Hello. My name is Greg Donovan. I'm a senior producer here at Deep Silver Volition LLC, and I'm going to try and explain some of the day-to-day responsibilities and key challenges that a producer in the video game industry comes across on a regular basis. First up is, I think most of you know, it's like trying to find what a producer is and what they do is hard, but a lot of people don't even understand what the role comprises of. And so I'll be talking about what the role does from purely Volition standpoint, and know that The responsibilities for a producer in another studio may be different. When it comes to key responsibilities, and these are things that in most cases a producer will touch on on a daily, weekly basis for sure. A couple of them, at the forefront is establishing and upholding the game vision. Certainly you work with other team members to establish and define it, but figuring out what are the tools that you use to help communicate it, and importantly making sure that that vision is clearly understood by the team. So, well, we have a large team here. By most standards, it's over 200 people. Getting 200 people to understand what a creative endeavor is, and what they need to do in order to fulfill that vision is a challenge. A fun challenge, but making sure that vision is clearly understood and clearly communicated is a prime responsibility. Second is working with the team on defining the scope of the game. How much are you making, what are you making, and how long will it take to make it? Again, that's an iterative process, where you need some back and forth and lots of discussions with the team. But that inherently ties into scheduling, which is a third key responsibility of the production department producers. So that is everything from making a working schedule for the team, a high level schedule for the team, employing the project management artifacts that work best for the team that's risk mitigation, having a strong vision statement. Having a working backlog, having a project or feature road map. How you organize the schedule, and how you update it, and how you establish milestones. What's your cadence of milestones? Do you do agile? Do you do waterfall? Do you have a combination of both? How often are you reviewing milestones and checking in? How often are your sprints? That all ties into scope, budget, the PNL models, it's all part of the key responsibilities of a producers. Actually, when you get down to it on the side it's probably the key challenge is like how do you successfully work with a team to balance the trifecta of quality, time, and budget. The old adage is that you only get two out of the three, and producers need to do their best to nail all three. It's fun but it's very, very challenging indeed. The other thing other key responsibility is actually working with the publisher. The development team will make games, but the publisher actually puts it out. So producers for the most part get to work with the marketing department, the legal department, public relations, sales, operations sometimes. It's, It's a different set of needs, a different set of criteria and priorities, and be able to see that business side of it as actually, not only is it interesting, but it also has it's place. It's important, and it's something that helps keep producers on their toes, to recognize that you also have another set of, another corporation effectively that, even though it has the same goals, i.e., to put out a good game, how they go about delivering that may be different from how the team does it. And working as a liaison between corporate publisher and the team, is actually another responsibility of the producer. I mean basically its working. [NOISE] I'm talking out loud here, and the stream of thought is like I think the essential responsibility of a producer, is to successfully manage working with both the team and the publisher. To successfully deliver the game that has its clearly defined vision and quality requirements within the deadlines and budget that you have. And that's a tall order usually, but it's fun, in part because it's challenging and also because you are working with creative people that have a lot of usually good ideas on how to achieve that goal. Some of the key challenges that a producer may run across. There's a lot of overlap with the key responsibilities, but number one is establishing and then maintaining this clear project vision. You're working with a lot of creative people. They have wonderful opinions. They're usually very strong opinions. And trying to define, make the game fun, is usually very, very difficult to do. Especially if you are in early pre-production and you're talking in abstract terms. You don't have anything in game, not even a prototype. Maybe you have some concept art. So figuring out what tools to use to successfully communicate that vision, and how often you update that vision, and how you work with a team to clearly communicate it, is a key challenge. Let's face it, to get 200 plus people working in the same direction towards a common goal can be very, very difficult. And that's a segue into another key challenge, which is basically communication. It is tough to clearly define and articulate and communicate these often abstract terms, and make sure that creative people understand them. It's a constant challenge, but it's a fun challenge, because you're working with them on a daily basis to understand what's working and what isn't. And ways of what to understand about the game. What do you understand about our priorities? What do you understand about the scope? What do you understand about the mechanics? Of the features that were putting in this game to actually deliver on the vision. So kind of overlapping on the communication, the end goal for the communication challenge is actually scheduling fun. It is a very difficult process. I don't think anyone knows how to do it well. It's inherently iterative. It's not uncommon for something that you have on paper to actually not work out or be fun in game. Important thing and one of the tenets we try and subscribe to, is to fail fast. Know that a lot of work that you do particularly in early pre-production is going to be thrown away. That's okay. In pre-production what you're trying to do is actually figure out what is your plan towards production. Production loosely defined as, we know what we're making, we know how to make it, we know how long it will take. Even if you think that, you're probably not going to get everything