Working In Teams
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 7 ก.ย. 2024
- I talk about lessons I learned from working with teams, starting with lessons from a Duran Duran documentary.
Videos I reference:
Duran Duran: There's Something You Should Know: www.netflix.co...
Good Team Characteristics: • Good Team Characteristics
How To Receive Criticism: • How To Receive Criticism
How To Be A Good Game Director: • How To Be A Good Game ...
How To Be A Good Game Director, Part 2: • How To Be A Good Game ...
Never thought I'd have Tim Cain as part of my morning routine. I appreciate the regular uploads!
It is my regular morning learning routine 😁
Whenever I see his update, it goes on while I am working.
@@kyoujinkomy 10 o'clock break from work is listening to the wisdom of uncle Tim
No kidding. I never knew much about the guy even though I've known his name for half my life. I have been thoroughly grateful over the last few months to learn so much about and from him.
Tim Cain is my hero. I really enjoy his games and yt channel
I wish more tales had the moral "If you don't believe me, believe Duran Duran"
Tim Cain's Duran Duran episode
I'm looking forward to the MASH episode!
Ha, I did get compared to Alan Alda's Hawkeye character a few times, both for humor and for a distaste for authority.
I took a drink every time Tim said Duran and woke up in the 80's
Not that many then
If you say it out loud (or google it!) three times in a row, you wake up in an alternate universe. You’ve been warned! ☝🏻
Teamwork makes the Dreamwork
Tim your treasure trove of knowledge not only helps practically in my budding game dev career, but makes me feel really seen and understood. I've worked with 5 different indie teams now on vastly different projects and have had multiple different levels of authority and different roles. I've had teams with major communcation issues on every little detail of the game. As well as easy going, every idea i pitch is entered no questions asked, teams that have really helped me be my best creative self. My biggest hurdle, has been issues with the ethics of team members and understanding that our goals are completely different. I've unfortunately seen the game itself suffer and the team willing take hits in quality and passion due to the different goals of team members. This video reminds me to look at myself more earnestly and to understand what I'm good at, what I'm not, and that it's okay to pick and choose which teams to work with and what I really believe in. When to walk away and when to accept your role and let someone else take the reigns. I guess I don't really have anything meaningful to add to the discussion here, but I just want to say thank you for these videos and this one in particular really helped me on a day I wasn't feeling the best. As a fan of your work, as someone working their way up in the industry to be a game director, and as a fellow creative also doing TH-cam on the side for fun, thank you for doing what you do man. You're a huge inspiration of mine.
great timing as i’m scheduled for a team fit interview in roughly 1.5hours
Good luck to you.
Good luck
How did it go?
Update please!
Or did you get the we will call you back...
thanks! i have another interview scheduled for today (this time it’s a company culture fit with the manager of there person i met yesterday). i was told i’ll get a response from them by the weekend (today’s will be the 4th interview) as they have an internal discussion this week on the interviews. i am cautiously optimistic for now
He's got me listening to this great band now. Reminds me of my early childhood *80's kid here
Duran Duran FTW every time.
I work in QA on projects much less interesting than games but your insight is really valuable. Thanks for doing these videos!
Indeed, while the level of creative control that comes with being a solo indie feels great, I've realized many of the games I'd really like to make are just too big for one person.
Been working on a project for 2 years now and it's maybe a third of the way done at best? 😅
There's definitely a balancing act to be had
In your previous videos you mentioned equality between games and art. I would love to hear you talk on that subject. Either way, I love listening to your thoughts about game development. It is really inspiring.
You will like tomorrow’s video. It’s about viewing Fallout as a work of art
@@CainOnGames Oooooh, thank you kind sir!
LOVE Duran Duran! I wasn't expecting to hear about them here! :D If you want interesting teamwork stories in the new wave genre, look into the Hall and Oates drama from this year haha
Some people like working in Teams, others prefer Slack
I started getting sad on weekends when I realize I don’t have a new Tim video to watch in the morning. Thanks for the knowledge Uncle Tim ❤
Love that shirt Tim!!
Your reaction to the documentary is proof that games are art as much as music is (and should be considered so (I guess people are more accepting of that these days, but still))
First off, thank you so much for doing this channel it's been great company (re)starting my game dev journey. You talked a little bit here about that enormous burst of energy at the start of a new team or new project, and I was wondering if you could maybe talk about maintaining that energy or how you re-energize and maintain passion for a project throughout the development cycle?
Company culture can be very important. Most people focus on their supervisor and the people they work directly with. IMO the top down culture is just as important.
