious whether this also applied to the game industry, and whether a
respectful working environment contributed to differences between failed and
successful game project outcomes as well. We were not disappointed.
尊严
广泛的管理研究指出在对员工相处上尊严起了一个很重要的角色，还因此可以增加产出。
最近一篇哈佛商业文摘对两万名全球员工作的研究指出，除了尊严之外没有更有用的领导
行为。有尊严的员工在工作，满足，专注，及其他方面会有巨大的进步。
我们很好奇这是否对游戏产业适用，是否一个有尊严工作环境可以影响专案的产出？这没
让我们失望？
Figure 7. Questions around respect, and related correlations.尊严的关联性
All three of our questions in this category showed significant correlations
with outcomes, especially the question about respectful relationships between
team leads/managers and developers.
三个问题都显示正面的关联性，特别是团队管理者及开发者的关系。
Clearly, all team members