right, because again, this is making games is an inherently iterative process. And scheduling fun is something that not many people are good at, and we're certainly learning and improving on that process all the time here at Volition. Working with creative people is a challenge also and it can be maddening at times, but I learn something from it every time I go through a project cycle. Sometimes I can get stuck in the mindset that my view of the world is the only view of the world, and certainly that's not the case. And to be able to work with creative people across multiple disciplines, helps me get better at my job, and helps me get better at solving creative problems. And it helps me recognize that you can't do this on your own. You can only do this successfully when you're working with a team. I also get asked a lot, it's like, you know, what are the pros and cons of being a producer. And again, this totally overlaps what the day-to-day and weekly and monthly, certainly monthly responsibilities are. I'll start with the not so good first. You can, at times, feel like you are on an island, and what that means is that people are usually coming to you with problems. And its not uncommon for everyone to tell you that what you're doing is wrong, but no victims, only volunteers. It's part of the gig, and you can't take it personally, and just understand that everyone has the same goal of creating the best game possible. And they're coming to you only because they want to work with you to solve these problems. Trying to schedule fun is a maddening process, again as I said in the past, no one's very good at it. We get better at it every time, I think, but that can just be a frustrating process. And we're just trying to, I guess that's a good thing too, because we can take a look back and say, all right, how can we improve on this? How can we improve at figuring out where the pitfalls are going to be on this new feature? Well how can we cut corners to make sure that we aren't losing time? And trying to balance that with, like it's okay to fail. It's like we know we're not going to get every single prototype right from the beginning. Also, at times producers can be put in a position where they have to make unpopular decisions. That's usually rare, but it can be tough. Certainly trying to marry the business and the creative side can be a challenge, and sometimes the cold, hard truth is at times, finance and budget can be the final arbiter when it comes to making a decision. And often times, creative people may not agree with that decision. But, if you are able to be open and be transparent about it, and explain why that decision was made, people usually end up respecting the decision. What I do like is constantly shifting gears, matching the business side of it like profit/loss models, contracts, working with the publisher with the creative side, like solving creative problems with creative people. Being able to go back and forth and wear that many hats is very appealing to me personally as a producer. I feel very fortunate in that I get to work with all disciplines. Programming a little bit, I'm not a programmer. Art and design, I work with them enough. Producers probably work with them enough to be dangerous and maybe annoy them a little bit. And it's one of the things that I have personally found is, just because for example, I play video games doesn't make me a good designer. And to get better about knowing when to stop talking about design and experts make the decision similarly, just because I read a lot of books, doesn't mean that I'm a writer, but getting back to the point. Being able to work with all those discipline and cross discipline groups or separately, is something that helps me be better as a producer, helps me understand how to creatively solves problems. It helps me better to more effectively work with the team to keep the project moving forward. Working with the developers and corporate, it's kind of analogous to working with the business side and the creative side, but there's different priorities. There's different needs. There's different problems. And being able to kind of go back and forth between those two worlds, is it keeps things fresh. It keeps things interesting, it keeps things challenging, in a good way. Working with creative people is a great thing, I love doing it. Touched on that briefly already, but I'm always learning, I'm always improving. I think at my skill set in working with creative people and understanding how to better approach solving problems with the team. I personally like scheduling and planning, I love a finely crafted schedule and spreadsheet. I love working with project management artifacts, I love setting up milestones and prioritizing work, and writing user stories with the team. I love reviewing work at the end of a milestone with the team, to figure out what we accomplished and what we didn't, and how we need to adjust scope. So I think that project management side of it is not only critically important, but I'm lucky in that I actually like to approach that work and dive into it. I love working with project managers that know that role way better than I do, and I've learned a ton since I've been here. I love solving problems, both creative and quantitative problems. And I think most importantly of all, I love the end product. If I were a producer on, say, light bulbs or toilet paper, something I wouldn't be as nearly enthused about what I do. I think having passion for what you're making is critical, otherwise you're not going to, your enthusiasm won't be there. And your level at which you throw yourself into the work, and working with other people, won't be where it needs to be to make the best possible game. It's never dull. So, in closing, I would say that being a producer can be appealing, if you're someone that likes to marry both the creative side knowing that you won't get into, you should probably not get into the details of creative decisions, but you can work closely with creative people. And marrying that with the quantitative or business side, and being able to work with the team together. With the express goal of delivering a fun game at the end, within established deadlines and budgets and quality requirements, and trying to make all of that work together. And working with enthusiastic compassionate people that are on board with tackling and achieving that goal. Then production's probably something you could be interested in. Good? >> Okay. >> All right. >> Thank you so
