0:00

james dabrovsky and benjamin pembrose from sharpmount london were

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very happy to join us today on our podcast we talked about building games in london

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a very expensive city for game dev we discussed how do they

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hire and retain employees and what can you do to make sure that

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your team produces incredible results greetings and welcome to the 80 level

0:31

roundtable podcast in each episode host karel tokorev invites video game industry leaders to

0:38

talk about the world of game development no topic is off limits as long as it

0:43

relates to video game development new episodes are in the works so remember to follow us or subscribe and

0:50

share with someone you know will also enjoy the podcast can you introduce yourself

0:56

to our audience uh we did a little bit of an interview with james already i don't think we covered uh benjamin on

1:03

the website so if you can do like a little intro that would be great sure yeah so my name is uh benjamin

1:09

penrose and i'm the art director at sharp mod london and have been working in the industry

1:16

now for [Music] just over 10 years so it started off my career working at playground games

1:23

and joined the team at sharp mob uh back in 2020

1:29

or 29 2020 it's 2020. like ever since the pandemic all the

1:34

years blurred together right it was yeah opening opening day for the studio was the end of september 2020. so we're what

1:41

about 18 months old now so still still quite young me and ben actually started

1:47

our games careers together when ben was a concept artist and i was a producer

1:52

more years ago than i dare to think now uh just as playground games is opening up to work on forza horizon uh the first

1:59

the first fourth horizon game so we've been worked together for a very very long time we actually i think we partnered with

2:06

uh playground games a couple of years ago we were looking for people for

2:12

horizon as well as the new fable that they're working on but uh tell me about

2:18

uh shark mob so the first question i have when i learned that there is this new

2:24

studio coming up um is that you actually have offices in london

2:29

so why london i mean it seems like the most expensive place to have a studio right

2:35

now it's it's it's it's a good it's a good question and it probably is one of the

2:41

most expensive places in the uk although it's interesting i think the um

2:47

the salary differences or the salary bands you see in london versus the rest of the uk are getting they're getting smaller and smaller over time but yeah

2:54

there's a bunch of other costs that make london more expensive than other places um however on both a local scale within

3:01

london and i think on a national scale being on the uk there's a lot of benefits um

3:07

on the uk side of things we obviously obviously have the video games tax relief system

3:13

which really actually helps in bringing down dev costs and making us a little bit more competitive with the rest of

3:18

europe um than you than you would think even in london um but the choice to be in london for charm of london for charm

3:25

of london specifically uh was for a few reasons um the biggest being

3:30

access to talent um on a on a local scale looking at the uk um

3:35

you've really got um i'd say three or four major games hubs in the uk london has one of the biggest games development

3:42

uh sense in the world when you look at the number of game developers here across both kind of pc console aaa mobile um the

3:50

platform holders are here we've got microsoft and sony google all sat in the city with us but also guildford has a huge games hub

3:57

and is only 30 minutes away on train uh lemmington spa where me and ben used to work together it's about an hour and a

4:03

half on the train and then you've got guilford uh sorry cambridge as well with a good few developers about an hour on

4:08

the train with london nestled between those three hubs so in many ways within a probably hour and a half

4:16

commute circle around london you have access to pretty much the majority of

4:22

game dev talent in the uk um and i think one other thing we thought we we were always going to be open to

4:28

hiring international talent and we're hiring people from across the globe right now um and london i'd say more so

4:33

than anywhere else in the uk is quietly attractive for people coming from overseas it's such a well-known city

4:39

for people who want to come and live in one of the world's bigger kind of more exciting metropolitan cities it's a

4:46

great place to be and so we have kind of a lot of success hiring both in the within the uk but also hiring people

4:52

overseas as well and and for us that was the number one reason for being here in the city um

4:58

a secondary uh piece is um we're increasingly conscious that the

5:04

triple a side of the game's business and aaa something that we make aaa games for pc console here at sharp mob and with

5:10

the triple h side of the business and the games as a service side of the business this idea that you're not making a game

5:16

to release it and drop it you make you release a game and you sustain it for a long period of time

5:23

those two worlds are coming together more and more uh and the future i think it's certain that's going to

5:29

continue london does have access to aaa game developers but more so it has a lot of

5:34

access to i think the uk's games as a service experience uh so we've got the platform holders here we

5:41

have quite a lot of mobile developers like king space 8 natural motion um and so we

5:47

wanted to build our studio from from day one with the mindset of having both triple a thinkers

5:52

and games as service thinkers in the building from a very early conceptual stage and i can't think of a better place in the world to do that than than

