What are the most common mistakes game developers make in leadership positions?

1. Lack of clear communication: Not effectively communicating goals, expectations, and feedback to the team can lead to confusion and inefficiency. 2. Micromanagement: Overly controlling every aspect of the development process can stifle creativity and demotivate team members. 3. Ignoring team feedback: Failing to listen to and consider input from the development team can result in missed opportunities and demoralization. 4. Unrealistic deadlines: Setting unachievable timelines can lead to rushed and subpar work, as well as burnout among team members. 5. Inadequate risk management: Failing to anticipate and plan for potential challenges can result in costly setbacks and project delays.

When game developers fail to communicate effectively, team members may not have a clear understanding of project goals, tasks, or expectations. This can lead to misalignment, confusion, and even conflicts within the team. Without a shared understanding, team members may work on different aspects of the game independently, resulting in fragmented progress and a lack of cohesion.

Assuming information instead of asking for information. It is the most frustrating and disheartening when something does not go smoothly and it is revealed only after that it was due to an assumption, rather than discussing and understanding the full scope from the team.

1. Communicate and lead your team to the vision, then let them execute it to the best of their ability. 2. Resist kneejerk reactions after being away from the project for a large period of time (It always happens). Communicate your concerns and let the team iterate on your feedback. 3. Your main responsibility is to resist scope creep and set a good example for others to follow. Do not be the one causing massive scope creep the day before the live demo! Lock it down weeks before and polish the demo, there are always new features that won't make the deadline and that is okay. You can surprise people with it the next time!

1.Lack of empathy towards team members: Developing games involves a lot of trial and error. We are all human and will inevitably make mistakes along the way. A good leader should encourage the team to "fail faster," learn from their mistakes, share their learnings, and move on! 2. Setting realistic estimates: Often, leads can overpromise on development times for features, resulting in significant work crunches for the team. Personally, I believe it's vital to schedule some "comprehensive gap" for the team. This allows developers to have a dedicated time for unforeseen circumstances, bug fixes, and polishing. Establishing healthy boundaries is crucial. 3. Be approachable: Create a safe space for your team to communicate feedback openly.

Shifting from doing things to delegating things is probably the toughest challenge for a beginning manager as you know you can deal with everything twice as fast, but the thing is that you have to spend time teaching your team so that they can work independently and make their own decisions.

The first thing people need to know about management is that there is no "one size fits all" solution or process. You work with people, so you should act accordingly. You need to know the skill level and the internal drive of those you manage. If there skill level is low and their drive is low, you might need to do some micromanagement. If skill is high, but drive is low, coach and cheer for them. If skill is low but drive is high, support, give specific feedback & training courses. If both skill and drive are high, delegate, give responsibility, take some load off your chest.

As a manager your work is to define the requirements, time frame and focus of the tasks. A common mistake is to don’t do this work correctly and having to re-do work. It can also make team members frustrated and unmotivated due to lack of freedom or because the manager is changing the work after being done. This reduces creativity and productivity of the team, who assumes iteration as an inevitable step when the root cause of the problem is a wrong definition of the tasks. In other cases, the task is well defined but wrong communicated, the result is the same.

Beware the pitfalls of micromanagement! Like a seasoned traveler in an open environment, have faith in your team's abilities. Like in an open-world role-playing game, micromanaging is like restricting a character to simple equipment. Instead, allow your imagination run wild. Assign work wisely, give your group authority, and treat feedback like priceless gems. Give them space to explore and learn, just as they would if they were free to explore large areas. Recall that a leader's confidence is more notable than any difficult mission!

Micromanagement is a team killer. Be smart in how you build your team Be clear in your objectives, scope and timeline. And trust your team to deliver what you. Provide them the support they need. Do proper reviews with concrete actionable feedback. And empower them and provide them ownership of the product.

Most commonly mistake that mostly people make and I have regret of it too! is wishful thinking... People's try to make the things true, which may not be true... So we have to study the ways! life of people whom which we are inspired.... Also the terms like ?Vommunication ?Feedbacks ? Deep Learning are very important to note down...

Indie teams are usually founded by friends, people who know each other on a personal level. They are involved in each others lives for a long time, and now they are creating a business together. Conversations in these settings can be very emotional and sometime feedback is understood as open criticism of the other person, and not as constructive information aimed at bettering the game. It's good to set ground rules. No ego MUST be one of them! People need to be able to look past the emotional connection and just be professionals. Also it helps to have one clear authority in each vertical of development who makes the final decision on the matter and takes the responsibility for it. Readiness to learn and improve is a prerequisite too.

I just wanted to let you know that feedback and criticism are not about you. It's about the need for your team members to be heard, included, and respected. You don't have to do everything they suggest. Just listen, write things down, ask questions, and think about it. A lot of ideas will be terrible, some will be good, and once in a while, there will be a fantastic idea that will change everything for the better. The most important thing is to give this process time. We often don't listen to feedback and criticism because we just have so much to do, and being agitated, we think that just listening to other people is a waste of time, when it's not. So make the time and the place for your team members and their feedback.

Learn to listen, receive and manage feedback. Write it down and track it, then see how it evolves over months and years. Learn from that feedback and see what succeeded and what didn't. It will help you drive your project in the right direction. Take time to have meetings with not just your leads, but also people on the ground, to make sure they know that if they want, they can give you direct feedback - without undermining your leads. As a leader, your door should always be open, for everyone, to voice their opinion. At Bright Star, we host introductions meetings for all newcomers where we make sure to stress the fact that the door is always open for everyone to voice their opinions - and that they should trust their intuitions.

