The People, Process, & Progress Podcast - The Practical Benefits of Playing Video Games for Project Managers | PPP #91

Episode Date: October 17, 2021

Video games are fun. They can also help us build build or enhance some of our Project Management skills. Check out this episode to hear more about history of video games, Project Management's use in developing games and skills I think Project Managers can take away from playing video games.

According to History.com, video games started in the early 1950s at the University of Cambridge with a version of tic-tac-toe called OXO. Project management, as you know, started way before. So, where do these seemingly disconnected worlds intersect? In this episode of People Process Progress, episode 91, The Value of Video Games for Project Managers, I'll take us through the history of video games, down my path of video games, how video game companies, particularly Ubisoft and Massive, use project management, and how I think project managers can get some skills by taking time out and suspending reality. But first, please silence your cell phones, hold all sidebar conversations to a minimum,

and we will get started with people process progress in 3, 2, 1. Welcome back everybody to episode 91, the value of video games for project managers. This is a subject both in project management and video games that is near and dear to my heart. I am a project manager, as you all know if you've listened to the show, and something I haven't talked about as much is I enjoy video games. I have since I was younger, and through kind of my history, I'll mention and take probably some of you all through the way back machine of thinking of our old consoles or PCs or whatever. And then get into kind of what are some of the game styles, so the prominent ones that I enjoy that are very popular these days. And a great article that I read from one of the developers at Ubisoft and Massive and how they use project management. And then some lessons learned that I

think folks can get or that I've gotten from playing games. So probably like many other folks, and I'm 47 years old of my age, Atari was one of the first or the first consoles that we played. And that was in the early 1980s, right? And so I know I played Asteroids and Space Invaders and all that stuff and Pac-Man eventually, like many of you did. A few years later, around the same time, friends of mine had a Commodore computer, right?

And we would play this game where you'd pick your, the way you would go and these little bits and bytes that looked like they were shooting arrows or knights or something would battle. And just, it's funny today too, because there were horrible, super old graphics, but now kids play that game Minecraft, which is old blocky graphics. So then we played those kind of games. And then in the 80s, in the later 80s, the Sega Genesis came out

and Sonic the Hedgehog that now has his own movie from a couple years ago. And I remember playing with friends, and you'd have a couple cold ones and play Sonic the Hedgehog and sit there and you know just just have fun and they're a really good thing to do between classes or work or something like that. Then the Sony PlayStation came out in 94 and I got it around that same time and then the graphics were so revolutionary. I think the first game I got was one of the NHL hockey games and it just changed changed the whole kind of perception of what could happen with these consoles versus computers. And during that time, my dad was an early adopter of the Mac. So didn't play as many games as using like the, you know, word processing kind of things on there.

And then I even jumped into Dreamcast that had this great fighting game called Soul Calibur and some other things. And so my friends and I used to play Tekken and Soul Calibur and these fighting tournament things and just, you know, a good way to pass the time and have fun out there. And then I got into computer gaming. As I got into the information technology world, I started building my own computers from the board to the memory to the CPU to the video card and sound card and monitors and, you know,

the mouse and keyboard style and then kind of the custom gaming keyboard style. And I was hooked. From the 90s to the 2010s or so, I was a PC gamer hardcore. It at first didn't bode well for my wife and I's relationships. I was not good at time management with games and things, which I'll touch on a bit later. But it was fun. The thing about PC games, if you've been involved in that, or But it was fun. The thing about PC games, if you've been involved in that, or even just as you know, technology is each year, each new game, each new iteration, you have to buy new hardware to keep up. And so it gets to be expensive. So and then as I kind of had less time or money really to keep putting into the PCs,

the Xbox 360 came out. And then the Xbox One, which is the platform I have. And now my kids have the Nintendo Switch and my oldest son though now is a PC gamer so it was kind of neat to get him going into that and kind of help set it up and do you know jump back into that machine but it was a really fun time to spend with friends online or meet folks that you would play you know you would squad up and play these shooter games and for folks listening that aren't into gaming I'm sure I'm going uber nerd but for folks that are gamers I'm sure you understand it's a fun time when you're having a fighting tournament or a sports tournament. Or you and your friends are playing shooters and doing these missions and all those kind of things.

