Bear with me on this one…I’m currently sat watching a TV programme in the UK called ‘Mary Queen Of Shops‘, which is of particular interest because they’re focusing on a business I know near my house.

The programme features Mary, who goes into a failing local business and revamp it into something much more successful.

Why am I writing about it? What on earth has it got to do with video game development? I felt compelled to write something while the programme is still on air

Whilst researching teams, I recently came across 2 similar concepts that describe the skills of people working in your beloved game development industry – “T-Shaped” people and “Generalising Specialist”.

I wanted to know more about them and how these types relate to my experience of people and if the idea gives me something for me to learn.

The shape of the letter is a nice way to visualise someones skill with the horizontal stroke ‘——–’ referring to the breadth of someones skills and the vertical ‘|’ referring to how skilled they are in that particular skill.

Therefore, “T-Shaped” people have a principal skill that describes the vertical leg of the ‘T’, they’re multi-player level designers, script writes, AI programmers or shader artist. However, they have a broad understanding of how things fit together and can branch out into other skills when required although this may not be their strongest area. They can also see  things from multiple perspectives and be inspired and diverse.

“Generalising Specialist” is a term given to someone who has a broad set of skills that peak in one particular area *but* they can slide between similar roles when required. E.g., a level designer who can also script, a gameplay programmer who can also prepare UIs, an animator who can also sculpt.

‘I-Shaped‘ people are highly skilled in a particular area, more so than is seen in people with broader skills, but they pay for this depth of knowledge with a much narrower skillset. This narrow, but deep, set of skills may not be required for a whole project and this may be where you consider outsourcing, freelancers or contract workers to hit the sweet spot without taking the hit of them having nothing to do outside of that one task.

When building a team it’s important to include various types of people in order to succeed. Generally smaller teams start out with all T-shapes and as the team grows and more specialists are needed then the ‘I-Shaped’ people start to appear to when the team and the game start to require more specialist knowledge.

What type of person are you? I think I’m ‘T’ shaped.

Further Reading

• Generalizing Specialists: Improving Your IT Career Skills
• The Ten Faces of Innovation – IDEO’s Strategies for Beating the Devil’s Advocate & Driving Creativity Throughout Your Organization.

I’m typically passionate about making sure our beloved games industry is well stocked with talented, passionate individuals and we’re not going to get them by just sitting back and waiting.

I’ve been actively involved in the promotion of graduate recruitment for years now and I spotted this post that I prompted me to comment, but my comments were removed! So, I thought I’d share them here.

There used to be a time when developers of all sizes existed from small bedroom teams up to hundreds of people working on projects and everywhere in between. Developers of 40-100 people were not uncommon but all that has changed.

I often wander between favouring and hating the idea of a 9-5 culture at work. On the one hand it fits in nicely with a family life where we work to enjoy ourselves, we turn up, do some work, go home and disconnect and plug ourselves into an entirely separate life.

On the other hand, what we do as game developers is a creative process, it requires thinking, passion and creativity that simply cannot be turned on and off at preset times of day.

Imagine a day like this:

• 9am – be creative and passionate when you punch in
• 12pm – stop being creative and thinking about your art.
• 1pm – start being creative again, now, you’ve only got 4.5hrs remaining
• 5.30pm – stop thinking, park your creativity, go home, disconnect
• rinse and repeat.

What happens if I’m on the brink of a brilliant discovery at 17:15 and I need that extra bit of time but I have to leave at 17:30?

I would argue that this simply suits a certain time of person and that person isn’t into making games they love, they’re looking for a job churning out mundane average “product”. Something to do to get paid for and keep them off the streets, something they don’t have to think about and get emotionally invested in. Maybe they’ve been burned out and are looking for an easy life, 9-5 does have it’s appeal sometimes.

A corporate culture like this will ultimately mean that the business itself becomes a function of it’s indoctrined staff, a reflection of the people who work there and the ones who made the decision to make it like this. This may succeed for a time but I can only guess that it won’t last forever.

Now, I am absolutely not advocating disregarding Working Time Regulations and forcing people to work every hour of the day. I’m not saying to over-burden people so they have no choice.

What I am saying is that people don’t think and contribute in this prescribed manner, people change, some people are so into what they’re doing that they want to work weekends anyway, you just can’t stop them. Sometimes you have an off day and haven’t got an idea in your head. You’re fundamentally being told that caring about what you do isn’t what your employer is looking for and the consequence of this is that you will find another outlet.

I think that flexibility is the key here and enabling people to contribute as much as they can to their art, in a way that suits them (within reason) can only be a good thing for the game and the business. We should be results focused and not get hung up on whether someone clocks in at a prescribed time.

We demand a lot from our developers and we need to recognise and reciprocate the gift of time and effort.

Do I support hard 9-5 working hours? No, for all the reasons above

Do I support developers making games with passion and creativity, whenever that may be? Yes