The Game Outcomes Project, Part 3: Game Development Factors
遊戲專案為何成功系列之三：遊戲產業的獨特要素
網誌版：http://wp.me/pBAPd-qp
原文網址：
http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/PaulTozour/20150113/233922/The_Game_Outcomes_Project_Part_3_Game_Development_Factors.php
縮網址：http://tinyurl.com/m7kmuzf
撰文：Paul Tozour
繁體中文翻譯：NDark
20150113
譯按：本文是一篇統計學專業文章，若有翻譯不正確的文句，請以原文為主。
This article is the third in a 5-part series.
Part 1: The Best and the Rest is also available here: (Gamasutra)
(BlogSpot) (in Chinese)
Part 2: Building Effective Teams is available here: (Gamasutra)
(BlogSpot) (in Chinese)
This article is part 3, and will soon be updated on BlogSpot and
translated to Chinese.
Parts 4-5 will be published in late January 2015.
For extended notes on our survey methodology, see our Methodology blog
page.
Our raw survey data (minus confidential info) is now available here if
you'd like to verify our results or perform your own analysis.
The Game Outcomes Project team includes Paul Tozour, David Wegbreit, Lucien
Parsons, Zhenghua “Z” Yang, NDark Teng, Eric Byron, Julianna Pillemer, Ben
Weber, and Karen Buro.
本文是系列五篇中的第三篇。
第一篇請連以下文章 (Gamasutra) (BlogSpot) (in Chinese 繁體中文)
第二篇請連以下文章 (Gamasutra) (BlogSpot) (in Chinese 繁體中文)
第四，第五篇將在2015年一月下旬釋出。
想要知道問卷的方法論，請參閱部落格頁面 "Game Outcomes Project
Methodology":http://intelligenceengine.blogspot.com/2014/11/game-outcomes-project-methodology-in.html
我們問卷的原始資料在此，有興趣的朋友可以拿去分析。
"遊戲專案為何成功"團隊成員包含Paul Tozour，David Wegbreit，Lucien Parsons，
Zhenghua “Z” Yang，NDark Teng，Eric Byron，Julianna Pillemer，Ben Weber，及
Karen Buro。
The Game Outcomes Project, Part 3: Game Development Factors
遊戲專案為何成功系列之三：遊戲產業的獨特要素
The Game Outcomes Project was a large-scale study of teamwork, culture,
production, and leadership in game development conducted in October 2014. It
was based on a 120-question survey of several hundred game developers, and it
correlated all of those factors against a set of four quantifiable project
outcomes (project delays, return on investment (ROI), aggregate reviews /
MetaCritic ratings, and the team’s own sense of satisfaction with how the
project achieved its internal goals). Our team then built all of these four
outcome questions into an aggregate “score” value representing the overall
outcome of the game project, as described on our Methodology page.
遊戲專案為何成功的問卷計畫是在2014年十月開始，針對於團隊合作，文化，製作，以及
領導方面大範圍的研究。問卷是基於一百二十個問題項目對數百位遊戲開發者的調查，我
們透過一連串的要素與量化的專案產出分數（包含專案延遲，專案利潤，網頁分數，內部
滿意度）相對應做出的關聯性分析。我們問卷團隊把四個產出分數總和為一個產出分數，
代表遊戲專案的總和產出，如我們方法論部落格所提。
Previous articles in this series (Part 1, Part 2) introduced the Game
Outcomes Project and showed very surprising results. While many factors that
one would expect to contribute to differences in project outcomes – such as
team size, project duration, production methodology, and most forms of
financial incentives – had no meaningful correlations, we also saw
remarkable and very clear results for three different team effectiveness
models that we investigated.
此系列先前的文章（第一篇，第二篇）介紹了"遊戲專案為何成功"此計畫目前驚人的成果
。許多我們所預期的要素會影響遊戲產出。其中團隊大小，開發時程，製程方法論，許多
種獎勵都沒有顯著的關聯性。我們也看到許多值得一提的數種團隊效率模型對我們產出的
影響。
Our analysis uncovered major differences in team effectiveness, which
translate directly into large and unmistakable differences in project
outcomes.
Every game is a reflection of the team that made it, and the best way to
raise your game is to raise your team.
