Beyond the pitch: getting your team engaged and excited about a game
development project
[翻译] 超越极限：让游戏团队启动并对专案有热情
短连结：http://wp.me/pBAPd-we
原文连结：
http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/EricByron/20160610/274746/Beyond_the_pitch_getting_your_team_engaged_and_excited_about_a_game_development_project.php
by Eric Byron on 06/10/16 06:50:00 pm
The Game Outcomes Project is an independent industry/academic partnership.
It is driven entirely by intellectual curiosity. Our mission is to survey a
large number of game developers and statistically analyze the connections
between game development team culture and project outcomes. We ran our
initial study in late 2014 and published the results in Gamasutra and on Paul
Tozour’s blog in early 2015.
“游戏专案为何成功"是一个独立的业界学界合作团队。完全是因为对知识的兴趣而驱动
。我们的任务是透过问卷访问够多的开发者，以统计的方式分析游戏开发团队文化及产出
的关系。在 2014 年底我们做了第一次的研究，并在 2015 年初于 Gamasutra 及 Paul
Tozour 的部落格发表结果。
The articles in 2015 took a very scientific approach to analyzing survey data
and attempted to draw correlations between cultural and non-cultural factors
that affect team performance. Our recent research is based on interviews
(qualitative data) and, while we lose the ability to run traditional
statistics, the data has depth and is loaded with lots of real-world examples
from experienced leaders. We will attempt within these articles to present
practical ideas that you can use when leading game development teams.
2015年的文章以一个非常科学化的切入点分析调查的结果，并试着找出影响团队效能的文
化／非文化要素。我们最近的研究是透过访谈（定性资料），当然我们无法用传统的统计
来分析，但获得的资料却是基于从资深领导人阐述的真实案例。我们在这些文章中会展示
实务的方法，可用来领导游戏开发团队。
A primary objective of the Game Outcomes Project is to engage the broader
industry community in a dialog about how to lead successful teams and
projects. Over the past several months we have spoken one-on-one with 9
successful leaders in the Games Industry about the validity of our previous
findings and asked for input on areas they feel we should explore further.
“游戏专案为何成功"的主要目标是接触广大的业界社群关于如何带领成功团队及专案的
讨论。在最近的几个月，我们已经一对一地对业界九位优秀的领导者进行访谈，内容关于
我们先前的发现，及征求他们的回应，让我们知道未来我们应该朝哪个方向前进。
Every leader we spoke with agreed that establishing the vision early and then
protecting and nurturing the level of enthusiasm and engagement on the team
are critical to success. We heard many stories and examples of how some
leaders have done this successfully across a broad variety of game projects
and constraints. Three primary themes emerged in the data around
establishing and maintaining the vision, along with several secondary themes.
Each will be explored below.
我们谈过的每一位领导者都同意早点建立视野，保护培养一定程度的热情，启发团队，对
于团队的成功非常重要。我们聆听了各种领导者成功地在不同的专案及规范做到这些的案
例。三个主题分别围绕在建立即维持视野，以及若干子项目，如后述。
Establishing the vision means finding a way to communicate to members of the
team what the game is going to be. There’s a lot of literature and
resources about writing a vision statement for a business but not a lot of
guidance available for writing a vision statement for a Game project. We
offer these suggestions about formulating a vision statement to share with
the development team.
建立愿景的意思是找到一个方法对团队成员来沟通，沟通游戏会变成如何。已经有很多文
献及资源描述建立企业的愿景宣言，却很少特别别描述游戏专案的愿景宣言。我们在此分
享及提供给开发团队一些关于如何建立愿景宣言的建议。
A vision statement is for internal use. It is written to inspire your team.
It is not the same as a marketing statement that will be used to sell the
game. Use language that will be well understood by the members of the team.
A game vision statement should almost always describe the genre and express
the reason people will want to play the game. You want to infuse passion and
emotion into the vision statement. You may use words like: scary, exciting,
addictive, social, surprising, immersive, light-hearted, fast-paced,
strategic, entertaining, educational…
愿景宣言是对内的，是用来激励团队。跟销售的口号是用来贩卖游戏不一样。你必须使用
团队成员能了解的语言。游戏的愿景宣言应该能够形容游戏的类型，给玩家动机来玩这个
游戏。你会想要鼓舞热情及情感到这个宣言中。因此可能会用可怕的，刺激的，会上瘾的
，社交的，令人惊奇的，融入的，轻量的，快节奏的，策略的，娱乐的，富教育性的等字
眼。
A vision statement creates a graphic mental picture by including descriptive
words like: dark, whimsical, futuristic, floating in air, rocketing through
space, medieval, photo realistic, angular, irregular, bright and colorful,
cold and dark alien world… A vision statement may also state what the game
is not by way of comparison or contrasting it to another well-known game
within the same genre or within the franchise, if you are making a sequel.