Not only in game development, feedback and criticism are important in many situations. Your perspective may not always be right, so if others think this feedback worth, you should value it and use it to improve the project. Updating your game based on feedback can reduce your workload and help you see different perspectives.

The number one most common failure point for talented teams and leaders is to ignore production realities. SCOPE is everything. Truly remember, if you don't ship the product because you went over budget or time, the great team you have assembled is going to dissolve. Time is the most finite resource. Ship your project. Scope it honestly. Succeed and apply the extra learnings and great ideas to the next game.

Predicting the scope and budget is a skill in itself. Make sure you know what features are key to making your game fun for your players. Is your game fun without this or that feature? What changes if this/that is taken out? Sometimes less is more. Know the crucial features first, then make projections and scenarios. Find out how much similar games cost to make. 2nd thing is failing to leave overhead budget. Adding 20-30% on top of the total budget ensures you can cover some development mishaps (anything that can go wrong, will go wrong), and once the game is published it takes another 3-4 months at least to see some revenue, so you need to keep the studio afloat until payday comes.

There's an old saying in the Boy Scouts, "when you think you have enough firewood, get 10x more". That same mentality needs to apply to game budgets, always account for overhead and whenever you think you have a budget figured out, add 50% more to the time and budget allocated.

Two things: 1) Overhead, overhead, overhead. Always leave room for overhead. Programming is... erratic, and the more code, the more features, the more depencies, the chances of issues arising WILL increase. You need to account for that. 2) You want to downscope more than adding new features. Settle for an MVP (Minimum Viable Product). The things that are core for your game to work, making sure it is fun to play, no matter the graphics or anything else, but that the core gameplay is great. Then you can always expand from there, make it bigger, more grand. A great rule of thumb is to follow these 4 steps in terms of scope: ? 30 Seconds of Gameplay ? 3 Minutes of Gameplay ? 30 Minutes of Gameplay ? 3 Hours of Gameplay

The most difficult thing is to see the contribution of each part of the project and to look at it from different perspectives. You must have a deadline and a final budget for everything. It is always good to improve your product, but sometimes the cost is too high for the value that it creates. If you cannot manage that, everything could collapse. You must understand the situation of all team members and stakeholders and try to see from their point of view before you make a decision that affects them.

Make sure you are connecting with actual gamers, not just quality assurance companies and people. You need to get out there, get talking to actual gamers, to people whose life is gaming, whether it is for example YouTubers, Twitch Streamers, Esport players or hardcore gamers, they're all valuable sources of feedback. The faster you can get versions of your game out into the hands of real gamers to test, to see and hear their feedback, the better. Learn from it, value it, and truly listen; but remember, you're not making a game for everyone, you're making a game for the niche you've selected. Maya Angelou famously said: "People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel"

I don’t care how many polys you push or how cool your water looks. If the game is not fun, nobody wants it. Ask the mono Space Invaders

When I call someone a "Very good engineer", I actually insult them. Being a precise and perfect engineer means being repetitive and boring. Art and flow is about imbalance of curves, not a mathematically perfect sine wave of expected ups and downs. There's not a rollercoaster on the planet modelled after sine. Be unexpected.

It is critical to realize that stepping into a leadership role means setting aside your ego. No matter your expertise or years of experience, there's always room to learn something new, sometimes even from unexpected sources like a junior team member. Their fresh perspective might offer simple, effective solutions. Create a mindset that being in a higher position doesn't make your team's experiences automatically invalid or less significant than yours, but rather, take time to consider all options before making a calculated decision. Remember, every perspective counts and every problem is an opportunity to learn.

A good leader must remember that although they are in an elevated position compared to the rest of their team, they are still a part of the team and should make an effort to learn new things and improve their skills with the rest of the team. A good leader should use their past experiences to understand what may work to solve certain problems or overcome certain challenges and what may not, and constantly be revising their approach with every new experience.

Failure and ego are mortal enemies. Ego prevents failures to become lessons. Worse it feeds the ego towards bitterness. Accept that you are wrong. Accept that you failed. Only then you can make something out of yourself.

Inadequate focus on monetization. Ambitious studios oftentimes negate to communicate with everyone that it is ultimately a business. Creating a great, great product is priority 1A, but revenue generation is a close 1B. Too frequently, studios work behind closed doors for 3-5 years to create a game, thinking that if you build it then they (users) will come. This brews a culture wherein an ideological (and idealistic) approach to product building trumps all else. Yes, there are success cases, but those are hard to come by, and this approach will become increasingly risky given the rising game development budgets.

One big mistake is ignoring to have a person who will guide you on the way from A point as an engineer to B point as a leader. From my experience to make your journey as smooth as possible from engineering to a leadership position you need a plan and a lead buddy. Usually, I build a mini-me plan for a few months by describing new leadership-related activities for a person and helping him/her try to be a leader in silent mode. I adjusted our f2f to share more personal experiences to give a clear context of what it means to be a leader. When the candidate's expectations are met that is important to support for a few months later after promotion to leadership position. This approach will help to avoid common mistakes.

Many leaders do not share their knowledge for fear of losing value within the team. On the contrary, sharing knowledge helps not only the team to mature, but also to believe more in the leader, to feel more confident in him/her and to be more committed to common objectives.

As a leader you job is to uplift people. Make them valuable enough so they can leave your company, but threat them well enough so they don't wish to leave.

Many leaders do not let grow other juniors with the fear of their replacement in same organisation. As a leader they are the main bridge of juniors and Management where leaders only deliver to management what they want because management trust and prioritise the leader first before Junior.