我們的分析揭露了團隊效率模型之間的差異，以及對團隊產出造成的差異。
每個遊戲都是團隊獨一無二的成果，要提高遊戲品質，就先從提高團隊品質做起。
In this article, we look at additional factors in our survey which were not
covered by the three team effectiveness models we analyzed in Part 2,
including several in areas specific to game development. We included these
questions in our survey on the suspicion that they were likely to contribute
in some way to differences in project outcomes. We were not disappointed.
在本文中，我們關注問卷中沒有在團隊效率篇章提及的額外要素項目，特別是遊戲開發相
關的項目。由於我們認為這些問題可能對我們問卷有貢獻，所以把這些問題納入我們的問
卷中，它們並沒有讓我們失望。
Design Risk Management
First, we looked at the management of design risk. It’s well-known in the
industry that design thrashing is a major cost of cost and schedule overruns.
We’ve personally witnessed many projects where a game’s design was unclear
from the outset, where preproduction was absent or was inadequate to define
the gameplay, or where a game in development underwent multiple disruptive
re-designs that negated the team’s progress, causing enormous amounts of
work to be discarded and progress to be lost.
設計上的風險管理
首先，我們先探討設計上的風險管理。與這篇"用一個影片來說明那些被取消的專案"相同
，我們親眼目睹很多專案在開始時的設計不明確，前置作業不足以解釋遊戲玩法，或是開
發過程中不斷打掉重練，造成工時的浪費。
It seemed clear to us that the best teams carefully manage the risks around
game design, both by working to mitigate the repercussions of design changes
in development, and by reducing the need for disruptive design changes in the
first place (by having a better design to begin with).
明顯地，優秀的團隊都很小心地處理設計面的風險，試圖減輕開發中規格變動帶來的影響
，或是在開始時就直接捨棄不良的設計（直到找出真正好的企劃案才開案）。
We came up with a set of 5 related questions, shown in Figure 1 below. These
turned out to have some of the strongest correlations of any questions we
asked in our survey. With the exception of the two peach-colored
correlations for the last question (related to the return-on-investment
outcome and the critical reception outcome for design documents), all of
these correlations are statistically significant (p-value under 0.05).
我們設計了五個相關的問題，在下面的圖一顯示。它們對我們問的其他問題都有強烈的關
聯性。除了最後一個問題兩個粉紅色的區塊之外（針對開始的文件與專案利潤的關聯），
其他的關聯性都有強烈的統計表徵（小於0.05的p值）。
Figure 1. Questions around design risk management and their correlations with
project outcomes. The “category score” on the right is the highest
absolute value of the aggregate outcome correlations, as an indication of the
overall value of this category. “Not S.S.” indicates correlations that are
not statistically significant (p-value over 0.05).設計面的風險管理及專案產出分
數的關聯性。最右邊的欄位代表四欄中最高的絕對值關聯性。Not S.S.代表沒有統計表徵
（大於0.05的p值）。
Clearly, changes to the design during development, and the way those design
changes were handled, made enormous differences in the outcomes of many of
the development efforts we surveyed.
顯然，根據我們的問卷指出，開發中改變規格，或是如何改變規則，會對團隊產出造成重
大影響。
However, when they did occur, participation of all stakeholders in the
decision to make changes, and clear communication and justification of those
changes and the reasons for them, clearly mitigated the damage.
然而，假如規格真的改變，團隊成員的參與討論，清楚的溝通，及改變的原因，都會減輕
傷害。
[We remind readers who may have missed Part 2 that negative correlations (in
red/orange) should not be viewed a bad thing; on the contrary, questions
asked in a “negative frame,” i.e., asking about a bad thing that may have
occurred on the project, should have a negative correlation with project
outcomes, indicating that a lower answer (stronger disagreement with the
statement) correlated with better project outcomes (better ROI, fewer delays,
higher critical reviews, and so on). What really matters is the absolute
value of a correlation: the farther a correlation is from 0, the more
strongly it relates to differences in project outcomes, and you can then look
at the sign to see whether it contributes positively or negatively.]
請記得在第二篇中我們提到，負向的關聯性並非壞事；相反地，那是因為問題是以反向的
方式設計，例如：詢問對專案可能發生的問題是不被允許的，這問題就應該對專案產出有
負面的相關。也就是回答偏向於比較低方向，其實是對專案的產出更好（更好的利潤，更
少的延遲，更高的分數等）。真的重要的是專案產出的絕對值，而讀者應能明顯看出那些
問題的方向。
Somewhat surprisingly, our question about a design document clearly
specifying the game to be developed had a very low correlation – below 0.2.
