Becoming a Game Producer
Welcome! If you’re here, then I’m assuming you’re curious about the role of a game producer. Read on to learn more!
Howdy! This is my first blog post. I’m terrified. I have no idea what I’m doing, but I say that every day *shrug*
Let me preface by saying I’m writing this purely based on my own research and experiences. It won’t be the same for everyone, and I don’t really think there’s a set path to become a producer. Almost every producer I’ve talked to ended up where they are now in a different way! Pretty fun. Also, I’m also still learning about game production and how to be a better producer, so take everything I say with a large grain of salt.
I’ve been a producer in the games industry for…almost two years now. Wow! Feels weird to say. Whenever I tell people what I do, or I share something on LinkedIn, the number one question I get is “how did you do it?” I’ve shared a few tips and tricks on there, but I thought it would be easier to put it in a blog post so everything’s in one spot.
Becoming a game producer didn’t happen overnight. It took a few months of research, followed by months of rejections and self-doubt before I found a place that was willing to bet on me (shoutout to the TS4 team at Maxis - you changed my life).
Here’s what this blog post will cover. I might end up writing separate pieces on each of these, because I could go on forever:
what is a game producer?
what skills and tools are useful?
what if I don’t have games industry experience?
what production resources are out there?
Who this article might be for: someone curious about the role of a game producer, interview tips, producer resources, someone looking to enter the games industry with zero experience, a producer looking for advice, someone who enjoys memes, idk.
ℹ️ - One thing I found confusing when I first started out - the word “production” could mean different things so I’ll be sure to give context when I use it. But it could mean production as the job function, the team, or the development stage in a game’s development lifecycle.
What is a game producer?
Producers are game developers too!
Let’s talk about the role of a game producer and what it is you actually do in this role. Keep the ship afloat, wrangle cats, lots of analogies can be made and are all true!
It might vary based on the studio or game, but in a nutshell, a game producer helps oversee the overall production and development of a game or pipeline from start to finish. Think of it like an air traffic controller - manage the flow and communication of work and people, guide team members, and be proactive to identify and remove roadblocks. From my experience, a game producer can also serve as the voice of the player and vision of the game, which is important to keep in mind throughout development.
While I meme about it above, game producers are usually in charge of tracking development milestones and work, ensuring teams have what they need to complete work on time and at the promised quality. Identifying team goals, what tasks need to be completed to meet them, and what the priorities are is a huge part, but communicating these goals so everyone is on the same page is equally as important.
Producers also help with decision making, often using data from dashboards but also trusting their gut. Making decisions is hard, especially if it’s something as big as cutting work to stay in scope, but producers help teams come to these decisions. Identifying project risks and ways to mitigate them is key! There’s a few ways to do this, but I might save that for another post.
In some studios, producers are people leaders, helping to maintain a healthy vibe! Tracking work is one thing, but ensuring people are properly tasked and have good work-life balance will translate to a well-developed game.
Again, it’ll vary by studio! There’s different kinds of game producers. Some specialize in a specific discipline. For example, I’m an Associate Technical Producer at That’s No Moon. While I interact with all kinds of teams, I generally focus on supporting our engineers. I’ve also worked as a publishing producer, where I partnered with game studios to help get their game developed, marketed, and published on various storefronts. Take a look at Hitmarker’s complete list of gaming jobs to see what other kinds are out there! What kind of producer role would you be interested in? Comment below!
What Skills and Tools are Useful?
HIRED.
Now that we have a general understanding of what a game producer does, let’s talk about what skills and tools you might use day to day, as well as what some job descriptions ask for! I’ll also dive into some general tips and examples for each, and how to navigate through them if you’re coming from a different industry.
The most important thing to keep in mind: you don’t need to have it all! Lots of skills can be learned and trained, and a good studio will give you a chance and support you to hone your skills. These aren’t all the skills people would find most important, this is just me pulling from my experience and what’s allowed me to succeed in my role. If I didn’t list one, comment below - would love to hear your take!
1: Project Management
I talked about it above, but producers ensure the game stays on track and meets its goals. To get more granular, this might look like:
Ideation & Brainstorming: collect and manage ideas, risks, initial budgets
Scheduling & Roadmapping: create project schedule with milestone delivery dates and visuals
Risk Management: identify project risks and mitigations, and communicating proactively
Process & Pipeline Management: create and iterate on processes, manage various development work
Progress Tracking & Reporting: create dashboards and visuals to track and report progress, either to team members or management
Common tools producers use for project management include JIRA, Trello, Asana, Shotgrid, Confluence, Notion, Miro, Perforce, and ClickUp. Also, some studios will follow some version of project development methodology like waterfall, agile, or lean, or a framework like scrum or kanban. Again, you don’t need to have experience with all of these, but these are ones you might see on a producer job description. YouTube and Reddit will be your best friend if you’re unfamiliar with any of them!
Tips: you are generally the first line of defense when it comes to whatever it is you’re producing, so it’s important to have the facts organized and updated! This doesn’t mean you have to know everything. The two most common answers I have for people are “I don’t know the answer to that question…but I can point you into the direction of someone who does,” or “it depends.” Both are extremely valid answers!
