Losing Your Objectivity

Game development can become an increasingly tricky proposition as it progresses and losing objectivity is often the culprit. It is a hazard of the job that dogs us all. As with any labour of love we get tangled up in detail and can lose sight of the bigger picture. Retaining objectivity is important because it helps keep your game steered in the right direction.

One of the functions of a game director, or whoever is in overall creative control of the project, is to retain objectivity. The best achieve this by avoiding getting bogged down in detail and effectively delegating. The very best, in addition, have a handle of every detail but only with a view to how it contributes to the bigger picture. They have an ability to zoom in and out without getting stuck.

Whatever your breadth of influence on the project having a handle on how the details of your specific contribution add up is crucial to keeping objectivity. This is why being given a clear brief is effective because it helps you ask the right questions in the context of the overall project. Part of remaining objective is the ability to ask questions of what you're doing.

So what other things can you do to help prevent losing your objectivity? Here is my guide:

Talk to others about your work: Explaining what you're doing to another person forces you to approach it from an outside perspective and with a more conclusive eye. Another person is objectivity, so use it.

Leave your work and then come back to it: The further down the rabbit hole you've tumbled the longer you should leave it before returning. It's a simple and classic strategy but one of the most effective. However it takes self-awareness to recognise that you've lapsed and fallen into crazy-land. Taking action can sometimes just mean having a cup of tea or in more serious cases a longer break, like a vacation. The amount of times I've come back to my work and muttered "What was I thinking?!" is plenty. Artists; how many times have you overly tweaked detail that no one will ever notice but you? Coders; overly engineered a piece of code for its intended purpose? You get the picture.

Know your goals: It's hard to look at things with an objective eye without an objective! Pretty simple, but I'm sure, like me, you've seen your fair share of developers, or even entire teams, getting caught up in needless details and tangents because their objectives weren't clear.

How is your contribution relevant?: Without a sense of purpose we can all stray. Refuse to take on work until you're absolutely clear why what you're doing is important and how it fits into the bigger picture. You can't be expected to remain objective without knowing this. This ties a lot into effectively motivating your team.

Be passionate about your work, but leave your emotions at the door: Emotional attachment prevents objectification. Any Pimp will tell you that one for free. We all need to be able to cut our losses and get rid if something isn't fulfilling its purpose. Being sentimental, emotional and overly attached can be your biggest enemy here. So grab a flamboyant hat and a lovely big fur coat and your fellow developers will know you mean business.

Present your work to the team: A more extreme version of talking to just one person; this can be a really useful exercise. Fear of talking to a large group of people forces you to consider your audience and demonstrate a very clear grasp of your work. Succinctly summarising your work is impossible to do without looking at things objectively. Just simply out of respect for your audience you're perspective has to be a wider one.

On the flip side to all of this, it shouldn't be condemned as a wholly negative thing to lose objectivity and get lost in your work. It is the natural tendency of a curious mind to go off and explore. It should just always be tempered with an awareness of your end goal. It's a skill to recognise when you're straying too far and to redirect yourself. It's a matter of self-awareness and discipline to maintain a firm grasp of the bigger picture. Good luck keeping that grip!

What other methods do you employ in keeping your objectivity? Have you any examples of how badly things have gone when objectivity was lost? I'd love to hear them.

This article was originally posted on my blog: Losing Your Objectivity: A Survival Guide.