Do the producers specialize on a game aspect or do you need to know 'everything' about that game?asked by Perry_Hope

That's an interesting question, one of the goals of what production is is we basically try and make sure that designers like Kirk have the resources they need to make the game possible. So, while the production coordinator for the tech design and engineering team. It's not my job to know how to do coding, or how to do engineering or necessarily know how to do tech design, I just need to make sure they have the resources they need, make sure the information is being correctly funneled to them. Now, ultimately what can cause a bottleneck is something like lack of communication or what else would you consider...

That is the priority number one, communication is the most important thing that a producer can provide any employee...

Right.

In development, we need to keep those channels open and ensure that everyone knows what they need to do and are expected to do. That way we don't have issues where, 'hey, I didn't know that Jimmy over here was supposed to be doing this. I've been waiting for him to finish this other task, which prevents me from implementing thing I wanted to do...'

Right.

So, communication is absolutely number one.

A good producer will be able to keep their team in the loop at all times, an excellent producer will be able to preemptively predict what obstacles are coming down the road. Be able to foresee what things down the road are going to bottleneck, such as knowing what the other teams are working on. For example, we have Mark Hong, who is our art and animation producer, so if I am working on a particular feature as a producer... my goal is I want to be able to talk to Mark and find out what he's working on. See how what he's going to do is going to effect what Kirk's team is coming or is doing down the road.So if we see Kirk is working on a particular component for a ship, if I find out from Mark early on that that ship is going to be delayed or the art isn't coming along as quickly as possible it's my responsibility to provide that information to Kirk say, "Hey, we have a little more cushion time as far as that particular ship so if you have something else you need to work on, some low hanging fruit that you want to complete in the meantime". That's where the producer comes and lets these guys know, that's what's available.As far as specialization, it's useful to be able to talk to those developers at an educated level, like I said before you don't need to know how to program but at least know what those programmers are doing and what they're working towards. Same thing with tech design, we necessarily don't need to know everything about game balance but we need to know what their objective is and how do producers help them to complete that objective.

From a developer's standpoint, it is my responsibility to inform producers as far as the things they do need to know about that particular task so they can make an educated choices about scheduling and task party, etc. At the same time, when I do need to talk to say one of the artists or animators directly, it should be part of my duties to inform the producer in charge of that particular individual that that is happening that way they can ensure that maybe a higher priority task should take precedence or they know to follow up on that task in the near future and we can all figure out... hey, were you along that timeline, are we getting close to being done because this person is waiting on that. So, juggling tasks and figuring what priorities of things is the resource we use from the production team.

So, it's kind of a nitty gritty behind the scenes look at game development, it's not the most romantic or glamorous type of question but it is one that's important. That's why we wanted to address it, there are things that go on behind the scenes that help streamline a lot of these things other than just making pretty ships and cool levels.