5:58

london um yeah a bunch of reasons but talent talent being the primary one

6:04

so to kind of build on that uh conversation um

6:09

what do video game developers want right now like you've been probably

6:15

hiring a lot of guys like i said in your area and internationally

6:21

and um how do you see kind of like the this internal want of the video game

6:28

developer change since like when you first started and what's going on now

6:33

that's an interesting question um do you want me to go first do you want to jump in no no you go for it because

6:40

that is that's that is an interesting question from a yeah there's a few different angles by which

6:46

you could approach that right there's the sort of the type of lifestyle that people want to lead um yeah yeah yeah so

6:52

my children are walking into the office right now so probably best for james to answer that question first

6:58

you know so my view is the the industry has always been driven by passion from from day one and and and right now it's

7:05

driven by passion so i think you have a huge number of people who are in this industry just because they they love games and they want to make games um and

7:12

i think uh from way back when the industry started to now a lot of people choose where they

7:18

work based on the kind of games those studios are putting out whether they're passionate about those kind of projects

7:23

uh where they have a belief in that particular studio to deliver on the ambitions that they're setting themselves so when we have

7:31

people come to us we primarily have people apply who want to make um large ambitious

7:37

aaa projects that care about storytelling and world building that care about working on games that

7:43

are fairly technically innovative and advanced as we try and push the boundaries of what's possible on on pc

7:49

and console um i think where things have changed is whereby where i'd say 20 years ago that

7:56

was almost the exclusive driver for pulling people to companies it is becoming a bit more balanced now yes you

8:02

want to work at a company where you're super passionate about the projects but you also want to work a company that's going to look after you as a person

8:09

that's going to surround you with a nice environment with a team a group of people that you uh really really want to

8:14

work with that thinks carefully about your your mental health and your work-life balance and your life outside of the

8:21

office as well as in the office and and the understanding that um

8:26

sure our people are passionate about making video games but they have been just proved children are home to look

8:31

after and uh just the desire to do lots of other things around around what you do day to day so

8:38

these days i think when you're starting a game studio and you're looking to hire the best talent

8:43

you you 100 do need to think about how you make a game that's going to inspire people both for your new talent and the

8:48

people you're eventually going to sell to but i think these days you really need to think long and hard about um

8:53

your uh employee value proposition what's gonna what's gonna make people want to be at

8:59

your studio and surrounded by your people more so than potentially other places that they they might work

9:04

yeah i think the only thing i'd add to that really is um that i think as well as

9:11

the thing i've noticed more and more as we've spoken to people and sort of brought them on board at sharp mob is is

9:16

how people resonate with a passion behind the project for the the people sort of setting the studio up

9:23

so in that case myself and and james and a few others um you know there's

9:29

there is definitely a potential sort of direction to go where you're chasing the next big fad or you know you're sort of

9:35

emulating something else that you've seen as success in and i think uh people like developers i

9:41

think are kind of a little bit um

9:47

you know they're super sensitive to that sometimes and a bit wary of it and i think sometimes a developer coming along who's actively pushing for something

9:54

that they're super passionate about themselves i think is almost as much of an attraction for those people as as being passionate in the game

10:01

from their side like quite often there's there's not always a clear uh correlation between the games that

10:08

people play and are really passionate about from a consumer level and necessarily what they want to work on

10:14

and sometimes i think that is that's almost like the bigger attractor is the idea that you're going and working on

10:20

something at a place where there's there's a high level of ambition and everybody's really excited about what it is they're producing

10:26

because it's infectious right you know it ends up sort of you get sort of brought along on that journey as well i think

10:32

um i have a question on on top of this so

10:37

when you're having those interviews with these passionate guys do you feel

10:44

like you have to sell your project to them just as they have to sell themselves to

10:50

you do you feel like there's this need to you know explain that this is a great game and

10:57

the people are gonna love it and so on yeah i think um it's i mean it's definitely a it's a

11:03

two-way street i think you know it's as much about the studio or your potential employer

11:09

doing all the things that james is talking about in terms of looking after you and doing all of that great stuff and also having something that's

11:16

um exciting to work on and the the developers are really passionate about and and you know we're in a world now where i

11:22

think the the industry is growing so quickly at the moment with so much energy behind it that people have

11:27

choices you know if they've got a good track record and they've you know worked on some good stuff they're they're a

11:33

highly um valued person in the industry so and they've got they've got plenty of

11:39

choices and decisions yeah they could go to different countries they could go um work on different types of games like

