I’ve just posted an article on Gamasutra about what I’ve called ‘Creative Assembly Lines‘. Here’s an excerpt:
If Henry Ford’s Detroit automobile factory was the answer to the manufacturing problems of the 20th century, what might its 21st century equivalent look like: a “Creative Assembly Line”?
Can a company be consistently creative while still maintaining its productivity? If so, how would a system capable of delivering “hits” repeatedly actually work?
After all, one without the other has no value. Being creative is fine – but if you never release anything, you’ll eventually run out of money and deprive the world of your genius. Similarly, generating lots of products that offer the world nothing new is equally worthless.
Feel free to have a read, and please remember to let me know what you think – I’m always looking for new information or opinions to help me refine these ideas!
Thanks,
Colin.
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“If you give a good idea to a mediocre team they will screw it up; if you give a mediocre idea to a great team they will either fix it or throw it away and come up with something that works.”
Couldn’t agree more…
I belive that the more important part (right after getting the best team), is in pre-production… Really start to think things through before getting on a half-baked project… That doesn’t mean that a good idea can’t be saved for later. But you always have to prioritize something!
For example… The “mythical lunch”, when Pixar just babbled away with dumb ideas across the table. Most of all, if not every one – don’t recall quite well, would have to check my copy of Pixar’s short movies – , ended up as a hit (like you mentioned in the article)! I see this happening for two reasons:
1st – Creative freedom and a good base concept. They were having lunch, joking around. No stress, no pressure, just having fun! They were being themselves and intuitively letting out stuff that their collective personal/professional/artistical experience told them that was so originally strange that it had to work. If it got them a good laugh, it sticked with their mind. Plus, the potential for chaining even more good material in order to create a good story.
We still have that primordial need of listening to stories around the campfire… Change the campfire to a movie theater (or a living room with a game console/pc), and the outcome is the same.
2nd – Amassed technical experience. They had a lot of technical skills knotches under their belt as 3d developers, so they mastered the means as well as the message… But they didn’t rushed to let it out all the projects at once just because one day they had found out that they could make a better shading plug-in that in the previous day.
They allowed themselves to wait for a good timing where the right technical skills could be used to develop the right story (and with that, allowed the story itself to be matured much like you do with a good wine, or in your case, scotch:P – in any case it’s a correct blend of many flavors and ingredients). And this becaus, like you said, they mus get paid in the end of the month…
That being said, they prioritized their work. “What can we do best with what we got?”. Don’t try to do the best in the market, do the best you can do. Otherwise, you’ll always be focusing in other people’s strengths and successes that may or may not be your own. If you’re an excellent wood carver, don’t try to succeed with being a blacksmith…
It’s equally important to know yourself as much as the market, and to know what you can truly offer. Nobody necessarily sets out to make a list of published hits. What you must set out to do is to make a product that is accurately well developed to the best extent of your current abilities, and if it is something of real quality, then it’ll get a life of it’s own when it hits the market. Like you said also, there’s no need to push bad products with lots of marketing anymore… The internet became the best vehicle for publicity ever. People talk easily of what they like or not, you just have to light the right fuse =)
Sorry if there is anything that’s not quite understandeable, I wrote it in one stroke, lol. But I didn’t want to miss the chance of passing my two cents in this subject.
Badger – you’ve offered some incredibly perceptive additional insights there. I think your comment is another whole blog-post in its own right! Thanks very much for taking the time to write all this down – it’s appreciated.
Your observation about the importance of Pre-Production is a topic very close to the heart of the Denki Way. Our development process typically divides in the ratio 40:20:40 – that’s 40% Pre-Production, 20% Production and 40% Post-Production. We’ve been advocating this approach since our first game, “Denki Blocks!”, back in 2001. We’ve used it to deliver more than 100 commercial games successfully, and yet we still meet many people working in the Games Industry today who can’t believe we spend 40% of our entire schedule preparing for Production. “What do you *do* with all that time?!” they exclaim, to our continued amazement…
Your point about the fun process by which many of Pixar’s story ideas came about is an interesting one I hadn’t considered in much detail before. But now you draw attention to it I’m definitely going to have to give this some thought, as it’s clearly significant.
Their decision to focus on using what they know, rather than relying on entirely new technology is central to their success I’m sure. Again, this is something Gary Penn has recognised as part of the Denki Way. He refers to it as “repertoire” – akin to the tool-box actors or other performers develop during their career that allows them to move between disparate roles and yet still deliver a stunning performance. He suggests this is one of the most powerful and least understood aspects of performance that our industry has yet to learn to use to our advantage.
Great stuff Badger. This is exactly the sort of feedback that helps us to build our understanding of our craft. Can I recommend you either copy and post the comment on to the original Gamasutra article, or at least post a comment with a link to your post here? It really needs to be seen by anyone who reads the blog as it’s a great companion piece.
