Hi friends!

Last week I was lucky enough to get a ticket to the C2 conference here in Montreal (Creativity + Commerce, as I found out it was called once I was already there). There were a lot of cool things to see and do, but I wanted to talk about some of the inspiring thoughts I got from the talks that I heard while I was there.

The first talk was about “leadership for the innovation culture”, though I would argue it was actually about “how to encourage creativity and innovation”. The talk was interactive and involved playing with play-doh (isn’t that what all professionals do?) and interacting with people you don’t know at your table. A few different exercises led to a few different lessons, and I made a few observations that were unrelated to the lessons:

Task 1: make 3 shapes, whatever shapes you want – Observation: people are very different! It fascinated me that some people made cubes and spheres while others made thin pieces that they shaped into triangles and squares laid flat on the table. I’m curious to know what influenced their decision and what experience led them to make these different shapes instinctively.

Task 2: take a model you made, then cut it in half and swap halves with the person next to you. Then, put the two pieces together in objectively the best way. Then, take your creation and their creation and together, discuss what would be the best way to put those together. – Observation: it’s interesting to see the different personalities come out when discussing what is the best way to do something artistic. Are they assertive? Do they care? How much effort to they put in before giving up? Do they feed off your energy or fight it?

Task 3: make a model of a still-life in front of you, in our case this was a cloth, a lemon and a rose. Then, shuffle seats and try to add to the person’s model as if you were them – Observation: some people really tried to make the model “better”, as in more true to the original. Others tried to understand how the person was seeing the model and what they were trying to achieve; what was important to them, was it texture? Form? Proportions?

This talk also made me realize that often the discussion around the exercise is more exciting than the exercise itself. We had a whole bunch of emergent little stories that popped up as we thought about what the other person was thinking while making their model, and as well talked about how we felt giving creative control of our work to people we don’t know.

Another fun, more concrete bit of learning, was that the top two skills employers are looking for in 2020 are creativity and fast learning when looking to hire (from a survey of a bunch of tech companies).

The second talk, which was an interview about AI and work and a million other things, was highlighted by talking live with David St-Jacques who is currently on the International Space Station. So freaking cool.

The next thought came from the discussions that I had with someone who runs a company that makes educational apps for doctors. To be honest the field doesn’t matter much, but he said that when he interviews, the most important things to millennials that he’s trying to hire are the social change / meaning behind the work and the work-life balance. This isn’t surprising to me, but I think it indicates a general change in the way we view work. If this is the way that people see work, this makes me think that the CEOs of the big companies in 20 years will be the socially responsible, environmentally responsible ones with a focus on work-life balance, and that we’ll see enjoyable work conditions become the norm. This led to thoughts about the future of work in general, but that could be at least a whole post by itself.

The last talk was about branding and was fascinating! It was given by Debbie Millman, author of Brand Thinking, and basically told the story of branding from when it began. This, according to her, was long before we had writing. From the first time when we had symbols that represented something, and people agreed on what they represented, we had branding. A couple of fun facts I learned included the fact that the Marlboro man came almost a hundred years after Marlboro made their first filtered cigarette which was marketed towards women and failed miserably. Another fun fact was about how cartoon characters were drawn on cereal boxes. Look at the image below to see the old depiction of them vs the new one. Other than the colour (and the fact that the first one has grey spots on it because I couldn’t find a good image), what do you notice is different?

Look at the eyes! You’ll notice that nowadays, and since several decades ago, characters on cereal boxes look down at children, instead of up at them. This is because a child looks up at an adult and sees the eyes in the way these cartoon eyes are drawn. This gives them semblance of authority, and makes them more relatable to the children.

The talk was full of great and interesting points, but the final one I’ll talk about here was about branding and our effect on it. Millman talked about the fact that in this day and age, we have the power to control and change brands more than we ever have before. It used to be the case that a company decided their image, and you either chose to buy into it or not. With the advent of social media, influencers, etc., we’re in a place where we can influence a brand by choosing what we want from it. If a certain style of person starts wearing a particular brand, and that spreads within their circles, the brand will pick up on this and start catering to them. This can be powerful when a group that associates with a brand decides that they care about things like environment and social responsibility… the brands have to listen to their audience, and will change their image (and practices, if you’re optimistic) to reflect this. This can also be dangerous, as we saw with Lacoste getting roped into white supremacist outfits a couple of years ago.