11:44

so yeah i think there's there's always going to be an element of um you know them interviewing us as much as the

11:51

other way around yeah so it's very true it's it's been said for most senior talent right now they're not they're not

11:57

if they're if they're looking for a job they're not just talking to you they're talking to a bunch of people because we're definitely in a place in the

12:04

industry right now where a lot of companies are expanding there's a lot of demand for games content and

12:10

there's relatively few of the right people around particularly for specialist roles um

12:15

and a lot of companies um will have fairly similar similar benefits propositions and things like

12:21

that because we all benchmark against each other and we might try and outdo each other a bit but um

12:27

there's kind of there's kind of some standards there and so as part of our interview process um

12:33

we quite early on in the process we'll put somebody under nda just so we can make sure that uh the sensitive surround

12:39

our projects are secure and we'll then pitch to them um and as i mentioned that's a bit of a two-way street we want to make sure

12:46

that well for one if the person is super excited in what we're doing they're more likely to come and join us but also we

12:53

love the idea that people coming to work on our projects are super passionate about what they're coming to work on because i think you always get the best

12:59

creative work out of somebody who is is passionate about what their what they're doing i think it leads to a

13:04

good a good vibe and a good atmosphere in the office when you can feel that sense of

13:10

of passion and i do think here at um drama london while we can't share much

13:15

about what we're working on right now because it's such an early stage of development um i think one of the biggest attractors for people who've

13:22

been taken through the interview process that's allowed us to grow relatively quickly given that we're only 18 months

13:28

old is that the project that we're working on and that we're talking to people about as they go through the

13:33

process is super inspiring to people um and it is i mean it's been feedback

13:39

we've had from a lot of the people who've come and joined us is one of the primary reasons they joined us if not the primary reason

13:45

is the project that we're we're looking to build here at the studio

13:50

so i have a question it's a bit of a sensitive topic so if you don't want to

13:55

answer um then don't answer so the ques the question is uh this

14:02

so how does compensation work in video game companies

14:07

like um [Music] i where i work and live in los angeles right

14:13

and i know a lot of people from different studios and uh

14:18

i know that at the beginning of their careers if they're in santa monica somewhere

14:24

they usually live with a roommate and

14:30

sorry they bike to work you know it's not that they're living a very

14:36

lavish uh lifestyle right i also know people who work at like

14:41

companies like apple or like naughty dog when they are higher kind of like in this career ladder and

14:48

they're they're doing fine i guess you can you could say that um so how does it work in

14:55

in london because i know as you said london is kind of expensive

15:00

and you know rent is kind of expensive how does this comp work and is it even important for

15:07

developers so so my experience is different games companies have

15:12

different ways of working out what they want to uh pay people at shark mob we

15:19

we wanted to we wanted to make sure that

15:24

our benefits system and how much we pay people was was

15:29

was well thought about was based on data and was fair across the studio so if

15:34

somebody said why do i get paid xyz or why does this other person get paid this we could have a transparent conversation

15:41

with them because it was based on something uh meaningful um so in the very early days when we're only

15:46

maybe one or two months old we set out to build a kind of a grading structure for the company from a new graduate

15:52

joining us as a junior right through to a senior director um and we um there's i

15:59

know this is true in the uk i'm not sure how what global this is but there's a few salary benchmarking surveys um that

16:06

look at both the games industry the wider tech industry the wider creative industry um and we purchase data from

16:12

two of those companies to get a really good understanding of um what is the kind of minimum that people are paying

16:18

what's the maximum what's the average and that kind of thing um and at sharp mob as a new company we wanted to be

16:24

incredibly competitive uh in our in our offering particularly here in london and particularly because we wanted to grow

16:30

quite quickly um so we built salary bans built around the data that we're seeing

16:36

that felt like it was it had a competitive edge in the market and we did the same with our wider benefits

16:41

package um the way those bands look is they tend to have a midpoint that is data driven and then a a kind of bottom

16:47

end and a max end that's just kind of extrapolated out from that midpoint and when we hire somebody we first

16:53

assign them a band we then determine their kind of competency within that band and that relates to what they get

17:00

paid based on data what they get offered based on data and that's what we use internally

17:05

for both hires and pay reviews as we as we grow we love this idea that it's data

17:11

driven it's based on the market that everybody is fair for everybody

17:17

and it's explainable because we have a system behind it whether that's true for the rest of the games industry i don't

17:22

know i don't know a few of the companies that that do the same um but i i can't i can't speak for