Just as a place to kind of check out of the real world, whether you're working in an office or you're responding or you're working in medical. You're just something to get away and have fun and know that it's just a game. It gets heated sometimes and things like that, but it's, you know, it's less stress than the real world that you're dealing with. And so for me growing up that, and just the mind engagement of it, um, just really got me, got me hooked on them and I've really enjoyed it. And most of what I played were fighting games with my friends, um, like Mortal Kombat type things. Tech and I mentioned those things like first person shooters.

Call of Duty, of course, is one of the biggest shooters I think ever. Halo, those kind of things. Real time strategy games. So like base builders and then you go against another group in these. And I'll get into some of the benefits of that that I think and things that I learned that are practical but also very fun. And then these massive multiplayer online role-playing games or MMORPGs. So you make a character and you interact with all these people all over the world. And caveat to all this, of course, you know, one being an adult and having been a gamer and for other folks out there that have kids or have gamers, it all has to be, you know,

you have to be safe, pay attention to who you're gaming with, those kind of things. I was an adult when I online gamed with other folks, but watch out for the kids out there. There's plenty of software to watch them. There's plenty of good review sites on what games are good and what aren't. So if you're a parent and you have kids gaming out there, just a good kind of thing there that we try and do as well with our kids. But again, those are the genres that I kind of like the most and probably between shooters and the online massive games, especially superhero games. I was a comic book nerd growing up and still love

it and love all the movies that we have. So really great time. So great stories, Kevin, what does that have to do with project management? And what does that have to do with the intersection of project management and video games? Well, a little background right before you get into kind of the what's the value, what's the value add for this. And so directly project management is used in developing software and software as video games all the time, right? It's really good. And I found this great article about project management and game development by Johan Oldbring. And I hope I didn't butcher your name, but he's an art producer. It's from july 2020 and i'll link to that as well but he worked for ubisoft which is a huge company if you've heard of the splinter splinter cell series or the division which is pretty

relevant these days the division is about um these super secret agents that get activated in a pandemic uh go figure and then he works for this company, Massive. And I read his article, he had done a speech of this at a show of how they develop games and speaking to that. And so I'm going to share some of the key points that he mentioned in the article on how they use project management and what are some key focuses they have on project management when they make video games. And then I'll follow that up with kind of reconnecting to the history to my enjoyment of games of things that I think folks can benefit from and just the mindset that helps. And so also that perspective of certainly we don't want our kids to play ultra violent, super bloody games,

these kinds of things, but there is value in having kids solve puzzles, I think, which is really a lot of what these video games are. And I'll touch on those here a little bit. So again, if you're checking out this episode and you're going to check out these links, go to peopleprocessprogress.com, follow on Facebook and Instagram, same thing, People Process Progress. And you can go to the links

and read these articles for yourself and let me know what you think. What was my, you know, how much information did I pull out for you? So the first thing I mentioned is structure, right? And so, you know, which matches with kind of foundation three of an org structure. And so you have to have structure. And he shows a sample organizational structure of what they used when they made the game The Division.

So as you can imagine, they have developers, hardware folks, art folks, drawers. You know, it's like making a movie, making these video games these days. They just look so realistic. So you have multiple teams that are part of one big program or project or product spread across the globe or the country or the state or wherever, you have to have structure. And that's the first emphasis that Johan has in this article. And I think it's, it's, it's fantastic, right? You've got to know who's doing what, you've got to coordinate that. And how else do you coordinate that? Well, Foundation 5 Communication, and as he mentions, is communicate. And a way that he mentioned in the article and in his speech is that they had associate producers, so they had folks that would help make sure people were in

sync and do production, but they also had project coordinators with each sub team. So imagine an org chart with kind of a couple of leader boxes, three, four leader boxes or so up the top. And then across the bottom, there were probably eight other mini org charts. And each of those had their own product coordinator, associate producer, project coordinator, rather associate producer, and then the technical people for each piece of it. So let's say one person was doing character design, one was doing the backgrounds. One was doing, you know, animations. However the combination of that goes, and he breaks this down in different video clips too, which is awesome. So they have to communicate together who's doing what.

