Hello friends,
If you want to be a Producer, but only have a vague idea of what they do, this article might just help you to dig a little deeper into the importance of this role and what it usually entails.
Also, some practical advice on how not to screw up when you get to the point of being a producer.
So, let’s talk about one of the least-appreciated roles in the Game Development industry—the Producers!
Why is it important to me?
Since joining the industry, I have wanted to be a Producer. For me, it was an exciting role that was essential for all processes on the project and for the Game Development pipeline in general. Producer’s life seemed to be so great they were always involved in everything, their opinions always mattered and they were kind of all over the place. For a freshly minted QA who’s just got his foot at the door of game development, it seemed like a great role to work toward to.
I worked (and still work) with some grade-A Producers, but I’ve also seen some of them who are one of the reasons for this role having a bad rep. So, my solution was “If you want to do something right, you have to do it yourself” 😅
But it turns out to be way harder than I thought (shocker, right?). I’ve seen ups and downs in my journey and I wanted to share some insights with you because I think our industry can use more talented and inspiring producers.
Why is it important in general?
With the game industry's continuous (and somehow troubled growth), it always needs good Producers because production failures are one of the main reasons why we have so many sunk projects.
For example, did you know that in 2023 there were more than 12,000 games released on Steam alone?
I bet that nobody could name more than 20-30 titles from the top of their heads. Now, I’m not saying that the other 11,950 games don’t deserve a spot in the spotlight and I bet that some of them are quite successful.
My point is that the number of games released (and being developed) is exponentially growing and with the current demand, it will probably stay that way and continue to grow over time. This means more teams will be formed, more games will be developed, and more producers will be required to facilitate the processes.
It’s extremely fun, but…
When we talk about game development, great games or studios, we usually talk about either a successful business person at its helm (like a CEO or Founder) or Game Designers (like Kojima, Sid Meier or John Romero). The Producer role is usually less “sexy” and “revered” than that. To make my point, Game Design can be a whole degree, while Game Production can be just a specific course. Not to mention all the books, blogs and other content built around the Church of Game Design.
This is fair, but when I first started thinking about becoming one, I had only vague ideas about how to become one or what they do.
What’s funny is that the industry itself doesn’t have a clear definition of what a producer does. Every studio treats them a little differently. Every company has their own sets of responsibilities, and titles and treats them differently. For example, even if you are just starting in game development, you can be a Junior Producer, Associate Producer or just a Producer.
First and foremost
Something similar to all companies, being a Producer always means being a manager. But what does that mean?
Being a manager doesn’t mean being a boss. It means being a facilitator. As a Producer, it’s your job to make sure that every person on your team is as effective as possible (at all times). This can mean anything, from helping people communicate their ideas more easily to ordering takeout during crunch times.
As you have a higher overview of the project and direct communication with everyone on the team, it’s your responsibility to monitor the production situation and smooth the rough edges that the others might not even be aware of.
For example, during my first months as a producer in a different company, there were a lot of complaints from both our users and our senior management about the quality of our updates, despite us having a team of dedicated QA and a lot of hours of testing. So, I invited a Dev lead and QA lead to talk about it and it turns out that ever since the project started, the QA team had to develop their test coverage from scratch and wasn’t aware of declining quality. They were continuously running almost the same tests over and over again. So, together we reviewed the tests and compiled a whole new list to run as well as defined a process of reviewing and updating them every 3 months. Needless to say in the next update we haven’t had nearly as many issues as we had before that.
Mental state
But being a facilitator is the easiest part of the job. To be a good producer and a good manager for that matter, you need a level of psychological discipline and evenness of temper that comes naturally to very few.
In game dev, crunch times, pressure and stress are some of the most common things on the project. Especially when the game or an update is about to go live. During such times, the team will rely on you to keep it all together. I’ve seen so many times when people were losing it after negative feedback from a publisher or stakeholders, the extra scope or a tight deadline. As a manager, you need to keep your cool and cool them down at the same time, while figuring out a gameplan to get out of this situation.
It would be best if you were prepared for this to happen every single day. Because at some companies, it will. Unfortunately, I can’t say that there is a silver bullet that will teach you how to handle these situations. But what I can tell you is that whenever you are in this situation, try to distance yourself from your emotions because emotions are usually the enemy of good decisions. The rest will come with experience.
Come to terms with your limitations
As a producer, you are going to be the expert when it comes to scheduling, project management software, facilitating meetings and important decisions, planning the scope of the game, budget and people management. But that’s about it.
With the rest of the subjects, such as Art, Development, Design and others, you will never be the person who has the most expertise in them. Whenever you are communicating with other people, especially department leads, you have to remember that they dedicate every minute of their working days to their craft. You are simply there to listen, analyze the data they are giving to you and relay that information to other departments.
You are an intersection between all lines of the project. But it’s going to be very easy for you to assert your opinion as a producer and make all the decisions on the project. Don’t do that because you will undermine the authority of your leads and eventually destroy all the respect they have for you.
Instead, you need to trust your department leads and rely on them to tell you what’s going to be the best approach in a particular situation.
The best approach I’ve seen so far is the one that acts like the Supreme Court (I’ve actually just learned that it acts that way 😅). The lead of each department should be free to make all the decisions, but as a Producer, you can veto the decision if you think it will jeopardize the project as a whole.
Ship it!
Another reason why a producer’s job is so important comes down to the fact that shipping a video game is very hard. It doesn’t matter if you are developing a casual match 3 mobile game or a AAA action RPG on multiple platforms with a 200$ million dollars budget. It’s just hard.
The producer’s job is to see that project shipped, to ensure that all of this hard work reaches the players and to see that the studio survives this to move on to the next game. This means to keep yourself and the team focused on the project being shipped.
This is where the project management skills are going to come in handy. Every day your team is going to be faced with a decision that may disproportionately increase either the scope of the project, the time needed for development or the budget. Your job will be to keep the game close to the ground of reality. There isn’t going to be a time when you (or anybody else on the team) will feel that your project is 100% complete. There is always a small thing to adjust, an extra feature to develop or a polish to be made.
But the hard truth is that you need to keep all those aspirations in check because of the reality of your schedule and budget. This is the part where you’ll need to evaluate whether to go forward with this or not depending on the project’s situation. If time or money requires you to veto your favourite feature on the project, you need to be able to do just that without hesitation or second thoughts. Of course, some exceptions can be made and sometimes your stakeholders will approve those changes, but it happens extremely rarely based on my personal experience.
When it comes to modern times game development, there are some cases when quantity is better than quality, but if you are looking to delight your players from the start and make sure they stay with you for the long run, going for the quality is always better at first. You can add all (almost all) the features you want to during the cycle of updates.
One last piece
With all the hardships of the producer’s job, it’s been the most amazing and rewarding experience I’ve had so far in my career. I hope that everything here will inspire you to start your own journey of becoming the best producer you can ever be.
And if you are looking for something to invest your time in as a junior producer, I can recommend learning more about project management. Traditional project management helped me more than anything else in my experience and it’s a good place to start.
If you want to know more about the role itself, stay tuned for more posts or DM me if you want to hear about something specific!
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Have a great weekend!
Alex from Gamedev Relay
Every Scrum Product Owner, and Team Leader (elsewhere) SHOULD read this.