So… sort of a strange series of thoughts has been creeping in to my head. For the last few months, I’ve been very careful about building consensus on the project I’m working on. It’s gone reasonably well – people have generally gotten to contribute, yet in the end, we’ve managed to shape the project into something that has a good deal of potential.

But something’s been nagging at me recently. I’ve always hated leads who are conflict-averse. There’s a certain amount you have to push people to produce really genuinely top quality work, but to do so, you do have to push them harder than what they’re willing to give freely. This has also meant that I’ve always respected people who I think have a clear vision for what they’re doing, and can fight for that vision.

Mind you, that requires developing the trust that the vision is actually *there* first, because if I don’t trust the person fighting for their vision, I’ll eventually stop fighting and start working around them. I watched “Dangerous Days,” the making-of feature that comes with the new Blade Runner DVD’s, and Ridley Scott had something interesting to say – that it *was* “his” movie, and that he’d invited people to help him achieve his vision, but that the vision was his.

When I’ve seen game developers use that terminology – that it’s “their” game, it’s always been off-putting. Game development is an extraordinarily collaborative exercise, and it’s always bothered me when one person on the team calls it “their” game. It still does. I think movies and games are a bit different, because while a person can have a vision for the linear narrative they wish to convey, the interactivity of games means that bringing more viewpoints to the process broadens the scope of experiences you can bring to the table.

But that said, with both Ridley Scott and someone like Thomas Keller, the teams are there to do work to *their* standards, and they are the ultimate arbiter of those standards. If they let those slip, they are the ones who pay the price. For me, I’m in an odd position, because while I’m *not* the project lead, I am the lead designer. Whatever someone outside the process might think, I know that when I see a bad game, it rests on the shoulders of the lead designer. So if I abdicate my responsibility to enforce high standards, and leave it to the project lead, I still lose out in the end.

But the problem is that enforcing standards requires authority, of which I have very little. That hasn’t been a problem thus far because I’ve been able to convince people that at least to this point, what I want is what’s best for the game. But we do, to some degree, have a collection of “cool ideas” without a central unifying theme or vision. I don’t think it’ll take someone to make it “their” game to the exclusion of the rest of the team, but it will take someone with the strength and tenacity to ensure that the vision is consistent and of a high quality.

Despite the fact that I’m not in the position to be the be-all end-all arbiter of quality and the game’s vision, it’s still going to rest on my shoulders. And I’m going to have to take a more active stance in making sure those standards are held.

It’s weird, because it’s not really something in the game’s currently level of quality that’s bugging me – well, some small details, sure – but overall, it’s not bad. It’s just in my attitude, I’m finding that I’ve gotten a bit too lenient – a bit too willing to bend to the way other people want to do things, and it’s going to start being time to bend a bit less.