17:27

the most it has worked very very well for us um it's just something that we know we need to keep on top of every

17:33

year we need to go and take another look at the data to make sure that we are remaining in the place we want to be

17:38

um what about linking kind of the comps and all the other benefits to

17:44

performance like do you have any systems in place that kind of link those together

17:50

we do yeah so we have um we have a profit share scheme here at

17:56

sharp mob so every member of staff shares in the success of the projects we make

18:01

i say it's profit-based so once we release a project initially we'd look to recoup our costs

18:08

or pay off any anything we have to pay off but at the point where the project starts generating profit

18:15

profit that is shared among every person that has put time into that project um

18:21

because we're so early on uh we haven't got to a stage yet where we can see quite how that works we've seen it work

18:26

very well at other companies that that do this is there's a it's not a i wouldn't say it's a common thing within

18:32

the industry as far as i've seen it but where it has happened it's proven to work quite successfully

18:37

in some places and those kind of benefit schemes can either not pay out if you're not

18:43

successful or can really heavily pay out if you if you happen to create the next

18:49

fortnight which i'm sure we hope we we all will um and that's something we did want to certainly have as part of our

18:54

benefits package we wanted to make sure that your salary um that you received month or month was competitive and allowed you to

19:01

live a good life here in london but there was that potential to push

19:07

to push beyond that if the projects that we work on are successful and that sense that everybody who works and something gets to share in that

19:13

in kind of the outcome i i was actually a big advocate of profit sharing myself

19:20

i was pushing this on all the gdc talks that i did good yeah yeah i i think it's an amazing way

19:27

to to set things up it just it means that everybody shares in the success right

19:32

that they've all collectively worked on yeah i've been in places where they've done it in the past and it it's always

19:39

been it's amazing when you do really well right because it's just great news for everybody yeah i mean it's great news for

19:45

everybody and i feel like it's a more transparent way of uh you know complementing your

19:52

staff rather than you know you need to get a certain score on metacritic like if it's like over 89 or

20:00

is like below 95 and which is kind of super subjective anyway

20:05

it doesn't say much so much right that's very true on the uh on the user

20:10

reviews or something just to make it extra tough so

20:16

let's talk a little bit about the people that you're hiring you said that the kind of london and the areas around it

20:21

they have a lot of very good talent how did this

20:26

happen like how did it develop how did england and kind of uk became this big

20:32

hub for game development that's a really good question um and i'd say i probably don't know the

20:38

history as well as i should for specifically the london area but i know i know the uk has been making games

20:45

since the beginning of the games industry and we've got a lot of um

20:51

we've got a lot of these kind of very old institutions that have been in the uh games industry since very early on in

20:57

the beginning i know and i know codemasters comes to mind as a studio that's been in the running in the uk now

21:03

since i don't know the 80s i'm guessing i'd have to go on wikipedia and look it

21:09

up but there was a there was a few there was a few of those studios and i think if you look at the major games hubs around the uk that tends to have been

21:15

one or two of those big studios and they tended to have been founded in people's bedrooms uh and they just grew into the

21:22

giants that they now are and then over the years we've just seen a lot of breakaways from those studios

21:28

so uh if you go to lemmington you had codemasters um you had um

21:34

uh the guys that started blitz that worked in the dizzy games way back when um i think off the back of that i know

21:42

well playground games was started by a bunch of xcode masters people uh i'm guessing you know freestyle i guess was

21:48

the same but you see a lot of these kind of studios over the over the decades have just spun out of the the first big

21:54

company that was down there i think in guildford uh i know he had bullfrog back in the day

22:00

um and a ton of companies have spun out of that over the years um

22:05

the london scene i'm i say i'm not i'm not quite familiar with the history um i know uh kind of sony has had a place

22:13

here for for a good long time there's been a a bunch of other studios have been around for a long time um but what

22:19

we've seen in london over recent years is a very large influx of international companies moving into london um

22:26

i say we've got quite large offices in london for natural emotional part of zinger of

22:32

space ape who are now part of the supercell family king

22:37

say sony and microsoft are here we've got a sega outfit just just on the outskirts of the

22:43

city and there's probably a bunch of others that aren't coming to mind right now so i think i think london

22:49

um has had companies been around for a while but we've also seen a huge amount of international growth in london over

22:55

the over the last 20 years so

23:00

when you think about games built in britain and the video game developers who work

23:06

there there's something peculiar about them like if you look at the

23:12

japanese games they have their own kind of vibe like the the pauses are probably too long in the cutscenes right