There was a ton more that I heard and thought at the conference, but I figured I’d share a couple of these here so that I can better remember them and so that people who read this are (hopefully) entertained. That’s all from me!

It’s been a while since my last post! I’ll try to get on it more often. I guess that’s more for me than it is for you, but oh well. Now you know that I’d like to blog more often.

Today’s post is a reflection on the book Sapiens, by Yuval Noah Harari. This book came highly recommended by some friends, and I found it absolutely fascinating and eye-opening. It tells the story of humankind from the time before we were recognizably human up to today, hitting all the major points of development like the advent of writing, money, religion, etc. I wanted to talk about a couple of big points that made me think, and as usual, try to give people something to reflect on as opposed to summarize the book or teach what was learned.

The first major idea was the idea that Sapiens destroyed everything we’ve ever touched, ever. Since the time that we were tribes of chimp-like creatures, we’ve multiplied and obliterated everything in our path. Even before industrial deforestation, before the industrial revolution and the associated pollution, before global warming was a thing that we knew about, we were killing thousands of species and leaving desolation wherever we went. The giant mammals of Australia are a good example; these giant mammals had never seen predators like us, who managed to invade their territory by boats, and by the time they could learn that we were dangerous, we had already slaughtered them all. Bonus: I learned about the diprotodon, a cute giant wombat.

Another idea I found very intriguing was the idea of money, capitalism, communism, and humanism as “religions”. On religion, Harari says:

Religion can thus be defined as a system of human norms and values that is founded on a belief in a superhuman order.

We know that football is not a religion because it was clearly invented by humans and has a well-defined set of rules and rituals. According to Harari, a religion must “espouse a universal superhuman order” and insist on spreading this belief to everyone. Capitalism is an interesting example of this, because it seems to exist outside of individual humans and while it’s not associated with deities, it has a superhuman way of controlling the entire world’s behaviour. It may not spread in the form of missionaries like other religions, but it spreads through education, culture, and I would argue it’s a strong meme (in the sense of actual memetics, not internet humour). Something to ponder!

Lastly, the idea that agriculture was the beginning of the end for humankind is an idea that resonates very strongly with me. It’s something I had thought before, and he does a great job of explaining this without explicitly saying it in his book. I think a lot of the problems we have in society today and have had throughout the history of modern society have their roots in the fact that we changed from a nomadic hunting and gathering animal to a sedentary, farming one. The range, at least in my opinion, is huge. Materialism (especially exaggerated, damaging forms of it), depression from loneliness, bad eating habits, a culture where work takes up more than half your life, bad sleep habits, disease, the list goes on. I have hundreds more questions about this when thinking about how individualism came about, at least partly from sticking people in tiny houses that they “owned” and separating them from their tribe. So many questions!

But I won’t ask them all here, I’ll simply tell you that overall the read was fantastic and I highly recommend it to everyone. It also makes a good gift!

A few weeks ago was the Game Developer’s Conference in San Francisco. GDC is where a bajillion (I think that’s the official figure) people talk about games for a week, and we get full of knowledge, tons of new contacts, inspired and tired. I was fortunate enough to give a talk at this conference called “Tough Questions To Improve Your Leadership”, which is available on the GDC Vault here, but unfortunately it’s not made available to people who didn’t get a GDC pass.

I wanted to write about this talk because not everyone was able to attend the talk, or went to GDC, or has access to the Vault. I gave out a handout during the talk to follow along with, and it listed the questions I brought up in my talk. Here they are, and you can download the sheet here if you wanted to actually fill it out yourself or with your team.

Along with these questions are some of the sources I used, or keywords to search that are related to the questions and could help you learn more.

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Are you your own worst boss? How could you improve your own leadership by improving how you take care of yourself?
Seth Godin blog post – “Are You Your Own Worst Boss”

How do you make your employees or colleagues feel like they’re appreciated, heard and empowered?
For this question, I asked the audience to break up into groups and discuss this with the people around them, then write down those answers.

How much cognitive diversity does your team have? How can you promote that?Cognitive Diversity Harvard Business Review
Cognitive Diversity Forbes Article
Six Thinking Hats Exercise

How much psychological safety does your team have? How can you promote that?Psychological Safety Harvard Business Review
Psychological Safety Google Study
Cognitive Diversity and Psychological Safety HBR

Are you the rock? Are you the static, immovable force that doesn’t sway in the face of opposition? Do you show vulnerability? Can you be both? How do you see yourself on this topic?
The Power of Vulnerability – TED Talk by Brené Brown

Do you fall prey to the Sunk Cost Fallacy?
Daniel Kahneman – Thinking, Fast & Slow (book)
“How We Think About How We Think” – about Daniel Kahneman & Amos Tversky
Sunk Cost Fallacy, Loss Aversion, Prospect Theory

Do you ever do things because of your role and not because of your knowledge or expertise?

