年长暴躁设计师综合症症状编辑本段回目录
你完成所有一切。你从助理和初级设计师级别一步步往上晋升。你顺利度过危机，最终发行游戏。你掌握所有内部工具，发明新管道和新技巧，教授其他设计师如何运用这些工具。但现在你没有耐心等待自己晋升至高级及主管位置：这让你心烦，你正在逐步变老。
或者也许是位管理人员、首席设计师、制作人或HR，你不明白为什么技术娴熟、非常有前景的设计人员会变得消极怠工。你知道他很优秀，但你不清楚要如何将其带回成功道路，塑造成你需要的团队支柱。
我自己曾陷入这两种职业死胡同，因此想要同大家分享最近我对于“暴躁资深设计师综合症”的调查结果。
grumpy grump from gamasutra.com
病症
年长暴躁设计师（OGD）通常非常有经验，掌握开发诀窍，有一定地位——发明某些工具或开发过程，是工具运用的导师。问题是他们没有利用这些既有知识协助团队和项目发展，而是不断评判他人的做法有多么离谱，将如何最终惨败。
你会发现，OGD主要将精力用在批评他人的看法或是应对自己设定的挑战。他们排斥改变和进步，不想要学习新技巧或重新思考既有策略，他们会竭尽全力防止出现这一情况。
团队不仅得浪费宝贵时间和精力同他进行沟通，而且只要这一有害行为持续未能得到遏制，创造性就会继续下跌，因为创造性只能够存在于积极环境中（游戏邦注：在此环境中，各种构思将得到鼓励，而非否定）。团队的失败创意机制无疑敲响警钟，提醒我们做出进一步调查。
OGD的另一特点是树立同项目实况脱节的雄心壮志。OGD会将当前冲刺同轰动巨作所取得的最终成就进行比较，进而形成消极态度。他们也许觉得自己需要一次性通过《Super Bowl》，然后受困于此，其实他只需要争取若干场地。
Super Bowl from phandroid.com
OGD的最后一个常见特性是，他们一直追求更高职位，或高级级别，或领导地位。就其经验和技能来看，这完全是合理晋升，但这些设计师常因其态度而无法得到提拔，这导致他们形成沮丧情绪，而这只会恶化他们的其他症状。
进行诊断
要判断自己遇到的是不是OGD，寻找前面谈到的症状非常关键。观察设计师与同伴进行沟通的方式，查看他们如何给予回馈及建议。
通常暴躁设计师很喜欢采用全部回复方式，通常不会缺席邮件线程和口水战。此外，在集体讨论会或小组讨论中，我们会发现他们倾向否定他人的观点，将自己的看法强加于人。
另一观察内容是职业发展模式。这一设计师是否已身处这一岗位一段时间，或者他过去是否曾在某种岗位任职很长时间？困在某职位过长时间无疑会形成消极心态，催生其他问题，这非常自然，尤其是在公司没有提供灵活职业发展道路的情况下。
最后，查看存档业绩评价也能够让你有所收获，能够帮你查看暴躁设计师潜在问题的具体情况及发展过程。
通常你会看到自我评分和经理评价存在落差。我发现，这通常会被忽略，尤其是在总体评价是“设计师的表现颇令人满意”的情况下，但探究落差背后的原因非常重要。
我看过这样一个例子：设计师获得很高评价，表现被认为是超越预期，但他的自我评价比这还高。这说明，称赞没有得到察觉，这会导致危险的自觉高人一等状态，将妨碍设计师的表现和进步。
当然如果这种情况持续很长时间，相同问题就会持续出现在报告中，你会发现整体表现出现滑坡——有时会处于临界水平。
进行一对一的会议，解释具体情况。指出这如何有违你的预期，试着让暴躁设计师承认自己在此负有责任。他会进行抵抗、反驳，试图将讨论扭转至有利自己的局面，将原因归咎于外部因素等。
这就是准备工作的用武之地。凭借不同来源和时间段的具体例子，你多半能够顺利说服他。
但主要着眼点是保持事态的积极性。要传递的信息是：“是的，我们知道你很优秀，很有能力。这点毋庸置疑，这也是为什么你能够一直走到今天。如今你被某些不良行为困住了，导致你停滞不前，这对团队非常不利。让我们共同解决这一问题。”
让OGD意识到这给团队成员带来消极影响能够有效促使他摆脱这种状态。有若干设计师就他们给团队其他成员带来负面影响这一情况给出这样的回应：“我不想再形成负面影响。”
这是个非常微妙的谈话，它也可能变得言辞激烈（游戏邦注：在这种情况下，你将很难传递自己的看法）。接受这样的批评反馈是个个性化且情绪化的过程，所以做好进行持久战的心理准备。
我觉得最好将这同正式业绩评价区分开来，以降低伴随着些正式过程的紧张感，相反应清楚说明，这是旨在帮助设计师跳脱职业误区，重回正轨的个人发展计划。这也是为什么你不想草草了事。他们排斥所谓的批评意见非常自然，你也许会希望推迟会议，让他们慢慢消化反馈信息，然后几天后再展开讨论。
就个人经验来看，做好准备工作，表露善意和幽默感能够帮你顺利完成这一过程，收获预想不到的结果。令我惊讶的是，我看到有些设计师在短短几天内就实现华丽大变身。电子游戏领域人士特有的激情通常会强化行为和反应。若无法提供适当指示和目标，玩家眼中的内容和设计师眼中的内容将出现混淆，再来就是项目就会基于个人视角，而非团队视角。
实际情况是，如果我们以团队的进步作为出发点，那么这一激情会迅速将OGD变成团队的核心成员。
下面是形成彻底改变的一个具体事例：在告知设计师持续抱怨项目如何无法同自己欣赏的作品相匹敌完全无济于事后（他们只需要在既有局限条件中尽自己的所能），团队内部的争论很快就会戛然而止。第二天，他们的主管看到其中有位设计师探出头来告诉他：“身为专业人士的感觉真好！”然后接着忙手头的工作。再重复一次：是第二天。
