[Dennis Rohlfing (pictured) of social developer InnoGames dives into what it takes to be a good video game producer, outlining the responsibilities and hardships anyone entering into the profession should prepare to face.]
Producers often discuss topics such as budget, quality, time and scope to define a project, as well as its variables or constants influencing a project's success. Additionally, to sound really important, they may use terms like agile, SCRUM, Kanban, Lean Development, stage gates, milestones, risk matrix, business planning, business cases, resources and revenue. Producers for browser games add words like ARPU, ARPPU, Retention, DAU, MAU, TAU, and CTR.
If you're interested in those exotic things, buy some books, sit down and relax. But, if you want your team to reach its highest level of productivity, you will need more than just tools and an understanding of some basic words. You need to be good! Good at being a leader, motivating people, understanding people's habits and moods, communicating and excellent at offering fruits and candy to your crew.
Unfortunately, this article is way too long to include tips on chopping fruit. Instead, it will focus on those soft skills a producer should carry into a project for maximum quality results.
Producing
The only way to produce an excellent game is to turn it into an excellent project within the shortest time frame possible. Insomnia and burnout are not necessarily indicators for having pushed the project productivity and the product quality to their maximum potential.
The producer's main task is to keep control of all aspects of the development (without exception). In parallel, the producer needs to be able to answer all questions regarding the quality, budget and release date of the product at any moment.
That is an illusion, of course! Never forget that a producer cannot possibly keep full control of the project's evolution in every area of the development cycle. Instead, one needs to be sure to take an influential role in evolving a project's habits without limiting the team's self-determination. Especially in bigger projects, (more than 15-20 people) a producer needs to ensure that he or she has motivated, capable leads for each competence area (creative direction, art direction and technical direction) in place to be able to delegate crucial tasks with confidence. The producer should cultivate a relationship of trust with those leads to be able to receive honest and useful information on a close-to-daily basis.
The producer's voice is mightier than his sword. As a producer, you should never underestimate the words you use in any conversation with any person involved in the project, in or out of the office. An example of this: a couple of weeks ago, I told one programmer at a pub that I would love to have a tiny button implemented, providing me the possibility to start all my defined productions with just one click. Surprisingly, two weeks later the team presented me and the leads with a version including this feature... Right after the meeting, the game designer came to me upset that I would have destroyed the complete design with my "tiny, top secret, undercover and non-reflected feature request," because planning one's production separately is a clearly defined gameplay element. Oops! I only meant to discuss this with the previously mentioned programmer from a player's perspective and not as a producer.
Besides all the management theories out there in countless books, there is one very important message I would like impart on all future producers: Don't assume anything! I remember the days when my prior boss-man, Benedikt Grindel, wisely said this. Back in those days, I didn't realize the importance of this sentence. Today, however - four years later - I know exactly what he was talking about. I promise that soon you will too.
