Game Production

The book provides detailed explanations and real-world examples of how SCRUM can be used to increase productivity, improve communication, and deliver high-quality games on time and within budget.

Comprehensive guide to implementing agile methodologies in game development, covering topics from team dynamics to production processes. The book features case studies, practical tips, and exercises that provide readers with a hands-on approach to creating successful games with agility.

A behind-the-scenes look at the making of several popular video games, detailing the challenges faced by game developers and the intense pressures of the industry.

Highlights the challenges Garcia faced as a woman of color in a male-dominated industry, and provides valuable insights into leadership, innovation, and diversity in the tech industry.

If you're transitioning to a management role from game design, chances are you've read this one. If not, still consider it as it will help to understand the why's behind design decisions and challenge your team or your client.

Comprehensive guide to game production, covering topics such as project management, team building, and production processes. The book includes real-world examples and case studies from successful game studios, and provides practical tips and advice for game developers at all levels.

It is what it says. Can't get more practical than this. It is not gamedev related, but you might want to pick up a few tricks for your next pre-production.

Practical guide to game production, covering all aspects of game development from initial concept to final release. The book provides insights into production methodologies, team management, and project planning, and includes tips and advice from experienced game producers.

🎓 Producing Games: From Business and Budgets to Creativity and Design - Read if you don't know a thing about how games are made, or skip otherwise. This book is old, but the production process hasn't fundamentally changed.

This book is about way more than just how to do story mapping. What stories are really about? How do you actually use them to change the world? If you're not using stories like it is described in this book, then you're not using stories at all.

Explores the qualities and skills that make for a successful game producer, including leadership, communication, and adaptability, with insights from experienced industry professionals.

Delves deeper into the role of a game producer, including project management, risk assessment, and team coordination, and provides tips for aspiring producers on how to develop their skills and excel in the role.

The title might feel gimicky, but there are a few very important pieces of advice, which are worth considering.

🎓 Production Pipeline: a Design Tool? - A broad overview of a common production timeline: milestones, deliverables, dos and don'ts. Beware though, as presented pipeline is just one of the many: different studios tend to flavor this pipeline with their own set of adjustments.

If using Agile on your project, User Story Mapping can greatly help prioritize and plan releases. This article gives a very brief explanation and provides and example. Replaced original link with Web Archive version, as it became unavailable.

Same as above, a very concise and well explained user story mapping technique (PDF).

Hands-on guide to building a user story map (PDF).

🎓 Nearly Universal Principles of Projects - NUPP is a collection of nearly universal principles of projects: those we’d do well to follow in all projects, regardless of the methodologies and approaches that we use, to maximize our success.

Provides an introduction to designing a production process for game development studios, covering topics such as team structure, workflow, and asset management.

Delves deeper into the components of a production process, including milestone planning, risk management, and quality assurance.

Focuses on production methodologies, providing an overview of popular approaches such as Agile, Waterfall, and Scrum, and discussing the advantages and disadvantages of each.

A system, that produces reliable shipping schedules, based on the past performance of the team. It uses Monte Carlo simulation to generate distributions of possible ship dates, and then combines them with the team's availability to give a reliable date range.

How to make an educated forecast of the project's end date, based on the team's velocity.

Age of Empires II: Age of Kings was developed by Ensemble Studios with the aim of improving upon the original game in every aspect, from graphics to user interface. Modern game developers can learn from Ensemble's dedication to innovation within the genre and their use of tools and automated testing to streamline their development process.

Baldur's Gate II, developed by BioWare, focused on improving upon the original game by refining the development process, learning from past mistakes, and incorporating player feedback. Modern game developers can apply these lessons by prioritizing features, establishing clear development guidelines, and fostering open communication between team members to create an even better sequel.

Diablo II, developed by Blizzard Entertainment, focused on refining and expanding the gameplay mechanics of the original Diablo, while also addressing player feedback and criticisms. Modern game developers can learn from this approach by continually iterating on their game's core elements and incorporating player feedback to create a sequel that captures the essence of the original while offering fresh and engaging experiences.

System Shock 2, developed by Irrational Games, was a sequel created under challenging circumstances, including inexperienced developers, tight deadlines, and a small budget. Modern game developers can learn from the team's ability to adapt to these constraints and design within their technological limitations, as well as their focus on simple, reusable gameplay elements and cooperative development to create a worthy sequel.

Unreal Tournament, released in 1999, was developed by Epic Games and Digital Extremes, who had an unusual development cycle and a very loose development process. The game managed to evolve from a single-player game into a deathmatch-oriented design and ultimately earned more than five "Game of the Year" awards and is consistently rated in the top ninetieth percentile in reviews.

Gearbox Software's Aaron Thibault helps viewers build personalized progress charts in the pursuit of improving their production mastery.

Oculus' Bernard Yee provides a suggested to-do list for people who manage a team and project's to-do list, why they are important and how to be effective on a daily basis.

Clinton Keith explains how to deliver great games on schedule without breaking the bank or the backs of your team.

Amy Dallas explores a mindset for producers that can help one be successful when faced with managing a seemingly impossible project and shares some survival tips to keep you focused when everything seems to be going sideways.

