Passion or Professionalism?

DrCokePepsi

The following is a response to Ernest Adam's article, "The Designer's Notebook: Passion Versus Professionalism" and was written as an assignment for my Game Development Major at BHCC. 

Check out the article here, on Gamasutra: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/134891/the_designers_notebook_passion_.php?page1

Pretext: I wanted to throw this out there for multiple reasons; 

(1) To help eager developer wanna-be's - not being used derisively - to realize that you may have good ideas, but you have to work INCREDIBLY hard to cultivate success in the industry. Do not be dissuaded, but rather get inspired, and start on that grand 'idea' NOW. There is nothing stopping you from initiating your path to success.

(2) To identify the issues within the industry today, especially the MMORPG industry - which is ruled entirely by passion (grandiose dreams of which are not realized) or professionalism (cash shops and spreadsheets that determine what should be in the game based off of demographics and statistics). It is entirely lacking a balance of the elements.

(3) To speak my mind, and hopefully inspire someone who either wants to make games, or already does and rekindle that flame that keeps them going. Also, a bit of a philosophical discussion behind the process of game development should be interesting and fun.

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Passion Vs. Professionalism within the context of the game development industry is an interesting topic. I'm going to talk about my own motives, and move on to the grander context of the article and what the author, Ernest Adams, is addressing. 

The game development industry is a new beast, a new industry...something that is commercially relayed as either art, entertainment, a waste of time, an educational platform, a hobby, or as a paramount technological innovation. It is either well, or poorly received by educated, uneducated, influential, and average people across the world. 

But it has grown globally, and it is most definitely a cultural staple of our times in either negative or positive ways.

The sudden expanse, and emergence of such an 'informal' industry has almost failed to construct a meta, or standard, for the industry and it's operations. Lines are not rigid, but are blurred and distorted around the concept of business ethics relating to the sale of 'art', or 'products', or even the turn-over rate and demanded hours of employees within the industry. 

The Game Development industry is still new and very informal. Employees are either taken advantage of, or taken care of by what either becomes their company, or their friend group. At the same rate, Game Development is not Gameplay. So, very often, is it confused and misinterpreted by the general population that Gaming is similar to making the Gaming experience. And that is not true.

Fortunately for myself, I not only realized this truth, but have embraced and even enjoy the extended hours, and demand that is the process of actual development. I truly appreciate, am motivated by, and have an extreme passion for BOTH development and gameplay. But the concepts of both of these dimensions to working in the industry are often misconstrued, and it entirely depends on the position of the developer, their capabilities, and their passion for games that determines what they will be doing and how they will be doing it.

The age-old adage, life is all about balance; as symbolically displayed by the chinese ying-yang, is the key element in life itself essentially. And to limit yourself to either being a professional or a passionate is failure. But to lean in either direction is acceptable and expected.

'Developer' is such a broad term that no one person can master 'development', but rather they can hone a strong level of ability in any of the given aspects of development, and be familiar with the others. Professionalism favors more specialized industry developers.

For instance, a 3D modeler is often delegated rather specific, or generic tasks such as creating basic environment props like rocks, or making a bunch of different, simple, engine components like pipes, and buttons etc. Without passion, he is likely to leave the company out of utter boredom, or dissatisfaction. But what drives him through these specific tasks is professionalism and work ethic, but the ultimate motivating factor is the passion-driven project that these assets are for. The level of passion an employee has essentially governs his ability to see past the mundane, and into the perspective of the entire project's progress and goals. Both of these elements combined push him further in his specific specialization. 

A designer on the other hand, would likely rely more heavily on his impulsive ebb and flow of passion that essentially drives their creative process, thus spawning new worlds for players to experience. That being said: game development, even in the designer's field, is hard work. Task sheets, planning, and analyzing nitty-gritty details, or even researching different mythos to derive inspiration or to align historical contexts is essential to a designer's work, but what motivates them, essentially, is their passion for games and design.

So, in essence, neither Passion nor Professionalism reign dominion over the other, but they work in tandem to either motivate, or push through demotivated states, to achieve the ultimate goals that you have set out to achieve. Because dreams are driven by passion, but achieved by professionalism.

Sovrath

There are some weird sentences there. 

(2) To identify, sort of, the fault in the industry today (Why put "sort of" you either want to identify the fault or not. If you can't identify the fault then you could have put "to identify some of the issues in today's industry")

"which is ruled entirely by just passion (grandiose dreams of which are not realized) or just professionalism " ("just" doesn't work there. "Which is ruled entirely by either passion or professionalism" would have been enough. Whether it's true or not is another thing).

Braindome

Too bad no company knows what either of these are these days, let alone both... lol..ol..ol.

Better to ask which is better Vanity or Greed then they will understand the context.

Borluc

Balance.  

anemo

Braindome said:

Too bad no company knows what either of these are these days, let alone both... lol..ol..ol.

Better to ask which is better Vanity or Greed then they will understand the context.

Clearly greed is the better option, a greedy person can be forced to take a "less greedy" path if they get more for it.

A vain person can't be convinced of much, unless you're agreeing with them.

Albatroes

I didn't bother reading but I like adding to my post count so I'll say this. The problem that tends to happen with devs motivated by passion (usually associated with crowdfunded devs) is that they want to cram everything into the first iteration of something rather than take the time to see what takes priority. Working for someone on a project (Professionalism) forces devs to see outside of their "passion" (or outside of themselves) and make decisions on what vision has to be introduced first and in a realistic time frame. Crowdfunding is great when it works, but many devs that utilize such a method do not know much about business and how to properly work on schedules and/or within a budget.

cameltosis

Meh, I don't feel like either passion or professionalism are the problems with the gaming industry or MMO genre specifically. 

