The Role of a Producer in games development - The good and the bad!
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- Опубликовано: 27 апр 2023
- Game producers are essential in games development, especially at the AAA level, where studios have multiple departments with hundreds of staff. However, based on my experience, production can be both beneficial and detrimental, depending on how it's used. Here are my two cents on the job of a producer and where I think we can improve going forward.
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#producer #production #games #gamesproduction #stateoftheindustry 
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A good producer fight to give you the most amount of time to deliver the best animation quality you can without crunching. A bad producer is making the company plan a priority and your schedule suffer for it. This is how we have bugged games and rushed released.
It’s an incredibly difficult position to be in but an animation producer needs to understand what it takes to create animation.
The more they know about it the more they can relate and justify the man cost of producing good content. It’s our job to make sure we educate our producer correctly
Absolutely!! Couldn't agree more...unfortunately only after going through it a few times do you get to the conclusion you stated. But fingers crossed things will get better over the years.
As a producer, the truth is in the middle. I have been on projects with "unlimited budget" where "we want to give the team all the time they need to deliver at top quality". And oh boy I can tell that this is just another flavor of production hell. There is a safe amount of pressure that you have to put as a prod so that creative people do the hard cuts for you and the project move forward in the right direction. You are not a defender of the company or the team. You are literally the guy in the middle trying to make it work.
Allow me to propose a variation of your statement: a good producer works in service of the team. A bad producer thinks that the team work for them.
Really good, to the point video! There's a serious lack of material on 'the other side' of making games, such as project management, production, directing. There's a lot of stuff on game designers/coders perspective, making it like the organizational part of the development is some marginal, obvious part of the work. Hope there will be more videos like this! Thanks!
Thanks a lot for the great comment Gatt...and I agree there should be more videos talking about this subject as it's an important part of Game development. Keep in touch!
Thank you for sharing! It's always a pleasure watching your videos here on the channel.
Thank you for watching and for the great comment Dejay.
The Producer conundrum - giant backlogs with frequent interruptions. Being a Producer is a lot like watching someone walk a high wire, but you’re responsible if they fall and die.
As a Game Producer myself I appreciate your insight and take on the roles! I've always been told Producers are selfless roles.
"When we success the team successed, when we fail it's the producers fault." - My former Execuative Producer
Just to also add, my experience as a Producer and understanding is very case by case. Some Producers are more hands on, in the weeds, another is more like a protector, trying to protect the team from deadlines and stakeholders who just want more. But ultimately my experience has always been the production roadmap and deadlines is fully on us. What things need to get done when they get done and how it affects the whole process.
Outside of roadmaping and Dev cycle it's also being a conduit of information. Being the bridge of updates and communication and the biggest one always providing options. If I can't make the decision I am expected to bring the math and bring options that best suite our deadline and goals.
Thanks for adding to the conversation and you are absolutely spot on, based on my view from the outside that's the types of producers I found and tasks they had to cover. This is why finding a good one is extremely hard as it requires so many hard and soft skills.
@@harveynewman what hard skills do you think a producer needs? A job description asked for Jira. I am going for interview in 20 minutes. Wish me luck🍀
@@Usertesters best of luck I hope you get it. And yeah Jira is pretty essential to know as most game studios use it to track tasks, bugs and much more.
@@harveynewman it was a very quick interview, fingers crossed.
This was an incredibly interesting and informative watch, thank you for this!
I myself am a production person but in VFX, looking to potentially switch over into the games industry and trying to gather as much information as possible beforehand.
I was surprised to hear of the issues of production in games not understanding the departments. This is an essential part in VFX as well of course and we go through multiple roles (PA, Coordinator, Line Producer etc) before we even get to the Producer role. And through this we naturally learn an incredible amount about the pipeline and all the different departments. It would be very rare, or, I want to say close to impossible, to find a vfx producer that doesn't at least roughly understand the needs of every department.
And of course - understanding all the bits of the process makes my job a lot easier.
Not trying to say that the VFX production crew is perfect of course! We have our faults ;)
But I am curious to hear your thoughts - am I right in understanding that a Game Producer often starts with zero experience in the industry? Or are there any roles that come before a game producer? And I don't mean junior/associate game producer but an entirely different role comparable to a coordinator in VFX. I heard that sometimes production starts in QA testing (which I imagine would give them a good base understanding of how Game development works). And if so - do you think the Games industry would benefit from adding an additional production role before the Producer?
Anyways thanks for the great video!
Hey there! Thank you so much for your amazing comment and questions. I'm really glad to hear that you enjoyed the video.
You're absolutely correct about the role of producers in games coming from various industries. It's quite common to recruit producers from VFX because they bring a sense of speed and efficiency to game production. The only challenge is that the game and VFX industries are quite different, and the non-linear pipeline in games can sometimes be confusing and make it harder to understand why games are so complex.
