Hi! I am Shawnna O’Neil currently living in Austin, TX. I have 2 years of experience in Production working on an indie game known as HouseKeeping (working name). I have also worked at a local startup known as AstroBeam VR. Additionally, I have done QA Playtesting for Owlchemy Labs’ Cosmonious High. Over these coming weeks/months, I will be going over various Production topics. Now that you know a little bit about me let’s get into it.
As a Producer you are the main point of contact for all disciplines. You are also the main person who is wrangling talent along with keeping the project within scope and budget. Making a game can be stressful so a producer might bring the team lunch when a deadline is coming up to help boost morale.
Inevitably there will be conflict within the team. These conflicts can vary in degree and scope. All of these conflicts will need to be worked through sooner than later. While working on this indie project there hasn’t been many conflicts however I had one come up that as a Producer I needed to come out of my comfort zone and deal with. Before being a Producer, I had no idea I would come across team conflict or how to handle it.
The conflict involved several team members, some who were experiencing burn out and others who were perceived as not pulling their weight. The difficult part was the team members that were burning out didn’t want to say anything because they didn’t want to cause conflict. I noticed the folks who were burning out were avoiding doing things. I basically needed to poke a little further.
I met with those experiencing burn out over a Discord chat and I asked what was going on. I was then told they were feeling overwhelmed and unable to give support to other team members asking for assistance. After finding this out, I spoke to the team who was often asking for assistance and basically asked what was going on. Asking this question was the best advice I have been given and wanted to share. You can NEVER just accuse someone of not doing something because you don’t know what their story is going to be. It could be something totally out of your control going on in their lives.
I resolved the conflict by explaining how their actions were contributing to the burnout and asked for suggestions on what could be done to help. One suggestion was to bring a list of questions on a weekly basis rather than pinging with 1 or 2 questions several times per day. Thankfully, this helped reduce the conflict by making a few simple changes.
I wanted to start this series on conflict resolution because it’s one of the most important things as a Producer you will both encounter and need to work through. In my next article, I will deep dive into keeping your team calm under pressure for a big deadline. For example:
- Noticed an issue in the games production process was down by 20%
- Discussed with the talent to identify the concerns
- Worked with the talent that was having a difficult time
- Resolved the conflict and production increased by 40%
- Finished part of the project by the deadline
I hope that this article will offer some suggestions to Producers when they come across conflict on their own teams.