So You Want To Be a Producer - How to Lead a Development Team - Extra Credits

The Producer is one of the least-appreciated roles in the game industry. Their job is to ensure that the game gets finished and shipped on time (not floating in development hell forever) by enabling everyone else to do their best work.

(Original air date: October 5, 2011)

This week's guest art by LeeLee Scaldaferri! Check out her weekly webcomic, Name Game!
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♪ Intro Music: "Penguin Cap" by CarboHydroM

♪ Outro Music: "Ska Buffet" by The OverClocked Plaid Muffins

[Kohdok]

Movie producers have a saying "Movie's aren't finished, they're taken away".

[mikeleeisback]

"...waiting for his code to compile..."

Yeah, I've used that excuse.

[ronaldwong]

Couldn't be agree more. :)

I'm a producer in one of Indonesian most leading game studio and coming from a game designer role, I have to say that it IS hard to find a balance in saying "yes" to the development team to add more interesting features and saying "no" since the game needs to be done soon.

I remember that one time, one of the development staff said this to me "do you want this game to be good? or do you just want it to be delivered?"

I was dumbstruck at that time but learned my lesson. Sometimes adding more features to make a game "better" doesn't always seems the case. At the end of the day, no matter how "perfect" the game will be, it is your audience that becomes the judge. So learning from that, nowadays I am able to say "No" easier compare to before.

Thanks, Extra Credits for this interesting video, pretty much nailed the experience that I've been experiencing so far in my 4 years duration as a Game Producer. :)

[TheManWithTheFlan]

So, in a game company, the producer is like the support mage, casting buffing and battlefield control spells so the other player can come in and...kill the...games with their...developer swords? I think I lost the analogy a bit at the end.

[gibsmarpuri]

I swear I got teary eyed after hearing the line "Go hug the game producer". I am a 5 year software/hardware developer and was given a huge task to manage a gaming application which I did not really dreamed of. I don't think I will be the very best game producer but I will for sure avoid the temptations to be a bad game producer. I think being a game producer is the heart of the game. We are on our 6th month gaming development of a 5 man team and we still haven't reached alpha testing phase. This video will for sure give me another boost starting today. I will for sure understand every aspects and feelings of each team member. Thank you Extra Credits <3

[Einstine]

Not a game developer, just a programmer.
But this is spot on.
I had shitty managers, and I now a have a good one.
And this video describes exactly WHY

[Quelandoris]

Im a giant bear-man and i just hugged my understandably confused producer.

[kilotun]

Sounds exactly like the job of a Technical Officer in the Navy (at least the Canadian one). You have a bunch of guys and girls (your techs) working for you that are experts on their particular pieces of equipment. You've got some general idea of everything they do, but they can tell you every single circuit card in a unit and probably their grandchildren. Then you take what they are telling you and translate that into Command Officer speak (equivalent to Grade 10 English). In addition, you serve to make sure that the Command Team's priorities are being reflected in the work/maintenance that your technical department is doing. The techs might have something they really, REALLY want done but if there's no way for it to get done before the boat is going to sea, you've got to say, "Sorry guys, all resources we can throw at this are tapped out". Heck, the good Technical Officers will ACTUALLY GET coffee and Tim Horten's for their sailors. Maybe I should become a producer for a games company after my Navy stint. Sounds like fun...

[Killer]

I have never felt I wanted to do something more than how I feel I want to be a producer now

[dustindicely]

Sounds a lot like being the conductor of an orchestra

[mrmacdingo]

This video may have actually given me a desire to understand and explore the possibility of applying myself as a producer! I had no idea about the necessary skills of a producer before this video. Before now, I pretty much thought it was just being an investor or monetary authority. I had no clue that a producer would have an kind of hands on the project or did anything other than say 'yes' or 'no' to ideas! I love working with teams and facilitating communication between departments in my work! To hear that a producer's job is to be a 'bird's-eye' arbiter between creative talents is like hearing: "a good counselor (my current career aspiration) shouldn't be afraid to play 'Papers, Please' with their clients"! Thank you guys soooo much for showing me such an incredible opportunity and teaching me about a critical niche that I had such blatant misconceptions about! You guys rock!

[LostScarf]

This made Producer sound like a lot of stress, but it also sounds very interesting and fun in a way.

[IJustLoveStories]

Not a game developer, but an animator. I recently worked on a project where the producer was a very close friend of mine, whose strengths and weaknesses I knew very well. Throughout the project there were several things she had to stand firmly on in order to get the project done. Towards the director, who considered himself god, towards the modelers, towards one animator who's one of those beefy types who goes around calling themselves 'alpha' unironically, even to me. It was easy to resent her for de-prioritizing those cool shots, or for telling you that you simply can't spent any more time on this rigging problem, or for tightening the times on which the workday started and ended. Luckily, because I knew her well, I could tell she was taking no pleasure in doing so, and how much personal strength it took her to do it. In her way she was probably fighting for the project more than any of us, and I definitely made sure to let her know I appreciated that, both during and after the project.

[MRdaBakkle]

I love how so many of these videos relate to the film industry. I used to think I wanted to be a film producer. It's nice seeing the game industry coming into it's own as an art.

[ohmak]

A nice thing that other media like, say movies or books dont have is, you can't just fix the problem after you release it automatically. Games? How many patches do we have? How about a little cheap dlc for things that didn't fit. That awesome game mode you and the designers loved? Finish it post release and sell it for 5 bucks. People aren't going to complain about 5 bucks and some of the people who usually wont spend money will be willing to spend a measly 5 bucks. is it of course ever going to be as easy as I said it? no, of course not, but it's an option that other media don't have. We might as well use it.

[DracoTheBlack]

Today I learned: I want to be a producer.

[DiamondAngelWings]

You know, watching this again really hits home for me because the job of the producer sounds an awful lot like the job of a stage manager in theatre.  I studied how to be one in college (unfortunately I have been unable to work as one outside of college, but hey), and the main thing I got out of it was that the stage manager, especially in the planning and rehearsal stages, is the hub of information.  Directors, actors, designers, and producers all rely on the stage manager to collect information and distribute it where necessary.  They are also responsible for helping to spot problems and direct the people best able to handle those problems to solving them.  Stage management is very much a facilitation position.  Trying to make everything run smoothly so that the play, no matter how bad it is or how great it is, runs smoothly. Anyone in the theatre needs to give the stage manager a hug too!!!

[xtremewarrior]

Could you do a "So you want to be a concept artist" episode?

[fighder]

Been a producer on two projects now and experienced bad project management on another. Learned so much from these projects in how to better myself next time when going into a project. The best way in my opinion in being a better producer is by doing projects, big or small, commercial or not.

[ameteuraspirant]

with online games and bug patches nowadays, it's not as bad to cut features because you can always put them in later after the game is shipped if you need to.