What if I don’t have relevant experience: trick question - you probably have an example but you haven’t thought about it from a project management perspective! Being part of a school project, student organization, or other work-related project is still project management. It doesn’t even need to be work-related, either! Last year, I had to sell my childhood home for my father and project managed the crap out of that entire situation, from finding and managing external vendors, scheduling showings and services, analyzing risks of selling and offers, and tracking the progress of packing each room. And honestly, it was the hardest project I’ve ever taken on. The key to this area is to be clear, concise, and confident with your experience!
2: Communication & People Management
You can only make a great game if the team behind it is well-supported and set up for success, and a good producer can help with that. Producers partner with each team at a studio and make sure they have all the information, staff, tools, and time to make cool stuff. In my experience, I’ve been put in charge of a specific set of gameplay features, each with a team of people coming together to make the feature something we are proud to ship to players. Here, it was important for me to clearly define our feature goals, what tasks were needed to complete them, and assigning work appropriately so that people felt confident in their work with the time we had.
Another part of this is streamlining communication effectively so that everyone’s on the same page. Finding ways for people to communicate with one another is also part of the job - whether that’s facilitating meetings, following up with asynchronous conversations, running retrospectives/feedback sessions, workshops, etc. Don’t just listen to your team, ensure they know they are heard and that you are here to help, be transparent and foster that trust and rapport.
A challenging but important piece of communication and people management is leading with empathy. Being able to read the room and respond appropriately is a hard skill to master, but it comes with practice and time. Teams should feel empowered to own their work, so giving them the space to do so is key! Not only that, but maintaining a supportive and accessible environment will allow them to do their best work. Understanding their needs, communication preferences, and how they process information can help you create an effective communication plan.
Some tools you might see include video software like Zoom, Teams, Google Hangout, or other communication platforms like Slack or Discord. Documentation tools like Confluence or Notion allow you to store and share information. Tools like Miro are a great workshopping and retrospective tool for visuals and whiteboarding. If you’re hybrid or in office, sitting with your team can allow you to get to know people better! But, if you’re remote, hopefully your studio has adopted a healthy remote culture that still allows you to feel that sense of comradery.
Tips: not everyone communicates the same way, nor does everyone process information the same way. Get to know your team, understand how they best communicate and work with people and tailor the experience towards that. Not everything is a one size fits all, so forcing people into meetings or establishing processes that don’t work just creates more friction. It’s the same with players. Not everyone will experience your game the same way, so having accessibility options helps people play games in the way they need.
What if I don’t have relevant experience: again, you probably do! (are you seeing a trend here?) Much like project management, communication and people skills are embedded into everyday life. Think of a time where you were put on a team: how did you interact with others? How did you work together to meet your goal? Painting the picture for interviewers and recruiters will help them understand how your experiences transfer to that of a producer. For example, I was a Behavioral Therapy Intern where I specialized in play and filial therapy. When I talk about this experience, I highlight how it allowed me to train my active listening skills to effectively respond and ask questions to children and their caregivers so that we could provide an appropriate therapy program.
3. Effective Problem Solving
While producers aren’t expected to solve all the problems, they do play a part in arriving at a solution! You may have seen on my portfolio that I find it best to strike a balance between trusting your gut and using data to make decisions. The same is true for problem solving! Presenting people with facts, context, and possible solutions will allow teams to agree on the best path forward.
I mentioned before that risk management is an important skill to have. It allows producers to be proactive in solving potential risks that could occur during development. When I was in publishing, I actually pulled up our risk management plan because our development partner did in fact run into a risk they called out! This was great because we ended up going with the plan we discussed, and were still able to meet the milestone. Maybe they were psychic?
Analyzing data from project tracking software gives you ammo to make your decision. Say you have competing priorities for a feature, and your milestone deadline is approaching quick. You can use your data to see a number of things: who has bandwidth to support, where can we sacrifice time, can we punt this to another sprint or milestone, or is this even in scope? Backing up decisions with fact gives context, especially if you need to make a case to management, leadership, stakeholders, whoever the audience will be.
But, data isn’t the only way you should solve problems. Most of the time, it’s your intuition, gut feeling, vibe, whatever you want to call it. If you don’t feel one-hundred percent about a solution, you’re probably right. Have confidence in this feeling and voice it!
Lastly, if it’s a team effort, make it so! The key decision makers should feel empowered to voice their thoughts in a supportive environment. As a producer, give people the space to share and collect everything that’s been said. Present it back in a way that clearly defines the best path forward.
Tips: clearly define the problem. If you don’t know what the issue is, you’re not going to find the best way to move forward! Equally as important, identify who are the main people involved in deciding the solution and actioning on the solution vs. the people that need to be informed. One way to do this is through a DACI matrix. DACI = driver, approver, contributor, informed. This kind of framework helps everyone understand what their roles are and what’s expected of them.
What if I don’t have relevant experience: you guessed it - you probably do have experience! We’ve all run into a problem before that made us stop and think before acting on it. These experiences are absolutely transferable if you’re able to communicate it clearly. I’ll make a separate post about interview tips, but answering questions with an example and results will help people paint a picture of how you might solve a problem at their studio.
