11/8/06
Wow. Game concepts don't just appear magically but are instead calculated business deals. I understand this, but for some reason, I had this weird idea that every game company had their own version of Sid Meyer in a back room and that's where the designs come from. But, I understand that this is reality, but I've never thought about that directly before.
Another realization: how clearly milestones and project timeliness must be written out, to keep the project flowing smoothly and the deliverable and milestones changing hands efficiently. It makes sense to me when a project is stretched over two years, as opposed to homework projects which max out at a few weeks.
The note of "The Mythical Man Month" makes me want to sit down and read this book. It's an interesting and valid observation that more people adds complexity and at a certain point is counterproductive.
The weight and importance of the technical design document scares me a bit. I've been working under the Agile Web Development model at work currently, and so it seems like a really scary stone block weighing on the production team. Or maybe that's because I'm an artist at heart and it feels like it's stifling creativity. Which I'm sure there must be room for, but the concept scares me overall.
The producer role seems to be mostly business management. Which I am wholly glad there are people who aspire to those positions in the universe, like accountants, because it's not something I'm interested in doing. Seems to be incredibly high stress, multitasking, people and business managing, flag-watching... tons of responsibilities. I'll bet they have the salary to match (or at least I hope they do.)
Interesting that the interviewers in the marketing blitz want to talk to the photogenic programmer or artist, but not the all-important producer (as this article is describing the producer as). Seems unfair. I wonder how true this really is.
I like the idea of a post-mortem, even if I am terrified of performance reviews. I wish I had post mortem analyses of more of my projects on which to build on in the future.