Hi Malstrom,
since you’ve been talking a lot about creativity & “artists” and it’s relation with customers, I tought the following could be interesting.
I’m now reading a book named To Infinity and Beyond! The Story of Pixar Animation Studios. In the foreword (by John Lasseter, Steve Jobs and Ed Catmull) there is the following:
“The people who go to see our movies are trusting us with something very important – their time and their imagination. So in order to respect that trust, we have to keep changing; we have to challenge ourselves and try to surprise our audiences with something new every time.”
The first phrase, in my opinion, mixes two concepts that could only come from both good entertainers and businessmen. Good entertainers because they understand whose imagination matters and good businessmen because they understand whose time matters.
Well, the second phrase makes me a bit confused. Truly there is something new in every Pixar movie, but I think that what really matters is always the same. Pixar is not that “creative” or “surprising” every time. They are actually very predictable, and I think that’s one of the reasons they are so successful (of course, after finding a successful way of making their movies).
Later on in the book, it’s said that during Pixar’s early, difficult days, they had to start making TV commercials, in order to survive as a company before they could achieve their actual dream: making a feature movie. And then Catmull says:
“Commercials are like little short stories, and by doing them we would subject ourselves to the real-wolrd deadlines and pressures that you’d have to deal with if you were going to make movies. Restrictions are part of art, and we had to bring that into our process.”
The founder of one of today’s most “surprising”, “creative” and “artistic” (I’ve heard many people talking things like that) movie studios is saying that restrictions are part of art. So, if video games are art (like many developers like to say, and I’m OK with that), this is one more reason to make games the customers want, and not a green-light to make whatever the designer or developer want.
I tought all of this would be interesting because Pixar (and computer animation in general) share a similar evolution (and almost a common timing) with video games. In the early 70’s and early 80’s they were just trying to make the computer work for them. And now computer effects and CG animations are flooding the movies in the name of creative visions.
What happens when an engineer is severed from customers and is to get in touch with ‘his creativity’? We end up with an over-engineered product that is too expensive and doesn’t satisfy any customers. An engineer is expected to do his work within guidelines, why do ‘content’ makers feel entitled that these guidelines do not apply to them? As you have said, Pixar didn’t rise because they had too many restrictions. It was those restrictions that were necessary for the rise.
And the most important restriction is the destination of the product, i.e. the customers. The consumer experience frames everything.