4. Time Management, Prioritization, and Organization
Staying organized can help you save time! If you’re in a pinch, the worst thing that can happen is struggling to find the information you need when you know for a fact it’s…somewhere.
Using documentation tools like Confluence or Notion allow you to organize information in a flow that makes the most sense for you and your team. It’s especially helpful when someone outside of your team needs to reference something, and they’re able to find it without having to ask around. I’ve been in roles where my production leads have to present progress to leadership and stakeholders, and they need to quickly find the answer to something. Most of the time, they don’t message me because they know it’s on a specific page within our Confluence and that it’s the most up-to-date information. It might feel time consuming, but spending the time to organize and update will help everyone in the long run.
Along with organization, managing you and your team’s time is precious. Getting accurate estimates for work and planning that work in sprints or milestones is a good start, but once the team’s actively in development, checking in on the progress will help you understand if things are taking more or less time. Tying back to people management, it’s super important to ensure everyone has a healthy workload and that people aren’t feeling pressure, overworked, or that they have to crunch. Keeping a pulse on your teams will help you be proactive in assigning work.
While time is an important factor, analyzing team priorities will help you achieve your goals on time and at the quality you need for your milestone. Using tools like JIRA will help you assign priorities to tasks and bugs so that developers know what order they should be working in. Priorities can always shift, so be sure to set that expectation with your team and communicate appropriately!
In a perfect world, things get done on time, and everything gets the attention it deserves, but there’s always going to be times where priorities clash, or something happens that’s completely out of anyone’s control and now you have less time. If you need to pivot, it’s important to know why this is happening, what are the knock-on effects, what sacrifices need to be made, and what the new expected output will be. Lastly, communicating these changes out to the team will keep everyone on the same page!
Tips: if you’re unsure about what should be prioritized or how long a task would take, ask your developers! They’re the experts in their work and will have valuable input. Keep in mind that when you’re estimating, you will need to factor in other time like meetings, planned time off, and other things that might occupy someone’s schedule.
What if I don’t have relevant experience: think of a time where you had to juggle competing priorities or expectations - draw from personal experience. Even if it’s something like in a game! There’s SO MANY things I want to get done in Stardew Valley, but I only have from 6 am to ~1:30 am before I have to sprint back to my house before I pass out (I refuse to give Joja my money). During a typical day, I’ll identify the tasks I need to do, rank them, and organize my backpack accordingly. This example is even more applicable if you’re sharing a farm with other people!
Producer Resources
Phew, still with me? I’ll dive deeper into each skill in separate blog posts eventually, but that’s the ~ high-level ~ of what I think are important skills and what I’ve been asked about in interviews.
If you’re reading this blog post, then you’re already doing your research on producer resources! There’s lots of places to start, but here are the ones that I found to be the most helpful and a good starting point for that foundational knowledge you might be looking for:
Game Production Community Discord: a Discord community for game producers and aspiring game producers, run by producers from various studios and levels. They also have a podcast!
The Game Production Handbook: this book talks about game production as a whole, but discusses the role of a producer!
Javiera Cordera’s job application Notion template: a staple in my job search. I project managed the crap out of my job search using this template as a baseline and let me tell you, it made job searching…fun? more bearable might be the better phrase.
Svetlana Lisik’s producer one-pager: a great high-level overview of being a producer on the game development side
How Video Games are Made: top-to-bottom explanation of the game development process, which will give you context on how a producer fits into all of it
Agile vs Waterfall vs Kanban vs Scrum: overview of different development methodologies and frameworks you might encounter
JIRA Best Practices: while not used everywhere, if a studio you’re interested is using JIRA, you can get an overview of it here. But personally, the best way I’ve learned JIRA is by using the tool day to day and finding ways to break it :D
Building Better Games: newsletters, podcasts, and even a course on production run by veterans!
Maintaining the Vision: a helpful article to read about when learning more about a game’s vision, and how a producer can help be that voice
GDC Production talks: a collated list of GDC talks from some of your favorite games’ developers!
Again, these are ones I’ve personally used in the past but there’s a lot more out there! If you have recommendations, link them down below!
Ready to be a Producer?
a daily occurrence
If you took anything away from this blog, it’s that you can be a game producer too! When I first thought about switching to production, I had someone tell me that the skills I had were only good for the role I was currently in. That made me feel shitty, to say the least. But I put in the work, did the research, found people that actually believed in me, and here I am. Now, I want to use my experience to help others, and be that someone that believes in you.
Hopefully this was helpful? If it helps one person, then I’ll be happy. Again, everyone has different paths and there’s no one size fits all. Some things I shared may not be right or helpful to you, but know that it’s not the only way to get into production. Talking with more producers in the industry and joining safe communities can expose you to other experiences, too.
I hope to post more content soon, my target is to do one blog a month on a different producer-related topic, but it could be applicable to all types of game development roles. Maybe I’ll even start a newsletter. Am I cool enough for that? Who knows! If you have suggestions on what I should talk about next, let me know!
Ok byeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