That hit's so close to home:(
I've been working in game dev for the past 10 years and recently (6months ago) I joined a new studio.
Project is fun, team is great but there is producer in charge who's.... Well he's pretty much destroying the entire project. Bad decision after bad decision, crunch (ALREADY???!!!!), rude behavior and worst of all... Ego. Ego that tells hims he knows EVERYTHING.
It's sad that one person can pretty much destroy otherwise good atmosphere in a company:/
I like the plaid Tim 👍
90s Tim? 😁
The concept that authority and passion don’t correlate definitely is something that I’ve come to believe in, though it might seem counterintuitive at first. Also, your thumbnail face is my internal feeling every time I’m sitting in a meeting thinking “This should have been an email….”
My university heavily focused on group projects. Gotta say, it was good training as a preparation to work life where you are dependent on other people as well as being able to communicate with others on different levels of understanding
Yes, this is one advantage that I have seen in university vs self taught individuals. However, just being exposed to group projects in school isn't always enough for some people to be prepared for professional group projects. There is always an adjustment to be made.
Thank you for being a part of my morning routine of "checking in on the industry"
You are not only a huge inspiration, but amazing at delivering a wealth of knowledge and wisdom.
Please don't stop sharing! (Unless life makes it difficult to do, please take care you and your own!)
Oh dear, i love my good teams and i will always have a lot of love for the members who made it so. Mutch love!
Not me assuming this would be about Microsoft Teams haha. Very glad to instead hear the meditation on actual team dynamics.
Good morning, Tim. I love Duran Duran too..
I have a question for you!
-> You talk often about what some good guidelines within game development are. I know it may be vague, but as best as I can word/describe it - What in your time of game development have you 'broken the rules'? As in, you had certain standards or typical procedure, process, but you tossed it out the window and found possibly surprising results? If you have made a video already on this, I'll be sure to watch it.
Regardless, I want to thank you for your videos and your chocolate recommendations. They have served me and my friends well lol.
Thanks, and that's a good question about rule breaking. I don't have a video on that, and I'll have to think about it.
i just realized i don't know how to work in teams.
I'd love to see a 2nd video on the topic of Teams.
Now for me to go find a team to work with soo i can learn about teams.
That was a good documentary, and many of the insights resonated with me too. Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
Hey Tim, recently came across your content and I love it. I work in a sales enablement role (far stretch from programming) but I found myself in my role quite young/inexperienced. Your videos have taught me that despite things around you being corporate/professional, you can still be yourself and thrive in that environment. Your videos have helped me with some work/business conversations, purely with the way you look at things. Thanks for giving me a fresh perspective Tim 😊
Also, my surname is Moran so I used to TRY and go by “Moran Moran” when I was around 11 years old!
Hey Tim! Just wanted to say: thanks a lot! I am not a game developer but recently I had a job interview for my dream job, teaching at a university. Your videos helped me a lot in reflecting my strengths and especially my weaknesses. To some of the questions I could answer very well, based on your videos on the Peter principle and the "generalists vs specialists" one. Later when they got back to me and told me, I'll be getting the job, they also told me they'd never met someone my age that was so self-reflected. So, again: Thank you so much! This job will change my life.
Congratulations!
@@CainOnGames Thank you! 🤗
Always love your videos is Tim ! I hope I can keep learning like you do from all the people and projects around me- the introspection is so interesting to listen to 😊
Hey Tim I wanted to ask you about your favourite RPG mechanics. For instance obe of mine is the Inspiration mechanic in D&D 5e which rewards the player for playing to their character. It might seem everyday business for experienced role players, but in actual RPG video games where us players always tend to play as a virtual version of ourselves (hence always playing as the same boring character), it turns out to be such a good way to reward role playing. This also reminds me of Fate Points in Arcanum
Heyo I have a potential question that's especially relevant to folks balancing school & game design. What were some of the best tips & tricks you learned to be motivated enough to complete both school & your game development work simultaneously? I know you've talked about working while still in college a handful of times so I think you could give some really helpful insight/constructive criticism of us students who aren't so great at time management yet, thanks!
(Also loved the video, it encouraged me to think about previous work with teams I've done in a better light!)
You rock
And here I thought you were going to be talking about remote work and MS Teams. Not really, though thanks to using it all the time for work, that is the first thing I think of when I hear the word teams.
10:11 *bong*
Hey Tim!
There are few things more rewarding than working on a team that gels, where everyone is making contributions, bouncing ideas off one another, even inspiring ideas from each others.
