Some time ago I sent out a tweet extoling the virtues of timely, concise feedback as a responsibility of leadership in game development.
This is absolutely not a reflection on any specific person I’ve worked with and more an overall topic I’ve been stewing on over my years in the industry – and what I’ve seen to be good, and bad in leadership roles.
In Short, Director and Lead roles aren’t collectibles, they aren’t some magic threshold where you get to start doing the “cool stuff”. You have a lot of responsibilities in these positions, one of the most important is feedback. I’d argue that often in these roles your highs and lows are more pronounced. A good day can be a truly great one, but a bad day is crushing.
You often make no, or reduced commits in regards to your own project – your focus shifts from direct tangible contribution that comes with a revision number towards more people management, expectations, and giving clear, concise, and ON TIME feedback to those working under you.
Leadership roles (And in my experience especially Director roles) aren’t a license to just waive vague opinion around, or for your opinion in meetings to uniformly hold more weight. You haven’t moved to the top of the pyramid, so to speak. You’ve more than anything become a cornerstone. You are, and should be by your conduct – the foundation in which the project, and your area build their success off of and chart the way forward.
This all seems rather emotional, and pointed – so let me elaborate on examples:
As an Engineering Lead, even beyond the traditional code review process – its very possible, and in some cases even very likely that as the engineers who work with you as their direct manager will need your review on if their assigned tasks are actually completed.
As boring as it may seem, going through the In Review column in Jira – it has to be done, and it is your responsibility. The longer time you take to review an engineers task awaiting your feedback, the less time they have to act on said feedback, get the task back in to In Review, and ideally – to Complete.
If there is one thing I know makes the engineers I’ve worked with happy (even if they might keep it to themselves) is having all (or at least a good chunk of) their sprint tasks complete at the end of said sprint.
As an Art Director, you have to be in a staggering amount of meetings (Okay, maybe you -should be- and maybe this depends on the scope and size of the project). Your input is key across your area and across discipline. From the color pallete to the visual style and so much more – your input will shape the direction the project takes visually, design wise, and even technically. Repeating yourself, being introspective of your own decisions, and thinking of the overall health of the project as it moves towards release should be key in your day to day. (And stay on top of your review backlog)
A Creative (or Design) Director might seem like a super cool and vague title. I mean, who doesn’t want to be the “ideas guy” ?! The rude awakening some people might not realize is over the last seven or so years I have spent the most time out of my entire career staring at a blank confluence page, while slamming coffee and trying to think of all the edge cases around a design.
Writing document after document, establishing a projects GDD is arguably some of the most boring, yet ultimately rewarding in terms of overall payoff tasks I’ve ever had to do. Beyond that, trusting the design team working along side me to revise, and/or take ownership of certain areas of the design as the project moves closer to release has been a key growth point in my career at the Director level. Throughout development, being ever present guiding the vision of the project as it adapts to technical challenges, and production hurdles is another key area that you while in this role are responsible for.
The TLDR of this whole brain dump is as follows:
With that cool title and (hopeful) pay bump comes a complete shift in your responsibilities. The way you conduct yourself, the support you give to the team as a whole can make or break the development of a project more so than anything you may have done before.
Your feedback, your direction will enable and empower your team to bring the project to life and sing the best it can. Be humble, your title may say Lead, or Director – but your role is more so than ever before one of support – for those who look to you for that leadership or direction. You are there to help make your team shine, not your ego.
