Tamrielo

I’ve spent a lot of time over the last year bridging the gap between two groups of people. I don’t have a good term for the first group– implementers, maybe. They describe themselves as the folks “in the trenches” actively making changes and additions to the project. Then there’s management– the producers, the leads, the people with direct reports, and increasingly, directors and executives.

The two groups tend to think of themselves as separate. I’ve noticed, at least in the games industry, that it’s much more pronounced on the implementer side than the management side. In games, the studio structure tends to mean that the management layers actually in the studio are often considered “in the trenches”, particularly since a lot of them do the same work as the implementers. Beyond that, though, you get what’s often termed “the publisher” or “corporate”. There tends to be a layer of distrust somewhere in there, on one side of which are the implementers and on the other side is “management”.

I remember a producer, once, who became a studio hero when she went to the publisher to fight for more time and resources for the team. I was relatively new to the industry, but I remember other people talking about how she was “one of the good ones” and similar positive associations with the implicit suggestion that she was the exception to the rule. I recently had a classmate, a senior manager, talk in glowing terms about one of his employees, someone who had taken some extra time to fill him in on the technical details of some project, and volunteered to join him in a meeting to explain them. He’d expressed that he often felt like his employees would exploit his lack of technical knowledge to get away with various things, and having someone take the time to explain and help out in a meeting was hugely valuable to him. Listening to him, I couldn’t shake the familiar sound of “this was one of the good ones” and that implication that the person was the exception.

At the same time, I’ve noticed something about the management sphere as I’ve entered it and spent more time there. Networking is hugely valuable, and almost ritualized. It’s rather more than just meeting people over drinks, although it’s often that also; there’s a structure to it that doesn’t exist in the meetings I’d often attend with game industry implementers. I’ve started to figure out what the difference is. It goes back to the examples above– the communication that is valuable and important. The old adage “talk is cheap” is misleading– it might be cheap, but it’s incredibly valuable. Having a producer go out and advocate for their team, or an employee advocate for their boss, is a hugely endearing thing. It bridges gaps, it forms bonds, and it galvanizes relationships.

I’m starting a new job this morning, and I have it through a series of people who have all advocated for me. A classmate who I got to know well put me in contact with a firm who, upon meeting and talking with me, advocated on my behalf for the company I’ll be working for. Rather than consigning endless resumes to the void and going through interminable interview sessions with very little give and take, I instead had a variety of conversations about what they were looking for, what I was looking for, and how we could meet in the middle, and had a verbal offer before leaving the one and only 90-minute interview I had. I benefited hugely from others advocating for me.

In games, it’s often said that it’s “all about who you know”, which is true– it’s much easier to get a job if you know someone at the studio you want to work for who will, as above, advocate for you. What I’ve noticed in the management sphere is that what that advocacy looks like is very different. The business world has an ingrained understanding of exchanges, and since so much of it is about communication, exchanges of social currency are often understood. Those networking meetings are effectively interviews without specific positions; you meet people with the goal of finding personalities and skills that fit with needs you can think of. When you find someone, you know who to talk to– often someone who you’ve got a relationship of some kind with. “I used to work for X, I know they’re looking to fill my old position, let me talk to a friend of mine there”.

I wondered, when I first started meeting people in the business sphere, why everyone was so enthusiastic about helping others find positions if they wanted them. When I’d see the conversations, I’d just assumed those people were close friends, and it wasn’t until I had people advocating for me that I realized what was going on. The advocacy helps both sides, and the advocate benefits twice. People are looking for opportunities to advocate for others. It mirrors what I’m used to in games, where everyone helps everyone else find jobs, because no one knows when it’ll be them looking for a job. For me, it was familiar, and comforting to know that the two groups were not that different; one just had words for what they were doing.

I think one of the most valuable things I’ve learned from my MBA program is this structure of advocacy and how to do it properly. I’ve started watching for open opportunities and developing a sense of fit– who might I recommend who would fit in this kind of position? Who I know is suddenly just as valuable as what I know, because once I’m no longer directly implementing, my job revolves around communication, and knowing lots of people is as important for a communication-focused job as technical skills are to an implementation-focused one.

One of the things I want to look into as I point my newfound business managment knowledge through the lens of the games industry is how to foster advocacy between groups that are usually separate and distrustful of one another. More than anything, that advocacy drives strong relationships, and fostering that kind of environment can only be good for communication and understanding.

Polygon did an article about impostor syndrome recently, which I thought was rather good. It’s absolutely something I struggle with, and it’s something that virtually everyone I know feels to a greater or lesser degree. We’re all looking at someone else, who’s achieved more, done cooler or more successful things, and point to them as the kinds of folks who have it all together. It feels like we’re just a step away from someone realizing we don’t really know what we’re talking about, while people who actually know what’s up are the real successes.

