So, after getting to bed around 4am last night, (yay jetlag), I started my first day at FireForge, an independent game developer, strangely enough, right next to Obsidian Entertainment. :)
I spent the beginning of my first day doing what I do best: analyzing my situation and assessing the team's structure to attempt to help with issues or fix pipelines in the current system. I believe that every Producer and Producer-In-Training should be thinking this at all times: "Why?"
"Why" really allows a lot of change to happen, if you really think about it. It's something that we did as a child (asking why), but it really got beaten out of us. One of the things that I learned from a lot of my personal favorite Producers that I have worked with is that they are constantly asking why is this the reason we're doing something a certain way. If you ask a artist or designer why do something, it forces them to think "could there be a better way to do this?" Honestly, even if they don't necessarily think that, as a producer I believe that you should. A producer's main job is not just to make sure the schedule is on time, but also to make sure that the team has the tools necessary to get the job done effectively. Asking "why" helps get the juices flowing to facilitate change and make things better.
Later on today, I sat for a decent amount of time talking to the owner about where the company plans on going, how the team is doing, what is needed from me to help get the game moving forward, and what I think we need to do to help get the game out on time. This was such a new experience, just being put in a situation where I actually have the ability to make some good change. That's not to say that I never had those situations at Obsidian, I actually had the ability to do a lot there, but in this instance I am brought on much earlier, allowing me to try a lot of new things that I always wanted to but never had the chance. It's a humbling feeling hearing that you have a bit of free range to try some stuff, but also just a bit scary.
I finished off today looking into various Project Management programs that we can use. This was such a fun thing, I'm going to make tomorrow's post simply about some of the ones that I looked at.
Ta-Ta for now!
-ACN
You sir, need to start and commit to a daily diary blog about an experienced producer starting out at a new games studio, and educate us all on the day-to-day tasks of a producer. And then we will make a sitcom on it. I wish I had this when I was in school so I knew what a producer did.
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