Playing across the Playground: Paradoxes of knowledge creation in the video-game industry

This contribution aims at highlighting how a video-game firm copes in managing creativity and expression of artistic values, while meeting the constraints of the economics of mass entertainment. The research is based on an ethnographic study in one of the largest video game studios in the world located in Montréal. The approach considers that the creative units of the firms are the “communities of specialists” (game developers, software programmers, etc...). Each of these communities, which has found in Montreal a fertile soil that nurtures their creative potential, is focused on both exploration and exploitation of a given domain of knowledge. In order to valorize these sources of creativity, the integration forces implemented by the managers of the firm in order to bind the creative units together for achieving commercial successes reveal a hybrid form of project management which combines decentralized modular platforms, with strict constraints on time, and a specific management of space that favours informal interactions. However, we suggest that the integration forces put forwards by the firm are not just for harnessing creative units: they generate also “creative slacks” for further expansion of creativity. 1 This research paper is the first draft of a proposal for The Journal of Organizational Behavior, special issue on the paradoxes of creativity (accepted with revisions, October 2005). The authors would like to thank their colleagues from the « Groupe de Recherche sur le Management dans la société de l'innovation et de la création » of HEC Montreal, in particular Chantal Mailhot and Jean Michel Viola for creative exchanges. Patrick Cohendet also likes to thanks his colleagues from the project group KGP (Knowledge Governance and Projects, Configurations and Dynamics of the Project-Based Economy) currently carried out under the responsibility of Anna Grandori (Bocconi University) for stimulating ideas. Playing across the Playground: Paradoxes of knowledge creation in the video-game industry _____________________________________________ Copyright © 2005 HEC Montréal 2 Résumé Ce travail vise à montrer comment une entreprise de développement de jeu vidéo gère la créativité et l’expression des valeurs artistiques tout en répondant aux exigences économiques du marché du divertissement de masse. Cette recherche est basée sur l’étude ethnographique de l’un des plus importants studios de développement de jeux au monde, situé à Montréal. Les unités de création de la firme sont ici considérées comme des «communautés de spécialistes» (designers du jeu, programmeurs, etc.). Chacune de ces communautés, qui ont trouvé à Montréal un terreau riche qui alimente leur potentiel créatif, est engagée à la fois dans l’exploration et l’exploitation d’un champ de connaissance spécifique. Visant à valoriser ces sources de créativité, les forces d’intégration mises en place par les managers de l’entreprise pour faire converger ces unités créatives vers le succès commercial révèlent une forme hybride de management de projet qui combine des plateformes modulaires décentralisées, avec des contraintes de temps strictes, et un espace de management spécifique qui favorise les interactions informelles. De plus, nous faisons l’hypothèse que ces forces d’intégration mises en place par la firme ne font pas que canaliser les activités des unités créatives : elles génèrent aussi des «potentiels créatifs» (creative slacks) pour le développement futur de la créativité. Playing across the Playground: Paradoxes of knowledge creation in the video-game industry _____________________________________________ Copyright © 2005 HEC Montréal 3 Introduction Video-game industry has rapidly become a major player in the emerging category of “creative industries” (Kinder, 1991; Sheff, 1994; Herman, 1999; Howkins, 2001). It produces influential cultural icons and best-selling products, already representing a substantial share of the entertainment business. The products of the video game industry captivate a whole generation on psycho-sociological and cultural grounds (Turkle, 1984; Herz, 1997; Kline et al. 2003; Beck and Wade, 2004). They also fascinate the business world by the upsurge of new profitable markets. As a cultural product, a video game is a complex mix of technology, art and interactive story-telling. The technological part of the artefact should disappear beyond the magic of the scenario, the smoothness of controls and the realism of the simulation. Therefore, the generic video-game making involves the development and integration of a scenario, design of interactivity, programming activities, graphic arts, sound design, integration and tests/quality control. Thus, the video-game industry hires creators belonging to very diverse “communities of specialists”: script writers, game-designers, graphic artists in 2D and 3D, sound designers, not to forget highly talented software programmers. However, beyond these creative characteristics, this cultural product can also be seen as the result of a complex industrial project managed under strict conditions of efficiency. A video-game project is compelled to respect constraints of time and money, and aims at reaching large market shares in a very competitive environment. Managers in video-game industry must harness expression of artistic values to meet the constraints of the economics of mass entertainment. Thus, as for other cultural industries (De Fillipi and Arthur, 1998; Lampel et al. 2000) , on organizational grounds, the management of complex video games projects is the result of a delicate balance between, on the one side an artistic mode relying on flexible and decentralised expertises held by distinct creative communities of specialists, and on the other side a strict managerial attitude looking for the advantages of tight integration of these activities within cost and market constraints. The need to fine tune the level of integration in such an industry is high: too a strong integration could lead to a permanent reduction in diversity and creativity; too a loosed integration could lead to chaos and inefficiency. The aim of this contribution is to highlight how on practical grounds a video-game firm copes with these paradoxes. The research is based on a pioneering exploratory ethnographic study of a project in one of the largest video game studios in the world (Simon, 2002) located in Montréal. In this company, we have explored two main dimensions. First, the research traced the sources of creativity of the company (Part 1 of the contribution). The approach which has been adopted is that effective units of creativity are not isolated individuals, nor hierarchical teams decided by the hierarchy of the firm. The creative units of the firms (such as game developers, software programmers, etc...) are “communities of 2 According to the Entertainment Software Association. ( http://www.esa.com ) the video game industry would harvest more than 7 billions in revenues in 2004 in the US only, considering only software for PC and consoles Playing across the Playground: Paradoxes of knowledge creation in the video-game industry _____________________________________________ Copyright © 2005 HEC Montréal 4 specialists” who partly function in organized formal project frameworks, but who also interact within and across their boundaries (in particular they have developed deep roots in the fertile soil of the creative city of Montréal) with no prescription of any hierarchical and rigid authority. These communities are sources of the specialized creative ideas, repositories of accumulated knowledge, and cooperative frameworks within which new practices and routines emerged. Second, the research has analysed the nature of the integration forces implemented by the managers of the firm in order to bind the creative units together for achieving commercial successes (Part 2 of the contribution). It appears that the nature of the relationships and ties that bounds the dispersed communities together is generally not a unique platform (such as a given production line or a given modular structure). These communities are exchanging knowledge through different cognitive platforms which are shaped or enacted by the hierarchy and which have some plasticity and flexibility to take different forms of coordination and may reconfigure through time. From the point of view of the managers of the firm, this flexibility is the key of the success of the alchemy of combining heterogeneous communities to reach a creative collective videogame product. To go further in this direction of research, we will then develop the idea (Part 3 of the contribution) that the integration forces put forwards by the firm are not just for harnessing creative units: they generate also “creative slacks” for further expansion of creativity. Thus, referring to the metaphor proposed by Raymond (1996), we argue that creativity in the video-game industry seems to unfold through an attenuated, balanced organizational form which combines the cognitive informal platforms or “bazaars” disseminated in and outside an over-arching “cathedral” built around organizational culture, formal processes and multiple formal and informal communities. Our view is that bazaars are the main sources of creativity in and outside the limits of the firm-cathedral, but also that the collective efficiency of VGC relies on the coherent architecture of knowledge provided by the design of the “cathedral”. Methodology and data sources Roots of the game-development community can be traced back to the very origins of videogames in the early seventies (Herman, 1999; Sheff, 1994). Yet, researches dealing with the dynamics of video-game development at the micro level are scarce to non-existent. That is the reason why we have proposed to explore the specific case of a video-game company, “VGC”, ranking among the top ten video games company in the world. In 1998-1999, one of the authors of this contribution spent 14 months in the video-game studio, VGC, 2 to 3 days a week, observing, questioning and conducing in-depth interviews with gamedevelopers, in the tradition of grounded theory. A 200 and more pages ethnography gives a voluntarily “naïve” account of day-to-day work and activities of a multidisciplinary project team through common tasks, creative discussion and interactions. Regular follow-up interviews and secondary data analysis were implemented from 1999 to present to keep the 3 Raymond mainly focused on knowledge creation, opposing open-source software development as Bazaars versus more formal and structured processes, only implying indirectly the corporate nature of the Cathedral (See also the metaphor of the Academy and the Monastery – Himanen, 2001). We may distort a bit Raymond’s views in importing these notions in the organizational world. In doing so, we follow for instance Hannemyr’s interpretation of the fundamental tension between Hackerism and Taylorism (Hannemyr, 1999). Playing across the Playground: Paradoxes of knowledge creation in the video-game industry _____________________________________________ Copyright © 2005 HEC Montréal 5 relevant data up to date (general trends at VGC, new projects in development, implementation