6: Your Publisher Will Create a Schedule for Your Game

#6: Your Publisher Will Create a Schedule for Your Game

This one is partly true—usually, once you and your publisher agree to work together, you'll negotiate the dates of the milestones and what will be expected at each. However, this doesn't mean that you shouldn't develop a schedule on your own. If you approach a publisher without a definite finish date (backed up by a comprehensive project plan), you'll either look like someone who doesn't know what he's doing, or someone way too egotistical to be bothered with things such as due dates. Either way, it's a strike against you.

Of course, this shouldn't be the main reason why you write up a schedule. Like design docs, schedules are just as beneficial for you as they are for your publisher. Take the time to draft a schedule, and review it periodically to make sure it's accurate and that you're on track.

This is a big enough job that most game companies now have full-time producers and/or project managers, responsible for wrangling the dependencies of a project and making sure that everyone is working on the right thing at the right time.