It also had no statistically significant correlation (p-value > 0.05) with
ROI or critical reception / MetaCritic scores. This is quite surprising, as
it suggests design documents are far less useful than generally realized.
The only area where they show a truly meaningful correlation is with project
timeliness. This seems to suggest that while design documents may make a
positive contribution to the schedule, anyone who believes that they will
contribute much to product success from a critical or ROI standpoint by
themselves is quite mistaken.
意外地，我們關於設計文件的問題只有非常低的關聯性，少於0.2。甚至還有幾個關聯性
（利潤與分數）沒有統計表徵（p值大於0.05）。這結果真是令人意外，也就是設計文件
其實比我們期待的還要不重要。此項目真正影響的其實只有專案時程，若有人認為專案文
件應該會帶給我們巨大利潤或網站分數就是犯了大錯。
We should be clear that our 2014 survey did not ask any questions related to
the project’s level of design innovation. Certainly, it’s much easier to
limit design risk if you stick to less ambitious one-off games and direct
sequels. We don’t want to sound as if we are recommending that course of
action.
我們必須坦承本次的問卷並沒有問到關於專案突破或是新穎設計相關的問題。假設我們執
行續作專案或相同類型的專案時，當然很容易就會限制設計風險。此處我們也必須強調我
們並非透過上述問卷得到的結果來鼓吹不需創新。
For the record, we do believe that design innovation is enormously important,
and quite often, a game’s design needs to evolve significantly in production
in order to achieve that level of innovation. Our own subjective experience
is that a desire for innovation needs to be balanced against cautious
management of the enormous risks that design changes can introduce. We plan
to ask more questions in the area of design innovation in the next version of
the survey.
我們強調，我們相信創新是很重要的，遊戲的設計需要在製程上不斷進化來達到設計上的
創新。我們主觀的看法是設計的創新是需要小心管理非常多設計可能帶來的風險。我們希
望在下一版本的問卷中能夠帶入這些設計創新方面的問題。
Team Focus
Managing the risks to the design itself is one thing, but to what extent does
the team’s level of focus – being on the same page about the game in
development, and sharing a single, common, vision – impact outcomes?
團隊專注力
管理設計上的風險之外，在同一頁針對遊戲開發的問題中，接下來我們談團隊的專注力，
及團隊有單一共通的信念，是否會影響產出。
Figure 2. Questions around team focus and their correlations.團隊專注力關聯性
的問題
The strong correlations here are not too surprising; these tie in closely
with the design risk management topic above, as well as our questions about “
Compelling Direction,” the second element of Hackman’s team effectiveness
model from Part 2. As a result, the correlations here are very similar. It’
s clear that successful teams have a strong shared vision, care deeply about
the product vision, and are careful to resolve disagreements about the game’
s design quickly and professionally.
強烈的關聯性就如同設計風險管理的段落，及第二篇我們提到哈克曼團隊效率模型的"明
確的方向"一樣並不令人意外。也就是得到一樣的結果。顯然成功的團隊內都有強烈單一
共通的信仰，關心產品的方向，小心但迅速又專業地解決對於遊戲設計面的歧見。
It’s interesting to note that the question “most team members cared deeply
about the vision of this game” showed a wide disparity of correlations. It
shows a strong positive correlation with critical reviews and internal goal
achievement, but only a very weak correlation with project timeliness. This
seems to indicate that while passion for the project makes for a more
satisfied team and a game that gets better review scores, it has little to do
with hitting schedules.
值得一提的是這個問題"大多數的團隊成員都關心遊戲的方向"，在不同欄位中得到了不同
的關聯性。在內部滿意度與網頁評分中關聯性很高，但對專案時程的關聯性很低。這似乎
指出團隊對專案的熱忱會造成滿意度高的團隊，也會獲得比較高的網頁分數，但對時程沒
有影響。
Crunch (Extended Overtime)
Our industry is legendary (or perhaps “infamous” is a better word) for its
frequent use of extended overtime, i.e. “crunch.” But how does crunch
actually correlate with project outcomes?
加班
對這個產業來說，加班文化頗獲盛名（或說是惡名昭彰）。到底加班對產出的關聯性如何
？
Figure 3. Questions around crunch, and related correlations.加班的關聯性
As you can see, all five of our questions around crunch were significantly
correlated with outcomes – some of them very strongly so. The one and only
question that showed a positive correlation was the question asking if
overtime was purely voluntary, indicating the absence of mandatory crunch.