of IT systems and work processes, working atmosphere...). In 2004, the author supervised a 5 weeks study on the effects of “crunching” projects on the quality of life at work in VGC. An ongoing study based on in-depth interviews and processes analysis is presently focusing on developing a case study on the continuous improvement strategy of VGC, aiming at framing work processes without diminishing individual and collective creative inputs. This research is freely inspired by a multi-method approach and builds on selected data from those three studies. The company involved defines itself as “a leading international developer, publisher and distributor of interactive entertainment products”. It is the third. European independent video-games publisher and became one of the top five independent publishers in North America in 2005. It is presently employing about 3,000 permanent collaborators worldwide, of which 2/3 are dedicated to production. It settled its main development studio in Montréal in 1997, presently hiring almost 1000 developers and managers (first quarter 2005). VGC follows a strategy of strong brands/franchises development to put on the market mostly multi-platform “AAA” games, expected to sell over 2 millions copies. The two leading franchises respectively sold 3 and 5 millions copies worldwide in 2004. VGC experienced an impressive growth in terms of revenue, profits and brand recognition over the last 10 years. It banked more than half a billion Euros in revenues in 2004, with 9 millions in profit. The organizational structure of VGC does not reflect the traditional form of firm based on a hierarchical structure of functional departments. It rather corresponds to the type of “project based firms” identified in the literature (Gann and Salter, 1998, De Fillippi and Arthur 1998). However, if VGC could be classified as a project based firm, the nature of the projects undertaken at VGC exhibits specific features that characterize in our view many cultural activities and distinguish them from more traditional project oriented companies. The sources of creativity or “bazaars”: the communities of specialists at VGC. We argue in the following that the principal sources of creativity at VGC rely on the functioning of “communities of specialists”: script writers, game-designers, graphic artists in 2D and 3D, sound designers, software programmers, testers, etc... In each community, members exchange regularly with other members of the community about their practice through “bazaars” or informal cognitive spaces with more or less open boundaries, where people would meet and trade knowledge in a not-so-organized fashion. Those bazaars may be defined as work spaces that are not fully monitored by the formal corporate processes and where various personal agendas and approaches converge to tackle with an issue or a problem in search of a creative proposition or solution. Bazaars are not necessary aligned with corporate goals and strategy. They are also somewhat disconnected from the daily pressure of producing an efficient output designed for a market purpose. Under the roof of the cathedral, they are ambulatories and aisles, where people can meet, wander, and meditate. Bazaars offer spaces and time for the confrontation of ideas, recognition of errors, building of daring assumptions, experimentation and patient validation of new creative forms. 4 Multi-platform: available for all major home game consoles, portable devices and PC. Playing across the Playground: Paradoxes of knowledge creation in the video-game industry _____________________________________________ Copyright © 2005 HEC Montréal 6 Tracing the sources of creativity at VGC supposes to start from those elementary bazaars which are the informal platforms through which the members of each respective community of specialists at VGC interact. Exploring each of those elementary bazaars will then lead us to discover their connections to other informal creative places of exchange of knowledge in which the communities of specialists at VGC, find the sources of their inspiration. Members of communities of specialists who are employees of VGC permanently exchange with the exterior of the firm, through global virtual platform with specialists of the same focus of knowledge, even sometimes with members of competing firms who share the same interest for a given practice. They also directly interact through informal routes with communities of users. They also have planted deep local roots in the creative city of Montréal, a large scale bazaar constituted of a myriad of creative communities which is the indispensable fertile soil for igniting sparks of creativity. Through this constant opening to the external world and the permanent search of the best practices from outside the organization, communities of specialists at VGC are unique devices tapping in the external world to bring permanently useful knowledge and creative ideas within the firm.Thus, tracing the sources of creativity at VGC reveals a maze of bazaars of different sizes, an “hidden architecture of creativity”, which starts from the different elementary communities of specialists of the firm. The elementary communities of specialists at VGC. When looking at the organisational structure of VGC, one could find traces of functional departments: as in any other company there are accounting officers, financial staff, human resources employees and diverse administrative units. However, trying to understand the creative potential of VGC from an analysis of these functional departments would be misleading. In fact, those hierarchical units (the only one to be clearly visible on the flow chart of the firm) only represent some 20 % of the activities of VGC. They mainly act as support to the creative teams, which are the “essence” of the company and are hardly visible on a flow chart. The daily challenge at VGC is thus to match a traditional “hard architecture of knowledge” (the functional units) with the “soft architecture of knowledge” embedded in the rather informal communities of specialists. The properties and role of these communities of specialists are analysed in the following. The sources of creativity as well as efficiency at VGC rely on a subtle alchemy between communities of script writers, game-designers, graphic artists, sound designers, software programmers and even testers. We propose to call these groups “communities of specialists” because each of these communities is a kind of “local guild” composed of members with the same background and the same type of assignments who keep on sharing daily information, knowledge, and tricks about their work in and outside the formal framework of projects. Members of a given community eat together, go out together or they just chat online with peers in search of pieces of advice or technical solutions. They respect the social norms of their community which contributes to drive their behaviours and beliefs. Within a given community knowledge is continuously exchanged and can circulate through the existence of a local language understandable by the members only. Even if these groups are not officially identified, even if their members are separated temporary from their community because they are assigned to a given project, the community would still recognize their members and their specific skills and talents. Playing across the Playground: Paradoxes of knowledge creation in the video-game industry _____________________________________________ Copyright © 2005 HEC Montréal 7 These diverse “communities of specialists” which constitute the sources of creativity at VGC can be considered as a specific category of knowing communities which have been identified and analysed in the literature. The generic term of knowing communities serves as an umbrella for many variants such as communities of practice (Lave and Wenger, 1991, Wenger, 1998), epistemic communities (Cowan, David and Foray, 2000)., communities of creation (Sawnhey and Prandelli, 2000), communities of innovation (Lynn et al. 1996, 1997),...etc... The knowing communities share common traits that clearly distinguish them form more formal and hierarchical units such as project teams or functional departments. What bring nuances and variety amongst knowing communities are the way to deal with knowledge and the associated mode of learning adopted by the community to process knowledge. For instance, amongst the main knowing communities, one can consider of the one side communities of practice which refer to groups of persons engaged in the same practice, with a main goal of accumulating knowledge and competences on the given practice. To fulfill this goal members of communities of practice proceed to the constant circulation of the “best practices”. On the other side, epistemic communities: are small groups of knowledge-creating agents who are engaged on a mutually recognized subset of questions, and “who (at the very least) accept some commonly understood procedural authority as essential to the success of their collective activities”(Cowan et al, 2000). Knowledge creation is the main goal of epistemic communities. To fulfil that goal epistemic communities are structured around a procedural authority (a “style”, a “manifesto”, a “school”, associated with rules such as peer review, or shared norms of behaviours in the given practice).endowed by themselves (or with which they were endowed). At VGC most of the diverse knowing communities are focused on producing new knowledge in the domain of their specialized practice. On a first level, those communities of specialists broadly fit the definition of “communities of practice” as their members use 5 A knowing community can broadly be defined as a gathering within the organization of individuals who accept to exchange voluntarily and on a regular basis about a common interest or objective in a given field of knowledge. They rely on repeated and continuous interactions between individuals sharing a common cognitive interest or objective, and actively exchanging and accumulating knowledge in a given field. Through this regular exchange, common cognitive platforms and common social norms are built and guide the newcomers’ behaviours. 