However, I've had the opportunity to work with producers from different industries, and as long as they have a talent for teamwork and organization, they can make it work. It's all about finding the right fit for the organization.
I do agree that many game companies don't invest enough time in training and developing their production processes, unlike the VFX industry. Production is arguably one of the most crucial aspects of game development, and it deserves more attention. However, I believe that we are moving in the right direction. Many of my peers share the same views, and we've had numerous discussions about the importance of production and the need for a more tailored approach in the game industry.
Thanks again for your support and insightful comments. It's great to have people like you who understand the significance of production in game development. Let's keep pushing for a more thoughtful and game-specific approach.
I think that this is a double edged sword in some cases. One of the things about a PM or Producer is that they need to be a "Swiss Army Knife" for the company. Maybe they don't need to be but from the perspective of executive management I would postulate that a Swiss army knife is better than a spoon. If an employee is designed to stir soup and you put them into a job where they are required to turn over the burgers you might have an issue.
In a perfect world (from the perspective of a DEV) it would certainly help to have a producer who is aware of the difficulty of a given task by way of experience. Typically though, in the real world players don't really get to pick their coach and there is a reason for that.
If I were (and I am not) an executive who made decisions regarding who to hire as a producer I would pick a candidate who was versatile over one who was specifically good at producing a single discipline. If I pick the person who was an animator to manage animation element of a project then the animators might be one of two things - upset because this producer keeps meddling in their business or happy because the producer understands their job and gives them more than enough time to complete those tasks which as a negative possible outcome can cause even more delays.
You eluded in the video that as things are produced on time more and more work piles on. That is true for any industry. The sweet spot is to add appropriate caveats and buffers so that your team ends up hero's instead of zero's. What I mean by that is forecasting should always be done with the understanding that things can and will go wrong and should be accounted for not by reaction but by being proactive. If you build space into your timeline and more goes right than wrong, you get to wear the hero hat and take on additional work.
The point is PM positions in any company and in any industry are less about knowing the specific technology than they are about having a GOOD philosophy for producing any "complex" product.
If you only ever hire specifically talented producers to manage particular arms of projects you will end up letting all of them go every time a project is complete or trying to figure out what to do with them. If you hire versatile well rounded individuals who can learn a rudimentary understanding of those things and have an excellent understanding of diplomacy, negotiation and facilitation you will eventually end up with an individual you can throw at any problem and expect a positive result.
I applaud your videos and find them valuable and insightful. This is just an alternative opinion. Thank you very much for doing these!
Love the take and absolutely, it really depends on the studio the type of game and how much the producer gets to do in any one studio. As mentioned this things changes pretty much studio to studio.
Thanks a lot for watching and for your input.
Thank you for sharing! I am actually in a similar situation recently and your explanation helps me understand more about what the producer are facing and trying to working things out.
So, when you are a game animator and if you ever were in a situation when you suddenly have no animation tasks due to the changes of the production plan, what would you do during that period?
Hey Quin, happy it resonates. And I would speak first with your lead/director about the lack of tasks and what could be done in the meantime. If you still don't have anything to do, work on a few personal animation shots whilst waiting...;) I had that situation a couple of times and it was time well spent sharpening my skills.
Great video, Harvey! Thank you for sharing your thoughts. You brought up the point that it can be tiring to explain what a department does to a producer and that having a producer that understands the department's processes makes for the best results. My question is what if a producer is either new to the job or new to the department and has, say, production experience in another field but has to get up to speed on the new department's role and processes. If that producer is trying to get up to speed quickly and meeting with other leadership within the department to learn about it, would that still be annoying? Wouldn't that be a good producer who is trying to understand the department's role so that they can best serve its people and advocate for them to upper management? I would think that a producer who needs to catch up on knowledge quickly and seeks out expertise to help them accomplish that would be viewed as a forward-leaning and conscientious producer. What are your thoughts? Thanks!
Hey Gibson, great question. I think what you mentioned about asking questions is absolutely essential. And if certain departments don’t have a lot of patience explaining, perhaps try to clarify why you need the knowledge in order to perform your job better. Once they understand and makes sense it will be easy…specially after they see the results as you get better at your job.
I hope that helps…I’ve worked with young producers that given their curiosity and hard work are way better and more effective then experienced producers that perhaps are set in their ways of working.
@@harveynewman Hey Harvey, great response, thank you for taking the time. Intellectual curiosity goes a long way, I’d agree. Sometimes experience is a crutch or handicap if used from a position of hubris. Or the old “this is the way it has always been done so we will keep doing it this way,” which could be just laziness if there are better methods of performing tasks.