Stop, Collaborate, and Listen
“All right stop, collaborate, and listen.” -Vanilla Ice, Ice Ice Baby
It’s possible that at this point you may think I have fully lost my mind. I’ve gone from starting my articles with movie quotes to now using Vanilla Ice. But stick with me and it will be worth it.
In what feels like several lifetimes ago, I used to make independent films. Over the years, I made three feature length films. While all three of them were incredibly fun to make, they also were ridiculously stressful for a lot of reasons.
Undoubtedly, the single biggest cause of stress was the number of people working on each film. The last film I made had well over a hundred people working on the production. Many of those people were volunteers paid only with food and copies of the final movie when it came out. The others, like myself, were not paid, and we personally funded the project.
The fact of the matter was that having to count on over a hundred people to show up when scheduled, be ready to work a twelve hour day, have their lines memorized, and also work well with others is a lot to expect. But making the film required me to count on these people. Most of them were a joy to work with and most of them even showed up prepared to do their roles. However, even the small number that didn’t, sometimes derailed the production and helped to cause issues and delays.
I’m not in any way begrudging those people. In fact, I am grateful to every single one of them because in truth, they showed up and worked on my dream and that was amazing. But it took a lot out of me when people didn’t come through.
Soon after we filmed the last movie, I hung up my filmmaker hat and started designing board games. Designing games was something that I could mostly handle on my own — only needing to count on others for feedback and design help when they felt like helping me. But I was a solo act.
I worked fine on my own for several years but really started to yearn for more connection and collaboration. I’ll be honest and say that I was nervous about the idea. You see, working in the game industry as a freelance designer largely feels like making your own low-budget independent film. All of your work is on spec. Which means that you and your collaborators don’t get paid unless someone actually buys your work and almost all of us designers have some sort of day job outside of our design work.
But I moved forward with the idea of designing with someone else. And guess what? My first three collaborations all failed. The projects just kind of fizzled out, and we all moved on with our own work.
Not too long ago, I decided once again too try collaborating with others. But this time, I sat down and thought about why the last collaborations didn’t work. Once I had figured that out, I moved forward and lo and behold, the new collaborations are going swimmingly and have produced a good number of successful projects.
So let’s talk about how to be a good collaborator with others using the immortal advice of Vanilla Ice. Every one of my failed collaborations were because as a team we failed to do one of the items listed below:
Stop - When you decide to work with someone else, it requires you to stop thinking in that solo mindset and start thinking like a team member. It also means that you need to stop letting your preconceived ideas and notions about things get in the way of successfully collaborating.
Collaborate - This can be a tough one for some people but you need to be willing to let the other person share the load of the work. For those of us that spent a lot of time working solo, it can be hard to let others really step in and get their hands dirty but it is imperative for successful collaboration.
Listen - One of the biggest keys to collaborating successfully with others is to listen to them. And I mean to actively stop talking and just listen to what they have to say. Let them speak more than you. Consider their ideas and opinions and where they are coming from and try to really hear what they have to say.
These ideas have really helped me be a better collaborator when working not only with other game designers, but also other co-workers and coaches. I hope that you find it as useful as I have!
Word to your mother.
-Jason