There are few things more soul-crusing than working on a bad team. Recriminations, finger-pointing, blame shifting, grandstanding, selfishness, and pettiness.
Hi Tim, I love your videos and your games. I had a question for you regarding characters in RPGs, you seem to have a preference for blank-slate characters and that a game will lose you if the player character is named.
However in the game Pathologic (not necessarily an RPG I admit) you can play the game as three different pre-existing characters and their background/class affects the gameplay and narrative.
I feel this has a lot of potential for an RPG experience where you can experience the same narrative but through vastly different lenses (one of the characters is an outsider so what you learn is pretty surface level as people don’t trust you, while another is a local coming back so with him you learn deeper things the first character never learns) I was wondering if you think this mechanic would work in an RPG game, where your background is pre-determined but you’re still given agency in how to role-play beyond that.
Would love to know what you think of this, all the best!
Hi Tim, love your work. Have you spoken about your early games, before you started working for companies? Essentially, Games you made to learn game design?
Well, what I've learned recently, is when in-authority, it's your job to maintain cohesion. Well, duh, but seriously. Good team or not, people could often run in opossite directions without even looking, and then you get a fight over why and who's to blame. You, it was your job, you didn't do it well, now your team is suffering and falling apart, and the crunch is going to be even worse. That is of course how I view it. Anyway though, I'd love Tim to share a more in depth opinion and experience on both in-authority and under-authoriry, hmm, mindsets? I feel like this type of wisdom is hard to come by, yet immensely valuable.
Since you were the prime age for it, how do you feel about 90's alternative? Were you big on the bands of the time? Nirvana, Alice In Chains, Soundgarden, etc.
If AAA is mediocre for any reason it is in that they consider devs as "human resources", in other words, following the definition of "resource", an interchangeable and measurable, exchangeable piece in the machine.
Following the D2 analogy, devs are much more like random items you find: specific archetype, with an infinite amount of nuance, leading to radically different outcomes sometimes.
Not only people are unequal, but their "network of relationship", how they fit together, are exponentially unequal, and a good team is a rare, rare and precious thing one has to do everything to keep intact and treasure.
Their output are unequal quantitatively, but also produce qualitatively different outputs, even for equal units of output. This can easily be seen in game jams: a single theme is exploited in thousands of different ways, even by people with comparatively similar levels of skills.
Instead, managers consider people as "resources" on a fucking production excel or jira chart, and people, even from winning teams, are broken down and moved around. Individual sensibility towards certain subjects is also disregarded, and things like the "ability to correctly log time and fill jira tickets" is used to evaluate who should get promotions and lead creative endeavors. Effectively promoting for conformity and "BIG 5 consciousness", which de facto filters out creativity.
It can't be further from the truth that devs are interchangeable. This is the way of thinking of mediocre people and in particular HR and mediocre management. The people who should know the best about this are the ones that know the least, and they are the ones often in charge of making decisions about this nonetheless. As with other endeavours, high quality leadership, like we see with Larian, is critical to the success of these companies.
_“I don’t that idea of yours, but you go and do it yourself!”_ Thia sounds interesting. Do you have examples where someone went and did a published or even a successful game with *that* idea front and center? 🙂
An aside about Duran Duran, having not watched the documentary. Being a band as big as that in the UK in the 80's the press attention would have been huge. It's not like the US. There's nowhere you can hide. The press pack would hunt out celebrities and there can't have been a private moment at any point.
Separately the punk mention, the new romantics did come out of post punk. The earlier stuff by bands in the scene were on the same labels as punk bands and the whole thing coalesced at the beginning around one particular club in London that was an outgrowth but also a rejection of punk.
Great video!
Thanks for sharing Tim. That's a nice shirt btw!
Doing something for 40 years - and especially in the game industry - definitely says something about your stubbornness, resilience, tech skill, drive, adaptability and comm skills; it's a very hard industry to survive for a few years, let alone that long !!!
More tangents about bands and documentaries, please.
This is so accurate. If you're in a team, you always need to learn how to communicate and collaborate.
For more information about the importance of collaboration look up 2gether's U + Me=Us.
You mention reading critical reviews both here and in your receiving criticism video. I'd love to hear about critical points made in reviews of your games (whether professional or from Steam / Epic / GOG) that made you think, "I agree. I need to change that up in my next game."
Thanks!
Here's to the next 40 years, Tim!
Maturity is so underrated, and completely absent in a lot of people unfortunately, I don't know if it's always been that way but the amount of 18-50 years olds throwing temper tantrums or letting their emotions get the better of them is scary, and shows a real lack of respect for everyone else. We used to have mentors that would help shape younger employees, but that is apparently some form of discrimination now and not allowed.
