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Each month, industry veteran Tom Sloper provides career guidance to game biz wannabes, newbies, and junior professionals with the goal of helping them break into the industry, and stay in. Submit a question to Tom for developer-oriented advice in this column (IGDA members only).
 by Tom Sloper |
A Focus on Better Production (February 2006)Hi Tom, I want to make a difference in the gaming world in terms of small business development. I have an interest in finding out what owner/managers and producers need most to get their jobs done. Hello Jason, It sounds like you haven't actually worked in the field of games. I think that in itself will be your biggest hurdle in achieving this goal. There are two courses of action I recommend for you. 1. You need to get a management job at a game company and work on at least two, preferably three or four, game projects from beginning to end. This will give you a clear idea of what needs game project managers have. It's best if you can work on a variety of projects - small, large, online, console, mobile... Different types of projects have very differing needs, and you need a broad overview. 2. You should do a thorough comparison of the existing management tools out there. Producers who chat through online forums or email groups are always comparing notes on various management tools. You should take a look at Microsoft Project, Bugzilla, Scrum, Extraview, Mr. Project, Sunbird, Alienbrain, Openworkbench, Dotproject... and there are probably numerous others as well. Some of the aforementioned are tools for tracking assets or bugs rather than entire projects - you should still check them all out thoroughly as part of your research. Know that many producers prefer to use MS Excel for creating schedules as well as budgets (to the exclusion of dedicated project management tools). I've even used Excel for asset tracking. One great thing about Excel is that it's so flexible - the producer can make it as simple or complex as he wants. I belong to the IGDA's Production SIG, and an email went around last April from another fellow named Jason. He suggested further research you should do. These are about project management processes, and why better processes are needed, rather than tools. If you create new tools, they need to work with a variety of processes. Check out the following:
You can read about Scrum at Games from Within. And you can Google "agile development" too. I have a final bit of advice. You mentioned that you were interested in serving small companies in particular. I may have misinterpreted your intentions, and if so, I'm sorry. But I think you shouldn't limit your efforts to clients with shallow pockets. Big developers and publishers are just as much in need of better project management as the small guys. |
Please note that there is no guarantee that Tom will be able to respond to all the questions he receives. It is up to his discretion which questions he uses for this column. For further advice and resources, check out the IGDA's discussion forums, the Breaking In web site and the Students & Newbies Outreach section.
Tom's Bio
Tom Sloper's game biz career began over twenty years ago at Western Technologies, where he designed LCD games and the Vectrex games "Spike" and "Bedlam". There followed stints at Sega Enterprises, Rudell Design, Atari Corporation, and Activision. In 12 years at Activision, Tom produced 36 unique game titles (plus innumerable ports and localizations), designed four games, and won five awards. Tom worked for several months in Activision's Japan operation, in Tokyo. He is perhaps best known for designing, managing and producing Activision's "Shanghai" line. He is currently consulting, writing, speaking, teaching, and developing original games. Find out more at Sloperama.
© 2006 Tom Sloper. All rights reserved.