Partway through May and I want to talk about something that has been on my mind and interesting to see as I'm growing into that leadership position.
hey everyone i hope you're well playing and making the games that you all love you're joining me your host max pairs lead level designer absolute pleasure for you to be with me today whether it be morning evening or night whenever you're listening to this thank you for taking the time out of your day to join me um yeah it is now may i am absolutely shocked uh how quickly everything has is gone in terms of the speed of the year like jesus christ where has it all gone so quickly um yeah as i'm recording this it was only yesterday gta 6 announced that it's been delayed which is uh yeah quite interesting
to see um just where the whole market of games will we see things now push back i guess we'll never know in terms of some internals will be pushed forward who knows right it's quite a big ripple throughout the industry as a whole uh and yeah really what i wanted to talk about today instead of a traditional sponsor what i'm offering now is that of joining the mailing list social media is constantly changing all the time as we're seeing some people are leaving twitter others are choosing to remain blue sky threads all of this so it's really hard to reach out to all of you incredible aspiring and current
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As maybe you know, it was the end of last year where I became a Lead Level Designer.
We've talked about a few things with that and the transition into this new role and kind of another thing I wanted to share I was listening to a really great talk where he's interviewing between Corey Barlog and Neil Druckmann and them talking about being in their positions which is especially Druckmann man I don't honestly get how and this is not said in a disrespectful way this is more like how this happens but he has such a pivotal role in so many places that I'm surprised you let that happen because I've seen it in other companies where each role he has is so so important must be a ton of work
and yet you know like he's able to must be must be able to do it and it's incredible to to watch and got huge respect for for both men and you know only can dream of uh careers like like them and hopefully one day that can be the case but you know just so much respect for them and being in their uh how do i say positions but they're talking about like one of the things they're learning in when they switched over to that of director creative directors head of studios all these kind of elements i think the one that really stuck to me was that uh i can't i think i believe it was neil who basically
said a lot of the time he finds with new directors that they are are the ones basically stopping new ideas because they feel as directors the best ideas or the ideas that get put forward should only come from them right and i think it comes from a position of it being new you're feeling as the director you're the one who constantly being asked for answers etc like it's quite a yeah quite a challenging one in terms of letting go as well because you're letting go also of actually being interactive with the game i think that's always one of the most interesting things for me as i'm seeing more and more
uh younger developers come through there and i was no different i'll admit that rush to become into a leadership managerial director role and i'm always like man like slow down just because people are getting seniors much quicker now um and i don't necessarily think that's because of quality i think it's more down to because principles now a route it's changed a lot in terms of uh what is senior right what is the quality of senior and from that as well i always try to recommend to people and i can't remember who i think it was actually barnaby zola who uh is a director at ubisoft he'd mentioned
essentially to me that uh you know don't rush to get into leadership because then you stop actually making games especially in the triple a space right and i think that's really important is like i know everyone wants to get that obviously money is such a huge part important part of it because game dev for the most part is not paid particularly well especially in your early days so for for people to to want to get that i understand but also just really enjoy the fact you get to have have a actual impact in shaping of the game uh but yeah the the whole point of being like i said letting go of ideas
is something that i noticed for in myself where it's a tough one to do simply when i say that it's not as in tough for uh your team or hopefully it's not tough for your team to pitch incredible ideas i've been on one side where i've constantly pitched ideas and been told no and the other side why it has been pitched and I've sadly had to say no and it's nothing to do with bad ideas or anything I think one of the hardest things for me that I am learning in the leadership position is the element that when you are in leadership the other side of it you have to consider is you also in that form of production right
a lot of producers are not looked favorably on i will say i've not worked with many uh many good producers in my career either but there have been some incredible ones and as a lead you have to you have to focus on making sure the game comes out right like the game releases that is on you and production and one of the sad things that i'm seeing as a lead is you eventually hit a point in the projects many of us know where it's not about aren't new ideas it's not about uh going to create something super new it's about small ideas that you can get big wins out of especially when you're closing and it's
something that again like i say it's a bit of a a challenge where you're like i said i'm super happy to have team members be able to pitch me ideas and share them and sometimes like you know i'll need maybe a couple hours to think on them because when people are pitching ideas they're normally thinking about it just in their their avenue unless they're more senior developers they understand that there is a snowball effect when you're pitching ideas what other teams do we need for this it may be quick on your side but what are the bottlenecks on other disciplines and as i said when you start to
switch to more of a closing phase it is a real shame because you want to figure out a great way to be able to encourage this but let them know hey, we're at that different stage.
