Devil's Advocate

Our group at Great Forge Studios is four people. When we need to make a decision - for instance, lately we've been discussing how to handle Endurance costs - the four of us sit down and debate until we find a solution that makes us all happy. As a result of over half a year of this, we've begun thinking alike. The proper psychological term is "groupthink".

Every Sunday night I go to a bar with my good friend Scott for karaoke. One night, I decided to bring some of my work with me. He was intrigued, and I showed him what I was trying to accomplish. At the time, it was mostly creative work - coming up with new powers to fill out powersets. He began tossing out ideas, and we debated them. Eventually, we had enough powers that I could bring them before the rest of the team for serious discussion.

One of the first powers he suggested was an attack for Fiery Aura. It was a toggle that hurt enemies and allies alike. When I brought it before my team, it was immediately shot down; they didn't want friendly fire. I asked for a reason, and they couldn't immediately give one. For the rest of the evening, we debated the merits of allowing or disallowing powers that could injure teammates. Eventually, we decided against friendly fire, but it showed me something important: we would never have had that discussion if Scott hadn't tossed out the idea. We thought so alike that the idea of friendly fire never occurred to us.

Every design team needs someone to question every decision made. Far too often, teams who work closely together fall into groupthink, and they take the group's assumptions as fact. Someone has to shake up that mentality and question the status quo.

In discussing Powerpoint presentations, Kathy Sierra said that every slide should to have to fight for its life. I use that mentality in game design - every idea should have explain why it has to be added in. If there isn't a compelling argument that the idea both provides something the game needs and provides something that no other idea can provide better, that idea gets scrapped. Similarly, if the team immediately shoots down an idea, I jump in and start arguing why we have to include it.

Without debate, there is no game design. A devil's advocate is the most important thing a team could have, and I'm glad I found one.