23:20

if you if you look at the american games they're like you can see people who are doing them

23:27

especially like if you look at big call of duty and that stuff so

23:33

when i look at the stuff like that you mentioned like at the games that

23:39

buff rock was making at the fable series at the horizon series like all those um

23:48

a lot of games came from uk right um what do you feel is like this peculiar

23:53

thing that kind of unites all of them that is that is a really good question

23:59

and one i've been debating with both myself and other people over the past few months because i actually think

24:05

um the uk games industry um doesn't brand itself as well as it used to anymore on

24:10

the international stage i've often thought now if you think of like where's the home of really serious aaa game

24:16

development you probably go to the west coast of the us uh with your naughty dogs and your

24:21

sony santa monicas and things like that maybe a bit in the nordics as well um sir sharp mob was originally a spin-off

24:28

of ubisoft massive as a bunch of ubisoft massive uh leadership team broke away to start sharp mob um

24:35

i think uh the uk used to be a triple a oh we were perceived as a triple a powerhouse

24:42

there's bit of a there's been a i think was was about 10 years ago there's quite a drain

24:47

of talent from the uk across the united states and canada as uh the industries um in

24:53

north america started to expand and there were a kind of bunch of jobs uh over there um

24:59

and i've heard a lot of people from outside of the uk talk about the uk being the racing game country now

25:06

because we had black rock bizarre playground games codemasters like more than anywhere in the world i think we make a lot of racing games um and that's

25:13

definitely true uh but as you say there's been a ton of these other games sprinkled throughout our

25:18

history um the bullfrog games the lionhead games i'm conscious that ninja theory are

25:24

rare as well right yeah such a like massive i mean just that that period sort of you know during

25:31

the n64 sort of heyday everything they made was a smash hit and it was all so varied as well but that's that

25:38

that's the thing that i like sticks out to me when it comes to the uk gaming scene it's just i mean you're right

25:43

there's definitely like a bit of a pull towards certain genres like racing but but actually just the

25:49

there's a real breadth and it and and also it never really sort of apart from

25:54

racing really never really manifested in particular sort of clear genres like you might get in other territories like

26:01

especially if i think about rare and bullfrog and the sorts of games they made they were sort of you know

26:07

they were kind of all by themselves in a lot of ways they were not like they were trying to emulate

26:13

anything in particular it's just they had this i mean that's one of the things that i loved about rare actually as a studio back then the fact that they they

26:19

used to produce so much great stuff but everything that came out of that place felt like it had its own sort of unique identity i mean there was a touch of

26:26

rare sort of magic or a certain way they approached visuals which used to permeate through

26:32

you know from title to title but generally speaking you know you look at something like jet force gemini and

26:37

compare it to golden eye and banjo-kazooie and they're just all over the place it was great

26:44

yeah there's a bit of there's a bit of um i don't know british culture and british humor in a lot of those those

26:50

i've spoken to quite a few people who feel like over the years the uk has lost i think

26:55

in the early days there was a lot of character narrative adventure style games fable being a great example and

27:02

i've heard a few people say that's kind of that perception around the world has dissipated a little bit and the west

27:07

coast of america has kind of started taking over that crown um and i i believed that myself a little bit until

27:13

i started to remember that we've got rockstar north in the uk making the grand theft auto series uh you say you

27:19

have ninja theory in cambridge who've been working on kind of hellblade and various other games the fable series is

27:25

is still being brought to life by playground games at the moment down in guildford you've got supermassive

27:31

working on uh their very cinematic character-based games um so i think

27:36

to ben's point i think we've ended up in a place in the uk where rather than be known for a specific genre of game

27:42

we just make a lot of different types of games and in some ways we just need to rework how we brand ourselves on the

27:48

international stale stage because we do do triple a we do do mobile we do do games of service we kind of touch every

27:54

genre um i am starting to see i think a bit of an ink just talking around the various

28:00

years a bit of an increase or a bit of a return to character story-driven gaming here in the uk

28:08

and um there's a bit of hope that we can lure some of our uh ex-pat brits that

28:14

have gone over to the state back again to rebuild the uk games industry to its

28:20

former glory um and i hope well it's part of our mission at the moment to do just that

28:26

i i like that you mentioned all of that because when i was still kind of reading those magazines about

28:33

new york with video game reviews people were i had the i had a feeling they had some

28:39

kind of like a different attitude toward games made in the uk like the whenever like the bitmap

28:46

brothers uh published anything they were like oh that's different that's it then like and

28:51

you know ball frog and all the other guys it felt like it's i i remember there were like pages and pages and pages on

