Small Weird Crews

One good way to think of yourselves as you embark is that the team itself is a shared quest. You're coming together to create an interactive story. Each of you holds responsibility for building parts of it and moving forward — story telling is really story making.

"Story principles can drive an awesome small team. Think purpose, genre, character selection and development arc."

— Mike Shatford

When you don't have a clear, coherent direction, things feel formless. Many teams struggle in an uneasy fog.

"For me, a game idea is a platonic ideal that we are always striving to achieve. Once I can see a thing in my head, my job becomes all about how to help guide people to it."

— Raphael von Lierop, Hinterland

Where are we going? If you can't answer that question clearly, watch out.

Trust is either there or it's not. Its absence is a tax on every hour. Without trust you can't move fast. You can't delegate. You can't have hard conversations.

"Trust is built by clear expectations and consistent delivery. If delivery doesn't match expectations, even if the work is good, trust is eroded."

— Sam Dungey

Trust is head, heart, and gut. Build it, deserve it, and connect it to purpose, every day.

When the company tells you "we're just a great big family here"—run.

Families can't lay each other off. Families can't quit. As emotionally complex as they often are, families are literally for life. Can you genuinely say the same about the people you're working with?

We can build great things without pretending we're a family.

Three or more, fifteen perhaps being the sweet spot, sharply diminishing returns above fifty. Small crews bring together humans with character and personality and ragged edges.

"Your team doesn't want to work with the 'LinkedIn' version of you. Character and confidence isn't visible in our triumphs alone; it's revealed in the challenges we face, the mistakes we make."

— Emma Procter

People think differently. We don't easily fit into statistical boxes. This is useful especially in an age of corrupted databases.

"Creating a diverse team is difficult—financially, time-wise, emotionally—but absolutely 100% worth it. The stories we're able to create together are so much more than anything I could have imagined myself."

— Jevon Wright, Adaptory

The OCEAN model is a useful shorthand: Open, Conscientious, Extraverted, Agreeable, Neurotic. Favour people who are open to experience, and very strongly favour conscientiousness. Slightly disagreeable can be useful. Neurotic is often a red flag.

We invert this sometimes and we shouldn't. The trust you build together is grounded in character. Together they're more important than personality. It's not always about being likeable or making best friends.

Putting personal politics above trust and character is a mistake that destroys teams. Small teams that remember this tend to be much higher-functioning.

Three gigantic red flags.

Duplicity: If someone defaults to "I am going to trick everyone," that trait cannot exist in a high-functioning small team.

Negativity: If it's a foundational character quality and they're not going to change, that's an anchor on your potential.

Passivity: The most subtle. People who are nice but won't do anything unless told to. You'll probably like them. But over time you'll probably become incredibly frustrated by their inertia, and so will others.

One Person Plus Followers: The genius surrounded by enablers. Workable, but everything depends on one person's capability ceiling.

"We Are a Collective": Completely democratic. Everything goes to a vote. Pretty categorically, this doesn't work. Under pressure, collectives always discover they need structure.

Three Founders: Teams of three guys or three women are often stronger if at least one gender is flipped. Not a political point—just experience from many people I talked with.

The blob is decision-making by consensus where no one has accountability. No one makes the call until everything falls apart. It's a feature of large institutions — the kind of structure you're trying to avoid as a small crew.

"Make sure you have at least one person on your leadership team who isn't a creative. You need someone laser-focused on the business side."

— Josh Tsui

Some level of core dissonance, disagreement, tension is incredibly useful. You almost always see it in lasting crews. Think of two front people in a band who disagree on everything but make great music.

But bullying is not useful. In my home country of New Zealand, because we're "too nice," bullies get too much room. Tension is people with strong viewpoints vying for the best solution. Bullying is one person running rampant. Avoid this, and if you're the bully, look in the mirror and consider what your real ambition is. Bullying lowers the ceiling of what can be accomplished.

Traps on both sides. Stupid hierarchy—where rank matters more than contribution. Social savagery—the informal cruelty in flat organisations, the whisper networks.

Neither serves your crew. Both will poison the well.

When you start doing difficult things you're serious about, the irony drops off. You accept you're in this for real. Irony corrodes commitment. Commitment is what small crews run on.

"...seriousness is no longer a trait we celebrate in people, replaced by the shield of irony that permeates every conversation, every tweet and so many interactions we have with each other. The ironic voice dominates our online discourse and media culture. Our critics and chroniclers mock the new and the bold and those who are deadly serious about their missions as though they're relics of a bygone era. 'Are you not in on the joke?' We ask. 'It's irony all the way down.'"

— Katherine Boyle (who was not interviewed for Small Weird Crews)

In military special forces, the ratio of active specialists to support personnel can be 20:1.

You will overestimate your resilience, and underestimate your support needs.

You can't go full-bore forever. At some point it crests, everyone burns out, and you realise your crew needs a rhythm of rest and enablement.

One Hit, Can't Repeat: We did the thing. Now we have second-album syndrome.

"We Fell Into a Gold Mine!": We accidentally did it. Now we're trying to do it deliberately.

"We Have a Process": The rare studio that figured out a repeatable method. But, driven by process, can they build anything truly great?

"Just on the Journey, Bro": No real direction. Just vibes. Lovable but irrelevant.

Once you're up and running, you're in a rhythm. Make decisions. Do the thing. Repeat.

In general, it's often good to make decisions as fast as you can without going off the rails. But for really big direction changes where there's no turning back, delay can help boldness in the long run.

Decisions are the rope ladder of what you're building.

It's great being Queen at Wembley Stadium. It's great being a punk band at tiny clubs. The middle is often the most challenging zone because by definition it invites mediocrity. This is the barbell theory.

You can't copy-paste another team's unique success, big or small. Queen were ingredients, not a formula. So are you. Don't accept middling comparisons.

If you're doing ambitious things, you have to find your own magic.

If you have a size you want to stay at—for the thesis of Small Weird Crews, that's somewhere between three and fifty, with that sweet spot at fifteen—be aware of what happens if you go beyond that.

Success is a trap. "We have the money to hire lots more people now. Nothing will change except we'll get more work done." It changes. More work does not necessarily get done.

Be aware of yourself circling the black hole of headcount expansion.

The joy of these teams. Why we do it.

Being under pressure is not the problem—if you're doing it well, it's a joy. An absolute crazy roller coaster of fun.

You're five people, locked in. You don't need 500. You can do this. And it's incredibly rewarding when you do.

It is never the "right time" to do something bold. Many of the strongest modern companies were founded during downturns when everyone knew it was madness to build. Many great films, books, video games, and inventions went against the grain of their era.

"Don't strike while the iron is hot, but make the iron hot by striking."

— Oliver Cromwell (via Paul Moon)

Trust, trust, trust, trust, trust, trust, trust, trust, trust, trust, trust, trust, trust, trust, trust, trust.

Do not forget it.

"One of my personal ambitions as a creator is to make 'heavy' things. Cultural productions that will be left on the beach when all the ephemeral content has been washed out by the tide. You can erect monuments with a handful of friends. The future is physical. Build for all time."

— Jason Killingsworth, Tune & Fairweather

In a world of lightweight, disposable content, there's massive competitive advantage in building things that last. Heavy things are harder to make. They require obsessed teams.

Heavy doesn't mean complicated. It means built to matter. Built to last.

This is what you and your small weird crew can accomplish, together.