Meetings, though often disliked, are essential tools for communication and progress in professional environments, particularly in industries like game development. Effective meetings require clear agendas, active participation, and the courage to address issues directly, especially in smaller, focused groups.
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Hi everyone, it's me Tim. Today I'm
going to talk about running meetings,
something I know you all love.
Everyone's always telling me, Tim, I
love meetings. Talk more about them.
Actually, I know you don't like
meetings, but I was having lunch with a
friend of mine who's also in the game
industry in a very different role
than I have. And I mentioned to her that
last week I was in a meeting and I got
called out for not talking at all. We
got to the end of the meeting. It was
almost an hour long and somebody said,
"Well, Tim, you've been quiet. You
haven't said anything. What do you
think?" And I even said, my answer was,
"Well, this is the first time I've been
to this meeting that you guys have been
having for a few months now. I just
wanted to listen."
She said she had the opposite experience where
where
she was in a meeting that someone else
was running. Her boss was running it and
she knew her boss and several people on
the team had a specific problem that was
occurring. But they were getting near
the end of the meeting and no one had
brought it up. So she was like, I guess
I need to talk about this because she
didn't want it to go another week
because it was getting worse every week.
And we were talking about how people
don't like meetings. And I know you guys
have said meetings are terrible and
they're dumb and I have a whole video on
why I think conversation is important
and I'll link it below. And
if you feel like meetings are dumb, go
leave comments in that one cuz I'm just
going to assume here going forward that
meetings are important because they are.
Now, can they be wrongly used? Yes. Can
they be can they occur too frequently?
Yes. Every tool can be wrongly used and
used too much. So meetings are no
different in that regard. But I had do
have another video on brainstorming
meetings and that's a very specific kind
of meeting with specific kind of rules
and how it should be run. So I have a
video on that. Right now I just want to
talk about general meetings. Meetings
where you call some people together to
talk about something. And if you plan to
become a director or lead in any role,
these kind of meetings are going to be
expected of you. You will eventually be
called upon to run these. So that's why
I wanted to give this because some of
you are like, "No, I'm never going to
run those." And I'm like, "Okay, you're
going to be a very unusual lead and
possibly a very ineffectual lead." But
let's talk about meeting types. I think
there are three big kinds of meeting
types that I have in the game industry.
There are different types but they also
correlate with the size. The first one
is informational meetings. These are
usually big group meetings like the
entire team or maybe even the entire
company which means these meetings
sometimes can have a 100, 200, a
thousand people in them. Sometimes
they're in person and we'd have them in
big, you know, auditoriums um at
Interplay. We used to go outside so
everybody would be on the first and
second floor balconies and somebody
would be talking to us from the first
floor. Now, it's all done in in Teams or
Zoom or something like that. But these
big meetings are usually because
some information has to be given to the
team and they want to do it all at once.
You know, hey, we just shipped this game
or hey, the reviews are coming in or
hey, we kicked off a new project or
whatever. Whatever you want the whole
team to hear and you want to hear it
from the same person at the same time.
These meetings tend to be very short and
very focused. There is discussion, but
it's usually relegated to a Q&A at the
end of the information block.
Contrast this with directional meetings,
which are smaller groups, usually run by
a director, could be a lead, sometimes
senior, and it involves the director
talking to the producers or the leads.
And this tends to be a longer meeting.
And again, information tends to be
flowing down, but there's a lot more
questions being answered during the
meeting because these are all your
leads. And you're usually telling them
stuff. And this is why I call it
directional. Usually saying, "Hey, you
know, in this game, we're really trying
to, you know, let the player have a lot
of agency. So, I'm starting to know
railroading and level design or
railroading and dialogues. We've got to
stay on f we got to stay on track.
Focus." It's not something you're not
pulling one person out and going,
"You're doing something in or someone's
doing something wrong in your your
group." It's a director saying, "Hey, I
see things not going the direction I
want them to go, the direction that our
pillars imply we should go." Those are
those tend to happen
every week or two. Um, and then there's
actionable meetings. These are sometimes
called strike team meetings. This is the
smallest group. I've seen a strike team
of two people you could have. In
general, strike teams are like five to
seven people. It's whatever fits
comfortably in a small conference room.
It's very focused. conf strike teams
might meet two or three times a week if
they need to because they're usually
implementing a particular feature like
inventory might be a strike team or it
might be a small area on a map like
we're doing this dungeon or or we're
doing this town and there's a strike
team to do it. So it's a mix of a
programmer, an artist, a level designer,
a narrative designer. Sound will come to
strike teams and they all they're all
working on just this one particular
narrow feature in the game. They need to
have these meetings because they all
need to be on the same page constantly.
The slightest divergence because they're
working so quickly and so specifically.
Anybody goes off and does something for
a week or two and then comes back, that
may be a week or two lost.
For all of these meetings, all of them,
whether it's a giantformational meeting
or a directional meeting or an action
meeting, you should have an agenda.