6 Amongst the main common traits shared by knowing communities are the following: • Knowing communities have no visible or explicit hierarchy at the top of them that can control the quality of work or the respect of any standard procedure. What holds the community together is the passion and commitment of each of its members to a common goal, objective or practice in a given domain of knowledge. Thus, the notion of contract is meaningless within the members of the community, and in particular there is a priori no motive to think of any financial or contractual incentive devices to align the behaviours of the members of the community. The interactions between members of the community are governed by a type of trust grounded in the respect for the common social norms of the community • As Wenger (1998) noted, a drawing on community interaction and participation to act, interpret and innovate, acts “as a locally negotiated regime of competence”. The communal setting provides the context, in which the collective beliefs and the representations structuring the individual choice are built. Communities allow the strengthening of individual commitments in an uncertain universe. Individuals remain attentive to the specific contexts and can therefore update the shapes of their cooperative engagements. Therefore, communities are suppliers of sense and collective beliefs for agents and play a central role of coordination in the firm • Knowing communities have no clear boundaries and in particular are not confined within the boundaries of the firm. Playing across the Playground: Paradoxes of knowledge creation in the video-game industry _____________________________________________ Copyright © 2005 HEC Montréal 8 the same technical “jargon”, share practical knowledge, and exchange tricks based and trials-and-errors field experiences. However, on a second level, they clearly have also an “epistemic dimension” which means that in their activity of knowledge they refer to a “procedural authority”. For instance communities may gather around the appreciation of one “genre” of games, promoting stealth/action games, pure shooting games, adventure games or even colourful games for kids. Some communities would promote game-play oriented games or games with deep storylines and well-developed characters. Graphic artists would defend realistic settings and characters, or characters inspired from the epic heroic-fantasy genre, with exaggerated features or even cartoonish designs. In this formats, those communities would fit the definition of “epistemic communities”. As a result, most of the communities of specialists at VGC have a dual dimension in the way they process knowledge, aiming both at exploration and exploitation. The respective intensity of exploration and exploitation certainly varies form one community to the other (for instance, the community of game designers is probably the one having the most weight on exploration). However, the coexistence of many diverse communities having both an exploration and exploitation dimension is in our view one of the distinctive characteristics of cultural industries, and one of the reasons for these types of organizations finally succeed in matching creativity and efficiency. The cognitive informal platforms of the respective communities of specialists constitute the active and visible reservoirs of creative ideas at VGC. However, the understanding of the formation of creativity supposes to explore in details the various lanes through which each of these communities establishes permanent informal interactions with the outside world, in order to confront ideas, to tap creative practices from the other domains of knowledge, and to interact regularly with communities of consumers to check for the relevance of their creative endeavours. This exploration reveals a complex maze of creativity, with intense connections to the global world mainly through virtual exchanges of knowledge, but also with deep roots in the local creative milieu of Montréal, viewed as a “creative city” or as a large and complex bazaar regrouping myriads of knowing communities which promote creativity in very diverse activities and modes (Stolarick et al, 2005; Florida, 2002; Landry, 2000). The local maze of creativity: How VGC taps in Montréal cultural resources. Over the years, Montréal has succeeded in attracting an increasing numbers of people from an increasingly affluent creative class. For example, the evolution over the years of the 7 According to Florida (2002), the members of the Creative Class are a driving force in the economic success of cities and regions. The distinguishing characteristic of the Creative Class is that its members engage in work whose function is to “create meaningful new forms. They are a highly mobile group people that do not slavishly follow jobs to places. Their location choices are based to a large degree on their lifestyle interests, which extend far beyond the standard “quality-of-life” amenities that many mayors, business leaders and economic developers continue to think are so important. The rise of this new class alters the rules of the economic development game. The core of this new class includes scientists and engineers, university professors, poets and novelists, artists, entertainers, actors, designers and architects, as well as the thought leadership of modern society: non-fiction writers, editors, cultural figures, think-tank researchers, analysts and other opinion-makers. The Creative Class also includes creative professionals” who work in a wide range of knowledge-intensive industries such as high-tech sectors, financial services, the legal and health care professions, and business management. Playing across the Playground: Paradoxes of knowledge creation in the video-game industry _____________________________________________ Copyright © 2005 HEC Montréal 9 “Plateau” from a French working-class neighbourhood to one of the hippest urban area in the world (according to Wallpaper) is a concrete manifestation of the rise of a creative class in Montréal. Also, Montréal’s situation as a predominantly French city in an Englishspeaking continent is both an asset and a liability. According to the magazine of cyberculture Wired, Montréal ranked as sixth technopolis in North America in terms of technocreative and knowledge-intensive activities. A following study from PriceWaterhouseCoopers ranked Montréal fourth in North America considering its technology elite, with more than with more than 200 000 jobs in creative and technology intensive industries. This creative evolution is deeply rooted in the history of the city. Starting with the “quiet revolution” of the sixties and main international events like the World Expo 67 or the Olympic Games in 76, Montréal developed an image of creative city. From the midseventies to the late eighties, the city became very active on the cultural scene, with an international jazz festival, some famous performing arts companies and individuals (theater, musicals, circus arts, contemporary dance, experimental electro-acoustic music, pop music...). Quebecer movie industry developed a very specific genre, mainly attractive to locals, but with some international recognition as well. Some of the most famous animation artists awarded with Oscars in the eighties and nineties came from Montréal. In the early nineties, this trend was completed by a fast development of some start-ups in the early multimedia industry. An offspring of smaller companies thrived on the personal computer and Internet revolution, with a strong accent on computer imaging, special effects and video-games, infusing the city with a sense of diffuse techno-creativity. The arrival of VGC in 1997 epitomizes this phenomenon. Attracted by generous government grants and fiscal credits, and also by the creative reputation of the local bilingual workforce, the company settled its main development studio in Montréal, hiring 300 new employees the first year. VGC general manager once mentioned that the quality of the local workforce played a strong role in the decision to develop this studio further. Employees had very good academic credentials; most of them undergraduate and graduate students with backgrounds like computer science, cinema, fine arts, literature, theater, management, and marketing. With four international universities, and four specialized schools in multimedia arts and computer graphics, two major programs in movie arts in Montréal, VGC can tap into a very well trained, if not specifically skilled in video-games workforce. But the source of the main talents of VGC’s employees is to be found elsewhere. Most VGC employees are very active consumers of Montréal creative scene and would even actively participate in creative communities. Even if the influence of some very creative fields is not direct, it still infuses 8 While a multilingual environment can be a factor attracting talent, the need to be able to function in French for newcomers can also act as a deterrent. Further more, Montréal’s most creative people are those most likely to speak both French and English, and thus, those who can most easily move on to other locations. In the past, Quebec’s workforce has been consistently less mobile than that of the rest of Canada, mainly for linguistic reasons. If it’s not the case anymore with its creative class, then Montréal’s survival will be closely linked to its capacity of retaining its creative and talented individuals. 9 July 2000 10 October 2000 11 Softimage, formerly owned by Microsoft and now a subsidiary of Avid Technologies, and Discreet Logic, now a subsidiary of AutoDesk, both leading companies in the 2D and 3D computer imagery and special effects for the multimedia and movie industry. Matrox, developing computer graphic cards. CAE, world leader in flight simulators. Playing across the Playground: Paradoxes of knowledge creation in the video-game industry _____________________________________________ Copyright © 2005 HEC Montréal 10 a general atmosphere that would influence most employees at VGC. A few examples give an idea of the specific creative culture that permeates the post-teenagers/urban bohemian population, very well represented among VGC employees (average age is now 26 years old, most of them living in Montréal urban area). As a creative playground, Montréal mainly houses experimentations mixing traditional art forms with technology. It is also a mix of underground and mainstream culture, with a common ground not to be neglected: tickets to events, museum, expos and concerts are generally cheap, granting easy access for a large extent of the young urban population. Montréal is well recognized for some musicals with international tours (Starmania, NotreDame de Paris...) but also for very innovative performing arts experiments including multimedia performances (Robert Lepage’s drama La trilogie des dragons in 1987 or La La La Human steps with Edouard Lock in contemporary dance since 1980 with worldwide recognition, to name a few). The worldwide success of Le Cirque du soleil, with its own style mixing circus performance, theatrical “mise-en-scène” and original music, gave birth to a circus arts cluster which is an important source of inspiration and pride too. Shows from le Cirque du Soleil toured the US, Western Europe and Japan. Three permanent shows from le Cirque also became major attractions in Las Vegas. Some employees at VGC toured with le Cirque. In 1999, the composer for Cirque du Soleil's earlier productions got hired by VGC to create the soundtrack of a video-game. Montréal is also the birthplace of the improvisation league, a genuine mix of commedia del arte with hockey, where small amateur teams compete on improvised theatrical performance based on themes selected by the public. One of the first lead animators at VGC, in charge of the design of game characters was a former member of such a league and was also trained as a mime. Montréal is home of some of the pioneers of multimedia arts. Luc Courchesne, for instance, began his explorations of interactive videos in the mid-eighties. His work has been exposed all over the world. He didn’t only perform as an artist but is now head of a center for the promotion of multimedia creation – La Société des Arts Technologiques (SAT). SAT organizes events that go from electronic music concerts and multimedia live performance with DJ, VJ, dancers, painters, graffiti artists to international academic congresses on techno-creation. SAT also sponsors residencies for electronic artist in various fields. Hervé Fischer is another interesting example. Media artist, professor and writer in philosophy, he received the first Music Video Award from the National Computer Graphics Association, in the United States in 88. With a lifelong career in research and multimedia creation, he founded the MIM, first international business fair for the multimedia industry – annual event from 1993 to 2003. In 2000, he also was elected first head of the Daniel Langlois Chair, funded by the foundation for art, science and technology; that promotes new media arts and movies. He co-founded Hexagram, an ambitious research center on media arts in Montréal, involving two universities, researchers in science and technology, creators and artists. Organizing “Images du future” in 1986, an international competition in computer imaging, Fischer got his main inspiration from the “demo scene”, very active in Montréal 12 Daniel Langlois was co-founder of Softimage, a firm that developed very successful computer 3D imaging software used in blockbuster movies (Titanic, Men in Black, Jurassic Park...). Acquired by Microsoft in 1994 for 130 million US $, Softimage is now owned by Avid technologies. 