28:58

those games because they were just so out of the blue like you know whatever

29:04

peter molina was doing and you mentioned rockstar which is also

29:10

like huge uh incredibly big franchise yeah i have started to wonder a little

29:16

bit lately about whether um the way your development community in

29:21

a country is perceived is based on the characters of the games that you make so if i think of um the west coast of

29:28

america even if i just look at la you've got kratos coming out of seoul and santa monica you have nathan drake coming out

29:34

of the charred series and so it starts to paint a picture because you can you can put these these hero faces

29:40

in a location and actually if i look at the uk game scene for the last kind of five ten years some great aaa games have

29:47

come out of the country but i struggle to think of

29:52

to lara croft came out of the uk a long time ago but i struggle to think of like

29:57

who are the hero game faces of the uk games industry these days um i think that's part of the perception

30:03

challenge we have like i think i still think of mario and and sonic when i think of japan um

30:09

yeah and i think that maybe that comes down to the other thing that we were talking about right

30:15

it feels like you don't very often in the uk get that thing where there'll be a

30:21

a particular game that comes out that then sort of gets multiple iterations of it where you sort

30:27

of get a character sort of developed over time it just um it tends to be more like people put all

30:33

of their effort into telling this fresh cool story and that's almost where i think a lot of

30:38

that's where a lot of the values uh gained you know is this idea that you're creating something new and fresh and it's it's something for people to

30:45

get their teeth into and then experience something new in it and then yeah and then it sounds like

30:50

moving on to the the next thing the next cool fresh idea well um i have a couple of questions not

30:57

really connected with that but i think we can move to like the next chapter is um

31:04

what skills are currently relevant for for you when you're hiring

31:10

like as an example um a lot of people right now are big on

31:16

procedural generation they want to have people who know python and then they can generate whatever worlds buildings and

31:24

so on what are you guys looking for because this is an advice for people who are

31:30

trying to get a job in the industry and they want to know what to learn yeah yeah so that's a great question

31:37

like this is so this is something that i've spoken that's a bunch of different places about at universities and things

31:43

i think there's almost like two aspects in terms of the artwork anyway the way i i would think of answering your question

31:49

the first is you know what what are we looking for i think for us specifically because because we are a triple a studio and

31:56

we're really looking to push quality across across the board in a bunch of areas i think the art production

32:01

naturally sort of drifts towards this place where you're looking for specialists in particular areas the people who really understand the

32:07

particular part of game art production um to a level where they've obsessed

32:14

over it for a bunch of time or they're willing to become super obsessed around a particular thing and become great at

32:19

producing this particular type of uh content this particular type of work

32:24

um and then alongside that you know the because you're putting so much effort into making sure that everything is

32:31

great there's always this sort of issue of how you produce that stuff at scale at triple a which is where i think

32:38

naturally you start finding people sort of wanting to make the most of those procedural tool sets you know

32:45

using houdini to do some really great stuff so that you can you can keep your quality bar where you want it but you

32:51

can do it at a pace where you're not going to take 30 years to produce the thing that you want to put out

32:57

and i think um i think that's

33:02

you know that that ultimately becomes another area where we are super focused so i think you want you want those craft people you want those people who are you

33:10

know on an artistic level they're they're super passionate about sculpting the human form or replicating something

33:16

about environments at a certain level of fidelity but then you you need to find that other skill set which is this

33:24

ability to really get in in the weeds with some of these great new tools that allow you to do great things at scale

33:30

but quite often and not always but you know quite often those tend to be skill sets that exist in sort of separate

33:36

places you'll find people that are really great at those more craftsmanship artistic side of things and people who

33:43

naturally gravitate towards the more um technical side of things

33:49

and you know if you're super lucky you'll find people who can do a bit of both and bridge that gap you know that's

33:55

i think that tends to end up being that an elusive person we call a technical artist you know that there are

34:02

super hard people to find i i i

34:07

yeah goosebern we um i mean there's i'd say

34:13

across every single games company and over the last of the entire history of game development there's a lot of the

34:19

same roles that we've always needed we always need programmers specifically c plus programmers but

34:25

um depending on your studio uh kind of good programmers needs across multiple different languages good

34:32

environment artists good level designers good game designers um so those those people are always in in

34:38

very high demand there is currently i say a big skill shortage in the industry around certain specialist roles

34:44

rendering engineers ben mentioned technical artists ui artists those very kind of specialists art and engineering