Hey Tim, do you have a video on the genesis of your game design philosophy and why player agency is something you prioritize. What led you to this outcome? Thank you!
I think my influences from tabletop RPGs led to my game design philosophy.
th-cam.com/video/bNf601IoBpc/w-d-xo.html
Ordinary World was pretty dope...
Good God, thank you Tim. I recently got into a position of solving disputes between employees and it's currently an absolute shitshow I was not expecting. As a dude that just wants to work, then chill and doesn't like drama, this is overwhelming. Do you have any tips for that?
Really like that shirt. Cool video today, thanks!
Can you talk about leadership or managing people? Specifically being the kind of leader that different types of people want to work for, but without sacrificing quality or productivity?
th-cam.com/video/F7uaMQnMsvI/w-d-xo.html
th-cam.com/video/sYZCYDRQtSs/w-d-xo.html
th-cam.com/video/85trmtqR-s8/w-d-xo.html
And I have a video coming up in July about being consistent in your leadership.
That's some good information, I look forward to the next one
This video showcases the importance and power of diversity in teams. It's not just the diversity people generally think of (gender, race, orientation), but also life experiences, ideas, and professional background.
What if your company uses for example Slack or Workplace instead?
Those companies will soon get shut down
@@heavyartillery-qm5hu what?
Working in teams sounds like a nightmare to a non-people person like myself lol.
I absolutely love listening to your videos! Would you mind doing a review of Fallout New Vegas and if you think it is a proper successor to the original Fallout?
Why I Don't Review Games
th-cam.com/video/mFZSt3TaE7Q/w-d-xo.html
@@CainOnGames Thanks for sharing!
Hi Tim , recently i have question in my mind that drives me crazy about that , if you know the answer i really would like to know of that answer . In Fallout 1 the Player ( Us ) have 2 main interaction interface which is abbreviated as CHA ( i think long name is Character Sheet ) and the other one is PIP ( which i assume represent as Pipboy screen ) . In character sheet , is there any particular reason that the skills and the representation of details in that screen is showed by Vault Boy . Is it because since we are a Vault Dweller , Vault Boy is the main reason for that representation ? or there is no such deep meaning of this :) . ( Either way i would be happy on that , just thinking that maybe completely might be wrong about that but i was thinking that in Fallout 1 because of we are member of Vault Tech , because of that in our conscious our S.P.E.C.I.A.L system is represented by Vault Boy , if there would be any other game maybe like we are from Brother Of The Steel for example maybe this system would be represented by Power Armored mascot ? :) )
Hey uncle Tim,
What's your thoughts on text to video AI?
And how did you or a member of the team do enemy AI?
that thumbnail is how i feel about working in teams, amirite
You’ve occasionally talked about ideas or features that you didn’t want in various games but didn’t “win” the discussion. Looking back over those, have you ever changed your mind about any of these? Did you ever later use those ideas or features in later games?
A question: if it is true, that working in a self aware team results in better games, why aren't there more fixed development teams out there? It seems to me, that breaking up good teams is a favorite pastime in game development?
Many reasons. People want to work on different games. People want to get promoted or to earn more money. Companies view employees as fungible.
@@CainOnGames I've always had this naive assumption, that since games are a kind of art, made for mass consumption, the optimal solution would be to set up a great technical team, capable of empowering the creative group, chief of which would be the game dev, sort of like a philharmonic orchestra bringing to life the work of a composer... And I feel that is sort of what you are saying... I know game development is, in a way, more complex than a symphony, but they are both art for mass consumption, made by highly educated workers, some with a technical competence others with an artist competence.
And yet, the symphony is viewed as this artistic pinnacle, that is supported by public and private money, and it is acceptable for it to be expensive... Art should be free of worldly constraints.
While games are commodities... I'm not asking whether this is fair or not, but whether you think this difference in perception and culture effects what games are made, how they are made, and what subject matter games can be about.
The creation of videogames relates to the creation of music albums in the same way coding relates to playing an instrument. Sure, I would say that videogames are art, and I would add the assertion that cars are art as well. Applied arts. These things both feature teams performing numerous creative processes but are subject to something that most things we think of as art are not: the committee, or management. Credits for "solo" albums featuring a dozen writers could seem to be the contemporary scourge of popular music, but if we examine the history of all of recorded music, it's the same process that allowed for the people who held the resources to make sure the first recorded jazz musician was a white man. On the other hand, it might be the only reason Steely Dan is any good.
