Game Director 101

Here are 3 of the basic fundamentals of Game Directing that I learned in my experience thus far.

Game Design and Documentation

Game design is coming up with the game modes, the game mechanics, and all the nitty-gritty of XP, settings, and fine-tuning parameters.

These are the actions that are outlined at a high level within the documentation. A game director will be responsible for the “Game Dev Doc” (GDD)which is the written source of truth. These documents are usually 100 pages worth of details. You can do ones that are 10 to 20 pages, and that’s okay, however, to do it the best that you possibly can, you’ll have to include a ton of details.

The amount of details and specifics you can get into for each and every department is going to make the process smoother and more cohesive. When you work with a team or a vendor, you will have to outline and detail everything you want done so the vision you have in your head can be realized.

If you don’t do all the details and have a high-level approach, that may work too depending on how invested and independent your teammates are. One approach can be to work with each department. Have the high-level goal and concept of the game and then figure out what specifics the different departments will need for launch to make the best game possible. Have them brainstorm independently, then take their notes to incorporate the things they may not be thinking of, have a follow-up meeting to align, and then incorporate the details into the GDD.

When it comes to design and documentation, it pays a ton to know and understand both the technical side of things and the creative side of things.

The technical will allow you to help inform your team about how to do a specific task or stay within the scope of the tasks that they are assigned.

The creative side of things is the art of game-making. The ability to create a game loop, structure the dopamine hits in a way that makes people want to keep playing, and the taste to make a game people truly enjoy for the gameplay itself. There are a few good books out there but when it comes to taste, that’s hard to be taught. You have to be in the culture of games, playing them, and spending thousands of hours playing all different types of games.

Team Management and Cross-Department Communication

To be a great game director it is imperative that you can manage a team. This is Leadership. Learning from Jocko’s “Leadership Strategy and Tactics” is the best book that will instantly level up your leadership skill level.

Both internal and external teams will require a slightly different approach. Regardless, both teams are made up of people. Your goal is to communicate with them in a way that gives them purpose, keeps them engaged, and keeps them moving in the same direction. You’re to help facilitate them outputting the most work, and not through punishment or nonstop tasks, but by being there with them in the weeds, doing what is possible to support them, and getting creative with how to solve the problems that the team is presented with. Being open-minded, and able to be influenced, is important so that when you feel strongly, you can influence them back.

Let’s dive into the internal team and vendor team nuances.

Internal teams have different department heads and stakeholders in an idea. Although you’re responsible for the game and making it the best that it can possibly be from a product lens, there will be features requested that you will have to make room for. As a result, it will affect scope and budgeting. A lesson to learn early when creating a Game Dev Doc is to reach out to the respective departments and request the scope of a feature set from them in the earliest stages of development. This can be used for accountability and hard boundaries later in the phase of managing them

Internal teams also have a unique composition because your team is made up of individuals with their own experiences, preferences, and abilities. As a result, you’ll have to weigh everyone’s feedback differently. Understanding who they are in relation to the feedback that they provide will be telling into whether or not you should listen to them.

The vendor team will be your technical expertise. They will be the ones implementing the project so you have to make sure you get people who know how to do what you want to do and have done it before. If they haven’t, then you have to make sure they are quick to learn without incurring massive technical debt.

The problem with Vendors is that they will never care about the thing as much as you. This is the same for any business where the founder hires additional people. They are not expected to develop and improve the idea you present but rather act as if they were the pair of hands implementing your vision.

Prototype, Playtests and Jira Tickets

The last major thing that you will have to gain is a skillset in Prototyping, Playtesting, and Jira Tickets. This is one area that I am still improving in.

Prototyping is the ability to create a simplified version of what you envision the future to be with your game, providing a slice of that game to start testing and iterating on features.

The iteration process is intense and never ends as there is always something you can do to improve the game you’re making. You’ll iterate yourself in the editor or you will host Playtests.

For example, you have to test the same feature from week to week to see if you are addressing a root cause problem. Some game modes you make won’t be fun, and as a result, more extreme feedback is helpful. Once you get only small changes, the game mode itself is going to stop iterating which can be both good and bad, but it’s important to do that up front.

Playtests are where several other people to test out your game. To run effective playtests, you can do one of the following, and I’m sure there are other approaches. This is one thing I know that I am not optimized in. I get actionable things to do and fix from playtests, so it’s not terrible, but the differences I do are not as extreme or as controlled tested as they could be.

Back to the playtesting feedback. One approach is to have people say what they think as they think it, making sure everyone is vocal. Going up to those who don’t speak and asking them is also very useful as they tend to be different player types. It’s your job to filter through the feedback and action the most important things that are mentioned, whether that be bugs, “feelings”, or game mechanics.

A second approach is more productive in the sense that you come up with very specific questions. You prime your playtest group with the context and what you hope to understand in an unbiased way. For example, we could only be talking about one game mode, or only the movement, or only the shooting. These are all things that would get overlooked if you had not primed the audience to help you improve a very specific thing from the playtest.

After the playtest is done you then have to do two things: Q&A and Jira Tickets.

The Q&A is where you ask the group a ton of questions so you can understand them and their feedback. Letting them talk to open-ended questions is quite useful and should be recorded so you can reference back to them.

The final thing you have to do is Jira Tickets. This is the end result where the rubber meets the road. If a Jira ticket is not created, your feedback will not be actioned. You also have to get very specific with what you’re looking to improve from a technical level. You don’t have to type the code or anything, but speaking in technical terms will translate the playtester's feedback into what you hope to achieve, which helps when you can communicate technically.

As I’ve logged over a thousand Jira tickets, I learned that creating a ticket for each small specific task is a much more effective way of breaking down larger Jira tickets to track them more accurately and get more wins, boosting the morale of the team.

Jira tickets are not only for playtesting but are for how your documentation will be actioned. It’s a great tool for tracking who’s responsible, the due date, and the priority order of tasks, as well as the details, pictures, or links necessary to complete each task. You’ll go through hundreds if not thousands of these in your time as a game designer, developer, or director.

Action Cures All

Everything you do in life is going to be difficult. “It takes just as much effort to do something small as it does to do something big.” so empty your tank, give it your all, and make the best experience for yourself and the user. Build something kick-ass that you’re excited about, and you’ll do amazing!!