🦉 AACT to Win!: A foundational model for success
🦉 AACT to Win!: A foundational model for success
I describe how we totally screwed up our development and how we are making changes to work better as a team and to operate more efficiently and effectively
Hey, Joseph Kim here! Welcome to a late Philosophy Monday delivered on a Tuesday, lol.
Every Monday (or Tuesday when I’m late), I’ll try to email you some lessons learned and game development philosophy from my experience building our studio at Lila Games. I learned so many lessons while leading King of Avalon at FunPlus that were never documented, and I hope to share more of those lessons with all of you this time.
Also, last week was GDC, which was truly amazing. My highlights included hosting the exclusive GameMakers GDC dinner with Century Games and Sensor Tower. We learned a lot about the history and operations of Century Games' Whiteout Survival and a bit about what’s going on with Sensor Tower and data.ai post-acquisition.
Also, many thanks to CleverTap and AWS for inviting me to moderate the AI x Liveops panel with them:
Pictured above are Landon McDowell, CTO at Believer; Purnendu Mukherjee, CEO at Conv.ai; Chirag Ambwani, SVP Gaming at Sensor Tower; Xiang Shen, CTO at Century Games; Andrew Cheung, Product at Roblox; and Josh Chapman, Partner at Konvoy Ventures.
Pictured above are Allen Adham, Co-founder at Blizzard Entertainment; Solomon Ruiz-Lichter, Senior Director at CleverTap; Travis Boatman, CEO at Carbonated; Troy Kirwin, Investment Partner at a16z; and Tim Hong, Head of Live Service Games at AWS for Games.
🦉 AACT to Win!: A foundational model for success
"I'm shocked," he said. "You guys should be much further along, and the game lacks a cohesive vision."
These words from one of our investors last year highlighted what was obvious: we were in trouble. Our game studio struggled with delays and direction changes from the start, and we were way off track.
Many problems plagued us, but the biggest problem was our lack of teamwork and operational efficiency against our product objectives.
And while we've made strides since then, we're still not entirely out of the woods.
Sound familiar?
You know how common this story is if you've worked in game development. The industry is notorious for its high failure rate, with some estimates suggesting that over 90% of new game projects fail.
But what if there was a framework that could help teams avoid these pitfalls and dramatically improve their chances of success?
Enter AACT: Alignment, Accountability, Communication, and Tracking Performance.
The AACT Framework
After much soul-searching, internal team discussions, and consultation with experienced industry veterans, I've identified the four foundational areas above that are key to reducing iteration, accelerating progress, and improving outcomes.
Addressing these areas will help our team work better together and with greater operational efficiency.
1. Alignment
Alignment is crucial but often fuzzy and difficult to characterize, like "company culture."
Alignment means that everyone on the team is moving in the same direction. Energy and resources are aligned towards a common goal instead of varied goals or even goals that are at odds with different team members.
Misalignment manifests in delayed milestones, lack of follow-through on decisions, and perpetual disconnects between intent and action.
Specific examples of these symptoms can look like:
The agreement to focus on building towards a playable core loop keeps getting delayed; deep into production, you still don’t have anything you can actually play.
The move to get a team to track and cost sprint tasks and visualize sprint performance keeps getting removed, then put back in and removed repeatedly.
The art bible you asked for three months ago keeps getting delayed, then for another month, then another month, and 6+ months in, you wonder if it’s ever going to get done.
You agree with a manager that they must have a difficult discussion with an underperforming employee. However, weeks later, you discover that even though the manager told you they had the discussion, it never happened.
As a principle, you agree as a team to push towards a system of iteration rather than final polish. However, the team continues to operate similarly, and excuses are made every time questions are raised about the approach.
A commonality amongst many of the examples above is a general “agreement” by people but then delays or lack of follow-through. That generally means that the alignment you thought you had is, in reality, false.
To fix alignment, you must clarify WHAT to align on and VERIFY that alignment is truly happening.
What: Understanding and prioritizing what is critical to align on.
Verify: Auditing that teammates are actually aligned (not just saying they are).
What: Crystallizing Priorities
Even deep into development, many teams remain fuzzy on fundamental questions they should be aligned on:
What is the vision of the game (or the vision of the product for non-game companies)? What is the “essence” (as per Rick Rubin)?