愿景宣言可以透过一些描述字眼在心中创造出一个画面，如黑暗的，古怪的，未来的，空
中的，飞过太空的，中古世纪的，写实的，生硬的，不规则的，明亮多彩的，阴暗外太空
世界等字眼。愿景宣言用来描述游戏，但不是透过比较或参考其他知名同类型游戏的的方
法。
THE VISION STATEMENT SHOULD BE CLEAR AND CONCISE.
愿景宣言必须清楚简洁。
A prominent theme with the leaders we spoke with was that the vision
statement needs to be concise and easily understood. Seppo Helava,
Co-Founder and Creative Director at Wonderspark, talked about using a
one-line expression of the creative vision, an “X” statement, that the team
can easily grasp and remember. He compared this to giving the team a
hundred-page design document and asking them to read it and then use it to
guide their decisions. They might read it once but would never look at it
again and would soon forget what is says. This isn’t to say that design
documents are useless. They may serve a purpose but they do not replace the
need for a vision statement. Seppo went on to say that by posting the “X”
statement visibly around the work area and using it regularly, it becomes
ingrained and easy for the team to consider an idea and quickly and
collectively agree if it is compatible with the vision.
我们跟这些领导者谈过之后发现一个特点：愿景宣言必须简单，容易了解。Wonderspark
的共同创办人及创意总监 Seppo Helava 以一句宣言的描述，来让团队容易记住。跟其他
团队用游戏设计文件传递愿景及指示作比较，使用文件的团队看过一次就不会再翻阅，很
快就会忘记内容。这边并非说明设计文件并不重要，设计文件并无法达到愿景宣言的需求
。Seppo 说：把这句宣言贴在团队周遭，常常使用它，就会种下深根。团队就能快速回想
，并针对这个愿景创造与之一致有共识的内容。
We spoke with Kate Edward, the Executive Director of the IGDA. Kate
highlighted “Rise of Nations” as a good example of affectively sharing the
vision. “In the day-one meeting, Brian Reynolds, fresh out of Maxis, shared
a vision for what he thought the game was going be. This meeting was
attended by all departments and disciplines. He did a great job of
articulating the vision and you could tell that everyone was onboard from the
first day. Specifically, he did a great job of articulating what
distinguished this game from Age of Empires and Civilization, while
acknowledging that it would be similar, in the same genre. “
我们也与 IGDA 的执行总监 Kate Edward 谈过。Kate 特别用"王国的兴起"这款游戏的开
发作为心理层面上分享愿景的例子。在开发的第一天刚从 Maxis 离开的 Brian
Reynolds 分享了他对于这款游戏会变成怎样的愿景，所有开发部门都参加。他有条理的
说明愿景，你几乎可以看到每个人从第一天开始进入状况。具体地说，他阐述且区分了这
款游戏与世纪帝国，文明帝国的不同，当然他也承认它们有些雷同之处，因为毕竟是同一
类型游戏。
DEFINE CONSTRAINTS EARLY
尽早定义限制
The concept of constraints came up in multiple conversations about
establishing the vision for a game. We spoke with Clinton “Clint” Keith,
who described himself as an “organizational therapist” and is the author of
“Agile Game Development with Scrum”. Clint commented that the team must
understand both the vision and the constraints from the very beginning of a
project. If members of the team understand the constraints, they can much
more effectively contribute to the creative process. Examples of constraints
include: ship date, genre, platform, game engine, etc. Providing the team
boundaries early helps keep them from wasting time exploring ideas that don’
t align with the vision or fit within the constraints.
限制的概念在不同的访谈中不断地由建立愿景的主题谈到。在与Clinton “Clint”
Keith的访谈中，他描述自己是组织的临床医学家，他同时撰写了 Scrum 敏捷游戏开发
（Agile Game Development with Scrum）这本书。Clint 说团队必须在专案的开始就了
解愿景及限制。假如团队了解限制，他们能够有效地创造创意内容。限制包含：时程，类
型，平台，引擎等。从早期就规范这些会帮助团队不要过分浪费时间在发想超出规范及愿
景以外的点子上。
A similar theme was also echoed by Keith Fuller. Keith provides leadership
training and is the author of “Beyond Critical: Improving Leadership in Game
Development”. He talked about constraints as external motivators and
stressed how important it is to communicate the constraints and be
transparent about why the constraints are in place.