They do stand-ups, right, which we'll talk about. Because his third thing is planning, or the third thing I picked up on there. Planning, right, to use user stories. So he mentioned he was on a previous project, coming off of that as a, you know, a developer, and then getting into doing more project management, but he's still producing. So they use user stories, right? So in that Scrum Agile kind of thing, and he said it was successful. So they use that as well. And making sure they know what are the dependencies. So let's say I designed this one character

that's integral to this other one or this background or this storyline, they have to be connected, right? Same thing for, let's say, installing something or building new software for the organization. If we're doing that organization-wide, we need to have to know that we're connected and we're in sync and we're not duplicating work

or maybe not leading one part of the production down a road that doesn't match the other. And so great outline from him. And then really another key point in the last one from just this example is making sure your leadership allows folks to dare to fail, right? As you can imagine in the video game world or art in particular, you need to take risks maybe in how you're going to do the animation or the storyline or pull things together. And so that's a big part of what he mentions is, you know, they need to try to try new things. And I think about, you know, waterfall, that kind of templated phased approach where we try and do everything up front, you know, we initiate it, then we plan it, then we monitor and control it, then we execute it, or you know,

however we want to jumble those two up. And then we close it, right? It doesn't always work that way. And it spawned particularly for software, agile, scrum, those kinds of things where we say, No, no, we can't just hold fast at the beginning and never change anything because stuff changes. And so we need to dare to fail and say, Look, we're gonna go with it's the beginning. But if it changes, we're gonna come back or we're gonna take a risk with this calculated risks, right? But I highly recommend that article. Again, I'll link to it. Really cool to see in practice as a project manager and a video gamer, what goes into pulling teams together to make games. And it's not unlike other project management, right? So we make sure we have structure. We're communicating, we have the right resources in

the key areas to help us communicate, we are planning together, right? We have to do that in some sort of process as well facilitated, we have to dare to fail and have that leadership support to do it. So you know, which which we certainly would have leaders intent, I would hope that said, we're going to produce the best game that does this for these users and you know that'll be written into all the other stuff that we do so from my experience as a gamer with a few decades of experience there and as a project manager with almost a couple decades there what do i think we can take from being a player of the games not necessarily a player of the games, not necessarily a developer of the games. The first thing I think is leadership, right? Whether we're playing with other humans and we're talking on a headset

or the typical uber nerd gamer sitting there with his friends, or in some games, you're the leader of a squad or a team or an organization or a civilization where you're giving commands to computer players. But either way, you have to think about the team that you have, whether it's real or virtual, right? And in these days, we have a real in-person team or virtual team spread around. You have to think about how you're going to lead those people. And in some games, they're so sophisticated, the choices you make change what they do,

just like in real life, how you interact with somebody can change the course of their actions or their interactions or their, you know, responses. And so in getting repetition in games, particularly their strategy games, or you have to build up a civilization or build a base and then conquer this area or move, you have to think about how you want to use your resources. And we'll get it out a second. But you have to lead those resources and those people forward. And I think that's a cool way to do it through practice through a video game. My second thing, like Johan states, is communication. So literal communication. So let's say you're doing the first person shooter, you have a mission you're going on, you're playing against other people in like online gaming, you have to communicate who's where, where are the

bad guys, which way should we go, I'm covering you, you move, right? Just like you have to communicate in a real project, I have this task, who owns it, do you need help, do we escalate, you know, just really talking to each other. And then it's other, you know, in other instances, again, you're communicating with artificial intelligence or non playable characters, and you have to give them messages or directions to make them go. But either way, it's all a good help in reviewing and making decisions. And then with those decisions, what's the best way to communicate this to the people that need to know it when they need to know it or if they need to know it right now? Resource management. This kind of goes with the leadership I mentioned. So the people, the stuff, the facilities in real life, obviously critical to project management,

right? People first, just like people process progress. What's the stuff that we need? What facilities do we need? And again, in those kind of strategy ones, we build a base or those kind of things. You know, what do we need to build this up to get to the next level in our technology advancement? Well, in a real world project, what do we need here as a predecessor to the next step to then be able to build or advance the network or advance our

software or something like that, right? Very similar decision making processes, just ones in the matrix, if you will, in this virtual world, and the other is in the real world. With resource management, and decision making comes time management, right? So time management, for me, say you're on a mission, and the mission sets this parameter that says you have three minutes to get through this area, and you can't be detected. So then you have to realize where can I go? Where can I not go? I have to do this quickly, but I have to make good decisions to not get caught by the enemy spotlight or something like that. Well, let's say in the real world, we have this number of days to do this number of things or think about COVID, right?

