Article by Mohammad Reza Arashiyan
If someday I decide to mention six of my most important experiences in Unbound Game Studio, I will definitely come up with this list of six. We, at Unbound Game Studio, have the experience of starting a small studio and grow it into its current state, accommodating more than 30 active members from 5 countries around the world. And looking at this journey, I narrate these 6 points from these adventures for you.
5- Ask yourself if your team’s current pipeline has the capacity to accept a new member.
The pipeline is the path of completing a project from the beginning of the Idea step to Design, Develop, and finally QA. The progression and delay of each stage, solving dependencies in the construction process, and validating the produced product are all steps in a pipeline that you do them planned or none-planned in the team.
At Unbound Game Studio, we have different pipelines for the sub-teams (which we term as Squads), based on the members of these sub-teams. Based on my experience, you cannot extend a pipeline designed for a 3-person team to a 4-person team, or vice versa; because pipelines designed for average or crowded teams generally have more complexities than those for 2 or 3-person teams, and also the pipeline’s freedom of 2 or 3-person teams creates serious problems for larger teams. (I will explain the reason and solution to this issue in detail in another post.)
So, when adding a new member, you need to know whether you need to change the pipeline for your project or not. Sometimes, pipeline’s changes do not have much time and financial cost, but sometimes you need to keep the production process at a specific level to meet the priority and delay tasks, which will incur financial and time costs for you.
Because I intend to write a detailed post later on the production pipelines of games, I will avoid further explanation at the moment. But briefly, I must say that if adding a new person is expected to result in changes to team members or tasks exceeding 25%, you probably need to be prepared to change the pipeline!
4- Specify the skills you really need in the team.
First, ask yourself why my team needs a new person? Try to answer this question in keywords and separate bullet points. Most of the time, your reasons should not really lead to hiring a person! So, make sure you have a Skill title in your keywords that your team currently cannot handle, Or you are facing the keyword “heavy workload” that adding a new person can help with.
If your first step leads to the answer “I need a new member,” then you need to ask yourself the second question: What skills do you expect your new member to have? At this point, avoid general answers. For example, do not say, “I need a Backend programmer.” Be specific and say, “I need a NodeJS programmer with DevOps skills.” If you cannot identify your real needs, get help from other experienced people.
Do not forget the skills that you think are ordinary. If you use a specific project management system, if you use a specific version control, if you follow a specific convention, be sure to write them down and mention them in the job posting.
Keep in mind that programmers are not Batman or Iron Man who have all the abilities. Try to hire an skilled person for each Skill. You can only find a Game Developer who can write Backend code and meanwhile do Level Design and 3D modeling; next to Batman and Iron Man! (Even if you find one, do not hire! Let Batman and Superman save the city with Batman and Superman!)
3- Team members of a game development studio are not construction workers!
Creative teams have a greater level of communicative complexity with their employees. In my opinion, the difference between a construction painter and a professional artist is that creativity is removed from the work of one of them. Both work with art, both use rather similar materials, and both are familiar with the dominant artistic space. But at the end, usually a construction painter cannot be a professional artist.
Game development has a similar environment; game developers (in any role, be it game designer, artist, developer, etc.) inject a part of themselves into the product. If you impose stress and pressure on your team, the injection of these individuals into your product will have the scent and taste of stress. If you force them into decisions, your product will not be juicy and appealing. On the contrary, if you take care of their mental and emotional well-being, encourage them to be their best, nurture their artistry, and appreciate the scent and taste they inject into the product, your product will be full of unique and engaging ideas implemented in the best possible way.
In my opinion, the reason for the failure of a game like Cyberpunk, and the reason for the success of a game like the Mario series, is this very issue.
2- Does your human resources department have the capacity for this number of employees?
Continuing from the previous section, it’s essential to emphasize again that your team members are artists who require attention to their artistic spirit. The responsibility for this importance and ensuring their well-being lies with the human resources department (or its equivalent in smaller teams). When hiring a person, you need to ask yourself whether we will have the ability to provide emotional and psychological support to this new member. For example, who will be responsible for reviewing feedback and working conditions for this person? Who will ensure that the needs of this artist in the coming months, such as financial or emotional needs (like breakup, marriage, losing family members, migration, etc.), are met?
