Learning Game Design with Arcade Berg

The “Designing Producer”

What a title actually means differs from company to company; especially the title of designer.

First a quick description of the title "level designer". You never know what a level designer does at a company untill you ask. All you know is that it's level creation related.

The thing is, at some companies a level designer does everything in regards to creating a level. They plan the design, create the graphics and implements the layout and gameplay scripting. At another company, there are different people for scripting and creating the actual game worl. It's most common to have dedicated graphics artists to make the art as well.

Anyway, what I wanted to discuss was the role of the designing producer. Some large companies merge the roles of producer and the role of game designer.

Producer:

• Makes sure stuff are made in time.
• Keeps track of the big picture.
• Communicates with all disciplines (design, code, art, etc.)
• Says: No, we can't implement that, it'll take too much time!

Designer:

• Handles the creative imagination part of the game.
• Keeps track of the big picture.
• Communicates with all disciplines (design, code, art, etc.)
• Says: We must do this, it's gonna make for a much better game!

So, by looking at my lists of what I think they do, we can see that they both share two critical tasks. They both keep track of the game as a whole and they both must talk to everyone, to make sure things are running smoothly and act depending on the status.

With this in mind, it would be wise to have the multi-class Designing Producer guy, because you don't have to worry about the communication between producer and designer and you might need less people.

The fact that the producer keeps track of the time and the designer handling the creativity doesn't necessarily work against each other, so no problem there.

But here's the problem, the last point of each role. The producers main job is to say no to doing things because it cost time and money, while the designer must push for the good stuff and really argument for having them made to create the best game possible. This "battle" is the constant struggle of measuring the "bang for the buck". Usually, the producer has the final say.

By now, one would think that then of course, you can't have a designing producer because it defeats the whole purpose of the producer and the game will never be finished in time, or finished at all, because the designer will always want to do more stuff and iterate them to make them better.

Hi, I'm a Producer

And here it is, at last, my opinion. The opinion that shapes worlds, the opinion that cures cancer and make blind people see again. I personally, am not too fond of the designing producer idea overall. However, I do think it works if, and this is a big if, you can find the right people for it. I think it requires very skilled people who are very honest with themself and with the project.

A designing producer can save a massive amount of time, because they can make decisions on the fly. The discussions and bickering between designer and producer can be held inside the head within a few minutes instead of out loud for several hours or days.

The issue at hand is that it's incredibly hard not to be more of one than the other. Me for example have often had the role of designing producer during many projects at the Game Development at the University as well as during the spare time. I'd say I do a decent job, but there are times I'm way too much of a designer and other times when I'm way too much of a producer.

Okay, so I've blah blah blah'ed quite a bit now. Summary; in general I think it's not a wise choice to have the designing producer, but if, IF, the right person assumes the role, it's a very good thing.