A video game producer is the top person in charge of overseeing development of a video game.

Sierra On-Line's 1982 computer game Time Zone may be the first to list credits for "Producer" and "Executive Producer". As of late 1983 Electronic Arts had five producers: A product marketer and two others from Hawkins' former employer Apple ("good at working with engineering people"), one former IBM salesman and executive recruiter, and one product marketer from Automated Simulations; it popularized the use of the title in the industry. Hawkins' vision—influenced by his relationship with Jerry Moss—was that producers would manage artists and repertoire in the same way as in the music business, and Hawkins brought in record producers from A&M Records to help train those first producers. Activision made Brad Fregger their first producer in April 1983.

Although the term is an industry standard today, it was dismissed as "imitation Hollywood" by many game executives and press members at the time. Over its entire history, the role of the video game producer has been defined in a wide range of ways by different companies and different teams, and there are a variety of positions within the industry referred to as producer.

There are relatively few superstars of game production that parallel those in film, in part because top producers are usually employed by publishers who choose to play down publicizing their contributions. Unlike many of their counterparts in film or music, these producers do not run their own independent companies.

Types of producers

Most video and computer games are developed by third-party developers. In these cases, there may be external and internal producers. External producers may act as "executive producers" and are employed by the game's publisher. Internal producers work for the developer itself and have more of a hands-on role. Some game developers may have no internal producers, however, and may rely solely on the publisher's producer.

For an internal producer, associate producers tend to specialize in an area of expertise depending on the team they are producing for and what skills they have a background in. These specializations include but are not limited to: programming, design, art, sound, and quality assurance. A normal producer is usually the project manager and is in charge of delivering the product to the publisher on time and on budget.

Education

Most video game producers complete a bachelor's degree program in game design, computer science, digital media or business. Popular computer programming languages for video game development include C, C++, Assembly, C# and Java. Some common courses are communications, mathematics, accounting, art, digital modeling and animation.

Employers typically require three plus years of experience, since a producer has to have gone through the development cycle several times to really understand how unpredictable the business is. The most common path to becoming a video game producer begins by first working as a game tester, then moving up the quality assurance ladder, and then eventually on to production. This is easier to accomplish if one stays with the same studio, reaping the benefits of having built relationships with the production department.

See also

  • List of video game producers

References

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  • at Eurocom
  • Justyn McLean - Game Boy at Mirror