How do you think?

When working with other people it’s important to consider how they see things, as their view is often very different from your own perspective. In our world of game development there are, broadly speaking, 2 high level ways of looking at things.

Firstly let me put things in perspective by explaining that I come from a background of logic that took me in the direction of Programming, which I found a good fit for me. I lived in a world of abstract languages, numbers and weird concepts and the ‘creative’ people just didn’t understand. I arrogantly thought that anyone could draw pictures and it took raw talent to do what I was doing. These were the days when non-programmers were paid a pittance and weren’t coveted by businesses. Those were the days when programming skill made for better games.

At times it felt like Artists were from Venus, Programmers are from Mars. Businesses used to segregate the two camps and have rooms of programmers and rooms of artists, we were never a team working on a single project.

Thankfully, it’s changed a lot since then but the blinkered thinking is still evident today when trying to put across concepts, albeit not so overtly shown.

The creative side has now eclipsed pretty much all of the other roles in terms of determining a products success and it’s important for people to realise that there genuinely are 2 fundamental ways of thinking about dependant on the dominance of your Left or Right brain hemisphere.

Here’s a nice concise definition take from Bloom, see if you can see similarities in your thinking:

Left - Creative thinking involves creating something new or original. It involves the skills of flexibility, originality, fluency, elaboration, brainstorming, modification, imagery, associative thinking, attribute listing, metaphorical thinking, forced relationships.

Right - Critical thinking involves logical thinking and reasoning including skills such as comparison, classification, sequencing, cause/effect, patterning, webbing, analogies, deductive and inductive reasoning, forecasting, planning, hypothesising, and critiquing.

I’m not saying that your 100% one or the other, but I’m pointing out that there are different ways of thinking and it can take some people a while to realise this. This is an important skill for anyone rising through the ranks to acquire as they interact with more and more people and absolutely critical when you move up to externally represent yourself, your business or your idea.

Team Leaders need to understand their whole team, not just the ones they rose up through the ranks of.

If you’re pitching ideas, you need to be aware of the types of people you’re talking to. Maybe they’re looking at things from a different perspective and you’ll need to adapt.

Think about how all different types of people will experience your game and get the most out of it. Maybe you want to focus your idea on a particular type?

Does you whole business have a particular view that matches those above? I’ve certainly experienced Highly Creative, Poor Tech teams as well as teams that are Highly Technical but have Terrible Creativity.

It’s important to understand the variety of people we interact with and acknowledge that everyone has a different way of viewing things.

I’d love to hear about your experiences with businesses or people too.