From my experience working for a large AA / AAA gaming company in the UK, the problem is to do with balance but not the balance between passion and professionalism, its more to do with the balance of skillsets. 

What I observed from within the industry is that the main game designers, you know, the guys that write the original proposals for new games, tend to have quite a narrow focus. They have a vision for the core product and usually focus on the areas they are most interested in, but other features then get added with little thought. 

From there, the top decision making teams end up making decisions about features they just don't have the skills to talk about. The result is that the core features can often be good but the other features are often lacking, so the finished game lacks cohesion. 



Taking a specific example, lets look at SW:TOR. 

Bioware are famed for their long, flowing stories. They're pretty good at writing decent storylines, incorporating companions into gameplay etc. This showed in the finished product - the stories were OK, the companions fairly fleshed out and useful. 

But, Bioware lacked MMO experience and so many of the other features lacked cohesion. PvP is the prime example. They had old mythic employees working on SW:TOR and this can be seen in a lot of the combat - there is a ton of CC to make PvP more tactical - but the world pvp completely sucked. Ilum was ill-conceived with no real objectives or motivation, and real open world pvp was pointless as you got no renown and couldn't capture anything. 

This happens because the decision making team at the top just didn't have a clue about PvP MMOs and so they lacked the skills to add it as a cohesive feature to the game. 



The same usually happens with crafting / economy - you'll rarely see a gaming company hire economic experts to help them design a game with an awesome economy - as well as things like hobbies and stuff. The main designers only tend to care about the world they are creating and the stories within those worlds. 

I believe this comes down to the fundamental difference between creative types and logical types. You need the creative types to build up the IP and the stories, but it is the logical types who design awesome systems to make the game fun and cohesive. Most people are one way or the other, rarely both. 

Thing is, investors / suits rarely get involved in the details. When a creative type comes to them with artwork for an awesome new fantasy world, the suit can physically see something and can get excited and connect. When a logical type comes to them with plans for a new deep combat system, or plans for a virtual economy, the suit just doesn't understand. It is extremely hard to explain how a deep combat system benefits retention, or how a virtual economy results in more diverse communities. 

This means the creative types are more likely to gain positions of authority and are free to make game-wide decisions, whilst logical types get relegated in the decision making tree. 

DrCokePepsi

cameltosis said:

Meh, I don't feel like either passion or professionalism are the problems with the gaming industry or MMO genre specifically. 

From my experience working for a large AA / AAA gaming company in the UK, the problem is to do with balance but not the balance between passion and professionalism, its more to do with the balance of skillsets. (etc. etc. last post ^^) 

I'm glad that a professional from within the industry, with experience, was able to weigh in on this subject. And many thanks for doing so. I only wish I could 'agree', identify this as 'insightful', and give it an 'awesome' upvote.

This is very interesting and I am glad to hear this critique of the industry because, while I assumed that this was a rookie mistake or a beginner's fault, it is good to know that this is a big problem within the industry, even at the AAA level.

At the same rate, while I would never expect flawless cohesion amongst the many disciplines and departments in the massive AAA companies, I would have expected a higher level of organization and collaboration between these two primary 'thinking types'. I would almost have expected there to be an emphasis between the interaction between more logical and creative thinkers.

Also, with the absurd budgets and level of 'corporate process' I would also imagine that putting more focus on the many elements coming together, whether it's interface, world design, character stories, gameplay mechanics and systems etc. would have been very well-developed and fleshed out considering the fact that the developers are delegated such specific tasks, and are given more than enough time to focus on them. ("more than enough time" being subjective, but true, I feel. -even considering 'crunch' time.)

Thank you for this very informative perspective into the working of the industry, I will definitely put this to good use. 

p.s. Shoutouts to Savroth, thank you for the english lesson and not responding to the post in any way...but nonetheless I will use your input because it is true... 

And thank you Albatroes for not reading the post, yet your response was still relevant so GG lol.

p.s.s. Savroth, if you return to this post, what is your stance on this? I'd like to know. Lets cultivate some discussion

Gamer54321

I used to work with this guy that had the general opinion that: "It is not supposed to be art, it is supposed to be finished". I had to stop working with him, because planning for things apparently became impossible being in the back seat on everything.

If you as a developer can't have artistic merit in the the work you do: Please go work with something other than computer games.

As for passion vs professionalism, I don't think it is a dichotomy, as if they were mutually exclusive things. You could ofc make it a dichotomy for yourself, but that seems dumb to me.

Gamer54321

Working with ideas for computer games is probably demanding, because common phrases like "fun" doesn't mean shit when the meaning of that must be subjective. Good communication skills will be required probably, to avoid confusing yourself, and others with bs like arguments, for best understanding your own motivations, which would become more of a pointless exercise if you keep reinterpreting what you thought at some previous point.

I remember something from an audio tape about leadership, written by someone in the military. Basically, anything "strategy" is about knowing WHEN and WHY you actually achieve your goal(s). If you don't know when, how or why you achieve a goal, your goal posts or strategy might have little meaning to them.

iixviiiix

Chose other type of job as professional , and doing art as hobby with passion .

Eldurian

anemo said:

Braindome said:

Too bad no company knows what either of these are these days, let alone both... lol..ol..ol.

Better to ask which is better Vanity or Greed then they will understand the context.

Clearly greed is the better option, a greedy person can be forced to take a "less greedy" path if they get more for it.

A vain person can't be convinced of much, unless you're agreeing with them.

Or framing your ideas to them in such a way that they think the idea is theirs.