类似的想法也出现在 Keith Fuller 的访谈中。Keith 提供了领袖训练的方法，同时撰写
了超越极限：强化游戏开发的领导能力（Beyond Critical: Improving Leadership in
Game Development）这本书。他谈到限制就有如外部的驱动器，与团队沟通这些限制，让
它们保持透明很重要。尤其是要解释为何这些规范会存在。
When we asked Andre Thomas, CEO of Triseum, an educational games company in
Texas, about communicating constraints he had this to say.
当我们访问德州的教育游戏公司 Triseum 的执行长 Andre Thomas时，关于限制，他谈到
了以下的看法。
“Honesty! Total and utter honesty and transparency about the constraints.
Here’s the constraint (here’s the engine we’re using) and here is why.”
He went on for several minutes about the importance of explaining why the
constraints exist. If a constraint is a specific ship date, don’t just tell
them the date, tell them why it is that specific date and not some other date.
老实说，你必须完全地诚实及透明说明限制。打比方说：这就是我们用的引擎。以及说明
为什么。他接着花了几分钟说明解释为什么限制存在的重要性。假如限制是特定的时程日
期，不要光说明日期，必须说明为什么这一天特别重要。
DISCUSSIONS ABOUT VISION AND CONSTRAINT SHOULD BE CONVERSATIONS
对愿景及限制的讨论必须真的是讨论。
Of course, making games is a very creative endeavor and all agreed that
someone, an individual, needs to ultimately be responsible for the big
decisions about the creative direction for the game. Yet we also heard a
common theme that establishing the vision requires participation. Dave
Swanson, Director of Engineering for EA Sports, talked about the importance
of one-on-one dialog with members of the team. It is good to have a big
meeting where the Lead Designer pitches the game concept but Dave recommended
also taking the time to talk with each member of the team individually to
make sure they understood the vision, and, most importantly, understand their
role in the project.
当然，作游戏是非常需要尽全力在创意上的，我们都同意有个人，必须对游戏的创意抉择
有承担。也就是说我们知道建立愿景需要先有参与感。EA Sports 的工程主任 Dave
Swanson 谈到对团队成员一对一谈话的重要性。主企画针对游戏概念在会议中说明是好事
，但 Dave 建议同时也花些时间跟团队成员分别谈谈，确保他们都了解愿景，更重要的是
了解他们自己在专案中的角色。
We heard a similar theme from Andre Thomas. Andre stressed the importance of
including the members of the team in the design discussions from the
beginning. These should be conversations, not presentations. Andre also
described how these conversations need to continue during development as
things change and decisions need to be made. Andre described his best
project as one that had many iterations, along with various approaches and
dev waste along the way. You can only do this and maintain the team’s buy in
if you are talking and including the team in the decision processes.
Andre Thomas 也有相同的看法，Andre 强调从专案开始就在设计的讨论中把团队成员纳
入。而且应该是讨论，而非单方面的宣达。Andre 同时描述开发规格修改或是要下决定时
，这些讨论就应该继续。Andre 说明他做过最优秀的专案，在不同的专案时期中，都必须
尝试不同的切入方法，丢弃不能用的部分。只有你持续与团队沟通，把团队纳入决定圈中
，才能让团队保持对专案有承诺。
As we talked about communications we also talked a bit about organizational
structure and how important it is to try to keep the organization as flat as
possible. Clint Keith commented that communication is more challenging on
big teams. He referred to Dunbar’s number which suggests a cognitive limit
to the number of people we can maintain a stable social relationship with.
Scrum best practices prescribes smaller teams (9 or less). Clint further
explained by talking about how larger teams and organizations will tend to
have hierarchical structures that cause communication channels to be more
complex. Smaller, flatter organizations facilitate communications.
当我们谈到沟通时，我们也谈了组织架构及如何尽量扁平化。Clint Keith 说沟通在大团
队是很有挑战性的。他提到 150定律（邓巴数，https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar
’s_number），其中描述了我们只能与一定数量的人维持社交关系，Scrum 的最好做法是
小团队（九人以下）。Clint 还进一步解释，大型团队及组织会顷向多层架构，反而导致
沟通复杂化。越小，越扁平的组织才能帮助沟通。
Clint shared this with me from the Valve Handbook:
Clint 从 Valve 的手册中与我们分享这些东西：
Welcome to Flatland
欢迎来到扁平世界
Hierarchy is great for maintaining predictability and repeatability. It
simplifies planning and makes it easier to control a large group of people
from the top down, which is why military organizations rely on it so heavily.
But when you’re an entertainment company that’s spent the last decade going
out of its way to recruit the most intelligent, innovative, talented people
on Earth, telling them to sit at a desk and do what they’re told obliterates
99 percent of their value. We want innovators, and that means maintaining an
environment where they’ll flourish. That’s why Valve is flat. It’s our
shorthand way of saying that we don’t have any management, and nobody “
reports to” anybody else. We do have a founder/president, but even he isn’t
your manager. This company is yours to steer—toward opportunities and away
from risks.
