Team Profile

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Publisher's Team

Publishing companies are often huge corporations, with offices in many cities and sometimes countries. They employ thousands of people who you may never meet, but who may work indirectly or directly on your game in the process of getting it to the shelves. Here, we have focused on those you are most likely to interact with while working on your game.

Producer

As with the producer on the developer's team, the producer for the publisher is also a project leader. Unlike the producer on the development team, however, the producer for the publisher will spend less time interacting with the production team, and more time marshalling the forces of the marketing team, and making sure that the executives at the company continue to stay behind the game concept throughout development.

The responsibilities of the producer for publisher are:

• Team leader for publisher's team

• Main communication link between publisher and developer

• Responsible for schedule and budget for the production from the publisher's side

• Responsible for tracking and allocating resources, as well as forecasting

• Approve work accomplished by developer so milestone payments can be made

• Coordinate with internal executive management, marketing, and QA personnel

The producer for the publisher is one step removed from the actual production, although they are usually more involved than any other person from the publisher's team. This position means that they have a vested interest in the success of the game when it goes to market, but they are also somewhat removed from the day to day struggle of production and sometimes able to see the game and its potential more objectively than the game designer and the rest of the production team.

There is a sense in many creative industries-the game industry is no exception-that executives and producers who are removed from the process don't understand the plight of creative teams. The suggestions and direction of these people are often met with resistance and scorn. While it is true that no one understands your game design the way that you do, it is also true that these individuals are skilled at publishing and marketing successful games and they may have some good points to make if you remain open to their feedback.

No one gets into the game industry because they want to make bad games. The producer and executives on the publisher's team are no exception. They want to make great games, games that they feel a sense of authorship in just like everyone else on the team. And if you can find ways to incorporate their suggestions into your game in ways that improve the gameplay, rather than dragging your heels, you will find when it comes time to sell the game that the publisher is behind it all the way.

Marketing team

The goal of the marketing team is to find ways to sell your game to the buyers. In some cases, they may have direct involvement during the production process-giving feedback on game concepts, and holding focus groups for various character designs. In other cases, you may never meet them until the game is almost ready to ship. The marketing team can be an asset to the open-minded game designer. This is because they are the strongest link to the demands and desires of buyers. It's their job to know the market, and if you can interpret the data they have creatively, you can address the trends and features that people are interested in without sacrificing your core gameplay.

One important factor that the marketing team has a strong influence on is the target hardware platform for PC titles. Marketing professionals study things like the projected penetration of different processors, available RAM on consumer PCs, average screen sizes, etc. In other words, a marketer in 2004 can estimate how many potential buyers will have a 3GHz computer in 2006, and they set the target hardware specs for games scheduled to be released in 2006 accordingly.

If it is important to you as a designer to have a best-selling product, it's smart to bring the marketing team in early. Tap them for information, invest them in the project, and give them credit for their insight. Sometimes having a clear concept of what those key bullet-point features will be on your box can help you stay on track with your designs when ideas are flying in from all directions. The marketing team can help you with this, and you'll have a powerful ally when it comes to publicizing your game or getting a new project off the ground. Nothing speaks louder than sales, and the marketers often represent the voice of the buyers.

Exercise 12.2: Marketing

Design the box for your original game idea. Come up with a slogan or tag line that will capture buyer interest. Write 'call outs' for the top three or four features in your game. Really try to 'sell' your game through your box design. Think about what aspects of the game will illustrate these points. Will your box show screenshots, character designs, or original artwork?

Show your box design to some of your playtesters and do an informal focus group on your design. This process will help you develop a good sales pitch for your idea-which we address in Chapter 16.

Executives

Executive management can include the CEO, President, CFO, COO, assorted VPs, and directors of the publishing company. It's beyond the scope of this discussion to detail all the responsibilities of all these individuals. Suffice to say that it's the job of the executive management to run the publishing company. This means providing leadership and direction, overseeing every department, and ultimately publishing great games.

Of course, there may be upper management on the game developer's team as well, if the company is large enough. In many cases, executives at game development companies are the founders of the company, or have risen up from the core design team to take on more responsibility.

At publishing companies, people in upper management can come from all types of backgrounds. Some may have business or marketing degrees, or experience in other industries. Others may have extensive experience in game production, but otherwise no business background. The nature of the game industry is that it grew out of a hobbyist culture, so there are many people who are very skilled in the development and publishing of games, though their academic credentials wouldn't tell you so.

