“You mean someone like Jess Brunelle.”
Yes yes, goddammit. Someone like Jess Brunelle.
It was 2007, and I was sitting in a conference room with several colleagues discussing our ongoing search for the perfect producer. Of course, the problem is how you define “perfect” when talking about a producer, because every studio has a different notion of what a producer is actually supposed to do.
At one end of the spectrum, the producer runs the show, not only establishing and driving the schedule but also setting the vision for the project and making the critical design, artistic, and technical decisions. It’s certainly an efficient model, but you aren’t going to get the best out of talented developers like James Phinney and Doug Williams when you remove them from the decision-making process.
At the other end of the spectrum, the producer is a mere lackey, responsible for documenting and communicating the decisions of the development team leads and picking up balls as they drop. This model ensures that the developers are able to drive key decisions about the game, but it can also result in a development process that lacks discipline, and in the worst case a game that is constantly delayed or never ships at all.
I’m not really thrilled with the notion of cutting our development leads off at the knees or watching the development process fall into chaos, so neither of those extremes are going to work for us.