13 “Demos” are very small pieces of multimedia – mostly 3D supported by music – developed in one day or one week-end to showcase the artistic talents and technological skills of small teams of programmers – demomakers in underground competitions (known as “The Demo Scene” or “The Scene”). See: Shatz P, Playing across the Playground: Paradoxes of knowledge creation in the video-game industry _____________________________________________ Copyright © 2005 HEC Montréal 11 at that time. Employees at VGC would go to the MIM, attend events from La SAT and get some inspiration there. Some of them were early members of the “demo” scene, a community that promotes what can be describe as creative hacking/programming. In parallel with this buoyant emerging cyber-culture, a few start-ups engaged in the development of video-games software and middleware, mainly for the PC. The local convergence between multimedia arts, “demo” scene and video-games nurtured the culture of numerous employees at VGC. Another very creative field, not independent from the previous examples, is the electronic music and post-rock fusion scene in Montréal. The aforementioned SAT was affiliated with a local bar, the Laïka, founded in 1999 with the mission to promote local deejaying and electronic music. The Laïka, along with small venues and after-hours clubs, quickly became the playground for local artists and a stepping stone to bigger clubs with international visibility and recognition. With several major electronic music festivals, Montréal attracted – among others an independent record label from London, Ninja Tune, a pioneer in the dance/electronic music scene, with artists like Coldcut, who claim to have invented the concept of mix with multimedia. Ninja Tune signed a Brazilian rising star in the drum’n’bass genre, an abstract and rhythmic genre of electronic music. Invited by employees, VGC director for music development spent some times in parties and musical events. He was instrumental in getting higher management and producers interested in Montréal electronic music scene to the point where the Brazilian musician got hired to compose the soundtrack of one of VGC’s main projects that was bound to become a blockbuster game. Other cases through the interviews revealed that one sound-designer was working on his electro-acoustic compositions or that a level-designer was previously a bass-player in a local rock-band. The “new” cinema and independent movie scene is another driver of the Montréal cultural scene, with four major festivals. Game-developers at VGC are experts in pop-culture, as witnessed by the merchandising artifacts from mainstream fantastic and animation blockbusters covering their desks and computer screens, but they would also find their inspiration in subgenres that would reemerge in their work. For instance, a level designer graduated from a private film institute in Montréal was an aficionado of fantastic/horror movies and of the survival-horror genre in games. He particularly appreciates the movielike dynamic of those games that induces tension and suspense. As soon as the leadWalkthroughs And Flybys CD, Waite Group Press, 1993 and also: George Borzyskowski. "The Hacker Demo Scene and its Cultural Artifacts" available at: http://www.scheib.net/play/demos/what/borzyskowski/ 14 The epicentre of the post-rock fusion movement in Montreal is three blocks away from UbSo studios. This movement gained international recognition under the leadership of the band “Godspeed You, Black Emperor”. See: David Carr. Cold Fusion: Montreal's Explosive Music Scene. The New York Times. February 6, 2005. 15 Two djs from Montreal are among the top 15 techno djs in the world. ( http://www.thetop100djs.com ). See also the bio of Dj Tiga: music artist, international Dj, label director, shows producer and entrepreneur. (http://www.tiga.ca/bio.html) 16 From the most experimental to the mainstream electronic music: Elektra festival, Mutek, and Montréal Electronic Groove (MEG). MEG is now a consortium of artists who tours in Europe. 17 Festival des films du monde – independent movies from all over the world, Festival des films sur l’art – mostly short movies on anything art, Festival du cinéma et des nouveaux medias – independent and experimental movies, with multimedia works, and Fantasia – fantastic/horror movies and animation/japanimation movies. Playing across the Playground: Paradoxes of knowledge creation in the video-game industry _____________________________________________ Copyright © 2005 HEC Montréal 12 designer of the project identified this personal interest, he put him in charge of the development of the in-games «cameras», that is to say the perspective of the player in the game, to give it a more cinematic and dramatic feeling. These few examples show the intricate networks of local creative communities that directly or indirectly influence in many ways the creative process of video-game production at VGC. Many employees at VGC are either inspired by or active members of theses communities. However, the local context of Montréal is not only offers a fertile ground for informal contacts to be made possible. It also proposes more formal institutions or professional associations that contribute to a large extent to favor the creativity of the communities of specialists at VGC. The local institutions that favor creativity: The Memberships in professional associations More than one hundred employees of VGC are members of the local chapter of IGDA, the professional association of game-developers. Its mission goes as follows: The International Game Developers Association is a non-profit membership organization that advocates globally on issues related to digital game creation. The IGDA's mission is to strengthen the international game development community and effect change to benefit that community. The association organizes monthly events. Beyond the social meetings, people are sharing knowledge from the game-development community in Montréal and also on a global basis. The main feature of these meetings is that employees from almost all the corporate players from the local game-development scene have a chance to meet and share technical knowledge and creative ideas but also stories and opinions about the different competitors on the market and about working conditions. The companies themselves quickly got involved in this bazaar through sponsorship, lectures and even hiring sessions. It is highly interesting to notice that this emerging grassroots association is considered by the industry as half a threat and half an opportunity to be followed up carefully. Local IGDA chapter appears to be a community of interests with connections with other chapters of IGDA in North America and Europe. Another interesting association finds its roots in a partnership between the industry and a para-governmental initiative. Alliance NumericQ introduces itself as a business network to deal with public financing and lobbying issues. This association also aims at becoming a knowledge network with a local an international active presence. One of its branches focused on the game industry, organizing for instance an annual game summit in Montréal. Most big players in the industry take a relativistic stance towards this association. They acknowledge the fact that they have to be members, but they mostly would deal directly one-on-one with the government when strategic issues are at stake. Still, it is a powerful vector of knowledge transmission about the legal and financial issues as well as the managing practices of the industry. 18 http://www.igda.org/ 19 http://www.numeriqc.ca/ Playing across the Playground: Paradoxes of knowledge creation in the video-game industry _____________________________________________ Copyright © 2005 HEC Montréal 13 Communities of specialists at VGC and their links with the outside world: The specific case of dialogs with users We have above emphasized the specific role of the local milieu to support the creativity of a cultural industry such as VGC. This role is a key one. A video-game firm cannot probably be viable without the support of a creative city such as Montréal. Other examples of videogame firms confirm their existing roots in cities such as Los Angeles, Vancouver, Tokyo, etc... However, besides their local roots, communities of specialists such as the VGC’s ones also intensively exchange knowledge with the outside world, mainly through electronic supports. Members of a given communities permanently exchange with specialists of the same domain, even and in fact often with specialists employed in competing firms. This permanent and informal circulation and exchange of knowledge allows the communities of VGC to tap in to external competences, and to constantly benchmark the best practices in their domain of knowledge. Such an informal web of external connections is a well recognized advantage of knowing communities for a given organization. In their respective fields of knowledge communities know, better than any functional department or hierarchical units can know, what are the best practices and the frontiers of advanced knowledge However, in the exchanges with the outside world there is a particular domain at VGC which deserves a specific attention. Contrary to most of the traditional sectors, it seems that to a large extent in the video-game company, the relationships with the users are also monitored by informal links with the communities of specialists. Users, video-game players or “gamers” can be considered the expert in this field; as such they are an important source of knowledge which to a great part circulates through informal channels that leads to communities of specialists. More precisely, this relationship is dealt with in different ways. The relationship with gamers is dealt with from two perspectives: from the top, in a quite structured and formal administrative