但改变需要时间，我建议你展开后续会议，肯定他们的进步，同时找出尚有待提高的地方。
grumpy team from gamasutra.com
预防症状
我觉得症状的根源是个普遍性问题：缺乏自尊心。就如我在之前的文章中谈到的，设计师定义不清，鲜有人了解，这使得即便是经验丰富的设计师也觉得他们需要捍卫自己的“虚假荒谬工作”——这促使他们进行自我防御。就“构思趣味性”之类的棘手任务、有限权利、模糊过程及低效成功参数而言，我们完全能够理解，随着风险元素的日益增多，OGD会转而诉诸否定周围人士的策略，通过对比让自己显得更突出。
虽然暴躁程度需由设计师自己控制，但其经理及公司结构有责任提供适当的发展环境，给予其行为校正及时反馈。
可以说，设计师通常都不是杰出管理者，因此我建议公司安排适当人员及HR人士协助及提醒首席设计师处理团队当中的OGD问题。当然如果工作室设有设计总监职位就更好了，因为他能够让设计师在无需面临直接监督压力的情况下获得成长。
但我觉得设计师工作之所以如此棘手还有结构原因。最大原因就在于“趣味性”的模糊概念，这令衡量标准变得非常主观。这令设计师背负巨大压力，剥夺他们的自主权，让他们觉得非常无助。
团队需要认识到，趣味性就其定义而言是项非常棘手的任务，需要腾出较多构思时间，确定趣味性的预期形式，在开始着手制作内容前就其本质内容进行建模。
能够辨别不同设计特性的更优质结构还能够充分发挥设计师的作用。不妨看看编程方面（游戏邦注：这主要基于功能角色进行划分，具体内容包括3D编程、AI或工具），还有就是其他基于不同抽象程度的职位，例如建筑师或经理。此外，艺术内容也存在自上而下的分工：艺术目标、概念艺术和实际资产创建。
此外，它还将批评意见变成创意过程的组成要素，这同编程的代码评论形成共鸣。而所谓的设计师是个定义模糊的头衔，其通常没有明确的职业路线。
最后，我觉得设计和创意目标的混淆会极大损及项目。就和电影工作室需要导演和各领域的专业人士，方能制作出电影一样，我们也需要将设计和创意目标区分开来。
所有学科都应该提供技术解决方案，支撑项目目标，令其能够在游戏中顺利实现。让设计主宰目标会导致方法和目的出现混淆，形成不公平、不稳定的局面。
最后，淡化设计、艺术和编程之间的目标关系，这样各方面的负责人员才能够形成独立目标，创造无侧重点的体验。
总结
最后，还是要谢谢这些依然非常优秀的设计师，虽然我说他们又年长，又暴躁。他们表现出极大的成熟和勇气，愿意和同探讨这些症状，我知道这对他们影响很大。我个人想要对团队成员表示歉意，自己也曾给团队带来负面影响。
我这里所谈论的似乎像是基本管理技巧，也许确是如此，但文章内容在游戏领域鲜少被谈及，主要基于两个层面，包括设计师视角及工作室结构层面。
所以设计师切记不要自鸣得意，要积极接受新观点，而管理者则要注意完善自己的工作流程，以更好理解、引导和完善创造性过程。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，作者：Alexandre Mandryka ）
Old Grumpy Designer Syndrome
by Alexandre Mandryka
[What happens when designers have no clear career path, and there's no culture in the studio that helps nurture them? You get an old grumpy designer. In this article, design consultant Alexandre Mandryka identifies the causes and symptoms, and prescribes treatment.]
You’ve done it all. You’ve moved up through the ranks of associate and junior designer. You have been through crunch to ship games. You’ve mastered the internal tools, pioneered new pipelines and techniques, and trained other designers to use them. But now you are tired of waiting for that promotion to senior level and lead positions: it is getting on your nerves, and it is starting to get old.
