Video Game Production

Mari reached out (check out their site, SO cute!) and asked me to write more about my experience as a video game producer. So I'm going to do that! If you have other things you want to know, hit me up! Happy to help if I can. <3

How I Got Into The Industy

I don't have any experience coding games or making art. I knew some people who worked in video games, but that was it. Because of that, I never really thought that I'd work in the video game industry. At some point, one of them said, "hey, my company is hiring an entry level IT help desk person if you want to apply." So I did. I wasn't very good at that job, but an entry level production job opened up and I applied for that instead. And that's where I found my place.

My Production Background

I spent 3 years working at Gearbox Software as a Production Coordinator for the backend systems team. I was lucky enough to work on games like Borderlands 3 and Tiny Tina's Wonderlands. After that, I spent 2 years at Cloud Imperium Games as an Associate Producer for the Narrative team, working on Star Citizen and Squadron 42. Currently, I'm a Producer at an indie studio called Squanch Games working with the Environment, Player, UI, and Level Design teams on an unannounced game.

What Is A Producer?

So what the heck IS a producer, anyway? Outside of the video game world, it's comparable to a project manager. Basically, the producer is there to figure out what all the work is, how long it's going to take, and when the team is going to achieve it. It's our job to see everything from the big picture down to understanding the day to day work. It takes a lot of organizational skills, and you better love a spreadsheets, graphs, and/or charts!

Okay, But What Does A Producer DO?

Producers can do a lot of different things, and it can vary from company to company or even department to department. Here are some regular tasks that a producer might be responsible for:

• Meetings - scheduling, leading, note taking
• Tasks - create them and manage who they're assigned to
• Asking Questions - there are a lot of questions that need to be asked along the way
• Scrum Master - planning what work will be done in small chunks of time, typically called sprints
• Creating Road Maps - high level plans of how long the work for required features will take and who will be working on them
• Identifying Potential Problems - by keeping up with the schedules, road maps, and work tracking, a producer tries to identify where things may not go exactly as planned or where a team might not be able to finish the work in the alotted time
• Cheerleader - being generally encouraging, taking the temperature of the team, and doing what you can to keep morale up
• Improvements - encouraging the team to look at where things haven't gone well and how they can be improved in the future
• Managing Priorities - different projects or other teams might need things all at once, and a producer has to juggle those requests and figure out what is most important at any given time

It's generally the job of the developers to dream big! And a producer is often there to be a voice of reason and say, "That's great! But how long will that take? Will it compromise the schedule? Do we have enough people to accomplish it?" I know it sounds like we can be Debbie Downers, but we're there to make sure good decisions are being made and the goals being set are achievable. Without that, some video games would never make it out the door! Without a good plan in place, a company can run out of money before finishing the game.

Do you have more questions? Pop them into the chat on the right sidebar, and I'll do my best to answer!