The Producers: Getting it Made

At one stage or another we all have an idea for a hot new game, the next big thing. Most people who hang about on line have been part of a mod team, or have set about late at night talking about how they would make this game better, or going into minute detail about how a feature is crap, and ruins a games balance. Daily Radar have an article about how you go about taking it a step farther and getting your great idea made it into a game, and getting it published. They also go into how a producer will help you do this.

The producer is the person who shapes the game, "The internal producer is much closer to the project, overseeing its day-to-day development, making sure schedules are on track and that all the different teams communicate with each other". Another good example is Jonathan Knight, an executive producer at Activision currently working on Return to Castle Wolfenstein who says, "I do everything from signing checks, to helping shape the design, to taking screenshots, to faxing and Xeroxing. Producers are asked to take responsibility for a project, soup to nuts, and they take that responsibility seriously. The buck stops here."

The second part of the article deals with how to go about getting an game published, and will be of great interest to potential John Carmacks and the future Jim Molenieux's out there. The insights the article gives are very interesting, "Will Wright admitted that it wasn't easy getting The Sims made, despite the success of his previous games. He had to program an early version of the game to give publishers an idea of what it would be like." If you have even a vague interest in ogames you should check it out.