如你所見，五個圍繞在加班的問題都與產出有負面的關聯性。唯一有正面關聯性的問題是
在自願也就是沒有強制規定下的加班。
Even in the area where you might expect crunch would improve things –
project delays – crunch still showed a significant negative correlation,
indicating that it did not actually save projects from delays.
當我們預期加班會解決問題，也就是減少專案延遲。結果反而有負向相關，也就是加班並
不能幫助專案趕上進度。
This suggests that not only does crunch not produce better outcomes, but it
may actually make games worse where it is used.
同樣地加班也不能幫助產出更好的結果，反而可能更糟。
Crunch is an important topic, and one that is far too often passionately
debated without reference to any facts or data whatsoever. In order to do
the topic justice – and hopefully lay the entire “debate” to rest once and
for all – we will dedicate the entirety of our next article to further
exploring these results, and we’ll don our scuba gear and perform a “
deep-dive” into the data to ferret out exactly what our data can tell us
about crunch and its effects.
At the very least, we hope to provide enough data that future discussions of
crunch will rest far less on opinion and far more on actual evidence.
加班是一個值得探討的問題，複雜到我們不能跟只用數據來探討它。因此為了揭露它的真
相，希望能夠一勞永逸的講清楚這個問題，我們決定把它留到下一篇來深入探討。我們會
準備好面對這個敵人，從背後找到它所帶來的影響。
Team Stability
A great deal of validated management research shows clearly that teams with
stable membership are far more effective than teams whose membership changes
frequently, or those whose members must be shared with other teams. Studies
of surgical teams and airline crews show that they are far more likely to
make mistakes in their first few weeks of working together, but grow
continuously more effective year after year as they work together. We were
curious how team stability affects outcomes in game development.
團隊穩定度
大量的管理研究都說有穩定成員的團隊會比頻繁調動或互相支援的團隊來的有效率。對外
科團隊或空服團隊的研究也說合作的第一個禮拜會容易犯錯，但逐漸會越來越有效率。對
於遊戲製作團隊穩定度與產出是否相關我們產生了好奇。
Figure 4. Questions around team stability and their correlations to project
outcomes.團隊穩定度與專案產出的效率
Surprisingly, our question on team members being exclusively dedicated to the
project showed no statistically significant correlations with project
outcomes. As far as we can tell, this just doesn’t matter one way or the
other.
意外地，只做一個案子的團隊並沒有顯示出對專案產出有關聯性。
However, our more general questions around project turnover and
reorganization showed strong and unequivocal correlations with inferior
project outcomes.
相反地，對於換人或重組的專案卻對專案產出有負面的關聯性。
At the same time, it’s difficult to say for sure to what extent each of
these is a cause or an effect of problems on a project. In the case of
turnover, there are plenty of industry stories that illustrate both: there
have been plenty of staff departures and layoffs due to troubled projects,
but also quite a few stories of key staff departures that left their studios
scrambling to recover – in addition to stories of spiraling problems where
project problems caused key staff departures, which caused more
morale/productivity problems, which led to the departure of even more staff.
因此，很難說任何一點直接造成了專案的助力或阻力。以換人來說，業界已經有很多案例
告訴我們在困難專案會遇到的裁員與離職，更有關鍵的團隊成員離開工作室，這造成了連
鎖效應：士氣更低，更多人離職。
We hope to analyze this factor more deeply in future versions of the survey
(and we’d like to break down voluntary vs involuntary staff departures in
particular). But for now, we’ll have to split the difference in our
interpretation. As far as we can tell from here, turnover and
reorganizations are both generally harmful, and wise leaders should do
everything in their power to minimize them.
我們希望能在未來的版本更進一步分析這個要素（把自願離職與非自願離職的要素分清楚
）。但目前來說，我們只能解釋，換人或重組造成傷害，明智地來說應該減少這種現象。
Communication & Feedback
We included several questions about the extent to which communication and
feedback play a role in team effectiveness:
溝通與回饋
我們列了幾個關於溝通與回饋在團隊效率方面的問題：
Figure 5. Questions around communication and their correlations.溝通與產出的關
聯性
Clearly, regular feedback from project leads and managers (our third question
in this category) is key – our third question ties in very closely with
factor #11 in the Gallup team effectiveness model from Part 2, with virtually
identical correlations with project outcomes. Easy access to senior
leadership (the second question) is also clearly quite important.
