“Team Leadership in the Game Industry” was recently written by Seth Spaulding, Art Director at Firaxis Games, and analyzes what it takes to be successful in a leadership role specifically for game development. It includes a number of interviews with game industry veterans who are in lead or executive positions and examines case studies of leadership failures via the author’s experience. I ordered it from Amazon.com and when it came to Tokyo it apparently made it’s way from Germany (yay for globalization!).
The book starts off with giving some examples of the organization of game development companies of various sizes. If you’ve been in the industry for a while this is nothing new but for people new to the industry this is a good overview.
What the book does really well is identify positive leadership traits that earn the respect of your colleagues and get the job done. Perhaps more importantly the book identifies many skills that may appear to be of highest importance but really aren’t in a leadership position. A simple example – the lead artist does not need to be the best artist on the team. Of course they must know the tools and technologies that are being used to understand the work and to earn the respect of the team but the primary goal of the lead is to manage and help the team succeed as a whole (and possibly do production work depending on the size of the team). There is nothing wrong at all if they are also the best artist but it should not be the main requirement as making art is usually not the primary job function of the lead on a large team.
In an interview in the book with Joe Minton, the President of Digital Development Management, he summarizes his thoughts on good leadership qualities and bad which match fairly closely with my views as well. From the book:
S.S.: What are the most common traits shared by other effective leaders in your experience?
J.M.: Openness, communication, trustworthiness, integrity, ability to motivate, willingness to take measured risks, not procrastinating, understanding that being in charge doesn’t mean being the expert.
[...]
S.S.: What are the worst traits a leader has exhibited in your experience?
J.M.: Randomness, thinking one is the expert on everything, being wishy-washy, weak willed, easily overwhelmed, operating from fear, pretending to be a celebrity.
The book is loaded with great interviews with experienced industry veterans (not “celebrity” developers) that are quite valuable.
Continuing on it includes advice on how to craft job descriptions for leads such that responsibilities are well defined and understood. This is something I wish happened more often across the industry. When applying for a job it is usually quite clear what your responsibilities will be when hired but internal promotions that come with new responsibilities should also include very clear expectation setting for the requirements of the role. The author has suggestions on how to accomplish this in a clear way.
There are plenty of specific tips on many smaller scale but important job functions such as running meetings. Overall it is clear Mr. Spaulding has been in the industry for a long time and has accumulated a lot of valuable experience. I wholeheartedly recommend the book for both people interested in becoming a team leader and as a way to see new perspectives for existing team leaders.
I’m glad that this book isn’t infatuated with “celebrity” designers. Those “big names” are often more skilled at giving interviews to media and self promotion than they are at making games and building teams.
Those skills are undoubtedly useful for promoting and selling a game or pitching a company but I totally agree – for this topic and context I’d much rather hear from people with lots of experience successfully managing projects directly.
This seems to be an interesting book. I haven’t read it yet but since you’ve written quite a good review, I will check it out. Thanks for the heads up :)