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Alright! Here's that thread one person asked for lol!
Imo one of the key skills of a really good producer is Emotional Intelligence & the ability to manage up.
One of the most difficult but common things any Producer has to deal with is the emotional turmoil of making a game.
Imo one of the key skills of a really good producer is Emotional Intelligence & the ability to manage up.
One of the most difficult but common things any Producer has to deal with is the emotional turmoil of making a game.
This can be anything to mediating with disgruntled team members, anxious directors, or how real life situations impact the team, like covid has. As a Producer, you have to keep your head straight, address the situations head on, whilst also always thinking about the end goal.
You also often need to manage up. You may be employed by a company, but you need to manage people who pay your wage as much as you manage the people in the rest of the team. This is often the most difficult part of this job; team members expect to managed, many directors do not.
At the end of the day, a Producers loyalty is not to the directors, but it is also not necessarily to the team - a Producers main job is to make sure that a game gets completed and released within budget and in good time. Every action they take should be to this goal.
Whilst it's important to make the distinction, it's also worth pointing out that ultimately the end results is that your loyalty IS with the team because a content team makes a great game, an uncontent one generally make nothing. So making sure the team is content is priority.
More often than not, this is where managing up can come into play - Most directors have a lot riding on the success of a project, so they're rightly going to be nervous. A Producers role is often to be a guiding rod for that anxious energy, & ALWAYS to keep it away from the team.
This can look very different for different teams - sometimes it's being a bit of an emotional sponge for worries, sometimes it's providing facts and reason, sometimes it's straight up telling the director no... and in extreme cases, sometimes it's letting them fail and learn.
Regardless of reason - often if a team know how truly anxious a director is, it tanks their motivation - if the director doesn't believe in us, what are we working for? When in reality, the director DOES believe in them, they often just need a sanity check for their anxiousness.
This is were emotional intelligence is invaluable - having the awareness of when to agree, when to challenge, when to share, when not to share; when someone is mean vs when they're just stressed! It honestly is a fine art and something I feel I'm still growing with every day.
It's worth noting in dev it's never about negating negative feelings - a bit of negativity is normal! In fact it can be the sign of a passionate team who care. So it's important to simply help guide that negativity to a healthy resolution, rather than try to squash it completely.
Second worthy point - these skills do not come naturally to most people! I have done many years of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, which I've found I use those tools most often in my day to day work as a Producer. I've also read a lot of books and on the job experience is !!
This thread is specifically about managing up, because in my experience Producing is one of the few roles in game dev were no one ever puts it in a job spec, but you'll constantly have do it. But this is a tiny slice of what using emotional intelligence in game dev looks like.
There's way more were this comes into play, such as solving employee conflicts, best practices in saying no to new features, improving team motivation when things go wrong, how to handle personal life issues... it'll touch pretty much everything you do lol
If people are interested I can do another thread going into more detail in other areas =D for now, main point is, being a Producer means keeping the ship afloat and to it's destination in the smoothest way possible! Which is why you need a Producer, ok thank you good day.
As a random aside, I'm also an avid scuba diver, and the first thing you get taught is no matter what happens - never panic. The pressure under the ocean is so great, once you panic, you'll lose so much extra energy, you'll instantly be fucked. The same is very true in game dev.
ANOTHER aside - none of this accounts for when you work with a director or CEO that is just truly terrible, doesn't care about it's team at all, only cares about the bottom line and treats people like garbage. That's a whole other kettle of fish that this thread does not cover!
Thankfully I have not worked with anyone that terrible since the start of my career so 
These days, extremely lucky to be working with awesome teams and directors on awesome projects YO!
Still using my EI stills everyday thou haha.
These days, extremely lucky to be working with awesome teams and directors on awesome projects YO! Still using my EI stills everyday thou haha.
Also worth noting, as a Producer we get it wrong some days too. We're only human! But decent emotional intelligence is also having the self awareness of knowing when you've stepped wrong and owning that mistake.
Ok anyways I'll stop adding to this now haha.
Ok anyways I'll stop adding to this now haha.
Ok last one I promise but not one talks about how doing threads like these are scary af yo. Who am I, to tell you what is right and what is wrong, amma right? 
Just 6 years of experience and as many game releases haaaa
Just 6 years of experience and as many game releases haaaa
