Decisions that hurt, but are necessary

Being a producer means making decisions. Sometimes they really hurt, sometimes less. Every producer is faced with an important decision sooner or later, and their choice could ensure that the project succeeds or fails. Producers don’t code, they don’t create graphics, sounds, or build levels. They may have a stake in everything, because like a good conductor, a producer has to know all the departments. He doesn’t have to have mastered any other discipline, but he does need to be able to think like a programmer or a designer. His understanding must go so far that he can ask smart questions to solve problems. But he doesn’t solve them by writing code or revising assets himself, but by redistributing tasks, rearranging the timeline or revising stories in the backlog. Sometimes he just needs to fetch a kebab or make coffee for a hungry team member, because the producer makes sure that the machine runs smoothly.

In my last project, I learned a lot about the work of a producer, but also things about myself. So now I know that being a pure producer is not enough for me, I also have to do a little game design. My creativity is so jealous, I can’t keep it under the lid. I have so many ideas and so much, so extremely huge joy in thinking up and creating things that I get unhappy when I can’t live it out. Back in 2009, I was also mixing game design and production, except that my bosses didn’t know they had a creative producer as an employee. It was a wild time, where I knew Jira and had a rough idea of planning, but from today’s perspective I was as far away from a good producer as an egg from a buttercream cake.

In the last project, I learned how to distribute tasks correctly – something very important. Before, I always thought that a team member’s job drawing would tell you what tasks you need to assign to them. A programmer writes code, a level designer builds levels, and a graphic artist creates graphics. The larger the team, the more this approach hits the core, but it is not irrefutable. For example, a graphic designer can also become a game designer if he or she is particularly qualified for this in his company. You always have to think outside the box and sometimes it’s lower than you think.

The smaller the team, the more the person who does the planning, i.e. the producer, has to make sure that he chooses the right team member for each task. And right in this case means:

1. Of all possible candidates, the one has the highest necessary skill.
2. He has enough time and there is no other important task for which he would be best suited.
3. He has the fire in him, he wants to make it.
4. The person enjoys the task.

These points have to be evaluated and weighed against each other – the fun is often not decisive, but sometimes it is. Nevertheless, points a, b and c are usually the most important. In my last team, I had thought for too long that a member was determined by their job title, so I didn’t choose the best one for the job. This meant that we didn’t have good level design for a long time and everyone was unhappy – there was also a lack of good sound because our UI designer, who was supposed to do it on the side, didn’t have the fun or the fire for it. None of us felt called to be SFX designers, but the playtesters were crying out for it. Good advice was expensive. You have to know that I also have a lot of fun with level design and also with balancing, two very cool things. Figuring out stats that fit perfectly and building levels that push all the mechanics to the limit can be very satisfying activities.

Other teams in our situation would have left everything as it is and stubbornly adhered to the designated departments – that’s the easier way. Another team struggled with balancing, but didn’t talk about it or change the responsibilities, which didn’t solve the issues. Often, changes fail due to the fear of conflict. You don’t want to take tasks away from someone because it might make them feel bad. But that only makes sure that the whole team is not doing well and the game suffers. In the end, you’re hurting the person you were trying to protect because the game isn’t going to be as good as it could be. And after all, we work to get better – and also to earn money.

When meetings and motivational speeches were no longer effective, I redistributed the corresponding tasks. That can be a very difficult step and that’s what it was for us. But just because you take a task away from someone doesn’t mean you kick them out of the team altogether. He can take on other tasks and thus help the team in other ways. Unfortunately, redistributions don’t always end so lightly, but in this respect, the producer has to think about the product. The team should be happy, so every single one, but the quality of the game decides in the end whether everyone can keep their job. The team animal can’t live on air and love alone.

It would have been easy to take all the tasks away from the level designer and do it yourself. I had a great desire for it and previous knowledge. So points c and d were fulfilled. But of course I didn’t have the time for that, because the SFX also had to be reworked and there was actually no one in our team who was better suited for it than me. Let’s go through the list:

1. My skill is very low because I’m not a composer. However, the same was true for everyone else on the team. Therefore, this point is neutral.
2. I had enough time, because our team was so tiny at that time with four members that my producer activities were manageable.
3. I knew how important this task was, so I wanted to finish it in the best possible way – because I wanted our game to be good.
4. I didn’t enjoy the task directly, because I’m just not a composer and it’s very difficult for me to work on sounds. However, the intrinsic motivation was so great that it still had a certain appeal to take on the task.

So that was the situation and it was with a heavy heart that I decided to entrust the level design to our programmer, who had enough time at this point in the project and was also very knowledgeable about the genre of our game. He took great pleasure in the matter and had tremendous expertise. Since our level designer left us by mutual agreement, I changed our vision very much and shortened large parts of the planned level design to keep the risk as low as possible. That was also a very important and difficult decision, because it turned our game upside down, almost halved it. At this point, we benefited from my very detailed risk analysis, which included exactly this case. Therefore, we were able to simply work through the appropriate solutions and did not run the risk of ending up without anything. They lost self-confidence after a team member left us, returned after the vision change and we continue to work highly motivated.

At this point, everyone realized that the very agile way of working had saved our butts. That’s because we built everything in our game in a strictly modular way and were therefore able to make the project make a 180-degree turn within two hours of work. From a side-scroller with arena tower defense and Vampire Survivors borrowings – to a pure Vampire Survivors clone with a high difficulty level and 6-minute run length as a USP.

It’s been a wild ride, this project. But we all learned a lot. The game that came out of it could have been bigger. It’s not AAA or BBB, it’s more mobile, the playtesters just enjoy it and that’s what it comes down to. And I have the good feeling that I made the right decisions in very difficult situations, even if they sometimes hurt. But that’s the job of a producer, especially if he’s a creative producer.

Your Chefspatz