從專案領導者與管理層來的定期回饋（第三個問題，與第二篇蓋洛普團隊效率模型的第十
一個問題雷同）很清楚地與專案產出有關聯性。能夠與管理層溝通是很重要的。
Regular communication between the entire team (the first question) is
somewhat less important but still shows significant positive correlations
across the board. Meanwhile, our final question revealed no significant
differences between cultures that preferred e-mail vs face-to-face
communication.
團隊中持續的溝通（第一個問題）雖沒那麼重要，但仍有正面的相關性。順帶一提，最後
一個問題，也就是是否面對面工作卻完全沒有顯示任何相關聯性。
Organizational Perceptions of Failure
組織對於失敗的態度
A 2012 Gamasutra interview with Finnish game developer Supercell explained
that company’s attitude toward failure:
在2012年Gamasutra對芬蘭遊戲開發者Supercell的訪問中說到關於公司對於失敗的態度：
"We think that the biggest advantage we have in this company is culture. […
] We have this culture of celebrating failure. When a game does well, of
course we have a party. But when we really screw up, for example when we need
to kill a product – and that happens often by the way, this year we've
launched two products globally, and killed three – when we really screw up,
we celebrate with champagne. We organize events that are sort of postmortems,
and we can discuss it very openly with the team, asking what went wrong, what
went right. What did we learn, most importantly, and what are we going to do
differently next time?"
我們認為在這間公司中最大的優勢是文化... 我們鼓勵失敗。當遊戲做得好的時候我們慶
功，但當我們砸鍋，譬如要取消專案的時候我們更開香檳慶祝。我們用某種解頗的儀式來
透明的探討那些潛在問題，我們在哪些地方犯錯了，而哪些地方做對了，我們學到了甚麼
，下次我們該怎麼做？
It seems safe to say that most game studios don’t share this attitude. But
is Supercell a unique outlier, or would this attitude work in game
development in general if applied more broadly?
Our developer survey asked six questions about how the team perceived failure
on a cultural level:
似乎大多數的工作室並沒有相同的做法，Supercell是否這麼特別？如果我們將這樣的態
度推廣出去有用嗎？
我們的問卷中就問了六個關於團隊文化是否接受失敗的問題。
Figure 6. Questions around organizational perceptions of failure and their
correlations.組織如何看待失敗的關聯性
These correlations are quite significant, and nearly all of them are quite
strong. More successful game projects are much more likely encourage
creative risk-taking and open discussion of failure, and ensure that team
members feel comfortable and supported when taking creative risks.
These results tie in very closely with the concept of “psychological safety”
explained Part 2, under the “Supportive Context” section of Hackman’s
team effectiveness model.
這些關聯性很顯著，幾乎全部都很重要。成功的團隊都能在創造時鼓勵承擔失敗與談論失
敗，這樣確保團度成員有安全感，感覺創造時有後援。
這些結論與第二篇哈克曼團隊效率模型的支持信仰所提的心理層面的安全感十分雷同。
Respect
Extensive management research indicates that respect is a terrifically
important driver of employee engagement, and therefore of productivity. A
recent HBR study of nearly 20,000 employees around the world found that no
other leader behavior had a greater effect on outcomes. Employees who
receive more respect exhibit massive improvements in engagement, retention,
satisfaction, focus, and many other factors.
We were curious whether this also applied to the game industry, and whether a
respectful working environment contributed to differences between failed and
successful game project outcomes as well. We were not disappointed.
尊嚴
廣泛的管理研究指出在對員工相處上尊嚴起了一個很重要的角色，還因此可以增加產出。
最近一篇哈佛商業文摘對兩萬名全球員工作的研究指出，除了尊嚴之外沒有更有用的領導
行為。有尊嚴的員工在工作，滿足，專注，及其他方面會有巨大的進步。
我們很好奇這是否對遊戲產業適用，是否一個有尊嚴工作環境可以影響專案的產出？這沒
讓我們失望？
Figure 7. Questions around respect, and related correlations.尊嚴的關聯性
All three of our questions in this category showed significant correlations
with outcomes, especially the question about respectful relationships between
team leads/managers and developers.
三個問題都顯示正面的關聯性，特別是團隊管理者及開發者的關係。
Clearly, all team members