Whoever's running it should have an
agenda. And I mean that. I mean have a
list of things you want to go over in
that meeting. If you don't have it, many
people in the group are going to say,
"God, you were just rambling." But if
you do have it, still expect some people
in the group to go, "That was a very
controlling meeting. You you know, we
were we were doing good stuff and you
you we started talking about this and
you moved us over here." And that's because
because
if if you have to choose between being
called rambling and controlling, choose
controlling. Rambling is always bad. So
have a list of things you want to go
over. That's how I do these videos. I
have a list of topics I want to make
sure I cover. You don't have to have a
script. You don't have to write down
everything you want to say to people in
a meeting, but you should have an idea
of the topics you're going to cover.
That alone will get you through 90% of
any of the informational or directional
meetings and a lot of the action
meetings. So, now I want to talk more in
detail about action meetings and strike
teams or whatever your your company
calls it because I think there are
things you need to do in that that you
may not do in the bigger meetings. The
first one is if you see something you
don't like, say something. Don't let
things slide for weeks or months. You
don't even have to say that's wrong. I
hate it. This is stupid. Which, judging
from the comments, many of you tend to
do. Instead, the best way I found to
handle this is just go, I don't
understand this.
I don't understand this dialogue. I
don't understand this character. I don't
understand this creature. I don't
understand this city layout. and then
explain what's causing an issue for you.
Like be specific. That's what these
actionable meetings are for. I've heard
a phrase compliment publicly, critique
privately, which I think doesn't extend
to this. I mean, you can critique how
something's coming together in an action
meeting. But I think what what they mean
by that is if you really like some
particular person's work, call them out
in an action meeting or even a
information or directional meeting. But
if you're having specific problems with
somebody, that's where you sit down with
them privately and go, "Look, you're not
doing this or you're not doing this well
or you're not doing this right or you're
not doing this on time." However, you
still should address things, especially
in action meetings, that you don't want
people to do or that you don't want to
have done moving forward. Otherwise, you
end up wasting so much time. I've seen
people out of wanting to be kind or
pleasant let a game go off the rails and burn
burn
all because they didn't want to be
unkind to someone. And I'm like, okay,
that's going too far. That's the
pendulum swinging too far in the other
direction. If you see something going in
that isn't right, or even if you see a
feature going in that isn't fun, you
need to say something because if you
wait 6 months, you just burn six months
of of time and money.
You should especially call out if work
was done incorrectly early on because
course correction is easier early or if
work is entirely missing. And I know
some people are like, "Well, no, you
shouldn't call it out. It shouldn't be
done." Here's the problem. Especially in
small meetings like that, because you're
so focused, everybody probably can tell.
Like, let's say some creature was
supposed to be done and then you have
the weekly meeting and you don't even
bring it up and it's not in the game.
Those people are going to be really
worried. Is Tim not noticing this
creature isn't done? Is something going
on that we should know about?
Just saying, "Hey, this creature wasn't
finished this week. Um, stuff got behind
on the creature queue. We're aware of
it. We're going to have the creature
done next week." and then you can move
on. But just ignoring it makes people
nervous and you almost always know
they're going to come up with some worse
idea in their head of what's going on.
The other thing that's cool for small
actionable meetings is this is the time
where people ask questions a lot often
during the meeting and you should
encourage that. You should even ask
people for feedback like what happened
in that meeting I was in. Because if
people come to these meetings regularly,
the small actionable meetings, and they
never talk, why are they there? And this
is something I said in the brainstorm
meeting. If you're coming to a small
strike team meeting and you never talk
or ask questions or are discussing what
you got done, you don't need to be
there. You could be sent a video of the
meeting. You could be sent a summary of
the meeting. and and that would let less
people would be at the meeting because
the more people are at the meeting, the
more chance it derails, the more p talk
past each other that can happen. You
want the meeting to be small and tight
as possible. So if you have people
coming who never talk, they don't need
to be at those meetings. They can still
be at the other meetings because usually
it's not as back and forth as the strike
teams are. But
the other thing, the last thing I want
to talk about is a lot of people don't
want to run these meetings. Forget the
people who don't like meetings, which I
know is a lot of you. Some of them don't
want to run these meetings. And I will
tell you, the ones who often very
voseiferously want to run meetings,
those are the ones you don't want
running meetings. Those are the scary
people. It's like in politics, the
people who want to run are frequently
the people you don't want running. And
then you see someone, you're like, why
aren't you running? I don't want to do
that, but you'd be good at that. The
best directors I've ever worked with and
the best leads for that matter have been
people who are very passionate but
reluctant to be in those positions.
Those are the best people to get because
those are the people, you know, who
aren't going to let the power go to
their head, go crazy, um, or just try to
always prove themselves right because
they don't even necessarily want to be
in that role, but they're good at that
role. Those are the people you want.
people who are good at a role that they
don't necessarily demand that they be
in. Those are good those are good people
to run meetings to. In fact, I often
find producers run meetings very well
because they're really good at keeping
lists and having an agenda and keeping
on tab of what everyone's going on and
and asking tough questions. So,
frequently having a producer or an
assistant producer run a strike team
meeting is a good way to go. But anyway,
I did want to talk about this because I
think a lot of you think meetings
shouldn't happen and I think that I can
think of projects that have derailed
because of that attitude. So, I think
meetings should be run but they should
be run well and I hope this gives you an
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