Or maybe you are a manager, lead designer, producer, or HR, and you don’t understand why that highly skilled and very promising designer turned into a negativity beast. You know he’s good, but you are at a loss to turn him back to the path of success and create the team pillar that you need.
Having been myself on both sides of this potential career dead-end, I want to share with you my recent study on what I call “Old Grumpy Designer Syndrome”.
Symptoms of the Syndrome
An Old Grumpy Designer is generally quite experienced, has developed knowhow and has achieved some status for it — owning some part of the tools or processes and being a reference on them. The problem is that instead of using this recognized knowledge to help the team and project move forward, he’s constantly showing how wrong others are and how doomed their efforts.
You’ll often find that the ideas the OGD is most likely to devote his knowledge and energy to burning down ideas that are not his or that challenge what he has established himself. He has become resistant to change and evolution, he just doesn’t want to have to learn new tricks or to reconsider his current ones, and he will do everything he can to prevent that from happening.
Not only is the team wasting valuable energy and insight interacting with him, but as long this toxic behavior persists unchecked, creativity gradually goes down, as it can only exist in a positive environment where ideas are nurtured instead of shut out. A failing creative dynamic within a team is definitely a sign that should ring a bell and trigger further investigation.
Another trait that can appear in an OGD is extreme ambition that is disconnected from the realities of your project. An OGD can compare the current sprint with the actual end results achieved by the reference blockbuster game and develop negativity as a result. They might think they need to win the Super Bowl in one play and get paralyzed by it, when all that is asked is to gain a few yards.
The last frequent trait of OGDs is that they consistently ask for a higher position, either for a senior rank or lead. Because of their experience and skills, this is a perfectly valid progression, but as these designers usually don’t get promoted because of their attitude, it leads to a frustration buildup that of course worsens the other symptoms.
