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Teamwork Fundamentals

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Business of Games and Entrepreneurship

Michigan State University

4.4 (678 ratings) | 17K Students Enrolled

Course 3 of 5 in the Game Design and Development Specialization

As well as a form of art and entertainment, games are about business. Whether you want to work at a game studio, start your own business or make games as a hobby, recognizing the dynamic landscape of the videogame industry is critical to finding your place. This course will introduce you to game production, project management, teamwork skills, and how to position your game ideas and yourself in the broader marketplace. By the end of the course, you will be able to develop an impactful portfolio of game work to get noticed and/or develop an effective business plan to bring your game to market.

Skills You'll Learn

Marketing Communications, Product Development, Planning, New Product Development, Entrepreneurship

Reviews

4.4 (678 ratings)

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LN

Aug 07, 2017

Very good course giving more than an overview of games development, which is what it takes to survive in this creative industry. Reality of games development.

SS

Mar 10, 2016

Great way to introduce the business of games. Gave me a very thorough understanding of the biggest questions one has about how money works in the industry.

From the lesson

Games are Made of People

I think one of the most important things to realize about the business of games is that games are made up of people. While I'm borrowing the line from "Soylent Green" to be a bit funny, the reality is that creative people really do live and breath the games that they make and a game can't exist without a good team behind it. In this module, you will explore the fundamentals of game production and teamwork. You will get a foundation in some of the project management tools and techniques that while you may not use them on this project will help you be a better game developer in the long run.

Teamwork Fundamentals8:35

It's About the People7:10

Taught By

Casey O'Donnell
Associate Professor

Transcript

[MUSIC]

Welcome back to the business of games and entrepreneurship course here on Coursera.

We've talked about intellectual property and some other things.

Let's start talking about teamwork and the fact that most games are built-in teams.

What do I mean when I say the team?

Well, a team is a group of people with complementary skills that work together to

achieve a common purpose.

A goal and that's what a team is about.

And here on Coursera, you may be working on your own,

you may have found somebody through the course forums that you're working with.

And so you may feel kind of isolated, but

the reality is that most games get built in teams.

It's a group of people with complementary skills working together.

The reality is that on a team, you're always gonna have both positive and

negative experiences.

It can't always go well, there are other people.

Even when you work by yourself, there's gonna be good days and bad days.

And so the fact is when you throw lots or people together,

somebody is gonna be having a bad day in there.

So figuring out how to sort of work through those things are important skill.

What's one thing that you like or a thing that you dislike about team projects?

Most of you probably are thinking, I really dislike

when I feel like I'm pulling all the weight, I'm carrying the load.

So keep that in mind the next time you're on a team and

you feel like maybe you're just coasting.

Let's talk about dysfunctional elements of teams, because the first thing you should

probably focus on is trying to avoid those kinds of things.

So there's a good book called the Five Dysfunctions Of A Team and

those five items are really important.

It's a way to think about where teamwork dysfunction actually comes from.

So, one of the first is and absence of trust.

If you don't trust your teammates,

it's going to be very difficult to work well together.

Fear of conflict, why would that be important?

Conflict is bad.

We've got people with different expertise coming together to talk about things, so

you need to be able to have conversation and occasionally disagree.

If you fear conflict, you tend to agree and projects will tend to be run by maybe

one bossy person and maybe that's not the best thing for the team.

You can ask yourself questions about lack of commitment.

Somebody not really in it for the long haul.

Maybe they don't have the same desire, the same hopes or dreams.

So, a commitment to the team is important.

Another thing that can lead to team dysfunction is an avoidance of

accountability.

If nobody wants to take ownership of aspects of a team project,

it's not gonna work and the last one is inattention to results.

Just because you think things are getting done, you need to pay attention to them.

You need to go back and look at them.

You need to see how that progress has been.

What are people producing?

Pay attention to the results that are coming from within a team.

Here's some tips for working together, because working in teams is really hard.

One of the recommendations that we make to people is meet people properly.

What does that mean?

Well, it means say, hello, meet them, come together and

come together in a way where you're really coming together as equals.

You don't wanna start teamwork with a power dynamic where one person is

the person who's always in charge.

There's gonna be leaders and there's gonna be people who aren't leading pieces, but

you have to meet people properly.