way, and from the bottom-up in a very diffuse, fuzzy and emergent way. In a cultural industry such as the video-game industry where managers must “analyze and address existing demand while at the same time using their imagination to extend and transform the market” (Lampel et al, 2000: 263), this dual perspective related to the relationships with the users is a key source of success. From the top, it is a strategic issue to understand the general trends of the market. Beyond the formal sales report, an editorial committee, a short list of historical game-designers of the company working with an chief director works in determining the present and future interests of gamers. This team would play video-games; attend international gaming events, reads about the industry and generally emerges itself in pop-culture to define the content orientations of VGC. Strategic decisions to launch a new project or even to create a new brand would involve this committee, some marketing experts and even the president of the company. Knowledge from the users seems to be more integrated from the bottom-up. As most industry born from an almost “underground” activity, the video-game industry tries to stay close to the customers by hiring “hardcore” or so-called “lead” users (Von Hippel, 2001, Thomke and von Hippel, 2002). In most cases, those users are hired because of their interest in video-games: they are gamers making games for gamers. Beyond their individual talents, game-designers, software programmers, graphic artists, sound engineers or project Playing across the Playground: Paradoxes of knowledge creation in the video-game industry _____________________________________________ Copyright © 2005 HEC Montréal 14 managers all share a same passion for video-games and the associated culture. As “gamers”, they refer themselves to the same iconic milestone games they played along the history of this emerging entertainment form. They use a common language about the world of video-games. They would most likely agree on the generic features differentiating a good game from a bad one. In this regard, as users/consumers, they use a common base of knowledge. This cognitive platform allows them to work collectively as designers and also to promote their passion for video-games. It also drastically facilitates the dialogue with the consumers of the VGC products. A very concrete dialog with lead-users outside the company may also take part in the conversation via beta-testing. Beta-testing consists of an early release of a game or a part of a game to a selection of “happy fews” – selected through a registration on the Internet who get the chance to test-drive the software. They then have to write reports on their impressions and may also occasionally be submitted to in-depth interviews. Their contribution allows debugging and fine-tuning before the official release of the game. The “holy grail” of the industry is the elusive “casual gamer”. This protean gamer plays occasionally, maybe two to three times a week and is really difficult to seize from the marketing point of view. This part of the market is largely “ignored” by the industry (Screen Digest, 2005). The casual gamer may be looking for short and not too challenging yet entertaining game experiences, with a low learning curve and strong brand appeal. VGC and the industry in general adopted a generic branding strategy based on spin-offs from the movie industry and/or sequels of pre-existing games. Although this approach seemed to work up to now, industry experts argue that it poses a threat to creativity in the video-game industry in the long range. The industry is still looking for means to get a better understanding of casual gamers’ needs. A much needed “conversation” still need to be implemented (Searls & Weinberger, 2000). Another potential bazaar seems especially difficult to access: the non-gaming community. How do you attract people to video-games? Some answers may come from casual online gaming or from small casual games on cell phones, but major player in the industry are still exploring this strategic issue. Recent announcements at E3 let envision two major strategies from the hardware developers that could strongly influence the strategic orientations of game developers. Microsoft and Sony announced “next-generation” consoles aiming at taking position in the family living-room as digital entertainment centers: gaming machine, sound-system, digital imaging (photographs and DVDs, and even web-surfing. Nintendo, now in the position of the underdog, presented a console only oriented towards games. Those two strategies aim at attracting non-gamers towards games through either quasi20 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3620518.stm 21 “Star” game-designers Will Wright (Maxis) and Peter Molyneux (Lionhead) emphasized this issue all through the last Game-Developers Conference this year, backed by one of the main creative directors of UbSo. http://www.cmpevents.com/GD05/a.asp?option=C&V=11&SessID=3887 . From the strategic point of view, the main actors seem to have adopted specific strategies only partially addressing those issues. EA, the industry leader, develops games with strong identity or under licenses from the sport/movie industry to casual to mid-range gamers. UbSo follows the same path in term of identity while aiming at mid-range to hardcore gamers with deeper scenarios. Nintendo, on the opposite, departs from the movie industry, and focuses on game-play – a short and intense fun experience with shorter games appealing to so-called “pure” gamers. Playing across the Playground: Paradoxes of knowledge creation in the video-game industry _____________________________________________ Copyright © 2005 HEC Montréal 15 movie experiences or simple, accessible gaming experiences. Assessing the real needs and expectations of the non-gaming community is and will be a tough challenge for developers like VGC. Again, important knowledge can come from the employees themselves, in contact with their own non-gaming communities: families, friends and neighbours... Finally, game critics from magazines and websites can’t be considered as a real bazaar per se but they act nonetheless as gate-keepers or as opinion leaders mainly towards hardcore gamers, but also towards some casual gamers through mainstream mass-media. They may play an interesting role as mirrors of gamers’ opinions about a game. The industry as a whole uses early announcements of game development to foster reactions from critics and gamers and implement adjustments in their games. To sum-up, the above developments have depicted the complex maze of creativity on which the sources of new knowledge and ideas of VGC rely. Starting from the in-house communities of specialists, we have strolled along the complex bazaars that guarantee through non predictable encounters, meetings, conflicts, or events, the existence of a considerable potential of creativity. Each of the communities that have been investigated can be considered as a specialized source of creativity for the company. The question is now to understand how the firm operates the processes of integration that harnesses the specialized sources of creativity to achieve a collective creative product for the video-game mass market. Here is the need for the “cathedral”, because nothing guarantees a priori the systematic concordance of interests and objectives of the different communities on the spot: the potential of creativity of any community is exposed to risks of inter-communal conflicts, autism or parochial partitioning, and constituent communities of the organization are not necessarily all homogeneous, convergent or aligned toward a common objective. That is the reason why, to avoid any lack of creativity and narrow vision due to an excessive specialization and any risk of parochialism, the integration of different bodies of specialized knowledge is required. Forces of integration at VGC: Cathedraling the bazaars. The building of the “cathedral” aims at offering to the creative communities and associated bazaars the conditions of coherence and efficiency to develop creative and profitable videogame. This building relies on the implementation of a “hard architecture” of knowledge in form of hierarchical devices, such as strict procedures to be followed in projects, specific committees, project managers, shared spaces, innovating routines, etc... We detail in the following how VGC has succeeded in designing a hard architecture of knowledge which maintain favourable conditions of creativity by “cathedraling” the bazaars and bringing “specialised and dispersed learning processes to a common closure in order to choose and implement a solution” (Loasby, 1999). The focus will be placed on the ways projects are managed at VGC, since this is the mode of management which is currently highlighted in the company. In a dynamic perspective, the company structure has evolved from a quasi-balanced matrix at the origins to an 22 For a critical review of these risks, see Bowles and Gintis (2000). Playing across the Playground: Paradoxes of knowledge creation in the video-game industry _____________________________________________ Copyright © 2005 HEC Montréal 16 exclusively projects-based company. A very important issue deals with knowledge management that has now to be fully integrated in the project-management process (Sense, 2003). Implementation of inand cross-projects knowledge management seems to be one of the most pressing issues in the company right now. Hence the importance of the temporary dimension of project based activities. Management of projects at VGC: the choice of a hybrid form. The nature of project management at VGC is a specific one. It shares common features with classical ways of project management in more traditional industries, but also exhibits some specific traits in order to nurture the fundamental creativity in the making of video-game products. In the following, we briefly recall the characteristics of the main types of project management to better further highlight the particular aspects at VGC in a dynamic perspective. In their seminal paper in the Strategic Management Journal, Sanchez and Mahoney (1996: 63) propose a typology of the different ways of managing product creation processes: The traditional sequential process, characterized by sequential staging of design and development tasks after defining the product concept. The design process is defined like a set of sub-problems solved in sequential way. When a blockage at one stage occurs, it is necessary to re-initialise the precedent stage, or the complete design process. Coordination is dependent upon intensive management, involving ex ante top-down rules and procedures to be followed by the entire organization, and centralized global vision of the product creation process. This type of process is adapted to organisations composed by specialised teams (involved in the design of one component), and managed by a centralised supervisor (as in a typically taylorian organization). The concurrent design process or overlapping problem solving process calls for repeated informational exchanges between specialized groups in the organization, which allows interrelated component development to proceed more quickly and