Black Isle’s Feargus Interview

Ever since hearing his name, I’ve wondered if that was his given name or a made up one. I believe it’s real; however, it does sound very D&Dish. =) Anyway, GamaSutra, the homepage for game industry vibes has posted an extensive & interesting interview full of particularly poignant observations with the the producer within Black Isle Studios, Feargus Urquhart. Randomly drawing from the pile of questions (as they’re all worth reading), I pull out:

Q: How do you get the team to turn itself around after periods like that? Does everyone just wait for the tensions just wear off, or do you have a way of working through them?

A: Basically, we try to get people working. The analogy I use a lot of the time is that game development is like a train or a very large ship. It takes a hell of a lot of energy to get it moving. Then once it does, it better be the right direction, because it can be really hard to turn with all that inertia behind it. When the team starts fracturing because of open issues and creative differences the train starts slowing down and will eventually stop. It then takes a Herculean effort on the part of the producers and leads to get it moving again. The quickest way to do this is make sure that everyone knows what they need to get done and have tasks they can easily complete. The managers then need to make sure that the tasks are being completed and are showing the team that they know what is and isn’t getting done. Once the team sees that the train is moving again and is picking up speed, they have a tendency to put the “bad times” in the past.