making games. To use an example, research has shown that Chinese gamers are more interested in competition (leaderboards, arena matches) and completion (completing tasks and collecting trophies) than Westerners, while Westerners are more interested in immersion—for example, role- playing in fantasy worlds. Moreover, culture determines how we communicate. Northern Europeans tend to be more direct in their speech; in Asia, extreme importance is given to context, both in terms of language and social norms, which to Westerners can seem indirect, and maybe, at times, difficult to navigate. Even the philosophy of game dev leaders is determined by culture. An American studio director builds a clear picture of how a game ought to be made—we will make it this way because I have a vision. In Asia, it is more common for game companies to make ‘microbets’ and invest in the one that works best.


MAXIMIZING CREATIVITY IN A GLOBAL INDUSTRY


The way we talk, how we interpret the world around us, the way companies make games—all of it is determined by culture. With this in mind, how do we manage creativity—which is at the core of the games industry—while being cognizant of cultural bias?


Since joining Room 8 Group after decades of working abroad, I have embraced this challenge. We’ve experienced rapid growth, going from 1 employee in 2011 to around 1,300 today. We’re now a global team; people clock in each day from all over the world—Ukraine, the UK, Spain, Canada, the US, Brazil, France, Poland, and more. To get the most out of a global team, we must be sensitive to different ways of doing things.


Global teams have a mish-mash of cultures. Leaders must take the time to understand each of them. One way to do this is to practice extreme openness as an organization. Sometimes, you simply will not know what parts of you have been molded by culture, because we all take culture for granted. It is paramount, therefore, that you make members of your team feel safe enough to talk, to share their ideas and their grievances. At Room 8 Group, we have cross-cultural communications training, which proved especially helpful when we started collaborating with our Brazilian team members around the time Recife-based PUGA (now Room 8 Studio) was integrated into the company.


Maximizing creativity in cross-cultural teams is about getting to the heart of ideas. In my career I have had the good fortune of working with visionaries like Glenn Entis, now a Senior Director at Google, and Nilo Rodis-Jamero, the guy who designed the Imperial Guard costume in Star Wars. When it came to ideas, they understood what was the form and what was the core; in other words, which parts were culturally dependent, and which appealed to fundamental human nature. Glenn and Nilo always cared more about the core, disregarding the form. They were able to take an idea and say, “This is what this idea means in any other culture; the stuff around it is your bias.” Some ideas transcend culture, like the concept of transfer to other worlds. The rabbit-hole in Alice in Wonderland; the mirror in The Matrix; the wardrobe in Narnia—these are transporting mechanisms. This idea of transfer appears in different cultures, just in distinct ways. When you learn to identify the core of an idea, you can apply it successfully anywhere in the world. It is especially important to do this when your team is culturally diverse; if you don’t, you will struggle to bring ideas to life that resonate on a global level. The games industry is becoming more global, and thus more culturally diverse, all the time, which, as far as I’m concerned, is cause for celebration. Games are confined to specific platforms less and less; old classics can now be enjoyed on modern platforms. Room 8 Group is at the forefront of this development. We recently launched REI (for Render Engine Infrastructure), a toolkit which makes porting games from old or proprietary engines to modern platforms far easier. It is also partially open-source, underscoring our commitment to sharing expertise (particularly with smaller dev teams). Now more than ever, gaming is a global community, and at Room 8 Group, we care about its cultivation. We should address a worldwide audience with a worldwide team of developers who are aware of their own biases and open to other cultures. It is the most brilliant opportunity, but it is also a big responsibility. By being mindful of different cultures, however unusual they may first seem to you as an individual, we can make great games that appeal to the most fundamental parts of human nature.


“Maximizing creativity in cross-cultural teams is about getting to the heart of ideas”


February/March 2024 MCV/DEVELOP | 29


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