reduces information losses between stages. The concurrent design process limits the re-conception stage and speed up the global design process. In this process, it is not necessary to wait for the end of a design stage before to begin the next stage. The matrix type of organization is a typical example of such a mode of coordination, where heterogeneous teams or communities are co-ordinated by mutual adjustment However, the exchange of information does not always compensate for the absence of a rich architecture of communication between heterogeneous groups eager to keep their identity and their jargons The drawbacks of this type of process is that it may leads to an expensive search for a cognitive consensus between communities, and necessitates active managerial involvement and coordination, mostly ex post, to resolve disputes and conflicts between communities, to implement common knowledge and to align beliefs while producing sense. The Modular organization process seeks to continuously ‘change and solve problems through interconnected coordinated self-organizing processes’ (Daft and Lewin 1993). Modularity implies the design of a common cognitive architecture of the project (the “script”, the “scenario”, the “shared vision” or “shared meaning”) and the definition of the Playing across the Playground: Paradoxes of knowledge creation in the video-game industry _____________________________________________ Copyright © 2005 HEC Montréal 17 associated standardised component interfaces (codified prescriptions and constraints to be respected by the participating groups). Once this modular architecture is created, each component design can be made independently and simultaneously by a specialised team or community, which can express their creativity provided that they respect the standardized interfaces. The definition of a common architecture and of fully specified components provides the ‘glue’ of embedded coordination that allows the development of a loosely coupled organization. ‘Embedded organization is the coordination of organizational processes achieved by any means other that of continuous exercise of managerial authorities’ (Sanchez and Mahoney, op. cit. p. 63). A modular organization thus “economizes on managerial authority”, however, in such contexts, there is still an important role for the hierarchy which is to define ex ante the nature of the platform, and ex post to redefine the platform if radical innovations are unavoidable (see Langlois 2002). With regards to Sanchez and Mahoney’s typology, VGC reveals a mode of creative design process management which is a very specific hybrid form, borrowing much on the modular platform type, but also including elements of the other types of project management. After having experienced a kind of management of concurrent based project, VGC turned progressively to a specific type of modularity combining strict hierarchical elements of the traditional sequential project, essentially to meet the time constraint, and elements of the overlapping problem solving process thanks to a specific arrangement of the office space within VGC. The modular platforms at VGC: The dominant form of project management at VGC is a modular one. Each project can be seen as a modular platform, in which the common architecture of knowledge is expressed by the “script” of the project which is the cognitive reference that glues the different communities of specialists that can work in modules or “studios” specialized in the different domains of knowledge related to a video-game project. Modules use different pools of knowledge, specific jargons and specific understandings of the project requirements. Each project involves different specialized generic skills (game-design, leveldesign, 2D and 3D graphic arts, various levels of software programming and integration, sound design, tests...), which refer to the specialized creative “bazaars” identified in Part 1. Each module is coordinated by a “project manager”. Project managers are in turn coordinated by a “producer”. The producer acts as an administrative and executive general project manager. He works out most content issues with a creative director, dedicated to one or more projects and responsible for the general “look and feel” of the game. They both answer to the demands of World Chief Editor or the local Editorial VP, who acts as the final corporate “client” for the project. One of the main issues for the producer is that he has to deal with repeated and sometimes unexpected requests for modification from the editorial managers, reacting to the more and more concrete evolutions of the project. Those interventions are experienced by the employees as major disturbances as they add complexity (and sometimes ambiguity), increase costs and mess with the schedules. Higher management promoted a more formal approach to projects – the Stage-Gate Process to avoid that those disturbances affect too much the progress of the project, still submitted to a fixed delivery date. Playing across the Playground: Paradoxes of knowledge creation in the video-game industry _____________________________________________ Copyright © 2005 HEC Montréal 18 The definition of the common architecture of the project (the “script”) is placed under the responsibility of the “Creative committee”, a panel including some “hyper-creative” employees (a chief editor, a short list of “historical” game designers involved in the early successes of the company and marketing experts). Some of the members have a status of Uber-gamers, with a specific and acknowledged ability to define new and exciting gameplays, game concepts or strong characters with the potential of becoming a brand. This committee as a life-and-death power on projects with “stop”, “improve” or “go” instructions. This power allows them to define or at least to orient the creative content of a game in specific directions. Their comments and reports have a lot of credibility either with higher management and project managers. However, if the Creative committee has the power to decide on the modular architecture and the associated standard interfaces (and also on a “re-modularization” if needed), the fact that the members of this committee are issued from the creative community of game-designers facilitates the acceptability of a new project. A new script adopted by the Creative committee could be thus seen more as the result of the creative work of the game design community, rather that the top down decision of a managerial unit disconnected from the practices of the day to day activities. Hierarchies and traditional sequential modes at VGC Each project is placed under the responsibility of a producer (who does not belong to the Creative committee). The modular organization at VGC implies constant activities of coordination, much more than in a standard modular platform which is supposed to “economize on hierarchy” though an “embedded coordination”. At VGC, the different modules are partly formally managed through sub-mandates, with specifications, deadlines and sometimes budget, but also partly through necessary daily follow-ups by wandering around. One of the main responsibilities of the producer lies in translating issues between the different modules and building a shared understanding of what the project is about, to avoid too much divergence. The producer juggles with corporate marketing and financial requirements, the necessary technical understanding of the project and socio-cognitive and symbolic integration through meetings and interactions. Often, producers would above all mean context manager, negotiator and “disturbance handler” (Mintzberg, 1973). To balance organizational constraints and creativity, the company implemented a StageGate Process with a strong focus on the design/conception phase. Each proposal for a new game must go through the evaluation of the Creative committee. Along the evolution of the project, the generic structure of a game calls for a succession of events taking place in different settings, connected through so-called «halls» or transitions (a short movie, for instance). Usually, a game-designer is in charge of a set of events taking place inside one three-dimensional “map”. Through the development process, a map integrates more graphics, objects, characters, sounds... Each map becomes a module around which dedicated individuals from different functions work under the unofficial supervision of the game-designer. The generic process of a game creation goes as follows. As the Creative Committee has agreed with top-management on a main idea to explore, a small ad-hoc team including a game-designer, a programmer and a creative director or a script-designer is established. They would take charge of the first step of the Stage-gate, which consists in 23 “A formal project management mode through stages and deliverables” (Cooper, 1993). Playing across the Playground: Paradoxes of knowledge creation in the video-game industry _____________________________________________ Copyright © 2005 HEC Montréal 19 providing the Creative Committee with a “demo map”, a small part of the game-in-themaking that would act as a “boundary object” to assess the viability of the project. Once this “proof-of-concept” is agreed upon, the next stage deals with the pre-production evaluation, mainly the technical feasibility. Is the in-house technology the right one? Does is require some R&D activities? Can it be bought on the market or through some alliances? Are the relevant employees available? Does it require some hiring or training? When the pre-production plan receives a “go” instruction from the Committee, the project officially enters into “production”. A formal Stage-Gate process would exclude any creative input at this stage. That is precisely where the video-game making culture and “traditional” practice of free-flowing creativity clash with the formal process. Video-games communities are used to leave the process open for new creative ideas implementations and for improvements up to the last minutes of the project. This key paradox is at the very heart of the tensions in the video-game making process. Especially in the following steps, which consist in production and finally quality tests, the balance between creativity management and organizational constraints becomes a major issue. Shared space, boundary objects, in an overlapping mode at VGC. Management activities aim at establishing a shared context where people could meet, debate, confront and even challenge themselves almost instantly. This occurs through physical organizations (as simple as same building, open space work areas or setting the desks in circle), organizational information and communication processes and also through the project manager’s own open attitude towards people and knowledge. As this context is generally experienced as a supportive playground, interactions and debates are rooted in some essential artefacts: the disseminated parts of the game-in-themaking. For instance, a first boundary object is the computer screen itself. It is striking that when an issue needs to be seriously discussed, team members would gather around one desk in front of one screen. Sending a file or some pictures back and forth simply doesn’t work. They need to be together to argue on the same shared artefact. A very important point in the work of those game-designers is the daily updating of their map, which would become essential boundary objects to interact with the different providers of lines of code. No real technical, artistic or game-play discussion could take place without the existence of those maps or “outside” the computer screen. 