34:51

and and also design roles um another example in the design side is um

34:57

we've been looking for a combat designer um for the studio and finding people who can can who have experienced in your

35:03

particular flavor of combat can be again quite a niche or a challenging role to fill and that said i i don't

35:09

know if you agree with this ben but i always believe it's more important to find somebody who has strong fundamental skills rather

35:16

than specific tool set knowledge because a talented developer in a certain field

35:21

will be able to teach themselves a good tool and so i would always rather take

35:27

a say incredibly skilled environment artist who has a passion to learn houdini over

35:33

a an artist who has maybe weaker fundamental skills but has a couple years working with houdini

35:39

yeah yeah i think i think i generally generally agree with that still i think yeah and it's something nice i i always

35:46

push when i go to the universities you know you see you see students getting really obsessive over

35:51

the you know the newest way to use a particular plugin in macs or photoshop and actually the thing that

35:57

would really push their work to the next level is if they attended a life study class every couple of days you know and

36:04

sort of learned of the craft on the underneath i think i think with some of the more

36:09

technically focused areas these days especially with the introduction of things like houdini i do think that almost becomes

36:16

it's almost becoming its own sort of subset of crazy things yeah like it's you know it's

36:22

that sort of way of being able to construct those those systems is almost as much of a

36:29

skill as being able to you know do an amazing job in that life study class that i was just mentioning

36:36

aside from the technical skills as well i'd say particularly for our field of development the kind of aaa space the

36:42

teams are getting larger and larger and larger um our internal team is probably going to end up somewhere around 250

36:48

people we'll be working with a bunch of external co-def partners around the world so being

36:54

um being somebody who engages well with a big wide team

37:00

and interacts with the team is absolutely critical these days particularly for for our kind of flavor of game development and we um

37:09

we strongly believe that the the very best creative output comes from teams

37:14

who feel comfortable and trust each other enough to enter into healthy creative debate so

37:21

if you and me have a disagreement about what the right creative outcome is we feel comfortable having that

37:26

conversation and trying to drive the best answer and and the best conclusion and um so i think people who are good at

37:34

uh taking feedback uh providing feedback themselves and having kind of that two-way feedback conversation is is

37:41

super important regardless of the discipline uh you you working right now um

37:46

james yeah it's about the soft skills but you kind of answer that you need to

37:52

um you need to communicate you need to figure out what other people think you need to find ways to give feedback that

37:59

uh people actually understand what you mean and not get offended and um kind of coming from there

38:05

um probably the last question for you guys so um james and benjamin you're both managers

38:12

and i don't i can't find a more challenging workplace to manage rather

38:18

than a video game development space because there's these two categories of people

38:24

like there are these artists let's say right and then there

38:30

is analytical people who are like programmers and they're they have completely different mindsets

38:36

um they live their lives very differently i know that it's kind of like an

38:43

oversimplification obviously it's not like 100 true but you can see

38:48

the differences um so my question is like in this environment

38:53

how do you actually get any work done and make sure that they are they are you know they don't

38:59

kill each other uh um so not not just with with kind of the

39:05

artists designs and engineers something that we actively pursue is trying to find a a team with a pretty diverse

39:12

mindset and kind of ways of thinking with the philosophy that if everybody does get on

39:20

you get the best again creative solution because you get all the ideas on the table you'll stress test them

39:25

uh through debate and then the best answer comes out of it so you'll always have the best creative solution if you have the what the broadest set of

39:31

creative thinkers uh in the room um but as you say that can be a big challenge because those people are prone to

39:37

fighting and i think there's a couple of there's a couple of things we certainly do

39:42

and philosophically that you can do to try and um help these various diverse thinkers

39:48

work collaboratively together i think a big one for me is that even if you think differently and you approach problems differently you're working towards a

39:55

singular goal that you um are aligned on part of that is i think having a team who are passionate

40:01

about the project and the passion about video games in general i've had a debate for years with people about whether you can be a good games developer

40:08

if you don't like games or you don't play games i'm of the camp that thinks you will the best game developers are people who play games and love games

40:14

it's like how do you be a movie director if you've never watched a film um i i actually struggle to understand the idea

40:20

of a a good game developer who doesn't care about the the product they're making so we as a team tend to focus on

40:27

hiring people who love the field they're working in and and love the projects that they're working on so um whether you're an engineer an

40:34

artist designer or however you think we're looking to have that singular focus

40:39

we intentionally built our studio um with a the leadership team the director group

40:45

particularly the creative director group um in upfront because we wanted to make sure that we