How and by what metrics will a key role to hire for be evaluated?
What are the expectations and focus for every milestone?
Are deadlines commitments or best effort?
How do we make decisions? Who owns AORs?
As a team lead or PM, your job is to crystallize and communicate the most critical areas requiring alignment for your project and team. This is situational and can’t be everything you can think of. You can't afford to diffuse focus by trying to align on everything. Ruthless prioritization is critical.
Once you've identified your top alignment priorities, it's crucial to communicate them clearly and repeatedly to key stakeholders and the broader team. In the upcoming section on communication, we'll explore the importance of clearly communicating through direct communication further.
Verify: “Trust, but Verify”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, I understand. We’ll do that.”
Bullshit!
The number of times I have heard those words or some version of it, and there was zero follow-through, makes me sick.
Verification of alignment is essential. As I've learned the hard way, simply taking agreement at face value is staggeringly naive.
In my experience, there are three main reasons why professed alignment often proves false:
Lack of Belief.
A teammate doesn’t believe in whatever you agree on but doesn’t want to argue openly. Hence, they will do the bare minimum but not actually try to do what you have agreed upon. The team member may be capable but lacks conviction.
Note that lack of belief can also be a problem in leadership. As a lead, PM, or manager, it’s also your responsibility to communicate the importance of initiatives or decisions.
Lack of belief is a two-way street. Leaders must do a better job of instilling belief and team motivation. On the other hand, non-believers must be honest about their lack of belief.
Undermining Behavior.
This is much more dangerous. You have someone who disagrees with a decision and, instead of openly disagreeing, intends to do things their way sneakily. The moment they can, they will ignore decisions agreed upon with full intentionality to undermine decisions made.
If you ask them later why they acted to undermine a decision, they will make excuses or attribute their behavior to a “misunderstanding.” They may say, “Oh, I didn’t understand.” Or, “There was a miscommunication.”
Of course, these excuses are often lies. The kinds of people who undermine decisions are dangerous.
In almost all situations with underminers, you should move to eliminate these people from the organization. There are no questions or ambiguities here. If these kinds of people are allowed to stay on your team, they will lead to huge problems and be cancer to the company.
Laziness.
Some people on your team may agree and don’t intend to undermine your decision but will not put in full effort. These are people who lack the discipline or determination to see things through.
In my experience, many of these people are “naive dreamers.” They imagine themselves as senior leaders with many accomplishments but don’t get much done and don’t work very hard.
Trying to convince a lazy person to put in more effort is a losing proposition. This effort is like trying to push on a noodle.
If you have a string of wet spaghetti which you want to move forward, you can’t do it by pushing from the tail end. You have to pull it from the front.
-General George S. Patton, US Army General
“Trust, but verify.”
Given that there may be a lack of alignment despite “agreement” based on some of the reasons above, verification of alignment becomes critical.
There may be some proven or more experienced people you can trust. However, not verifying alignment is very naive, especially for new people, those with less experience, or those you haven’t worked with before. I know from experience, having learned the hard way. Years of failure have taught me that the “just trust your people” approach is very naive.
Don’t verify, and you’ll regret it.
2. Accountability
When setting expectations, no matter what has been said or written, if substandard performance is accepted and no one is held accountable—if there are no consequences—that poor performance becomes the new standard.
-Jocko Willink, Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win
In most startup situations, carrying dead weight and inefficiency can kill your project. While there is always some inefficiency and poor performance in all teams, accountability is critical to startup success and new game development to eliminate inefficiency.
In large, established companies, accountability is rare. Areas of responsibility (AORs) are often muddled to hide leaders who make mistakes and to enable them to take credit for others’ work.
This behavior dramatically hampers potential project success for startups and new game development situations. As a leader or product manager, you must fight against the temptation to keep accountability nebulous. Many will fight you on this, but accountability is absolutely critical. I’m repeating this mantra of how critical accountability is because of how important it is.
Let’s be honest. As an individual contributor, the political climate at your company may punish you for pointing out teams or people who are not being held accountable for poor performance. If that’s the case, you should seriously consider your future at the company. Your life is short; find another job. Find a better culture. Find a place where your efforts will be applied in an environment more serious about winning.
