“Never outshine the Master” ~ Robert Greene
Whether it’s gaming animation, or a strategy document –- someone, somewhere, wants to mess with your stuff. So let them. Atwood’s Duck is a cunning ploy to let busybody micromanagers feel like they did something. You just have to give them something obvious to criticize and remove from your work.
The term comes from the computer programming industry:
It was well known that producers (a game industry position, roughly equivalent to PMs) had to make a change to everything that was done. The assumption was that subconsciously they felt that if they didn’t, they weren’t adding value.
The artist working on the queen animations for Battle Chess was aware of this tendency, and came up with an innovative solution. He did the animations for the queen the way that he felt would be best, with one addition: he gave the queen a pet duck. He animated this duck through all of the queen’s animations, had it flapping around the corners. He also took great care to make sure that it never overlapped the “actual” animation.
Eventually, it came time for the producer to review the animation set for the queen. The producer sat down and watched all of the animations. When they were done, he turned to the artist and said, “that looks great. Just one thing — get rid of the duck.”