Leading Remotely: Game Production During a Pandemic

I’m Donald Harris, an executive producer at FarBridge. I have been in the games industry for more than 10 years, working on games like TitanFall, Monopoly Bingo, and most recently RWBY Grimm Eclipse. I love making games, but game development is hard…. it always has been. On top of the normal challenges involved in making games, this past year has been one of the most challenging in our careers, due to the global pandemic.

My most recent endeavor at FarBridge has been leading the project to bring RWBY Grimm Eclipse to the Nintendo Switch. We’ve been working with Rooster Teeth to support and expand RWBY Grimm Eclipse since 2018, and were thrilled to add new features and goodies to make this the “Definitive Edition” of the game. I had the pleasure of working with amazingly talented producers, engineers, artists, and game designers to make RWBY on the Switch a reality.

RWBY Grimm Eclipse Definitive Edition is coming to the Nintendo Switch

One of my favorite things about being an executive producer is coaching, hiring, and helping team members achieve their best. When the pandemic started we immediately shifted to being a completely remote team, all working from home. This meant most of our old ways of working with a team had to change. The days of walking over to a team member’s desk to chit-chat about a new bug or the latest industry news were put on hold. And we couldn’t invite people to our studio for a casual lunch or all-day interview.

Conversations didn’t happen by accident anymore, and information wasn’t shared in the same ambient manner over in-person lunches and coffees. Instead our studios’ producers had to be purposeful and hold even more regular meetings and check-ins than usual. These meetings not only helped to keep folks in the loop, but to also maintain our working relationships and friendships with each other.

As a project leader, I see it as my job to serve and help the team members. But how can I know how to best serve the team if I didn’t know what their needs were? To help with this, I made it a point to regularly reach out to team members individually and have one-on-one conversations with them… not only about our RWBY project, but also encouraging them to speak up about any other issues.

Mixing in voice and video calls when possible also let me hear each team member’s voice and better understand their opinions and concerns. Text chat in Slack can only tell us so much, especially when you’re used to seeing a team member and communicating in-person most of the time. Things got particularly interesting when we add new people to our team this year, who I still have never met in person. But they’ve since become good friends, and they feel like they’ve always been a part of the team.

As I mentioned… game development is hard. Stress comes in many different forms even in a normal work environment. As our expected “two weeks at home” stretched into months, our team members grew weary of the pandemic, and at times we all needed to focus on staying healthy. There were days where I had to step away from the computer to attend to family matters, and that’s true of almost everyone on our team.

I’m glad that our entire management team made it very clear that we needed to put our team first. It was imperative that we give everyone the needed time and space to prioritize their health. And in our weekly studio-wide zoom calls, we shared important information and resources having to do with the pandemic, the ice-storm we had here in Austin, and most recently the availability of vaccine sign-ups.

We’ve always tried to put people first, but this year has really forced us to live up to that value, and make health and safety an up-front part of our company culture.

Speaking of culture, it was also a challenge to uphold our company culture while remote, and to also meet the needs of the team. With no physical separation between our home life and our work life, I knew that our work hours could sneakily expand to take up all of our time. And if it felt like we were “always at work,” then we’d never get the break of feeling like we were actually at home.

We set clear expectations for the entire studio that nights and weekends were not for work. It took some trial and error to figure out the right pace of work hours, but each team fell into a good rhythm of scheduled meetings, online ambient hang-outs and coffee times, and actually-not-working time. To help support this, we were able to keep to our usual schedule of holidays and once-a-month experimental “jam days.”

We couldn’t have done this project without our partners and friends at Rooster Teeth and Aspyr. We all acknowledged that this pandemic and world-events were impacting everyone, and we were all in this boat together. Being able to talk with our business partners about the real impact this is having on us — the good and the bad — is what made it all possible.

For me, it comes down to the fact that we are all human. We’re all in this together. Treating our team with respect and trust, seeing them as people first, and taking care of their needs as much as possible, will always be my preferred way to lead. As entrepreneur and social-media icon Gary Vaynerchuk says, “kindness over everything!”

I hope we don’t have to face another year quite like the past one. But I’m incredibly proud of our team at FarBridge, and of how we got through this year together. We’ve been able to grow our studio, recruit new people from all over the country, refine our culture and priorities, and make awesome games we can’t wait to play with our family and friends.

Donald Harris, 2021

Donald Harris is an executive producer at FarBridge based in Austin, TX. He is also the founder of ATX Game Makers, an online community dedicated to the expansion of the game industry with a focus on diversity and inclusion. You can read more about FarBridge’s work and culture on our company website.

Published March 30, 2021