Just browsing Facebook right now, scrolling through updates, I can see at least ten different people expressing impostor syndrome, making comments like “wow, this game is so great, I’m doing something wrong” or “I wonder what it’s like to actually be good at [whatever]” or “I hope no one realizes I have no idea what I’m doing” and similar sentiments. These are mainly very intelligent people, who are smart enough to know that they don’t know things and are concerned about getting called out on what they don’t know, what they haven’t accomplished, or what they’re missing.

Last year, I basically turned my life upside-down. I left my job to focus full-time on my MBA, with the intent to transition careers from something on the game design / implementation side to something on the management side. After a brief stint at a local Baltimore program, I found myself frustrated with the program and looking for something that would get me more what I was looking for– something that would get me out of Baltimore rather than build my network within it. I transferred, purged most of my possessions, and moved across the country, to a city where I knew three people and had had relatively little contact with all of them.

I’ve told this story to people, and I’ve had them describe me as “brave” for taking the risk. Whenever I hear that, there’s a part of me that instantly denies it. I tell myself that the difference between the brave and the very stupid is success– this choice I made was brave if I can make it work, and very stupid if I can’t. Like any risk, it’s hard to tell if it was a good move or a bad move except after the fact.

There’s been some unequivocal good that’s come out of it. I’ve become much closer with my friends who live here, closer than I’d ever been before I moved. I’ve had time and distance to reflect on myself and what I want, and that’s a clearer picture than ever before. My coursework is legitimately compelling and interesting– the program I’m in here is very good, and I really enjoy it. It’s forced me to grow in ways that I wouldn’t have if I hadn’t moved. For the first time in years, I’m happy, and it’s happiness that’s not contingent on having everything I want.

At the same time, there’s this nagging feeling that it could all evaporate. It’s not stable, at least not until I can sustain and support myself, and I’m keenly aware of every passing day. I worry irrationally that someone is going to say “wait, what are you doing here thinking you can manage and lead people? Don’t you just make games?” I worry that if this doesn’t work out, I won’t have a fallback; I won’t be able to go back to working in games so easily if it came to that. I deeply worry that any apparent ability on my part is a combination of bluster and luck, and I’m not actually capable of any of the things I think I am.

Compounding the problem is that I’m rational and very good at rationale. I can justify these worries with evidence, to the point where I’m not even aware I’m doing it and I can’t tell if it’s a reasonable concern or an irrational one. I don’t have a job yet because I can’t actually do these things I think I can do. I do well in class because the work is easy and everyone in the class does well, not because I’m any good at it. I’m not insightful, I’m just stating the obvious.

When people talk about impostor syndrome, I can relate. For nearly every accomplishment I have, I have a reason why it’s not all that impressive, or a counter-example. I am waiting, eternally, for the other shoe to drop. It makes me reticent to speak my mind, or be honest about my thoughts, because what if someone calls me out on how wrong I am all the time? Moment of truth: some days the only thing that keeps me writing this blog is the general belief that no one really reads it. It’s a continual shock to me when someone comments and says they’ve read it.

A classmate of mine came up to me, recently, with a comment out of the blue: “You know, you’re a good guy and really smart. You’re way too hard on yourself. Give yourself a little more credit; you’re awesome and you don’t appreciate yourself enough.”

I tried; right now I can’t. I’m trying to get there, though. Instead, for anyone reading this for whom the feeling resonates, let me pass on my classmate’s sentiment. You’re great, and you’re way too hard on yourself. Give yourself credit– I may not even know you, but I know you’re more awesome than you realize. Take the time to appreciate yourself.

Thanks for reading.

Warframe and Destiny have a lot in common. They’re structurally very similar games, with the main differences being in the former’s emphasis on movement and the latter’s emphasis on tight gunplay. They also both have stories to tell, but are doing their best to stay out of your way while they sorta-tell them. They’re both doing a sort of osmosis-storytelling, where hints and pieces are meant to come together to form a narrative whole, rather than a linear storyline. In both games, the story is the world you inhabit, and like the real world, the amount of story you get from the world around you depends on how much you’re willing to look for it.

Neither game tells its stories very well. Warframe is better in that at least the story in the game can be viewed in the game, and when it does present questlines they’re coherent within themselves. Destiny, at least pre-Taken King, was largely incoherent and finding anything out about the story relied upon spending time reading websites rather than playing the game. Warframe’s tutorial is one of those coherent-within-itself storylines, and it and the first major questline following it both do a fairly good job of introducing the various factions you’re fighting.