Do you ignore statistics because you think you’re “different”?
Justin Kruger and David Dunning – “Unskilled and Unaware of it”
Dunning-Kruger Effect
Daniel Kahneman – Superiority Bias & Planning Fallacy

Do you reward extroversion over introversion?
TED Talk by Susan Cain – The Power of Introverts

What project management tips could you learn from other studios?
For this question, I asked the audience to trade papers with the person next to them and write an idea on the other person’s sheet.

Do you fill the space in meetings? Try not doing it, see what happens.

Does your team know where do you want to be as an individual in 2 years? 5 years? 10 years? Do you know where they want to be?

How adaptable is your organization? Have you ever answered “that’s just how we do it here” or worse, “that’s how we’ve always done it” when asked about something you do in your company?
Adaptability

How effectively is “work time” used at your studio? When are people at their most productive? How do you help or hinder this?

Do you know the quality of the tasks you’re doing, assigning, or being assigned? Do you know which tasks are “chores”?

Do you communicate your vision or your feelings properly to your team?

Have you considered the unknown unknowns? How do you plan for those?
Daniel Kahneman – Thinking, Fast & Slow (book)

Do you give advice that you shouldn’t give?
Source: literally everywhere, myself included.

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The talk went really well, and I was really happy to see a full room. In fact, I was expecting it to be a smaller room and not full, and it was way bigger than expected! I’m not sure if people came because it was part of the Producer Bootcamp sessions or because of the content of the talk, but I’ll take it, whatever it was. It was also the first time I was speaking alone on such a big stage in the games industry. Last year I did a talk with the lovely Tanya Short, which you can see on the GDC Vault if you have access.

I’m just realizing now that every video ever posted or to be posted of me giving talks will show me in a t-shirt with an animal on it from our game, Ultimate Chicken Horse. I guess I should just make sure to rotate through them often enough…

I’m looking forward to more talks in the future, and I hope that the talk and/or this article was able to help people on their journey, be it in game development or any other industry.

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Bonus! Some other stuff I drew inspiration from but didn’t use directly:
Seth Godin on the Tim Ferriss podcast
Alex Dorans – 5 Signs That You’re Compromising Your Approach to Quality
Brené Brown on the Chase Jarvis podcast

A good friend of mine asked me this question today, on my 30th birthday. Still weird to write that I’m 30, especially when I often feel 12. But this question was an interesting one, and while I can’t know exactly what I was thinking, I have some idea of what I expected and didn’t expect. It’s a nice thought to ponder, and I encourage you to ponder it.

I didn’t expect to be working in the games industry, co-founding a company, or doing any work related to running a business at all. At 20, I would have been in cégep (the school we have here in Quebec between high school and university) and just switching out of music and into sciences. My goal at that point was to become an architect, to design work and living spaces that affected people on a daily basis, without their knowledge of it. The dream of creating a universe in which a person can explore and go about their daily life, the idea that each person who connects with this world I’ve created will have a different reaction to it… this was what I really liked about architecture. After that description, it shouldn’t surprise anyone (myself included) that I ended up in video games.

At 20, I thought that meditation and mindfulness and subjectivity of experience was too spiritual and hippie-dippie for me. I’m certainly not what you’d call a “spiritual” person now, and science is still the absolute only thing that I try to use to describe our experience in this world, but I think that I’m connected with myself in a way that I never could have been ten years ago. In fact, I think all of that has happened in the last year or so, thanks to some great people around me.

I would have thought that by now I would be married, and maybe thinking about children. I didn’t imagine some perfect suburban house somewhere with a backyard and a white picket fence—I always assumed I’d be living in a smaller space, closer to downtown. But I did picture myself married like my brother was a few years back. While we’re on the topic of homes and families, I didn’t picture myself owning a condo, but hey here we are. Here I am, I guess. Hopefully you’re not here in my condo right now.

