Ponencia en Colombia 3.0

1. Establishing a creative vision
Alexandre Mandryka
gamewhispering.com

2. Who’s this guy?
• Born in Paris
• 12 years as a designer/creative director
• Ubisoft, Relic, consulting

3. WHAT IS A CREATIVE VISION?

4. Have you asked yourself these
questions?
• Is it fun?
• Is it good?
• Is it beautiful?
Questions so vague they are dangerous

5. What is a creative vision?
• It is a process
• It is thinking of what you want for your audience
• It is also inspiring your team with a clear target
Thinking before acting

6. Mandate
Meaning
Player
Experience
Game
Clear rationale Rallying target
 Focus creative effort

7. Mandate It can be very concrete
“The people’s car”
A car for every family
The specs followed
1 000 Reichsmarks max
Economical usage
5L/100Km
100Km/h
600Kg maximum
Fits 4 to 5 people

8. Meaning A message to the world
“Dad, thank you for showing me that there is
honor in looking back and respecting the past.”

9. Private Ryan: It doesn't make any sense, sir.
Why? Why do I deserve to go?
Private Reiben: Hey asshole! Two of our guys
died trying to find you all right?
Captain Miller: Earn this.

10. Old James Ryan: Tell me I have led a good life.
Ryan's Wife: What?
Old James Ryan: Tell me I'm a good man.
Meaning Ryan's Wife: You *are*.
It is our responsibility to be worthy of the sacrifice of our elders

11. Player
Experience “Need for speed, but at night”
• How do you represent speed
at night?
Use lights
Bunched to create contrast
Reflection is needed
Ground has to be wet
Helps find the right questions
and make decisions

12. Abstraction
Mandate
Meaning
Player
Experience
Time

13. Define your project
Communicate your vision
TOP DOWN PROCESS

16. - Features
- Systems
- Rules
...

17. Doing things in the right order
Execution Reflection
Consumption
Heading straight for execution leaves results to chance,
which is a largely unacceptable process at industrial level

18. Doing things in the right order
Reflection Execution
Consumption
First establish your vision
It then helps direct execution and becomes a rationale evaluation metric

19. We start wrong for different reasons
 Mainly because we don’t know better
 It reassures us, we need concrete progress
 I’ve seen it at all levels
 Also because we use the player perspective

20. Understand your material
Mandate
Make a Mario Kart like

22. Analysis takes time
Mandate
Romeo and Juliet + Modern times
Over 300 years

23. Ubisoft’s long process
• Core team
• Research for 3-4
months
• 3-4 days workshop
– Offsite
– In a castle
– With the CCO

24. Communication:
Not an exact science

25. Avoid misinterpretations
Mandate
Make a movie about WWII

26. Mandate Business
Team
Creative Meaning
Player Implementation
Experience
Rational flow
Communicate through different layers Creating a unified vision
Not what individuals ‘like’

27. Establishing Player Experience
Professional Gamer

28. An audience is mesmerized

29. Technique is at the service of intention
• Shaky camera
• Slightly out of focus
• Sound is distorted
• Looks into camera

30. Engage your team members
Support creativity
TEAM DYNAMIC &
BOTTOM UP PROCESS

31. Being creative
Abraham Maslow
Malsow’s hierarchy of needs

32. Intrinsic needs
Competency Autonomy Purpose

33. Respect competencies
Competency
Autonomy
Purpose
Give a problem Let me find a solution

34. If you don’t ...
Strong vision No team engagement
Vision must be Let the team member find
rationale their solutions

35. Supporting Bottom-Up
Vision
• Engage your team
disciplines
• Do the team specialists
understand and share
Coding Art
Process
Design it?
• They deliver the
Features Features Features
features
• They are specialists,
They know best
Game

36. The Sands of Time

37. Creativity VS Management
• Finding the creative core takes times
• It can fail
• Creativity is about finding something hidden
• Management is about limiting uncertainty
What is needed is Creative Management

38. Week 1 Week 2 Week 3 Week 4
Gold
Ideas
Understand creative process (vision, brainstorm ...)

39. Take away
• You are a creator, not a gamer anymore
• Understand creativity and respect it
• Establish a clear objective and work as a team

40. Alexandre Mandryka
alex@gamewhispering.com
gamewhispering.com