Jamie Winsor shares how user story mapping is used to cut development waste and align team members behind a single, well-defined goal.

Your game will start with a GDD and the production process will stem from the design documentation regardless of the production pipeline. Making sure you're having right documentation at the right time can help you avoid overhead during development big time (slides are here).

Ruth Tomandl discusses the concept of ambiguity and methods for determining whether it's a problem or not in game production.

Timestamped video, where Lead Game Designer from CD Project Red talks about their approach to breaking down the game into features and prioritizing them. Can be used as a framework as-is in your production.

Timothy Cain discusses the shift towards a culture of caution in game development, contrasting his experiences with project management and creative processes during the development of titles like Fallout and The Outer Worlds. He reflects on how this caution impacts creativity, innovation, and the overall charm of games, urging a return to passion-driven development.

🔥 This Problem Changes Your Perspective On Game Dev - An interesting perspective on game development: design process is a search algorithm in pursuit of the deepest point in a lake, symbolizing the best possible game. This metaphor serves to illustrate the importance of strategic experimentation and exploration in game design, emphasizing the balance between speed and accuracy, the dangers of local minima, and the value of daring to explore new ide…

This is what you'd call a "no BS" course on project management. Concise, to the point, and highly practical. It is not focused on game development, but I think you should still take it, because it closes many (if not all) gaps with just one course (~9 hours). Once completed, just adapt to your needs or just use some of the principles. It also includes numerous document templates and examples.

A tool, that helps prototyping game mechanics, economy flow and states either for production or for demo purposes. This tool has been mentioned by Jesse Schell in his Book of Lenses, so its old but it has transformed over the years. Not necessarily a tool for a producer to use, but it is often overlook, so go ahead and give your game designers a tip.

A free and open source online drawing tool. Neither gamedev or project management related, but is so versatile, I find myself using it quite often.

An awesome Google Workspace extension, that allows querying ChatGPT from within sheets or docs. You can generate data and modify any data tables or just text in any way using forumulas and functions directly in the documents.

As they say, database of everything on Steam. Very useful to follow your competitors and compare the numbers.

One of the better analytics tools and sources of estimated sales data. They also have some unique tools other similar services don't, e.g. revenue calculator, unit sales estimator and some others.

Simple tool to help you ballpark sales numbers based on the wishlists count on Steam. It is not as accurate, as some other tools are, but is the simplest one.

(requires paid subscription to GameDiscoverCo Newsletter) GameDiscoverCo's data backend providing analytics on games' "hype", discoverability and more. Additionally, you get access to a number of e-books on game discovery and budgeting.

A simple template to calculate your sales projections. As the name implies, it is very basic.

A solid template to use when forecasting sales numbers for your game.

Another template to help you analyze your competitors and calculate your potential sales numbers. Ideally, use this in combination with other templates mentioned aboe to refine your guesstimations.

A set of Excel templates to help estimate and forecast a project, and hopefully make an educated decision when needed.

Game Developers Conference YouTube channel, all sorts of talks on anything game development related. It's huge and is updated frequently, but you'll have to filter the information you need.

Crowdfunded documentaries about the production process of different kinds of games. Kind of a peek behind the curtains, sometimes with interesting "post-mortem" type of insights.

Videos on agile topics for Game Producers. Check out their web-site for extra articles.

I've listed one Tim's video in the Videos section above, but I strongly suggest to subscribe to his channel, it's just full of stories and experience, that will help you have good context on game development all around.

Not directly production related, but offers in-depth analysis on recent gamedev events, e.g. Brawl Stars ditching lootboxes: why, how and what was the outcome. You want to know about things like this when leading the production of your next mobile action game. And they also have a podcast.

Focused on the business side of game production and game discoverability, their in-depth analysis on Steam-related topics is gold. Must-read.

Weekly newsletter on leadership, which is concise and thought-provoking. It's not going to dump a ton of information on you but rather spark ideas on how you can grow as a leader.

This show seems to have ended, but some (if not all) episodes are still relevant in 2023. If you're managing a live mobile game, give it a listen.

The difference with the newsletter is that it has more stuff to read, like industry news, new game releases, in-depth articles on some general gamedev topics. Still, their podcast is great if you're on the go.Diablo Boss Rod Fergusson On What Makes a World Class Video game Producer - Rod drops some knowledge on us as we talk about how …

Quality project management content, not game development specific ().

Software Delivery Management Consultant Alexander Kryuchkov shares his advice about managing projects. I like him a lot because basically every post is highly practical and is packed with experience. Must read for any Project Manager ().

Insightful LinkedIn posts on agile in project management. William is also an author of the Statistical PERT.

RSS feed of the gamedeveloper.com (ex. gamasutra.com) - both news and articles, all about game development (including production).

A very high-quality business-focused blog to stay up-to-date on the industry. Check out their "Deep Dives" series for case studies on the failures and successes of pupular titles and studios.

A Google Sheet with salarie statistics, put together by Evva Karr *

Not sure how accurate this data is, as I'm not from USA.

A very detailed list of game publishers with some extra notes on most of them. Go-to resource for finding yourself a publisher.

Chris knows a thing or two about game marketing and discoverability. As a Game Producer, you will cross paths with marketing quite often, so go follow him.