Working In Teams

I talk about lessons I learned from working with teams, starting with lessons from a Duran Duran documentary.

Videos I reference:

[brettwurben]

Never thought I'd have Tim Cain as part of my morning routine. I appreciate the regular uploads!

[llamallama]

I wish more tales had the moral "If you don't believe me, believe Duran Duran"

[TJLounge]

Tim your treasure trove of knowledge not only helps practically in my budding game dev career, but makes me feel really seen and understood. I've worked with 5 different indie teams now on vastly different projects and have had multiple different levels of authority and different roles. I've had teams with major communcation issues on every little detail of the game. As well as easy going, every idea i pitch is entered no questions asked, teams that have really helped me be my best creative self. My biggest hurdle, has been issues with the ethics of team members and understanding that our goals are completely different. I've unfortunately seen the game itself suffer and the team willing take hits in quality and passion due to the different goals of team members. This video reminds me to look at myself more earnestly and to understand what I'm good at, what I'm not, and that it's okay to pick and choose which teams to work with and what I really believe in. When to walk away and when to accept your role and let someone else take the reigns. I guess I don't really have anything meaningful to add to the discussion here, but I just want to say thank you for these videos and this one in particular really helped me on a day I wasn't feeling the best. As a fan of your work, as someone working their way up in the industry to be a game director, and as a fellow creative also doing YouTube on the side for fun, thank you for doing what you do man. You're a huge inspiration of mine.

[dinohead]

He's got me listening to this great band now. Reminds me of my early childhood *80's kid here

[John-imk]

I took a drink every time Tim said Duran and woke up in the 80's

[StinkyBuster]

I work in QA on projects much less interesting than games but your insight is really valuable. Thanks for doing these videos!

[joyzmaa]

great timing as i’m scheduled for a team fit interview in roughly 1.5hours

[SamaelQuinn]

Thank you for being a part of my morning routine of "checking in on the industry"

You are not only a huge inspiration, but amazing at delivering a wealth of knowledge and wisdom.

Please don't stop sharing! (Unless life makes it difficult to do, please take care you and your own!)

[SunBroSquad]

Oh dear, i love my good teams and i will always have a lot of love for the members who made it so. Mutch love!

[colbymclemore]

I started getting sad on weekends when I realize I don’t have a new Tim video to watch in the morning. Thanks for the knowledge Uncle Tim ❤

[TheMorangutan]

Hey Tim, recently came across your content and I love it. I work in a sales enablement role (far stretch from programming) but I found myself in my role quite young/inexperienced. Your videos have taught me that despite things around you being corporate/professional, you can still be yourself and thrive in that environment. Your videos have helped me with some work/business conversations, purely with the way you look at things. Thanks for giving me a fresh perspective Tim 😊

[Skiad-OpsGash]

Hey Tim! Just wanted to say: thanks a lot! I am not a game developer but recently I had a job interview for my dream job, teaching at a university. Your videos helped me a lot in reflecting my strengths and especially my weaknesses. To some of the questions I could answer very well, based on your videos on the Peter principle and the "generalists vs specialists" one. Later when they got back to me and told me, I'll be getting the job, they also told me they'd never met someone my age that was so self-reflected. So, again: Thank you so much! This job will change my life.

[bananeyfish]

LOVE Duran Duran! I wasn't expecting to hear about them here! :D If you want interesting teamwork stories in the new wave genre, look into the Hall and Oates drama from this year haha

[goranbenak]

In your previous videos you mentioned equality between games and art. I would love to hear you talk on that subject. Either way, I love listening to your thoughts about game development. It is really inspiring.

[brandobin]

First off, thank you so much for doing this channel it's been great company (re)starting my game dev journey. You talked a little bit here about that enormous burst of energy at the start of a new team or new project, and I was wondering if you could maybe talk about maintaining that energy or how you re-energize and maintain passion for a project throughout the development cycle?

[BlackJar]

Indeed, while the level of creative control that comes with being a solo indie feels great, I've realized many of the games I'd really like to make are just too big for one person.

[paendamonium]

The concept that authority and passion don’t correlate definitely is something that I’ve come to believe in, though it might seem counterintuitive at first. Also, your thumbnail face is my internal feeling every time I’m sitting in a meeting thinking “This should have been an email….”

[perceivedvelocity]

Company culture can be very important. Most people focus on their supervisor and the people they work directly with. IMO the top down culture is just as important.

[Hjorth]

My university heavily focused on group projects. Gotta say, it was good training as a preparation to work life where you are dependent on other people as well as being able to communicate with others on different levels of understanding

[febbeedraws]

Always love your videos is Tim ! I hope I can keep learning like you do from all the people and projects around me- the introspection is so interesting to listen to 😊