Establishing a Diagnosis
When trying to identify if you are facing an OGD, it is important to look for the symptoms discussed earlier. Study the way a designer communicates with his peers, gives feedback and proposals.
Generally, a grumpy designer will be trigger-happy with the reply-all button and tend to be quite present in mail threads and flame wars. Brainstorms or group discussions are also opportunities to notice his tendency to shut down others’ ideas and try to impose his own.
Another thing to look for is career dynamic. Has the designer been at his level for some time now, or has he been stuck too long in the past? It is only natural that stagnating at a given level is bound to create a perpetual bad mood and can be a catalyst for the other issues, especially if no adapted growth path has been offered.
Ultimately, browsing all archived performance reviews is going to give perspective and help monitor the appearance and evolution of many of the issues that have most probably been already recorded and communicated to the grumpy designer.
Often, you will see a discrepancy between self-evaluation scores and those given by the manager. I have found that this is often ignored, especially if the overall appreciation is that the designer performs satisfactorily, but it is actually important to discuss the reason behind this divergence of opinion.
I witnessed a case where a designer received high marks and was noted as exceeding expectation, his self-evaluation, though, was even higher than this. This shows that the praise is not perceived, and this can lead to a dangerous and unnecessary self one-upmanship that will actually hamper designer performance and progression.
Of course, if this situation has been going on for too long and the same problems keep appearing in the report, you generally see overall performance go down — sometimes to critical levels.
Treating the Syndrome
So you think you’ve got an OGD. You now realize that one of your beloved designers — whom you’ve put so much hope into, and given key tasks — is actually responsible for a drop in productivity within the team, an overall bad mood, and a general feeling that makes people afraid to speak up. The consequence may be mild, but the bottom line is that things would be way better than they are now if this designer turns his negative behavior into an uplifting collaborative attitude and puts his skills forward to help everyone.
First, you need to do your homework. Consider the symptoms you’ve noticed, and write them all down. Dig up the repeated mentions you’ve found in the performance reviews, list the emails or discussion outbreaks, run stats on how often personal evaluations were higher than those of his manager. Make sure you compile all the elements that demonstrate a problem. You’ll need a substantial stockpile of ammunition going into this because that’s how you’ll get your grumpy designer off-balance and bring down his mental fortress, so he sees it from your perspective.
Book a one-on-one meeting and explain the situation. Point out how it doesn’t live up to your expectations and try to have your grumpy designer acknowledge that he has a part in it. You will see him resist, argue, and redirect the discussion to his successes, put the blame on external factors, and so on.
That is where your preparation should pay off. With concrete examples coming from different sources and different time periods, you should be able to get through to him.
The main idea is to keep things positive, though. The message that needs to come across is: “Yes, we know you are good and have skills. We recognize that, and it’s the reason you’ve made it this far. Now, you are stuck in behavior that holds you back and is toxic to the team. Let’s work that out.”
Having him realize that he has a negative impact on his teammates plays a big part in shaking the OGD out of it. I’ve seen several of them respond to the idea that they were hurting other people that they work with. “I don’t want to be toxic,” they’ll frequently say.
It is a delicate discussion to have, and it can become quite heated — in which case it’s hard to get your point across. Receiving such critical feedback is very personal and emotional, so be ready for a ride.
I believe it is best to separate this effort from official performance reviews, so as to reduce the tension that comes with those formal processes, and instead make it clear that this is a personal development initiative aimed at helping the designer out of a career pitfall and back on track. That is also why you don’t want to rush it. It is natural for them to resist what can be perceived as criticism, and you might want to adjourn the session, let the feedback sink in, and start the discussion afresh a few days later.
From my experience, a mix of preparation, good will, and humor can get you through that process and secure incredible results. To my amazement, I have witnessed complete turnarounds in a matter of days. The passion that defines people in the video game industry tends to amplify behaviors and reactions. Fail to provide proper direction and purpose, and you will witness confusion between consuming content as a player and creating content as a designer, in addition to a personal focus instead of one on teamwork.