40:52

always had a clear vision uh that we could articulate to the team and work with the team on so again people knew

40:58

what we were pointing towards and and gunning for and so there's that singular set of goals that that people were

41:03

working towards and then a really big thing for me is is um regardless of how people think and

41:08

approach problems um hiring people who are open-minded

41:14

who are good communicators who are humble uh we

41:19

we don't particularly want anybody in the studio who is um is uh arrogant or self-interested um and

41:28

focusing attention on really building high degrees of trust within a team so even if kind of we collectively disagree

41:34

about how to approach a problem we feel comfortable putting our thoughts on the table and debating it and we hope that

41:40

in most cases teams will be able to come to the right conclusion themselves um but one of the reasons that we have a

41:47

kind of very experienced leadership team at the studio is to also help mediate those conversations should they become

41:53

uh kind of not self-conclusive within the existing group so far we're saying in 18 months

41:59

we're now coming close to 60 people on the team we it's been working quite smoothly i think

42:05

we haven't had nobody's killed each other yeah nobody yeah nobody's nobody's been killed

42:11

yeah no depth on the studio um but we have a bunch of tools that we we use for that i mean um just

42:18

what two three months ago ben um we stress test some of these exercises on ourselves and we did things

42:23

we went through an exercise called the management drives profile um as a group of leads which is intended to show

42:30

um as an individual what drives me as a human being and what what what frustrates me or what

42:37

irritates me in other human beings and so we all went through this exercise compared them and you could suddenly see

42:44

where we had conflicting points or challenges the leadership team why in these profiles it allowed us to have an

42:50

honest conversation about some of these uh challenges we'd had in the past and bring them to the surface and by going

42:56

through those kind of exercises but learning to be more kind of open and transparent with each other as human beings we're learning to i

43:02

think be more vulnerable with each other we're getting good at saying for example i'm not very good at this i need some help or um i've done a terrible job on

43:10

this come come give me a hand with this or uh slightly better at understanding how

43:16

some of the stuff we do might wind somebody else up yeah that was that was almost like the

43:21

biggest insight it was like okay this is why this always uh upsets you because of yeah

43:27

i won't do that again we put a huge amount of thought right now into how do you develop teams

43:33

uh to to kind of trust each other and really enjoy working with each other despite

43:39

the fact they will come up problems in very very different ways um and i say we're stressed testing these

43:44

things ourselves and then we'll roll them out with the team but it's a philosophy that we want to grow the team around

43:50

yeah i i would just add to that as well by saying like to your question you know about all those different groups i think

43:56

um so it is a bit of a generalization which is probably a bit unfair but it is also kind of true like on average you

44:02

definitely get you know you sort of more um soft uh

44:09

like what's that what's the word i'm looking for like uh sent more sensitive sort of artists

44:15

and you're slightly more like um driven slightly ego maniac sort of

44:21

design teams and your more introverted engineering teams but actually i think it's one of the things that makes um

44:27

working in games so much fun like i from my point of view anyway you know you i think as as a you know a director or a leader

44:34

or manager you know so much of your time ends up being not necessarily stopping people from killing each other but but trying

44:41

to make those different worlds work with each other in a way that is productive and it's it's fun you know

44:47

what i mean like so much of my time in this industry has been sort of literally sort of running around talking to people

44:53

at different you know their desks and seeing how the work's coming on and and working out the right ways in which you can

44:59

key that person into something somebody else is doing and turn it into something great you know that's

45:04

it's the it's the best bit of the job in my opinion yeah we're actually also very very lucky that if we get to the stage

45:11

where we can't answer a question we come into a severe deadlock um sharpmob has its own in-house user research facility

45:18

and we're building the same in our new london studio that we move into in a few weeks time so we can always validate

45:24

questions with the with the the people we're making the games for and at the end of the day i think the right answer is whatever makes

45:31

our customers enjoy the games the most and want to want to play them and want to engage with them so

45:37

throughout our entire development process we're going to be making sure that we're validating the decisions we make with our target audience

45:44

and that would be a very good way i think of of answering any deadlock debates when it when it happens answer it with actual play testing and data

45:51

awesome james and benjamin thank you so much for joining us today we're out of time and fortunately i would love

45:58

to continue this conversation for another hour but probably you have other stuff to do as well so thank you so much

46:05

um we'll make sure to post whatever positions you have open

46:10

and link to the website so people can check out yeah thanks for enjoying another episode of

46:16

the 80 level roundtable podcast check out upcoming episodes on the 80 level website at 80.lv join our career

46:25

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