24 ... and sometimes even after the end of the project: it is normal practice for PC games to release through the Internet downloadable “patches” that would correct bugs or quality flaws even a few months after the official launch and sales of a game. 25 Boundary objects are artefacts of knowledge which serve as both containers (content) and carriers (process) of knowledge (Grey, 2004), «being both plastic enough to adapt to local needs and constraints of the several parties employing them, yet robust enough to maintain a common identity across sites» (Star, 1989). Fischer (2001) emphasizes the importance of boundary objects for social creativity. Seeing them as externalization of knowledge, they bring new understanding in the context of framing and solving design problems. Boundary objects serve multiple constituencies in situation where each one has only partial knowledge and partial control over the interpretation of the object. They perform a brokering role involving translation, coordination, and alignment among the perspectives of specific communities. Playing across the Playground: Paradoxes of knowledge creation in the video-game industry _____________________________________________ Copyright © 2005 HEC Montréal 20 As the result, the building of the hard architecture of knowledge for harnessing the creativity of the diverse communities of specialists at VGC leads to the emergence of a specific hybrid mode of management that combines the three traditional basic modes of project management. 1) A modular mode that defines a cognitive platform for the development of the “script” of each project. This type of platform assures a large decentralization of the cognitive work of communities and allows each community to express its creative potential. 2) A strict sequential mode for the management of time, with strict hierarchical schedules to be respected. This type of management of time excludes for instance to a large extent feedback loops, with real risks of losses of creativity. 3) A specific mode of management of space that contributes to reintroduce overlapping platforms and provides boundary objects between communities of specialists at VGC. The balance between these three modes is not fixed once for all at VGC. It varies through time, as a result of an evolutionary process of searching for a satisfactory compromise between a strict hierarchical order and the decentralized creative activities of the communities of specialists. How the rather strict nature of the project management may in turn stimulate a further expansion of creativity. The above analysis has described the ways VGC’s managers try to harness the creative potential of the communities of specialists of the firm, through the implementation of diverse platforms of knowledge. However, this vision, purposefully developed to highlight the compromises at stake at a given moment of time between creativity and efficiency, is essentially a static one. The implementation of the “hard architecture of knowledge should not be assimilated to the cast of a managerial veil on the creative functioning of communities in order to obtain some economic efficiency. We underline in the following that the hierarchical structures of knowledge set up by the managers of VGC also contribute in a dynamic vision in enabling the conditions of further expansion of the creativity of VGC. Project bazaar and project identity Each project is a specific entity which develops its own identity, history and culture (Boutinet, 2001). Each project will differ in terms of work atmosphere, level of motivation, types of social relationships... The game “look and feel” is defined at the first stage of the stage-gate process, but it will evolve with the cross-contributions of the members of the project. After the launch and the first hiring phase, project members are soon going to act as a community – or as a community of communities -, focusing on the same issues, developing the same language and even defining their own rituals. Individuals would be identified as “Project X” and at the end of the week they would often go out together once in a while, as a group. Their informal relationships and constant daily interactions on the same cognitive platform is a strong source of creativity or at least creative problem-solving through mutual challenges. Another interesting issue in those projects deals with the existing tensions between “hardcore” games versus “casual” games, focus on technology versus graphics, realistic simulation versus fantastic/kiddie Nintendo style worlds... Fans and advocates of various game “genres” and communities are always trying to bend the Playing across the Playground: Paradoxes of knowledge creation in the video-game industry _____________________________________________ Copyright © 2005 HEC Montréal 21 project towards their favourite style. The project manager has to reassert regularly the spirit and the look-and-feel of the game to make sure that everybody’s efforts are in sync. In most cases, a “demo” map is used as a reference and benchmark. Along the project, this alignment usually occurs when a common understanding emerges. A common sense of identity settles through practice, through trials and errors, mutual challenges and success. Beyond generic pep-talks, socially skilled project managers would also try to find a fit between individual’s interests and the project requirements. However, what is remarkable in this cultural company, by opposition to traditional industries, is that members of a given community of specialist, even when they are assigned to a specific project, remain connected to their community on a daily basis. They continue to exchange and interact with the other members of the community and even tend to enrich the knowledge of their community by bringing the experience gained during the project they are assigned to. In this dynamic process, they clearly cope with a “dual” identity: as members of a given project and as members of a given community. Such a situation offers many advantages for the organisation: it contributes 1) to facilitate the interactions between communities, 2) to solve the “distance paradox” (coupling or de coupling creative and routine work?), and 3) to reinforce the common culture of the company The cultural distance between communities First, the “dual” identity (to have the feeling to belong simultaneously to a project and to a community) favours direct interactions between communities. Members of a community that have participated to a project progressively build cognitive links with colleagues of other communities, and tend to bring this knowledge through the daily interactions within their community. Step by step, the cultural distance (Nooteboom, 1999) between the different communities of specialists in VGC is reduced and tend to a reasonable level of mutual understanding between communities, increasing the potential for innovation and creativity: As Nooteboom suggested, too distant communities within a firm will not lead to innovative solutions, but if the cognitive distance between communities is too small the innovative potential of the firm will fade away. Our view is that in the long run, this mutual understanding between communities may drastically modify the way to manage projects at VGC, in particular the way to build modularity. In a theoretical modular scheme, modules (communities) are not supposed to directly interact. Their interactions are mediated by the cognitive platform designed by the 26 As discussed in Nooteboom (1999) in order to achieve a specific joint goal, the categories of thought of the people involved must be coordinated to some extent. Different people have a greater or lesser 'cognitive distance' between them. A large cognitive distance has the merit of novelty, but the problem of incomprehensibility. In view of this, organizations need to reduce cognitive distance, i.e. achieve a sufficient alignment of mental categories, to understand each other, utilize complementary capabilities and achieve a common goal. Cognitive distance yields both a problem and an opportunity. The opportunity is that we learn from others only when they see and know things differently. In the absence of claims of objective knowledge, interaction with others is the only path we have to correct our errors. “The problem is that people may not understand each other and have to invest in understanding” (Bogenrieder and Nooteboom, 2004). Playing across the Playground: Paradoxes of knowledge creation in the video-game industry _____________________________________________ Copyright © 2005 HEC Montréal 22 hierarchy. However, in a case of the mutual understanding between communities becomes very high, we can envisage governance by community alone, with hierarchy needed only to ‘authorize’ or ‘enact’ the organizational forms produced by the interacting autonomous communities. In particular, the cognitive platform itself could become an emerging byproduct of the constant interactions between communities. The organization can operate largely in a self-organized manner. It is probable that, in such a situation, the unceasing efflorescence of communities allows the organization to innovate constantly. This mode can be called “management by enactment”, after Ciborra (1996), who describes the ‘knowledge platform’ at Olivetti in such terms. Mitigating the distance paradox, and valorizing the “creative slack”: Second, the “dual identity” contributes to solve the “distance paradox”. As underlined by De Fillippi et al (2004) organizations aiming at solving the dilemma between creativity and efficiency may physically separate creative work units from more routine work units. “Such de-coupling presumably favours lateral thinking ‘outside the box’ that is freed from the practices and conventions of the routine work of the organization (Bilton and Leary 2002)”. However, the implementation of such a solution introduces a major risk of dissonance when creative inputs and creative work practices have to be (re) introduced into the rest of the organization. The “dual identity” practiced at VGC contributes to eliminate this risk and by-passes the need of decoupling/re-coupling the organization by providing a specific mode of organisation that guarantee the permanent connection between the routine works required in the management of projects and the creative works done within communities. One of the advantages of this permanent connection between routine works during the projects and creative works done within communities is that it provides opportunities of feedbacks between the “micro creativity” that emerged from the daily activities during the project and the “macro-creativity” that is the expected output of the creative communities (and channelled by the Creative Committee). The creativity of a project should not be confined to the « macro-creativity » designed once for all at the beginning of the project by the Creative Committee. A creative project should be able to incorporate new ideas, innovative suggestions, and all these « micro-creative » inputs that emerge from the day to day activities during a project. According to the managers of VGC, one of the main 27 However, if the “dual identity” offers some advantages for solving the creativity/efficiency dilemma, there is one category of employees at UbSo, who stays apart from benefiting the advantages of the dual identity. They are the employees working on the administrative units supporting the creative communities, such as accounting officers, financial staff, human resources employees and diverse administrative units. (as underlined in Part 1, they represent around 20 % of the employees at UbSo). The risk for this category of people, which carries out by definition rather routine work is to be frustrated not to be involved in the «creative core » of the company, and this risk is taken seriously by the managers of UbSo in order to avoid the emergence of a strong cognitive gap within the company. 