At Unbound Game Studio, when we were much smaller, we held monthly meetings directly with the CEO. These meetings were very friendly, and due to the specific personality of the CEO (Moeen) at that time, they were usually conducted in a friendly atmosphere, and no one felt like they were talking or blaming the highest-ranking studio person.
As we grew larger and reached a medium size, Moeen no longer had a dedicated time for these meetings, and most of the monthly meetings were canceled. At this time, a person was added to the team in the role of an HR manager, and we celebrated adding a new Role to the team as our first HR manager! This new manager, by creating a series of online Forms, of weekly surveys with ready-made questions, weekly team bonding sessions, and monthly private sessions, was able to handle their tasks well.
But we grew even larger this time, and new members from other countries were added to the team. At this time, we added a new role called HR Coordinator. The person who accepted this role was a psychologist with a superficial knowledge of the gaming industry and was in a same age range compared to the members of our team. This person took responsibility for monitoring the mental well-being of the group and, for the first time in our team, if team members encountered severe mental and psychological problems, they could meet with a specialist in this field in a two-way communication. While all team members have regular monthly sessions to monitor their mental status, and if necessary, these sessions could be adjusted to larger or smaller intervals with the prescription of the HR Coordinator.
1- Consider the concentration of your organizational culture or team culture!
Stones placed on the bottom of a river are angleless due to erosion with water and stones next to each other. If you pick up a stone from the side of the river on a summer day and throw it into the water, you will give it a new life: the stone will start to move due to the water flow and become rounder and rounder. Now imagine that instead of one stone, you pour a hundred stones into the river; undoubtedly, this process will be repeated, but it will take longer for all the stones to become round. If you repeat this experiment with a truckload of stones, you can be almost sure that the river will close, and consequently, the course of the river will change.
Your teams have a culture or organizational culture. This organizational culture is a set of unwritten rules that have the potential to be transformed into written rules and are not committed to execution. And new people are like those cornered stones that enter this river. At the beginning, these people need time to get to know the organizational culture, break the unwritten rules, and try to compensate for it, and after a while, they get used to this new culture and become part of it. The moment these new individuals get used to the culture, or lose their importance, the process becomes more time-consuming and harder. And if carelessness occurs in adding these individuals, it can destroy your team from within.
At Unbound Game Studio, we have two rules for new people entering the teams:
First, a maximum of 25% of the population of a squad can be composed of newcomers. The direct manager of each newcomer is usually the manager of that squad or the Product Owner of that squad, and these individuals get acquainted with each other during onboarding sessions.
Second, individuals who usually have a lot of communication or responsibility with other members of a Squad (such as Product Owners or Seniors) will not be placed directly in that position during onboarding. For example, as soon as a PO is hired, that person will not start their work directly as a PO. Therefore, new members usually take assistant roles in the first months to be able to take full responsibility for the job after onboarding and getting to know people.
Bonus Note – Know the next step, Predict the Next Structure of your team
Don’t expand your team recklessly. More important than having a good technical team is being able to support this technical team. So, at the first opportunity, draw a 5-year roadmap for yourself and understand what structure you should have for what number of members to avoid problems.
It’s okay to have people in small and low-population teams take on responsibilities outside their conventional role (as I mentioned, the CEO of the organization, Moeen, was also responsible for HR at early time). But keep in mind that as the team’s population increases, primary roles become more bold, and side-roles lose color. This moment of losing color doesn’t mean a decrease in the importance of these tasks; rather, it means not enough time to perform them. This moment of losing color is when you need to think about hiring someone for that responsibility.
We envisioned a 5-year roadmap for the structure of Unbound Game Studio at the beginning. We envisioned different milestones for hiring roles such as HR Coordinator or PR, and with each person added to the technical body, we made sure we were still taking steps towards completing the 5-year Unbound Game Studio puzzle. This team structure and roadmap may change over time, and that’s okay! Just know what the next step you need to take is.
Remember that life is a long journey, and success comes with small steps in the right path, not by running in the wrong paths…