You’re first introduced to the Grineer, one of whom is planning on taking you prisoner for some kind of biological experiments, and callously disregards you in general. He’s a pretty reasonable starter villain, though it’s fairly clear he hasn’t thought his plan all the way through. In that first mission, you’re introduced to the Grineer and to Lotus, your eye-in-the-sky, mysterious companion who more or less explains what’s going on and why you’re doing what you’re doing. By the end of the first mission, you’ve got a pretty good reason to fight the Grineer and you’re at least aware that Lotus is trying to help you, though her motivations aren’t exactly clear.

By the end of the tutorial, you’ve also met an arms dealer who is, presumably, how you do your shopping via the game’s market (though the timing of this is awkward), and you’ve rebuilt your own spaceship to get around from planet to planet. You know you’re some kind of warrior, and you’re markedly more powerful than the average soldier you face. Depending on how much you listened to dialogue, you may also have picked up that the Grineer are, for one reason or another, obsessed with genetics and that the Corpus (another major faction) are basically war profiteers who set up conflicts so they can profit off of them, like an evil megacorp.

Closing out the major factions is the second major questline, wherein you go to find out about Grineer biological weapons and uncover the Infested, a zerg-like swarm of nasty biological creatures that, well, infest and destroy. You don’t need a lot of motivation to fight these things.

Then we get to the rest of the game’s story. First off, it’s hard to figure out how to even experience it, or in what order. There are questlines on the Market, blueprints that, once completed, unlock a questline for you to do that fills you in on some kind of story or another. Many of these are tied to warframes, so in addition to getting some story you also get to find and build a new frame for yourself. Doing “The Limbo Theorem” gave me a good insight into the original owner of the Limbo warframe, and by association a somewhat better understanding of the concept of the warframe in general, and why I can hop between these biotechnological suits.

There are also deeply hidden quests. One quest I found by scanning a random drone in a mission I was doing, only to later discover that by scanning it I’d unlocked a quest. I have no real idea where this quest is going, or even what it’s about. I haven’t delved into it yet, but I’m intrigued at digging up more (probably literally, the Limbo Theorem involved a lot of excavations).

On the other hand, there’s Alad V. Alad V is a boss on Jupiter. Like many bosses, he’s got something of a personality and taunts you (creepily) as you approach him in his boss level. Bosses’ stories tend to be contained to the boss levels on each planet, so you don’t get a lot of lead-in, but you gather relatively quickly that Alad V is some kind of mad scientist and wants to test some kind of new creation on you. You defeat him, like you do, and like many bosses he doesn’t show up again. Except he does. When I logged in for the new event today, I was greeted by a face I didn’t immediately recognize, telling me he was “calling in his favor”.

It was apparently Alad V, that guy I fought on Jupiter, and I have no idea what he’s talking about. I don’t know why he’s alive, I don’t know why I’m doing missions for him, I don’t know why I apparently owe him a favor, and I certainly don’t know where to even look for the story I missed in the process. If this event is more story, I’m forced to wonder if there’s more story in events that have already passed, that I know nothing about and may be referenced by future events.

I’m not inherently bothered by this, honestly. I like the idea of a game with history, where events move forward and past events change things but aren’t repeatable. What I don’t like is the game assuming I know what it’s talking about when even a basic check on my completed-mission flags would make it blatantly obvious that I have no clue. If this quest had started with a message from the Lotus telling me that she owes this Alad V guy a favor, and that she needed my help with it, I’d be more on board. There could easily have been an event that explained in great detail why the Lotus owes Alad V a favor, possibly due to player actions during that event, but I don’t need to know that for her request to make sense as a new player.

 

Even the existing message followed by a quick flag-check that triggered a message from the Lotus saying “That was confusing, let me try to help, I’m going to upload some dossiers to your Codex for you to look over and make sense of that” would help a lot and make sense, AND drive me to look at my Codex to figure out story stuff I might be missing. Even if the message was jarring, I’d at least be able to quickly and concisely catch up to a point where it did make sense, kind of like a comic book recap.

Instead, I have a guy calling in his favor out of the blue, and the only time I’ve seen this guy is when I was shooting him in the face as he tried to test his death robot on me. I’m not really inclined to give him the time of day, much less do work for him. I’m gamely playing along because it’s an Event, and events have neat missions and cool loot, but I don’t have much of a narrative motivation; indeed, I have the opposite of this. The event’s story revolves around powerful assassins hunting Alad V, and me going to help him with that, and I really don’t know why I’m not on the side of the assassins with this one.

To their credit, the assassins also don’t seem to know why I’m not on their side. Luckily they don’t seem to harbor much ill will towards me for it, more pity than malice.

When Warframe tells a coherent story, I’m interested in it and I like following along; it makes me better understand the game’s setting and I find the setting interesting. I just wish I knew how to get it to present its story to me in a more directed, coherent way, or at least how to know what story bits to do next, and where to find them.