I realise from time to time that most things in the world - inside and outside of game development - can be solved if you just talk to eachother. Maybe not toothache or bad weather, but most other human related issues.

An executive producer who spoke at GDC said something that really got stuck in my mind, that a producer shouldn’t just sit behind their desk, they need to do the walk and talk. Just go around, saying hi, checking how things are going. A lot of problems can be avoided if they’re caught in time. And a lot of times you manage to get there “in time” if you just ask questions. Talk… It sounds easy, right?

During my first six months or so working here I rarely spoke to people without feeling either guilty or stupid. Guilty for disturbing their peace of coding mind. Stupid because I had to ask so many question. It was a rather frustrating time. In order to be a good producer I needed to understand what they were doing and in order to understand I had to ask. But how could they respect me if it became obvious how little I knew? And what if they couldn’t do their job properly cause I constantly pulled them out of their natural work flow by asking [stupid] questions?

I know, no question is stupid if it’s an honest one. But still. Here I am, trying to be “boss” and running the project - but I don’t know what a poolserver is? Great… Apache who? Demons? Are they evil? Extrapol…what?

Time went by and I learned a lot, from constantly listening to the developers discussions and sitting in on their meetings. Occasionly I still asked questions, but with the basic knowledge in place the process was dramatically shortened.

What I’m trying to say is that communication IS the sh*t (pardon my French). It’s the coolest thing ever and a very nice way to get well-read and educated. You get to talk to people who know stuff that you don’t and you can even drink coffe in the meantime.

I rarely, or never, feel stupid anymore. Not just because I’ve actually learned a lot of the basic stuff and keep up with the shop-talk at the office. I’ve also come to realise that not knowing everything doesn’t necessarily make me a worse producer. It’s just hard getting used to when you’re a control freak like me

I suppose it’s a lot to do with feeling comfortable with the people around you. My team knows how much I appreciate them and hopefully they notice how much I enjoy working with them, so I think they’re pretty comfortable with me being their producer ( I also bribe them with candy, cake and ice cream from time to time). And they are so generous with straightening out all the tech questions I might have and keeping me updated with what they’re up to, that I couldn’t be more comfortable with being in charge of this project.

So, don’t stay in your seat all day sending out e-mails that might be misinterpreted. Don’t wait for that scheduled meeting before you speak to your team members. Get up, do the walk and talk. Listen and learn. (and when you meet your friends and family next time, dazzle them with your extended vocabulary…)

// Linda  - Certified Annoyer

The headline of today’s post is not my own. I found it on another blog while searching for some notes out there about one of the roundtables at GDC, one called “Play for free! Pay for item!”. That one line just came across as very striking. It’s an interesting thought, as the life and existence of games might be slightly changing. Many people out there consider online gaming, free of charge but with plenty of stuff to buy within the game, to be the future. The very bright shining way ahead for the gaming industry.”Free to play/micro transactions will be king!” as I quote one of the speakers at this years GDC conference.

Anyhow. Today I’ve been trying to put together my scattered notes from all the lectures. It’s nice to read them and get inspired and filled with enthusiasm all over again! There’s so much generosity and greatness within this industry. I consider myself very lucky to work in the middle of it. Oh ok, in the outskirts… Linköping, Sweden might still not be considered the “middle” of anything.

Now: back to the notebook.

/ Linda

That might sound a bit dramatic, but I’m simply referring to the last day of the conference. It’s Friday afternoon on this side of the globe and everything is slowing down here at GDC. Simply not as many people running around crowding up the place. Of course there’s still that constant noice in the background of a couple of thousand people talking at the same time, in different languages barely disguised in English.

I didn’t write anything about what I did yesterday. Bad me (still blaming the jet lag). Among other things I invited Fabian (a new friend of ours here at GDC who’s representing Pole Position Production, our gifted sound providers) to come along and attend a roundtable session called “Hentai, Hardcore and Hotties: Sex in games”. As a “gender aware” human being I felt it to be my duty trying to spread the knowledge on these matters. However it didn’t quite live up to my expectations as the discussion turned out to focus more on branding issues (what will happen to my company - image wise - if we provide the technical solutions for a strip poker online game?) and other stuf in that area. Brenda Brathwaite, the speaker/moderator, is a veteran within the gaming industry and is no doubt an extremely well spoken and interesting person. And of course, in just one hour of discussion, there’s gotta be a lot of topics you DON’T have time to attend to.

Besides that I attended Laura Fryers lecture “Production Basics and Beyond”. Laura is also a veteran, now working as an executive producer at Microsoft. She came across as a naturally gifted speaker, her presentation was really funny yet serious at the same time. Of course, for me, it was very interesting listening to her as she’s a woman (yes it makes a slight difference as there are so few and it calms me down when they’re successful) working/struggling/coping with the same issues as I am - how to get that game out on time, at the right quality level, while keeping the team happy. Interesting was to hear how she, although concerned with how the team is doing, not at all seemed to consider game development being possible without the crunch process - unlike several other speakers on these subjects.