阶层对维持预测性及重复性工作是很有帮助的。它有助于简化计画，让由上而下控制
一群人变得容易，军队仰赖这种架构。但是当我们在娱乐公司打算征募地球上最聪明，最
有创意，才能的人到我们公司，却告诉他只能乖乖坐在位置上是抹煞了他们百分之九十九
的才能。我们要的是创造者，希望他们维护一个有丰富内容的世界。因此 Valve 拥抱扁
平化。请记下，我们不用任何管理，每个人都不用对谁报告。我们有创始者跟总经理，但
他不是你的主管。公司是你的，请带领它朝向机会并避开危机。
In summary, here are the three main points:
结论，这里提炼出三个重点：
The Vision statement should be clear and concise. It needs to be
something the team can grasp easily, remember and refer to all the time.（愿景
的宣言必须清楚准确。让团队可以迅速掌握，记忆，随时引用。）
Define the constraints early and discuss them openly and honestly to
ensure that all understand why the constraints exist.（早点定义规范，公开诚实
地讨论，确保大家都能了解规范存在的原因。）
Discussions about the vision and constraints should be conversations. You
can present to a whole group but don’t neglect to talk with each individual
on the team about the vision and the constraints.（针对愿景跟规范的沟通必须使
用讨论。可以对团队宣达，但必须另外针对个别成员说明愿景与规范。）
Whether you are leading a small team, a large team, a team that has worked
together for years, or a brand new startup with lots of uncertainty, you need
to make sure everyone on the team is on the same page. This is a
well-documented principle in the science of leadership and managing teams, as
we discussed in our articles in 2015, and the stories shared by those who we
talked to recently reinforce the importance of sharing the vision and then
maintaining an infectious enthusiasm for that vision throughout the duration
of the project.
不管你带的团队是小或大，不管是已经共事很久或临时成军，你都必须确保团队中的每个
人与专案现在的进度一致。这件事已经在管理领导学中强调，如同我们在2015年的文章中
所讨论，以及我们最近所进行的访谈，都透露出分享愿景，在专案开发的过程中为了这个
愿景营造有感染力的热情。
There is no magic formula or plan you can follow every time that will
guarantee success on your game development projects. You have to be a learn
to be a strong leader and visionary. Keith Fuller described the importance of
leadership like this:
“I’m very much of the opinion that, if you have crummy leadership for your
project, for your company, all the best processes and tools are still going
to put you in a serious problem. If you have great leaders and don’t
necessarily have all the other answers you’re in better shape than the
inverse.”
那种照着做就能保证游戏开发专案成功的魔法配方并不存在。我们必须学习当一个坚强又
前瞻的领导者。Keith Fuller 描述领导的重要性："我非常注重一点，假如你的存在对你
的专案，你的公司，流程及工具而言都很重要，那么反而该警惕了。相反地，假如团队内
拥有很多个优秀的领导者，那么不用在很多问题亲自决定完美答案，这样的状况反而对你
的团队比较好。"
We want to thank all of those who have participated in the discussions that
were shared in this article. Their willingness to share their experiences
and lessons learned is vital to continuing the broader discussions about
important topics that help us all grow in our ability to be effective leaders
and increase our odds of success in running game development projects.
我们感谢文章中参与访谈分享论点的业界先进。他们愿意分享他们学到的经验对继续我们
的讨论至极重要，帮助我们成为更有效率的领导者，增进我们游戏开发专案成功的机率。
Leaders who contributors to this article included: Seppo Helava, Joe Hoff,
Clinton Keith, Keith Fuller, Dave Swanson, Andre Thomas and Kate Edwards.
此篇文章访谈的领导者：Seppo Helava，Joe Hoff，Clinton Keith，Keith Fuller，
Dave Swanson，Andre Thomas，及 Kate Edwards。
Our next Game Outcomes Project article will focus on crunch and take a deeper
look at why crunch may not be as helpful as some leaders or studios want to
believe. We will discuss some of the studies done regarding effects of
working long hours on productivity and offer some advice on how to measure
for yourself if you really are getting more done and better results when
teams work more hours per week. We will hear more stories from the leaders
listed above and we will hear from some additional leaders who spoke
passionately with us about the culture of crunch within the games industry.
下一篇"游戏专案为何成功"的文章会专注在加班及深度观察为何对领导者或工作室所深信
的加班并没有帮助。我们会讨论长时间工作的效能，提供一些对于如何测量自己在长时工
作下是否有做得更好的建议。除了上述的领导者之外我们还会听到更多关于游戏业界加班
文化的故事。