{"id":66,"date":"2005-03-14T11:18:40","date_gmt":"2005-03-14T17:18:40","guid":{"rendered":"\/?p=66"},"modified":"2005-03-14T11:18:40","modified_gmt":"2005-03-14T17:18:40","slug":"gdc-design-directors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.codedread.com\/blog\/archives\/2005\/03\/14\/gdc-design-directors\/","title":{"rendered":"GDC: Design Directors"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Friday we went to our final <abbr title=\"Game Developer's Conference\">GDC<\/abbr> session entitled \"Attack of the Design Direcors\".  The talk was given by Brian Allgeier, the Design Director on the \"Ratchet & Clank\" games.  While enlightening, it was also very entertaining.  <!--more--><\/p>\n<div class=\"ads\"><object type=\"text\/html\" width=\"468\" height=\"60\" data=\"http:\/\/www.codedread.com\/gads.php\"><\/object><\/div>\n<p>Some of the things I brought away are summarized below.<\/p>\n<p>A good game designer\/design team needs to work like the \"A-Team\":<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Hannibal - the leader, focus on the overall plan, is it cohesive?<\/li>\n<li>The Face Man - the promoter, pitch concepts, a people person<\/li>\n<li>B.A. Barracus - the mechanic, technical contraints, etc<\/li>\n<li>Murdock - the creative aspect, think outside the box<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Going with this idea, things to question about pitching design ideas:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Is it Cohesive?<\/li>\n<li>Is it Feasible?<\/li>\n<li>Is it Innovative?<\/li>\n<li>Is it Marketable?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Some key things that he attributes to the success of their projects were:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Weekly design meetings to tighten feedback loops between teams and increase knowledge sharing.<\/li>\n<li>Always find ways to measure work so an accurate perception of progress can be made.<\/li>\n<li>Delegation is key to empowering team members and creating ownership.  Find ways to keep the momentum going.<\/li>\n<li>Maintain aggressive schedules.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>One thing he stressed was that, to be successful, you have to \"stick to the plan\".  The problem with working on a project is that, over time, ideas go stale and you begin second-guessing your design ideas.  This can be a developer's worst nightmare and is one of the driving issues behind the saga that was <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gamespot.com\/features\/btg-daikatana\/\">John Romero and Daikatana<\/a> (an excellent read if you have the time).  Though I think the tragic flaw behind Romero was his ego, I think he might have been able to learn something from Allgeier about the role of the design director and management.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Friday we went to our final GDC session entitled &#8220;Attack of the Design Direcors&#8221;. The talk was given by Brian Allgeier, the Design Director on the &#8220;Ratchet &#038; Clank&#8221; games. While enlightening, it was also very entertaining.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,20,25,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-66","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-games","category-gdc","category-software","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.codedread.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.codedread.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.codedread.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.codedread.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.codedread.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.codedread.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.codedread.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.codedread.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.codedread.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}