Democratizing Game Art Feedback
Many times in my career in games, I have encountered this situation: game art teams ruled by benevolent dictators who failed to codify what they considered ‘acceptable quality. Teams ended up dependent on their subjective opinion, which, to make things worse, often lacked alignment with end-user needs and production realities. Over time these people either became a bottleneck or made an exit leaving someone else to pick up the pieces.
But I have also encountered a few bright spots in the past few years. Art leaders who were genuinely interested in improving the way their people gave feedback on the work produced. They wanted to create resilient teams that would embrace a culture of feedback.
So what did these people do to create the environments?
Well, this is not easy or quick, but the steps themselves may sound relatively simple; the hard part is prioritizing this work in the whirlwind of everything going on.
On top of it, this is change management we are talking about. Just mandating a culture of feedback won’t make it happen. My recommendation will always be to drive change by attraction — find the people genuinely interested. If they don’t get it, forget about the rest. Go back to the drawing board until you get something that truly inspires a minority group that can become your culture ambassadors.
Ok, but what are these “relatively simple steps”? This is what I’ve seen:
First, take the essential aspects of your art style, and codify them into a style guide. I’ve met many art directors who have been working on a style guide for years without putting it to use. Just face it: it will never be finished; it is a working document. So come to terms with the fact it is not perfect and make it at least usable — if you are struggling with this, try to ‘ish’ it.
Second, make public some simple criteria so that anyone can objectively assess their work in progress. Any art team member should be able to easily determine whether their upcoming masterpiece violates the style guide. I’ve seen style guides that were 30+ pages, describing everything from cute backstories of iconic franchise characters to what color to use in the drop shadow of a speech bubble. All the minute details can become noise masking the essence of what’s really important.
Third, for those things you believe only YOU can give feedback on because they are subjective, start a feedback forum or similar. Bring your art team together for a time-boxed session to review work-in-progress items. Think aloud while reviewing the work in front of others so people can hear your thought process. And so they can learn. Many teams do some form of “art dailies,” which I’ve seen done in various degrees of theatrics. Don’t take yourself too seriously, or people won’t feel safe. The important thing is that after a while, other people in the forum should provide feedback too. You want peer feedback to happen. It will allow you to observe if they are getting in sync with you, and you can take action if they don’t. And one day, they won’t need you, which, trust me, is good for you. You can use the extra time for other important stuff.
And what do you do in the feedback forum?
You banish Gut Feedback; that’s what you do.
Gut Feedback may sound like “ugh, that’s ugly,” but it also sounds like “sooo cute, I like it” or “Awesome!” which are maybe nicer to hear but are also a reaction. This type of feedback can be informative to some degree, but it doesn’t help me understand why this is good or bad for its purpose. And if the people in the room are not the target audience, it might also be totally off base with the actual reaction your end users may have.
Gut Feedback can also harm how people feel in the session. It’s nerve-wracking for the artists to get their stuff reviewed. Sometimes it takes quite a lot of convincing to put people at ease with sharing early progress. A poorly timed gut comment can destroy safety in the group.
Maybe you think the forum is the perfect opportunity to provide Direction, but be very careful about it. If you open your mouth to say: “Make the scene brighter,” you need to explain why. Try to say instead, “Make the scene brighter because this section is meant to be full of humor and should transmit joy to children.” If people don’t understand the thought process, your Direction is as bad as Gut Feedback.
What you should aspire to do is to bring Critique into your life
Critique is about knowing the purpose and outcome you are trying to achieve, then looking at the work in progress and figuring out what works and what could be different or better. All of it is hopefully articulated to maximize learning.
If you are interested, there are tons of resources out there explaining how to do a critique. Many refer back to product design, design thinking, or similar. But it applies just fine to game art; try to tweak it for context.
If I can recommend one source, that would be Christina Wodtke; she makes this easy to remember — just GASP:
• Goals: what is the purpose of this work?
• Attempts: what have you tried to do so far?
• Successes: how is this effective at meeting the goal?
• Possibilities: anything that could make this work better?
Christina recommends, and I agree, to consider Laura Klein’s 20/80 critique advice. If you are early stages (say 20% in), you can still make big changes, and this may be the time to give Direction if you feel like you must. If you are almost shipping (80%), the time for significant changes is gone, but you can still tweak it here and there.
Fun fact: a couple of times, I’ve found people who think the word Critique has “negative connotations, and we shouldn’t use it.” They are mistaking Critique with criticism. Honestly, the practice's name will not make it uncomfortable or unsafe for the team. Instead, you need to pay attention to the actions and behaviors of the people in the room.
To be clear, putting together a feedback culture where everyone feels encouraged and safe to give and receive Critique takes time. But if you genuinely believe this is the way, think what’s the smallest step you can take now and start moving.
More Resources
1. Discussing Design (Connor and Irizarry, 2015) — book that I give to art leadership peeps to get into the whole “three types of feedback” conversation. If reading the book is not your thing, Adam Connor has a few talks online.
2. Christina Wodtke has lots of design wisdom. She explains GASP in this story: https://medium.com/@cwodtke/five-habits-of-design-thinking-45bb61b30393?source=rss-b8250db9473------2
3. Game art people are often sceptical when I talk to them about taking tools from the product design world. Here you have a GDC talk about Critique that usually works well to persuade artists to try it: https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1023293/Maximizing-Critique-Improving-Communication-for