TEAM: Toll, Ein Anderer Macht's (German joke acronym meaning "great, someone else is doing it" :D)
I read the title as "working with Texans"
It took me a while to notice this video wasn' t about microsoft teams
Hi, Tim! I wanted to ask about your note taking routine since you mentioned it in one of your Carbine stories.
I'm currently working in a small team, and as the project gets older, I'm beginning to notice an increase in disagreements on past facts between the members. It's all very civil, but in several recent meetings I caught myself thinking something like "wait, our engineer is right, we've already agreed on this feature working this way. If only I had notes (like Tim Cain) to support him against our creative lead who is going by some old spec and doesn't remember this". I'm still voicing stuff like this even without "the evidence", but it's not always effective.
So, I'm wondering how did you form the habit of taking notes, when do you find the time, and what's your method for organizing?
I talk about my note taking here:
th-cam.com/video/P0NKR9R0XTg/w-d-xo.html
And I will go into more detail on a video coming up this Thursday.
One of the benefits of doing everything in a text chat app like Slack/Discord/whatever, as discussions automatically turn into notes you can reference back to later.
@@arcan762 naturally. However, when you're all sharing a relatively small space, work chats are only used so much, and specific little details sometimes slip past the task trackers.
@@CainOnGames I had a suspicion you might’ve done a video about it already. I even thought, in my fogged brain, that I tried searching for it.
Turns out it's hard to keep up with a youtuber as prolific as yourself when most of the channels I follow tend to upload once a month at best.
hi tim, its me!
I initially thought this was going to be about Microsoft Teams 😅
Am I the only one that thought he was going to talk about remote meetings on Microsoft Teams? 😁
Imagine what would happen after Tim watches a Simpsons documentary…
Tim, how do you go about building a team? For instance, would it be different if I were running an Indy studio vs. a AA or AAA studio? Or if I were a solo dev working with contractors?
I legit clicked this thinking by the thumbnail it was a fun rant on why MS Teams software sucks 😂
lol what happened at 10:09? Sounded like Fallout was beginning to happen IRL and the pop filter shook.
Cim Tain
Tim, is there a reason you won’t touch Fallout 76?
I don't like playing online much anymore. I have a video about why...coming up in 4 weeks.
@@CainOnGameswhen I had house internet I played it, most people don't play together unless it's a world event.
Mole miner gauntlet was a bit overpowered. But it was like 2 years ago.
@@CainOnGames Wow, you plan videos that far ahead?
@@DanielFerreira-ez8qdI film them that far ahead! 😀
@@CainOnGames I totally get that, but I really don’t see 76 as a online game personally. I mean...it is one obviously, but that is just the open world itself and the events. All the questing and the world itself are a single player experience, I play in a private server most the time by myself anyways. And as the years have gone on its built on that and has become a great fallout game.
I’m not sure how much you’ve heard about it aside from it but I think it’d be worth it for you to take a look. And honestly, even the online aspect can be great too. Somehow seems to be the most friendly community of gamers in my experience.
Thanks for the reply! Eager to see your online video as someone myself who doesn’t enjoy much online games either.
On reviews... I HATE comparative reviews.... This new album/game/movie is not as good as the last one... No, and luckily, the last one is done, go enjoy that, you are free to do that, the new one is... New, and different, review it on its own right please...
Microsoft Teams.... /s
Am I wrong to assume that you're the "cool Uncle"?
Yes, I agree. Microsoft Teams is dreadful.
As long as it isn't MS Teams, I'm on it
there is no I in Team.
There is I in hierarchy.
There is a me if you look hard enough.
depends on the language :)
Tiam xD
Hey Tim, its pronounced Birm-ing-um, not Birmingham over in England
Everywhere or only in Birmingham?
Isn't British dialects nearly as different as the German ones?
I work in tourism (southern EU) and what I always say to my American guests is: "There is no Ham in Brimingham and there are no Cows in Moscow" :)
Tbf you also mispronounce Moskva but that's neither here nor there.
@@Glimmlampe1982 Yes there are various dialects (as in most of the old countries around Europe) but I do not believe there is "ham" in any of them when referring to Birmingham. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong (please specify the part of the UK - I'd honestly like to know).
@@Glimmlampe1982 Pretty sure everywhere in England does
Well damn, I guess it’s a good thing that Tim isn’t in Birmingham, huh? Save your self-righteousness for actual tourists, not the guy providing you a video to watch every damn day of the week from his computer room
Hi Tim