Welcome to my /mentor page! I strive to be a champion of transparency, investing in the long-term, servant leadership, and running head-first into challenges with action-focused optimism. I believe part of that responsibility is to help guide future game developers into the industry!
In my free time, I mentor early career devs and students looking to break into games.
The below are excerpts from my own notes and things I commonly share with peers and those interested in the industry.
Producer Knowledge
As a game producer, my main focus is overseeing the entire game development process with three three key areas of responsibility:
- the product
- the process
- the people.
Producers do not own a team, but they manage sideways, upwards and downwards.
How I work:
- I work closely with the product/business side to ensure that our game aligns with market demands and resonates with players.
- I empower our team members by providing resources and guidance to bring the game to life.
- I optimize our development processes, streamline workflows, and ensure successful completion of the game.
Some of the responsibilities of a producer can be distributed among other roles in different contexts. However, the producer acts as the ultimate coordinator, bringing all these roles together for seamless collaboration.
Game Producer Vs Project Manager
Game production as a discipline stands apart from traditional project management regarding creative and business involvement. Game producers have a greater emphasis on the game as a product; they are the game’s champion.
The confusion between both fields stems from the simple fact that a great producer will have to be, at the very least, a good project manager. Project managers and more project management skills are crucial to the industry’s effort to eradicate crunch, and without them hardly anything will get done.
There is a recognition here that we exist in an environment that is:
- Changing constantly.
- Highly uncertain
The traditional management approach falls short in games, so producers must lead and build their teams into highly adaptive, collaborative machines based on crystal-clear goals.
What is Management Anyways?
The industrial revolution arose from the limitations of craftsmanship. The limited supply of craftspeople kept the supply of products low and their cost high. The invention of the assembly line transferred product creation to workers on the assembly line and were considered replaceable cogs performing only simple tasks. It removed the value of knowledge at every stage to a centralized few called managers. That’s where the whole concept of management in the workplace took hold. It’s always good to know the reasons for something existing.
The Managers Handbook, Basecamp Employee Handbook, Engineering Management for the Rest of Us & Mochary Method Curriculum have nice ideas.
Thoughts on Managenment
Top things that I think are must have for productive working environment (in no particular order):
- Psychological safety and trust in teams to organise.
- Coworkers that intrinsically care about their work.
- Coworkers that are fantastic people.
- Meaningful work.
Keep the decisions you’re making visible and discoverable. When it’s done well, all the other work is a lot simpler.