28 This is in line with Magee’s (2002) following view: “Indeed, a cornerstone of much of the ‘new cognitive psychology’ of recent years is precisely that creativity is founded in ordinary, not extraordinary, thought. In other words, the same cognitive processes used to resolve everyday matters or problems are also employed to make even the most advanced and abstruse of discoveries. What differs between the two types of activities is not the cognition but the circumstances and the extent of background skills and information needed to come to the conclusion. Put in this way, creativity thus boils down to the type of information processing familiar to standard decision making. Creativity, then, is simply a form, albeit an intriguing one, of problem solving. Like most models of problem solving, cognitive psychologists see the process rooted in the past, in one's Playing across the Playground: Paradoxes of knowledge creation in the video-game industry _____________________________________________ Copyright © 2005 HEC Montréal 23 drawbacks of the “stage-gate” process put forward to strictly control the timing of a project, is precisely that this constraint which excludes any significant feedbacks in terms of conception may imply a loss of creativity by “killing” the micro-creative inputs. The “dual identity” mitigates this risk, by allowing permanent interactions between micro and macro creativity. In practice, this permanent interaction may lead to two main effects: First, it may happen that if a micro-creative idea that has emerged during a project appears as relevant, it can quickly circulates within the communities through regular exchanges, be improved and validated through these exchanges, and be introduced directly in the project. The managers of VGC agree that there are cases when the stage gate rule should not be fully applied. Second, micro-creative ideas that emerge during a project can be absorbed in the active memory of some communities of specialists, as a “creative slack” that could be used in further projects. This creative slack is an important reservoir of opportunities of innovative knowledge for the organization, but the remarkable point is that this potential is diffused in the diverse communities of specialists of the firm that have memorised thanks to the knowledge brought by their members parts of the learning done during projects. While, as it is well known, organizations have extreme difficulties to memorise what has been learnt during a project, the interest of communities with regards to this issue is that they rather easily memorise the routines practiced by their members. The key question that follows logically is how the organization will benefit in the future of this creative slack which is dispersed between the diverse communities and needs an integrative effort to be reassembled and put into collective creative practice? Our view is that the answer depends to a large extent on the culture of the organization, which is analyzed in the following paragraph. The culture of gamers at VCG Finally, the mode of management of projects at VGC also contributes to reinforce the common culture of the company. The dual identity contributes to a large sharing of the history, successes, bad and good events, challenges and conflicts of each project within the communities of VGC. Each project becomes progressively appropriated by the company as a whole. The progressive forging of a common culture at VGC is also facilitated by a specific characteristic that has been already underlined in Part 1: Most employees are experiences and previous learning (Simon 1988; Sternberg and Davidson 1985; Walberg 1988) recent historical analysis of knowledge generation lends support to this view in the importance it places on accumulated experience and knowledge in the act of creativity”. 29 This notion of creative slack purposefully refers to the notion of organizational slack proposed by Edith Penrose (1959) who suggested that organizations always have some stock of unused, or underused, resources (e.g., knowledge, relationships, reputation, managerial talent, and physical assets) or “organizational slack” that inevitably accumulate in the course of developing, producing, and marketing any given product or service. In her view, these unexploited or underexploited productive resources are the primary factors determining both the extent and direction of firm growth. Growth is the dominant motivation of firms in her view, limited only by the administrative capacity of the organization. While Penrose does not devote much specific attention to environmental pressures on organizations (viewing firms as primarily proactive rather than reactive), her perspective at least indirectly implies that successful strategic change will more likely occur among firms already possessing a large stock of productive resources. 30 As Cohendet and Llerena (2003) suggested, “a routine that has naturally emerged within a community of economic agents sharing strong common social norms will have probably a much stronger power of replication than a routine which result from the functioning of a temporary team project constituted from heterogeneous agents who never met before”. Playing across the Playground: Paradoxes of knowledge creation in the video-game industry _____________________________________________ Copyright © 2005 HEC Montréal 24 gamers or play games on a regular basis, often playing the games they developed. If the job announcements put the emphasis on the technical job description, the hiring interview generally focus at one point on the former experience of the candidate with video-games and the game culture. This is true with hiring game-designers, developers and graphic artists, but surprisingly enough, it also matters with administrative and management positions. When a new employee starts an assignment, project managers and employees as well would always give the same advice: “Play! If you want to understand what we do, you have to play”. Most employees, even the reluctant ones – most likely female employees -, would give it a try. Some would just wander a few steps in this new world and go back to more secure grounds, others would become “hardcore” in a few months, finding their own genre of games and enjoying it with a passion. Most developers are inhabited by a real passion for games. The vision of the gamers proposed from the top – from the creative editorial committee is enriched by the permanent re-interpretations from employees on the shop-floor. Employees/gamers exert a strong influence on the game-play and visual content, mainly on the details. VGC tends to limit the free expression of personal style. The introduction of a formal Stage-Gate Process and the recent appointments of creative directors for each project, in charge of the global look-and-feel of a game act as major constraints for individual creativity on a day-to-day basis. This formalisation of process is confronted with the pre-existing culture of “bricolage” or “tinkering” and collective improvisation and is not yet integrated. In terms of product development, higher management seems conscious that this creativity mine could be dug deeper and reflects upon formal process to exploit the knowledge of the employees/gamers. One interesting initiative consisted in an open meeting where every employee with an idea could come and share with peers and managers. Reports say that this one-time endeavour was fruitful and exciting but no real operational project came out of it. No other formal process aims at exploiting further this free creativity pool at this point. These characteristics converge with what Himanen describes as the Hacker Ethic, an emergent work ethic that spurs from techno-creative communities, but that seems to bloom everywhere in the new generation at work (Himanen, 2001). At the same time, they may be dissonant with the cost and time constraints experienced by a company involved in a highly competitive market. To sum up, the hard architecture of knowledge that drives the management of projects at VGC should not be interpreted as a mere way of harnessing creative communities in order to reach a static efficiency. In a dynamic vision, this hard architecture of knowledge contributes to expend further on the potential of creativity of the company, offering in particular opportunities to enrich the repository of “creative slack” which is diffused within the diverse communities of the firm. The extent to which the company will be able to benefit in the future of this creative slack depends to a large extent of the common culture of the firm. In the case of VGC, it seems that the process is facilitated by the fact that employees, who are all sharing the same culture of “gamers”, continue to maintain when they are assigned to a project daily contacts and exchanges of knowledge with their community of specialist. We have underlined the notion of dual identity to express this feeling of belonging both to a project and a community. (in fact, it could be argued that it is 31 Hackers and software developers would use the expression: “eating your own dog food”. See: http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?DogFood Playing across the Playground: Paradoxes of knowledge creation in the video-game industry _____________________________________________ Copyright © 2005 HEC Montréal 25 a “triple” identity, since employees have also the feeling to belong to the large community of gamers). Projects in creative industries thus could not be only viewed as “temporary hierarchies” that distribute tasks, responsibilities and rewards in the firm to fine tune the creativity/efficiency dilemma. They also generators of new ideas and potential of further creativity that are instilled progressively to the communities of specialists of the firm. In such a perspective a « hard » device such as the stage gate process may be interpreted as a challenge that triggers creativity in VGC, as a form of prescription that obliges communities to intensify their exchanges through daily problem solving activities, and to continuously forces members of the large community of gamers at VGC to redefine what is a “game” in the VGC culture.