So that was great. And prior to this I had listened to another great lecture, held by Petter Sydow from Massive Entertainment. The topic was how to make a 90 + game (World In Conflict) while breaking all the rules. Besides being a catchy title for a lecture it referred to the change of project methodology that took place after several months of production. From handling things the old fashioned waterfall way the teams went agile, influenced bý scrum (which for you who don’t already know is one of several agile project management methods). And although the agile way is becoming more and more acknowledged and widespread through the game industry many people are still sceptical considering it to be a vague and uncertain way of production. However - Petter gave a presentation with examples tightly connected to the production process and the every day situations that occured during the development of World In Conflict. I’m extremely impressed they pulled this off, not only handling the transition to an agile working method mid way through the project - but also without any crunch… Go Petter and the teams!

Seriously, it’s truly inspiring and I only hope I can be just as wise and clever and super-talented in my role as a producer for my team.

Ok - now I still haven’t told you about todays lectures and no you’re not gonna hear about it either. Not now. I’ll be going in a minute so I’ll leave the Friday lecture excitement for a later post. I must keep myself busy at night aswell, leaving something to do later on. A hotel room doesn’t leave you with many choices really - the computer is your best bet.

Picked up a few dvd’s today on certain areas of game development. And I placed an order for the lecture dvd/audio recordings! All of them. So soon we can arrange miniature lectures for the entire teams at home, in the conference room! How about that folks?

And you poor guys at home having trouble with the coffee machine - you just wait, I’ll be back soon and of course I’ll sort all that out. Hang in there!

// Linda

So, now my first day at the conference has come to an end. All the events (lectures, expo-booths, roundtables etc) are gathered in the Moscone centre in central San Francisco in two different buildings across the street from one another. Just imagine the constant flood of game nerds walking back and forth, blocking the streets, completely taking over that perticular part of the city It’s brilliant.

I went to three lectures today. The one which had the largest impact on me was on the concept of Crunch (”Your shameful secret addiction to Crunch”) by David Amor, Creative Director at Relentless Software. It was absolutely brilliant -full of insight and humour on the difficult matter of productivity vs. overtime. Very inspiring. I also took part in a roundtable session called “Play for free! Pay for Items!” which was very interesting. It was a valuable experience participating in an open and honest discussion about the pitfalls, possibilities and issues other developers are facing on the matter of item based sales in online games.

All lectures and sessions are recorded and tomorrow I’ll have to check out how much they are to buy. I want to be able to share some of this stuff with the rest of the team(s).

Tomorrow is a busy day, lectures from 9 to 5. And some Starbuck’s coffee in between…

Until further notice.

// Linda

Hi people. Now we’re finally here. Over there. The conference starts tomorrow morning (which should be about about 18.00 or something Swedish time). Jet lag is a bummer but I’m trying to cope with some help from Starbucks vanilla latte…

The whole business/mingeling apparatus starts tonight with some kind of get-together arranged by The Swedish Trade Council. Most of the Swedish game developers attending GDC will probably be there so I’m very much looking forward to it, hoping to speak to some of our interesting competitors, calmly bragging about Power Racing. In a very subtle manner of course.

Tomas Ahlström is - informally - the social and schedule manager of our little group, being in total control of all our appointments and meetings. It seems like it’s gonna be a busy week… We already have quite a few meetings with the press scheduled, and we’re counting on a lot of visitors to the Nordic booth at the Expo area where we’ll be hanging out most of the time. Or at least Tomas & Tomas will, I’m gonna be spending a lot of time at the actual conference listening to some incredibly clever and interesting people giving lectures on agile projects and production do’s and don’t’s among other things.

The website is up, alive and kicking! Make sure to check it out (www.powerchallenge.com/racing). I’m thrilled with the work so far and it’s just gonna get better. My guys on the team are simply the best. Just imagine, in a few months from now we can all enjoy the hottest online racing game ever. And even if our summer release is “only” a first version, barely a Beta release, I’m sure it’s gonna be a great gaming experience for us all.

Ok, time to find out what this city is all about. And yes I’m bringing the camera just in case something unbelievable shows up.

// Linda, with a fanatic attention to bringing some adrenaline to your browser

Oh yeah, forgot to mention the tiny little detail about us going to GDC… The mighty Game Developers Conference, this year taking place in San Fancisco. We leave from Linköping on Monday morning and arrive in San Francisco…some thousand hours later. Today I’m off work early to:

1) buy camera for snapshot and blog purposes

2) getting things organized in general (like find passport and tickets, hug the kids etc)

But no worries, the blogging will continue through our journey to the west. We have lots of meetings planned, important and interesting people to meet and tons of valueable information to take in. I’m attending as many lectures as possible, most of them on production but hopefully also some on game design and business & management.

Our pre launch site will be up and running on Tuesday - very exciting! The guys on the team have done such a great job with all the material for it and it will ROCK! There’s a great game coming your way folks…

Anyhow, time to roll out of here. I’ll be back with some travel updates after the weekend.

/ Linda