I was talking to George [Zeits, lead area designer on Torment] and he mentioned that the game had been cut down a lot during development. As executive producer on this project, I imagine you had oversight of what was cut -- how do you decide what stays and what goes, in a game like this?
Well, ultimately I let the writers decide that. I'll extrapolate out and say well, at this rate, this thing is going to go too long by x amount, and we need to change something. I'd rather have more time in the iteration cycle, right.
I tell the guys all the time, we're either going to have more levels or more time to iterate. Which would you rather have
It's always more time to iterate, because you get to polish more, and make what you have better. So that always wins out. So I let them ultimately decide how they need to tell this really heavy, single-player narrative story, yet still remove things. And so yeah, they had to work themselves into pretzels a couple different times in order to do it. But it's fun, because at this point we're the only ones that know what's not there anymore. And at the end of the day, the game is still pretty massive -- it's probably a 40- to 60-hour game. But again, I let those guys make that decision, in terms of what makes sense.
What do you think makes a good producer? Because it seems like the expectations of what a producer is and does is a bit different for every studio.
By the way, I'm probably using the term wrongly when I say that, too. I sometimes say producer ,when now the new term is director. So my terminology might be a little bit out of date. I probably mean more game director, in this instance. But, as far as the person who is the figurehead, who's supposed to be in charge of a game, labels aside: to me, it's understanding the core vision and making sure that everyone on the team understands what it is.
You're able to move things across all fronts simultanously, all the time. You can't worry about your personal desires. Sometimes you want to dive in yourself and do stuff, right? But that's foolish. You want to get in and do a map or something yourself, but you've got forty people all moving in a line. And if you do something, that can cause three people to slip behind, and then that causes these other people to be off, and you could wind up losing two weeks or a month *snaps fingers* just like that.
So it's really a function of just -- it's like an orchestra. You have to understand where everyone is going, all the instruments are playing, and everything that is going on. You have to make sure everything is staying on point, and you have to adjust based on what's happening in real time. You have to be able to say no to people, and make them feel good about it. It's a lot of psychology, and understanding the philosophy of the products. I think it's the hardest job in the business.
There's also this satisfaction that people have in burying themselves in spreadsheets or other documents. And there are so many things that just happen in a conversation that you hear, walking down the hall, or someone asks you a question or you sit down in a meeting and you go gosh, if I hadn't been in that meeting, I don't know what would have happened here. Even with all these great, bright minds, things get off track. So having the pulse of what's going on at all times, that is what's important. That requires meetings, talking to people, hearing around corners, you know listening to what people are really saying, reading into it, and getting a sense of things. It's not about managing a spreadsheet.
Also, know your plusses and minusses. That's a huge part of it.
Like, at first I was a programmer, and then I met these other guys that were much better than me! So I said okay, I'm not chasing this, then. Because maybe I could have got close to them, but it was much easier for them, and they were already up there. So I said I have to get more guys like this, and some great artists. So I knew the things I was really good at, and what I wasn't good at. Not everyone has an aptitude for pulling something like that.
Like, I had a guy at Interplay and he was always complaining about management. Complaining, complaining, complaining. Well you know what I did? I made him a manager. And he ended up being one of the best managers. He would complain about a problem and I would say: solve it! And a year later he'd go ahhh well maybe this isn't so easy. And I'd say -- no shit!
But he became a great manager. Which is kind of the opposite of some people, who say make me a manager, make me a manager, and sometimes they're not the greatest manager. They want it for the wrong reasons. So it's really about identifying what you're good at, what you're not, and finding people to support you -- if you're managing these mid-size teams. These are different conversations if you're managing a four-person team, right, or a 200-person team. This is really about my wheelhouse, of fifteen to twenty people.