I had a really good conversation with Alex who is the creative director on the new Mafia game.
And it was a great conversation as we were talking about one of the missions I was working on.
And he funny said he's like, oh Max I feel like every time we come into these reviews you're constantly pitching us ideas and all we do is say no. And he said it's not because we don't appreciate them.
it's because there are some things where my views didn't align with the the company's design direction which is unspannable and also it was due to time and money which is uh yeah it's something that people forget about right and it's not always the the fun sexy part of design right like or game development that we need to you know make a profit stay stay around stay employed and we We need to make sure that what we're servicing or what we're getting our money out of is really the big bang for the buck, right?
And I really, really, really appreciated that conversation because to me, it showed that he was listening.
He showed that he was appreciative of this, but there was an alignment issue and that if I wanted to share more or pitch more, I had to consider their views.
and again that's something that I really do again appreciate and where we are with the project I'm on now I can't say anything about it but we're on uh the further side and one of the kickoffs I had before is like look guys you know this is no longer time for pitching ideas not because I don't want to hear them it's because we've just got to finish this and I really appreciate everyone's ideas and that and you know getting the team to be aware of those possible issues because i've seen and i've heard stories where people have pitched ideas and then others have like made the snide comment others
have laughed and that's not what you want you want to build a culture for ideas a friend of mine was just telling me how uh there was a study going on with like not just game development as a whole like what team percentage should it be for for the best possible outcomes and it was actually 60 40 60 senior developers and 40 newer junior kind of developers right that's quite interesting it's almost that even of a split because right now we're seeing um a lot let's say uh a lot less junior developers right now and it makes me very sad because there's all these people studying paying for university
degrees colleges courses and no guarantee of anything right now and it's interesting because you i'm hearing i'm not sure about many of you just on a side note about you know the work difference between gen z and other generations right and i was saying to someone who's you know telling me about some of these stats that like oh the youngest person i've recently worked with is 28 right i don't think their class is a gen z at all so even as a lead i would love to have some more young blood inside of my team again that's out of my control uh but i appreciate more developers as more younger developers
there because also when people are pitching ideas sometimes it is really hard especially right now we're all seeing people like as of recording this I think it was on here 3 -4 days ago the announcement about EA Respawn 3 -500 jobs I think I read lost it's really hard as an older developer to not become jaded and just see it as a job and just see it as your 9 -5 and that's not what I want like hell it's a goddamn saturday it's absolutely beautiful outside and uh i'm here talking about video games with all of you because like all of you listening i'm super goddamn passionate about this and i want
a team to be super passionate and it is hard to sometimes balance that is what i'm really expressing with all of this right the fact that we have how do i say we have to hit deadlines and sometimes there are points in production where it doesn't work with those deadlines investing in something new and again if people can see great glimpses to make things better in terms of small tweaks with systems you already have that don't have a rippling effect or if it does it's very minuscule on other teams then that's amazing and that's what we all want and it's great to see when those happens but I think
it's about honest conversations sharing it like I shared with the conversation I had with with Alex and it's those sort of things that I really respect and as I said I've been in a lot of meetings especially when I was younger constantly picture ideas this that there and you know I was very fortunate one of uh my leads that i respected growing up uh daniel moeller uh who's been on the show and he said to me that he viewed me as one of the more creative people on the team at the time and i was like absolutely not no way uh but i had space to do that i had space to do that and that's what i want
to try encourage with my team and just be conscious of right it's very hard thing to do it doesn't always mean it'll happen but i just want to share with you also that like maybe when you're pitching ideas understand more of the cost because it took me a while it took me till i was well into intermediate level right like if i do this okay how many days of animation is it how many dirt and like each place is different right like when you pitched an idea at ubisoft or cd project for for me it was you made like a quick prototype right you could quickly see it yo you didn't have art maybe had some