Find things that you have in common with other people.

Those are gonna be those things that feed into your collective vision for a project.

Make meeting conditions good, it shouldn't already be stressful.

The ways in which you come together with your team are just as

important as the kinds of conversations that you're gonna have.

Let everyone talk, don't just feel like there's only one or

two people that have a say in a project.

Either also do things like leave your ego at the door.

Eventually, you're gonna get feedback that doesn't feel good, that you don't like.

Somebody's going to criticize something.

We actually talked about that fear of commitment is actually one of the things

that can lead to dysfunctional teams.

Well, being able to receive constructive criticism is important.

But in addition to that, also praise things.

When you see something good happening on your team, talk about it.

Another thing would be to put it in writing.

So maybe you talk about something in a meeting.

Well, at the end of a meeting have somebody who's assigned to sort of type up

the results.

What's gonna happen over the next week?

Maybe you did a great job and you followed that up with a email saying,

I said it in a meeting.

I just wanted to say it again, this thing was really awesome.

Or hey, we've disagreed on this, but here are some outcomes.

It's another way that people can come back together and

look at the results of those things.

And ultimately, be open and honest with your peers.

Honesty earlier is way easier than trying to course-correct later and

maybe you'll just discover that it's not the right team for you or

it's not the right fit and that's okay, as well.

Now when we say,

avoid conflict at all costs that doesn't mean avoid all conflict.

It means, that, try to change how you address those problems.

Disagreements are okay.

Conflict is okay.

It's when you're attacking somebody else.

People don't like to feel attacked and so

how you broach those things is as important.

What you say is as important as how you say it.

Another possibility is to rather than say, well, hey, do it this way.

Say well, would it be possible to do it this way.

Have we looked at it another way?

So phrasing alternatives as a question,

because then it becomes a dialogue between you and the other person.

It's not a unilateral decision or

somebody sort of mandating the way that something should be done.

So let's talk about working teams, because it's important.

80% of teamwork is actually showing up.

I can't tell you how many times people wanna be part of a team, but

don't wanna show up and actually do the work.

I'm sure you've recognized this.

Some of you have had that experience working in a team where people just don't

show up and you have to end up having to shoulder the load, but

listen to your team members too.

And when I say listen, I don't just mean to their words, but

to what they're trying to say.

Try to understand where they're coming from and

that's gonna help you build trust with your team members.

You have to trust each other,

you have to trust each other to make mistakes, correct them, get better.

Trust is a really difficult thing in teams,

especially when you're working on creative projects.

You've screwed up, I've screwed up.

I probably screwed up on a lot of these videos and that's okay,

give somebody a second chance.

It's another opportunity to improve and learn.

And if we've talked about this already, if games teach us anything,

it's that failure teaches us a great deal.

Don't sweat the little stuff.

Tackle the big things first.

You can tackle the little things along the way.

Part of that is understanding what the real issues are and not what symptoms are.

It's probably important that you and your teammates also have a shared vision.

What you expect out of a project, what you hope to see as well ownership and vision.

Maybe even sort of philosophical overlaps,

because creativity is difficult enough by yourself.

But when you sort of put it in groups and teams,

it can be really difficult if you don't match up in terms of vision.

I cant' say it enough, you shouldn't be crunching before every meeting.

You need to be making progress and working in between,

it shouldn't be a sprint and then nothing.

When you think about the amount of time, it takes to do these things.

Steady as she goes is as important as racing to get something done.

One of my favorites is think about solutions, not excuses.

I don't wanna hear why something is,

I wanna hear about how we can make it better.

What we can do next?

How we can improve?

And I approach a lot of my creative projects this way.

We learn from those mistakes and we get better, I don't need to offer an excuse.

I gonna own up and say, hey, yeah, okay, how do we fix that?

Let's do better.

Finally, find a way to love your project and take pride in your work even if it's

not your favorite thing that you've ever worked on.

Because some of you probably had that experience where you've worked

on something that you really don't care about, but find a way to love it,

because that's as important.

It's gonna make your life better.

It's gonna make working on a project just that much more fulfilling.

We're gonna continue talking about production methods and teamwork and

leadership.

I hope you'll join me on some more videos.

I'll see you next time.

[MUSIC]

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