Thanks again for the feedback – it’s really appreciated.
Cheers,
Colin.
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Hi Colin!
I’m honestly glad that I was able to be of some use.
It only serves to prove what I stated above, that the sharing of information, freely and willingly, only helps to better oneself.
That being said, I thank you for your kind comment. Which, coming from one the Denki “family members”, has a very special weight to it!
Me and my longtime buddy/fellow coworker Gevan (which is also a big Denki fan), have discussed this sort of topics in great length. After your “review” we’ve decided to refine the argument here a bit more with our shared experiences (or at least correct the spelling mistakes due to the quick nature of my reply), and I’ll post it on Gamasutra, as you recommended.
I’ll place the link here for another round of your very much appreciated analysis.
Godspeed,
Badger a.k.a. Filipe T.
Hi Badger and Colin!
Well I make Badger words my own words. He knows I agree with him.
Although we can’t forget that many games and movies will sell just because of their title. We know for start that a Transformers, X-Men or dragonball movie will sell just because of the name. Doesn’t mean it will sell a lot, but there’s a big chance that it will sell enough to gain good profit from it. And this works the same for the game industry.
This aproach to the industry will work well if you know how to choose the right title in the right momment. But again.. “If you give a good idea to a mediocre team they will screw it up;” so the quality of the team will always be important.
This matter is also beeing adressed in more detail on the article at gamasutra.
Anyway, just wanted to point out that original and creative ideas are not the only way to gain some success in the game industry… But I admit that I find beeing original and creative way more fun and relaxing!
Take care!
GEvan.. a.k.a. Gabriel E.
Filipe/Gabriel – I’m glad to hear my feedback’s prompted you to consider tidying up your own thoughts so you can publish them on Gamasutra. It’s definitely useful to get these sorts of ideas written down so others can read and be inspired by them – we all benefit from that as it helps to push forward the thinking in our industry. As a young industry, learning about and experimenting with the creative process is absolutely essential to ensuring its evloution as a medium.
Your point about licensed products is certainly true, although it’s slightly beyond the scope of what I’d tried to address in the Creative Assembly Lines piece, as I was specifically looking for examples of companies creating original products.
We’ve built our fair share of licensed games at Denki, and there’s no doubt some of them out-sell original titles, even though they may not be as much fun to play.
Again, this was something we learned the hard way from our experience with “Denki Blocks!” – the positive reviews weren’t translating in to sales, whereas games based on cartoon licenses were generally reviewing poorly and yet still storming the charts.
We concluded it could only be because customers in the Game Boy market at that time weren’t buying games based on reviews; instead they were buying them based on familiarity.
I’ve experienced this effect myself in bookshops and the like, where I’ll scan down a line of books and only pick up the one I’ve already heard about. It’s entirely possible that every other book on that shelf is actually a better book, yet here I am grabbing the one I know of. As I see it, that’s when the effect of good marketing becomes crucially important.
In the end, it led to this observation: “Great games don’t sell. Well marketed games sell. And great games that are also well marketed sell loads.”
This is something that’s becoming even more important with the arrival of markets such as the Apple and/or Google App Stores.
And, as coincidence would have it, this is also going to be the focus for one of my next blog posts… so, well anticipated!
Cheers,
Colin.
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Hello again Colin!
Badger just posted on Gamasutra an article we made about what we were talking here. Take a look, here’s the link:
http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/FilipeTeixeira/20090627/2153/Production_or_Destruction__A_quick_guide_for_project_management.php
Take care!
GEvan..
Great blog guys! I’ve posted a comment on the Gamasutra page, and put a link to the piece from my Creative Assembly Lines blog on Gama too. People need to read this.
I notice you’ve also been assigned “Featured Post” status by the Gama administrators too – pretty impressive for a first post!
Cheers,
Colin.
PS: And I notice your link has shown up a limitation of the formatting on our new website… I’m sure Dave will be scratching his head trying to figure out a solution as I type
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We’ve thanked you on Gama, and now we’re thanking you here! We were surprised also… And there is so much more to be said! We could tell you stories that we’ve seen happen in Design companies we’ve worked before, for example.
First we saw it, we thought that it was just something standard being a recent blog. But, I hope it helps!
Heh, we noticed the formatting thing too. Say Dave we’re sorry for the extra load!
PS: It’s funny you mentioned actors and performers before, since my dad was one and now is a producer for one of the biggest theater companies here (I grew up very close to the performing arts).
Like I said, I guess it’s all connected!
Take care,
Badger&GEvan..
wtf—?
Dave? Too much caffeine?
Looks like our website became popular! I’ve put some measures in place to deal with that kind of thing in the future.
On the plus side, at least I fixed the extra long link problem
LOL
Point taken!
*bows at Dave’s wisdom and superior technical skills*