Overall, I didn’t think that I would be in the spot that I’m in, and I’m extremely grateful for it. I also know now that if I were still my 20 year old self, I wouldn’t have the capacity to be grateful for it, because I didn’t unlock that part of life (that part of the brain?) yet. Besides being happy that I’ve made it 30 years on this earth without any major diseases, without any traumatic injuries, and without, well, dying (knock on wood), I’m also happy with how I’ve changed over the last ten years. I think if you asked my friends, I wouldn’t be noticeably different from how I was ten years ago, and that’s fine. Under the hood there’s more going on, and I’m glad for it.

How about you? What did ten-years-ago you think that you’d be like ten years in the future?

In our sprint meeting this past week, the question of paying streamers to play our game on Twitch and YouTube came up. It led to a longer discussion and brought up some important questions that I’d like to bring up here, and without trying to reach a conclusion, make people aware of the things we have to consider for the future.

The conversation centered around the idea that we want some streamers to play our new update to our game Ultimate Chicken Horse a few days before the release, so that we can build some hype around the launch of the new content. How should we approach these streamers? Do we pay them directly? Do we go through something like the Twitch Bounty? Do we simply offer them the exclusive early content and hope they play it without compensation? There isn’t necessarily a clear answer for this question, so I’ll try to formulate some thoughts here.

The first thing to look at is the relationship between all of the parties. The ones involved here are:

• game developers
• streamers
• Twitch, YouTube, etc. (we’ll call them platforms)
• companies that pay for ads on those platforms (advertisers)
• viewers of content (viewers)
• purchasers of ad products (ad consumers)
• people who buy and play the game (gamers)

So here’s what I think the current situation looks like, and the green arrow with the ‘?‘ is what my team discussed in our meeting.

If you look at the relationship between any two groups mentioned here, it should make sense; for example, platforms receive money from advertisers, and advertisers get visibility in exchange. Advertisers also pay streamers directly and get visibility directly through them. The cash comes back to them from viewers of the content which become ad consumers when they buy the products being advertised to them.

The relationship between the streamer and the developer is the more complicated one here. The developer creates games that the streamer can use to create content for their viewers, and content for the platforms to show to their viewers. In return, the game developers get visibility from the streamers (because of their viewers). The question we were discussing seems to be whether or not the creation of the game is enough to justify the visibility being given to the developer, or if there should be money involved that comes from the developer and not only from the advertisers (either directly or through the platform).

So if we look only at the money flow, it gets injected into the system by people who are engaging with the system, presumably funded by their jobs. The cash comes to the developers when the viewers are convinced to buy the game and become gamers. The cash goes to the advertisers when people become ad consumers. The cycle can continue because the developers, streamers, platforms, and advertisers are making money and the gamers and viewers are happily spending it.

I won’t claim to know what is best for this system or how we should go about ensuring that everyone is happy and well-paid. I’m glad the conversation came up in our meeting because I think it’s useful to write this kind of thing out, and it brings up some interesting questions:

• Should developers be paying streamers directly for the exposure they give to the game?
• What kind of precedent do we set for this interaction, in either case (developers paying streamers or not paying them)?
• Who “owes” who more, between devs and streamers? That is, a huge influencer playing a small game is much more advantageous for the dev than the streamer, but a huge game being created and given for free to a tiny streamer is more advantageous to the streamer. Where’s the tipping point? Does it matter?
• If developers are paying streamers, how do we decide the basis for the payment? Time? Viewers? Engagement? Actual game purchases?
• How do we avoid viewers being turned off by constantly seeing what are considered “ads” (paid streams) as opposed to content that was chosen without bias by the streamer?
• How do we open the communication between developers and streamers without going through platforms to discuss these things?
• What do we think is fair to all parties (including advertisers and platforms)?
• How much should the advertiser money (ad revenue) be going to the streamer as opposed to the platform?

Another thing that came up, for better or for worse, was the idea that indie game studios sometimes ride on the big marketing budgets of the AAA companies in terms of streamers getting compensated. If a streamer makes $30k for playing a new Ubisoft game, they won’t bother asking a small indie for $200 for the same amount of time in their game (for many reasons). If the decision is that developers should pay streamers for the visibility they provide, is it fair to ride on the back of these huge studios?

I realize that this post is asking a lot more questions than it’s answering, but that’s kind of the point. We don’t know what the future of this relationship will look like just yet, but it’s going to be us (developers) alongside streamers who will need to figure it out. We all want what’s best for all parties, and we want to be fair to all parties above all else.

What do you think about this?