The truth is that if you motivate our genetically ingrained tendency to perform for the betterment of the group, you will see passion take over and turn OGDs into key players in your team within moments.
Here’s a concrete example of the turnaround: after having explained to designers that it serves no purpose to keep grumbling about how the project will never truly compete with the game they respected so much — when all that was asked from them was to do their best within existing constrains — arguments quickly stopped within the team. The very next day, their lead saw one of them pop his head away from his screen and say to him: “It feels so good just being professional!” and went on to blast through the tasks at hand. Let me repeat that: the very next day.
Change can take some time, though, and I recommend booking follow-up sessions to acknowledge improvements while identifying the areas that still could improve over time.
Preventing the Syndrome
I think that the root cause of the syndrome is a widespread problem: low self-esteem. As detailed in my previous article, design is poorly defined and understood, which makes even experienced designers feel like they need to protect their “phoney baloney jobs” — which tends to makes them defensive. With the awkward task of “coming up with the fun,” limited authority, unclear processes, and inefficient metrics for success, it is understandable that with rising stakes, the OGD will resort to bringing people down around him, in a desperate attempt to shine by comparison.
Although it is on the designer to control his own grumpiness level, I believe that the responsibility lies with his manager and the company structure to provide the right environment to grow in as well as give timely feedback to adjust his behavior.
It is safe to say that designers aren’t generally great managers, thus I would recommend that producing staff and HR assist and advise the lead designer facing a case of OGD in his team. Of course, it’s even better if you have a design director at studio level, as he can help designers grow without the pressure that comes with direct supervision.
But I also think that there are structural reasons that make the job of a designer quite difficult. The biggest offender being that elusive notion of “fun” that is so poorly defined that it ends up being very subjectively evaluated, if at all. It puts huge pressure on the designers while stripping them of much needed autonomy and sense of competency.
Teams need to at least acknowledge that fun is by (lack of) definition hard to come up with, and implement an extended conception phase to identify the desired modalities of fun and prototype its essence before the massive gears of production start spinning.
A better structure that recognizes the different specialties of design can also make the best of each designer. Looking at programming, which is actually explicitly segmented by functional role — like 3D engineering, AI, or tools — you will also see positions that correspond to different levels of abstraction, like architect or manager. Art also brings a great top-down hierarchy between artistic vision, concept art and actual asset building.
Furthermore, it incorporates critique as an established part of the creative process, which resonates with programming’s code review. Designers, on the other hand, are often … well … “designers”, a poorly defined title that doesn’t offer clear career paths.
Ultimately, I believe that the confusion between design and creative vision hurts projects immensely. Just like film studios need a director and a team of specialists of each field to make a movie, design and creative vision should be separated.
All disciplines should become technical providers of solutions to support the vision and make it exist in the game. Putting design in charge of the vision leads to confusion between the means and the end, and creates an unfair and unstable situation.
Lastly, diluting the responsibility of vision between design, art and programming, this typically leads each to develop their own independent vision, and creates an unfocused experience.
Conclusion
I want to take the opportunity to thank the designers that remained good sports even though I was calling them old and grumpy. They showed a great lot of maturity and fortitude exploring that syndrome with me and I know firsthand that it made a difference for them. I also want to personally apologize to the colleagues I have been toxic to in my career, the pain I caused was uncalled for and I am sorry for it.
What I detailed here may seem like basic management techniques and they probably are, but this article represents an effort I have very rarely seen in the field of design. It is twofold, and should be taken from both the angle of the designers themselves and also from the perspective of studio structure. After all, our industry has been around for only about 30 years and even though its growth has been incredibly fast, we must remain on the lookout for improvements to our creative processes and theories, as they are still, on many accounts, not fully matured.
So please, if you are an experienced designer, don’t fall prey to complacency and try to be open to new ideas, even if they go contrary to what lead to your past successes; if you are a manager, be on the lookout for improvements in your processes to understand, shepherd, and improve creativity.（Source：gamasutra）