As a leader or someone capable of creating or influencing accountability, you must do what you can to push for it.
Super-talented people don’t want to be on a team with underperforming people who aren’t pulling their weight. Over time, a lack of accountability will lead to a team filled with poor performers or mercenaries who are just there for money.
Accountability is critical if you want to be part of a team that does something great.
Before closing the loop on accountability, here is just one note of caution. Situationally, be careful to understand that accountability often does not happen immediately. Especially with younger organizations, sometimes accountability takes time because 1. investment is being made into poor performers the organization is working on to improve, or 2. you have a role player or hired hand who is the best alternative until someone better can be hired.
3. Communication
Poor communication compounds misalignment and muddles accountability. You can't achieve alignment if vision and priorities aren't openly and constantly communicated. And it's harder to hold people accountable when expectations are ambiguous.
There’s a lot I could discuss about communication. However, for the objective of this post, I’d like to focus on the #1 priority that is the most difficult aspect of communication: being direct.
I submit that 99% of people cannot be direct in challenging situations, and I further submit that 90% can’t even be direct in standard situations.
Without absolutely clear communication, alignment and accountability are not possible.
I’ve also noticed a tendency for many people to make excuses for themselves when they are not communicating directly. They will often delay or deliver a message in a way that is so weak that it becomes a different message.
Many people have an image of themselves that gives them a positive self-image and can be core to their self-worth. Based on this self-image, they may not view themselves as afraid of someone or too nervous to deliver a direct message. Hence, when they cannot communicate directly for fear or other reasons, that image of themselves is attacked and causes cognitive dissonance. This then often leads to excuses or incorrect communication.
It’s challenging for someone unaccustomed to direct communication to do so suddenly. It feels hugely uncomfortable, and most people are terrified of it. The only way to overcome this barrier is through practice and repetition.
I have one final point on this issue. Sometimes, especially in startups, extreme emotion is needed to appropriately convey a critical situation or problem.
Someone cursing and yelling at another employee at a large company could get that person canceled and fired. At a startup, however, sometimes you need to be super clear and go over the top with some heat to ensure your message gets through. I hate it, and it’s very stressful, but I believe you must be as straightforward as possible in critical situations.
Unfortunately, being chill with “nice talk” usually won’t get the job done.
People often can only change under extreme situations and through direct clarity in expectations. Asking someone nicely to make big changes and seeing massive change after a nice talk only happens in the movies. Even further, not giving super direct feedback about someone’s poor performance and firing them after all of your ambiguous “nice talk” is you being a jerk.
Believing otherwise is pretty naive.
4. Tracking Performance
Without appropriate tracking, accountability is challenging to implement.
Many people will also fight performance tracking, especially those with something to hide.
Tracking performance serves three vital purposes:
Planning & Progress: Tracking progress and keeping a history of work velocity helps one get a feel for the team's progress and makes it easier to plan dependencies and development schedules.
Accountability: It clarifies where accountability is necessary.
Identifies Problems & Performers: Tracking will help identify problems and bring focus to why progress is not being made. Conversely, tracking can also help highlight high-performing teams or individuals to ensure they are appropriately compensated.
It’s very challenging to improve what you don't track. Without rigorous performance tracking, misalignment and unaccountability can fester unnoticed. Not addressing these issues could kill your project. Act quickly before it’s too late.
Finally, it’s crucial to agree with a team on what constitutes good performance and the basis upon which tracking will occur. Performance tracking reviews should not be antagonistic. You are still one team with the same goals. Try to use this practice to help each other improve and grow rather than to blame and attack.
In Conclusion
Getting a game studio on track is immensely challenging. While we are still in the process of full implementation, I believe the AACT framework, in which we focus intensely on Alignment, Accountability, Communication, and Tracking Performance, can help us achieve success over the long term.
This framework has already delivered benefits in terms of teamwork and operational efficiency, which I believe we will continue to improve upon.
We still have a long road ahead to deliver on our vision, but we're urgently moving to embed these principles deeply in our operations.
There’s no more time for us to lose. It’s time to AACT!