The best-case scenario for a game designer is when an executive has considerable experience with game development, a deep understanding of the market, and are willing to take a hands-on approach. Unfortunately, most game designers don't see it this way. As a rule, designers tend to resent upper management's involvement in the production process. They want management to put out the money for the game, and then leave them alone to create their masterpiece.

As we said before, no one wants to make bad games, executives included. You might want to take the time to find out what games or products the executive you're dealing with has worked on, and what their expertise was before they moved up the ladder, before disregarding their input or pushing back on their suggestions.

If you do this, and still find that you just can't get along with an executive, try to learn from their mistakes. What are they doing that you don't like? Is it the way they present their ideas, or the ideas

themselves? Is it their attitude, or the content of their suggestions? Use this interaction as an opportunity to improve your own management skills. Write down what it is that they're doing that's ineffective, annoying or counterproductive, then make sure that you're not doing the same thing when it comes to your own team.

QA

If all else fails, at a certain point, you may find that the decisions coming down to you from the executives are 'ruining' the game. You may be fed up and ready to walk. But before you blow a gasket, consider this: its part of your job to communicate the vision for the game to the upper management, and you may be partly to blame if they're on the wrong track. Design specs are long and tedious documents, and they may not have read yours. Development code is clunky and unstable, and they may not have had time to install and play with your latest build. All in all, they may not have a clear idea of the finished product from either of these sources.

Take a step back from the situation and try to educate them. Perhaps you can have a brainstorm on the area under question with the entire team, and invite the executives to participate. This will allow them to give advice in an open forum, and to see some of the issues you are up against in implementing their suggestions.

In most cases, everyone will walk away from such a discussion feeling that their ideas have been taken seriously, and they will be invested in the decisions that were made. No one wants to be told what to do-not you, and not the executive team. Everyone wants his or her opinion to be heard and respected. An open discussion for the purpose of solving design issues accomplishes both of these objectives. In the end, you may wind up having to make the changes anyway, but perhaps you will have formed a new channel of communication for the next project.

The QA team for the publisher's team functions in much the same manner as that of the developers' team. The two exceptions are that they probablyaren't as familiar with the game, since they don't work side by side with the production team, and that their overall goal is to determine whether or not to 'accept' the build as a deliverable. This acceptance generally triggers a payment to the developer, so it's important that the build passes muster with the publisher's QA team.

Usability specialists

Some game companies use the services of usability specialists as part of the development process. As we discussed in Chapter 10, usability specialists can be an important part of making sure your game is intuitive and accessible to your target market. They evaluate a user's abilities to perform important tasks in the game, and understand key concepts. Usability testing generally focuses on the interface and controls, rather than the core gameplay, which distinguishes it from playtesting.

Usability specialists are almost always third- party companies that are hired by the publisher or the developer for a specific series of tests at a point fairly late in the development cycle. Some larger publishers, however, such as Microsoft Game Studios, have recently established in-house usability labs, and are beginning to integrate usability into the development process from start to finish.

This is the ideal situation if it is available to you. Usability testing can make an incredible difference in the player experience of your game. Like playtesting, it brings the player to the forefront of your design process and allows you to respond to their input before your game ships and it's too late to make changes.

Responsibilities of the usability specialists are:

• Heuristic evaluation of interfaces (this is an application of general interface principles and reporting of potential issues)

• Creation of user scenarios

• Identify and recruit test subjects from target market

• Conduct usability sessions

• Record and analyze data from sessions (this may be visual, in the form of video and audio, or quantitative, in the form of task success/failure reporting or questionnaire data.)

• Report findings and recommendations

A common mistake game designers make is to push off usability testing until the end of development. Some designers associate it with focus testing and marketing. In general, usability testing has not been as widely accepted in the game industry as it has been in the rest of the software industry. For many game designers, there is a resistance to 'outside' input on the game that makes them fear and dislike the testing process.

Unfortunately, these designers are missing out on a great opportunity to improve their game and learn more about how players interact with games. Every usability session can teach a designer something new about the craft of game design. And interacting with usability engineers can also teach designers how to break down issues with play, navigation, control, etc., to test these issues and solve them.

It seems obvious that learning how to solve issues with gameplay will make you a better designer. A smart and successful game designer will not only bring usability engineers into the process as early as possible, but try to learn as much as possible from them during their work on the project.

Exercise 12.3: Usability Experience

Contact a third-party usability lab and find out if you can either watch one of their test sessions or participate as a user. What types of tasks were you or the subjects asked to complete? Were you able to use the software being tested successfully? Why or why not? How do you think the input from the usability tests helped the designer of the software that was tested?

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