No guests today! Instead, I'll be taking questions from the Building Better Games discord and answering them. I cover10 questions including the challenges with AAA dev, the rise of co-dev, and what production careers look like. Enjoy!
Question #1 : How do you ensure that you (the royal you) are making a game that will be fun for players, not just fun for its designers to make? (Or maybe in this context - what are the ways in which production can support product management and ensure the sprint-to-sprint goals align with what internal player advocates are asking for?)
Question #2 : What would you say needs to happen to make the big players more competitive / successful again?
Question #3: Do you think there’s an observable trend towards an increased amount of codevelopment as a way to mitigate costs/risk? What issues do you see this posing for coherent design and production if there is an increasing reliance on external development partners?
Question #4: There are clear signs when certain aspects of a game are lacking - incoherent design, low quality assets, buggy software. What are the player-facing symptoms of a game that is lacking in production or leadership competencies?
Question #5: Production organizations at larger game studios often suffer from issues of structure, such as a substantial number of producers, senior producers, and even lead producers all rolling directly up into an overburdened production director, because there doesn’t seem to be an understood space for a “producer manager” between frontline production and executive/director-level production leadership. What is the rationale for this gap when manager is a well-understood conceit in other gamedev disciplines (e.g. designers will have design managers reporting to a design director, artists will have department managers reporting to a director, engineers have managers between them and directors, etc.)?
Is it just that production is typically not a large enough organization to merit managers? That producers are seen as organized and not in need of more traditional personnel management?
Question #6: How can you become better at your role as a producer when you aren’t at your job? Or in other words, how can you get better at what you do aside from getting more experience?
Question #7: For mid- and senior level producers: What does a career development track look like? Often it seems like the only future for a highly competent producer is executive producer (a stretch for many and not a realistic path for most) or production director, which itself is a rarified commodity at larger developers. What are the progression opportunities an IC producer should be considering?
Question #8: As the only Production guy on my team (and 1 of 3 "operations people"), how would you deal with getting questions and answers when you have nobody around to rubber ducky with?
Question #9: When talking about the past, how can you learn to abstract experiences and look past the specifics? Are there any resources you recommend for learning how to tell stories so that you’re not bogged down in the details of history?
Question #10: How are game developers selecting and setting up test groups to see their players are enjoying the game and it’s a good market fit? Are there aspects of this process that could see refining and improving? Or common pitfalls other developers tend to see in this process?
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LinkedIn for Steve Bromley (https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevebromley/) and Graham McAllister (https://www.linkedin.com/in/grahammcallister/)
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Steve Bromley's Book: https://gamesuserresearch.com/book/
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Graham McAllister URL: https://grahammcallister.com/
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Steve Bromley URL: https://gamesuserresearch.com/
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Agile Game Development: Build, Play, Repeat by Clinton Keith: https://www.amazon.com/Agile-Game-Development-Addison-Wesley-Signature-dp-0136527817/dp/0136527817/
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Lean from the Trenches by Henrik Kniberg: https://www.amazon.com/Lean-Trenches-Managing-Large-Scale-Projects/dp/1934356859/
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Creativity, Inc. by Ed Catmull and Amy Wallace: https://www.amazon.com/Creativity-Inc-Expanded-Overcoming-Inspiration/dp/0593594649/
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Turn the Ship Around by L. David Marquet: https://www.amazon.com/Turn-Ship-Around-Building-Breaking/dp/0241250943
Our discord community is live! Join here to engage with leaders and producers in game dev looking to make our industry a better place that makes better games: https://discord.gg/ySCPS5aMcQ
If you’re interested in an online course on becoming a better game producer, head here: https://www.buildingbettergames.gg/succeeding-in-game-production
Subscribe to our newsletter for more game development tips and resources: https://www.buildingbettergames.gg/newsletter
Ben's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benjamin-carcich/
YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@buildingbettergames
Spotify Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/6QD5yIbFdJXvccO8Z5aXpm
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