We have this long to deploy this many devices to help patient care. Okay, well, who gets them first? How do we decide what's the greatest path to get there quickly? How can we standardize things? So it's the safest way to do it. You know, just like trying to stay in the shadows of this sneaky mission. That's the best, most efficient way to get through somewhere, well, how can we use the best supplies and the most learned resources on our team to help us get to the goal line faster if we have a short amount of time? The other aspect of time management,

which I mentioned a little earlier that I haven't always done well, is the time management between the time I spend on the video game and the time that I spend doing other things around the house or with my family or stuff like the time that I spend, you know, doing other things around the house or with my family or stuff like that. And especially when I was younger and, you know, hanging out with the guys and, you know, we would be playing virtually online or in person or something like that. You know, oftentimes I'd put too much time into that. So time management,

thinking about that as a project manager, how much time are you putting with one resource or one aspect of the project versus the other? Are you balancing, you know, if you have multiple projects assigned to you, are you giving each project it's due or do you need to ask for help? Do you need a project coordinator or an associate PM to help you or a business analyst or some other resource because you're not able to handle it or you're not taking the time, whatever the reason is, the time management of ourselves is just as important as managing the time that we have to do something for the project as well. You know, we need to be efficient and effective as well. So that we can make sure the project is efficient is effective. And of course, in real life, if you're gaming all the time, you've got to time manage your life outside of that. One thing I've talked about, and certainly

is a big theme, and one of the folks I've mentioned that I listen to, Jocko Willink, is detachment. And from video games, I have certainly been playing games and gotten heated because you did or didn't win, or this or that, or got interrupted, and I was on a mission, and then realizing, you know, it's a game, you can turn it off and it goes away. And then you can start it again tomorrow and it doesn't matter. Right? And in project management, while bad things or bad interactions matter, we can still detach from let's say the difficult conversation is just factual, it's objective. It's, here's why we're in this red status. Here are the reasons we got here. Here's what we're going to do to get better. And then drive on, right? Less about my ego, less about who's to blame,

but also knowing, but here's what we need. And here's what we have to do. And do some people have to put in more time? Sure. Have we already put the time in and we don't have to? Sure. You know, the key there is can you detach? I've mentioned this before is not falling in love with your project. So you get a great kickoff to your project. And then you get assigned to another project. Well, it doesn't matter if they need you somewhere else. It's it's make sure you get a good handoff on that one project you're on, hand it off, and then go to the next one. So again, maybe I'm biased because I like video games and I'm a project manager, but I do see value in developing some leadership of real or virtual folks, communicating, whether you're talking on a headset or you're sending some sort of command in a game, managing resources to build up a civilization or to build a software

in real life, managing your time and your team's time in real life, or the time of the secret mission that you only have three minutes for in the video games, and then detachment of realizing video games are video games. You can leave it there and it can go away. This is especially challenging for maybe kids that are on video games all the time and aren't given the balance of that time in real world time and doing chores and doing their schoolwork and getting outside. And that's something I would highly encourage for me being a parent of three boys and going at it for 15 years now, you have to help them manage that because they'll get stuck on it, especially in the past year and a half, right? Because kids

haven't been able to make the connections like they should have been able to in normal times. And so they've really gotten into texting, Instagram, video games. And so that's good. And obviously with this episode, I'm all about it, but we have to balance that for ourselves, for our kids and for society. So I hope you all enjoyed this. I hope you can see the parallels that I mentioned in this episode. I'd be interested to hear from you all, peopleprocessprogress at gmail.com. Or again, hit up peopleprocessprogress.com when I post this blog post. And let me know your comments.

What else do you think you've learned from video games, good or bad? Are there processes that you've used? Do you make video games? I'd be interested to hear from folks there too, especially maybe talk to you as a guest on the show. So thank you all so much for letting me share two of the things that I really enjoy in both video games and project management. And again, if you haven't played a video game, maybe check one out and have fun doing it. I've had fun making this episode and making this podcast, so I thank you all so much for coming by here, for listening, for subscribing.

Please share this show. I think it helps. We're going to have a great guest coming up here in the next couple weeks. Stay safe out there. Wash those hands, and Godspeed.