form of art but it was maybe more blocky there's some reused VFX right but over it for example with ninja they were very much like we want you to prototype something to like the final products and we can all see how it would look right and that takes time from other teams so if you're prototyping to that detail to that standards then it better let's say better make sure it's it's that high high quality and it works that way and it's those sort of things to to consider right and it's just asking other teammates that you're working with right you know just asking how long do you think this would take
why does it take that long so you can understand it further down the line these sort of things and again does it tie in with this theme and style of the company of the project all of those come into it right and all this to say again is as the the element i was talking about with neil drucken don't don't feel that as a someone in management all the good ideas need to come from you what you want to build is that of a team where everyone gets to pitch fucking great ideas right like again there's some things where you want feedback and it could might you might be at the stages of project you can't
address that that feedback and those are really hard conversations and ones that i really as i said hate having to to do because you're seeing someone so frustrated and you have to you know help them understand what the system's already in but also allow them to know like yeah you can vent to me you're right this is wrong or you're right we can hopefully look into this or encourage them to make notes so next turn around we can go through and try address as as many of these as we can possible, right?
All these elements here are really, really important.
So to me, that's something that I just think is, again, like encourage the team, build a space for it.
Like it's hard, I will say, just in general, being a lead.
Like I watched so many GDC talks, so many TED talks about leadership.
Just finished a book called Radical Candor.
Very good book, a little bit dry, but very good.
tribal leadership it was this hard book leaders eat last like Jesus Christ but that's a story for another time but I've read all these things watched all these things and the one thing I think that they all miss out especially in leadership with games because I've seen it in many studios the studio I'm at as well where as a lead you're not just leading a team you're still contributing to the development of the game right right i'm still involved in making levels i i think i have the same amount maybe one less than the others of my team right that's quite a lot to do that have all the meetings
all those things and that's not spoken about a huge amount but the thing that to me is is really important even though it doesn't they said they don't talk about the element of trying to deliver something and be a good lead because they don't always go hand in hand right like you want to encourage your team to grow you want to aid them because if your team is better if your team is a place where you feel that you can all trust one another i guess what it only makes your life easier because you can delegate much more uh clearly and no results can be made you know that how they communicate and represent
themselves is align with how you as a lead want to be seen in terms of the team to other teams and that building strong relationships with other teams is super important and yeah i think it's uh that's the challenge right like it's not always that easy that simple as i said you have to think about closing and i really like you know switching from principal to lead i really envy uh or look back back now fondly on the times for instance being able to yeah here's that idea here's that idea here's this new one i thought about and even if i said no to i could still versus now having to be on the flip
side to think about okay well does this idea work yeah actually it does or does this uh will this have a cost on production time can i speak to a producer about it to get that extra extra time right and again all all part of the job i just think it's something i just want to encourage for people moving on when you're having team meetings when you're hearing people pitch ideas encourage it you know if you're not a fan of it point out some design flaws don't let it be snide don't let it be disrespectful but say hey we don't have time for this but i think the idea is really good or oh sorry i interrupted
you let please finish let them sell the whole idea to you because yes if you distill it down it doesn't sound as cool but if you're able to let them express themselves they'll appreciate and they know that this is where they can keep pitching more and more great ideas so yeah everyone this is my kind of a little thought ramble something that as i said i'm trying to learn from i hope that you find this i hope you're seeing more more ways for you to express whether that being someone to support in a team environment or being able to push ideas to others out there that when you're thinking about them
you can confirm what they are and think really about production costs.
So everyone, take care.
Thank you so much again.
If you want to get in contact with me you can at leveldesignlobby at gmail .com You can also reach down to us over on Twitter at MaxPairs or BlueSky at MaxPairs We have a mailing list so if you want to get other more great resources that's three times a week sign up there we have the books that I've written they're actually wrong side they're just, they wouldn't be above here if we could see it and the level design kit as well so thank you all very much I really appreciate it take care I'll catch you all next time
