Star Citizen Live Gamedev: Production Discussion

7 July 202301:03:111,733 linesWatch on YouTube ↗

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

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hi everybody Welcome to Star Citizen live I'm your host Jared Huckabee and we're back uh we had a bit of a Hiatus uh some technical issues some logistical issues some minor health related issues but all relatively in our past mostly resolved and we come back with a new look show us our new look hey joining us on the show this week are members of our production team uh here in the UK studio and from our Austin studio uh Mr Jake Ross hi everybody and Mr Philip I should have asked before but Sarah pasara yeah sorry almost enough Phil Phillip Jake welcome thank you thanks for having to be here inviting us uh Phil this is your first time on on SEO is okay Phil again yeah that's a question you should have asked
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before most people call me Phil okay good see we're we're getting our feedback under us uh Jake you're over here uh not just visiting you're kind of on a like what is a extended Outreach yeah I've been here I've been here since the beginning of June I'll be here through the end of July so a little summer Excursion to our UK studio and you're normally out of the Austin Texas the Austin Studio yeah that's right all right so um normally we do the introductions and stuff and I I say introduce yourselves and we talk about what you do uh this week's entire show is about what production does uh it's the ins and outs of production it's uh everything that it is everything that it is not uh some of the myths about the production uh we'll go over some of their big victories I'm
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sure we'll hear a couple of horror stories along the way uh so if this is your show about where you're like boy I really always wanted to know about production and what it actually does this is the show for you if you want to know where the Banning merchantment you can reach John crew care of Manchester Goods yards six goodyard Place uh Manchester M3 for three GB I forgot you can look it up so let's start basic on the LinkedIn level what's a producer in video games do like what what's the what's the job listing like um it depends on the studio right so game production is not the same across the industry every Studio runs the production differently from another
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um but generally like Baseline it's about supporting the development effort at large supporting teams managing schedules scope timelines priorities it's a supportive role right we support teams and the Endeavors and them hitting their goals but we also like leading the charge right we are part of leadership and it's all about plotting the course for the next few months years whatever the project needs yeah and uh I'd kind of echo that and say when I think of like just the basic building blocks of a producer role I think of basically three pillars or columns one is communication the other is planning and then risk so production is basically managing communication making sure that's not flowing smoothly
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planning is all about schedules and making sure that uh you know we have them first of all but also that when things inevitably change because that never happens in game development uh that we update them accordingly and then communicate out those updates and then the last pillar of risk is managing uh potential risks or impacts that might negatively have consequences on the schedule essentially so stick with these three pillars for a bit while we're talking about like the communicate pillar you say it's managing communication it's easy to sit here and say okay you manage communication but what is that what does that actually entail is it is it is it just sending 50 email miles a day is it constantly you you know just sending out a slew of teams messages are they is it what I do
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and I need to communicate I usually just you know I head to their I have to chase people down I have to chase people down because you know they don't always respond to an email as quick as I need to or a team's message like I have to go find them and like stand them and like like I I I I eyeball them while I wait for them to get off the call and then I'm like hey I know you got my attention what's communication like for producers yeah so I I think for for me when you talk about communication management like when you when especially it can it can vary from Project to project that kind of it's kind of a disclaimer for this whole conversation by the way is that production can mean a lot of different things just depending on where you work um the titles can be different um producer versus project manager or uh development director or coordinator yeah there's lots of different words that people throw around for what kind of we do and every company seems to have a
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different expectation about what a producer does at their various various job rights so there's that that disclaimer uh for everybody you're going to hear that disclaimer a few times but quite a bit Yeah but at least uh for us you know when I think of communication management uh for especially for a project of scale because this is very different um for a small shop that like where everybody works in the same location right or if everyone's a remote but there's plenty of of different platforms for communication through email and and messaging platforms and uh and all that kind of stuff so but but for a project of our scale and uh and the the different departments that are involved it helps to have a plan for how you communicate it's not enough to just say well just hit me up whenever something's happening right like you want to say like I was literally having a conversation with QA earlier this week about how we uh how we communicate
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progress and Status towards bugs and how production can help give a QA the information they need you know we have the very these various channels in our communication platform that we use to uh to send messages but how often are we sending those messages does it make more sense to consolidate all of the information you need into a single meeting or does it make more sense to send little info tidbits of questions throughout the day right what what makes most sense and how do we keep that from ballooning to where it's just absolutely untenable you know so organizing the flow of communication uh is is an important part of of a project our size and managing a project our size uh Menace seven in the chat says blah blah blah thanks for watching Menace um no you make a good point it's you know when you come and you come into the
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a business like this or whatever you know you've got artists you know they train their they go to school or whatnot they train uh to be artists uh you get designers they go and they train you know in game design or they in in all of these curriculums I've been to a few you know video game job fairs and something there's no there's not really a course in communication I mean there's a major that you know your parents are really disappointed in you if you pick it hi Mom uh but you know it's the act of communicating is one of those things that is not generally taught you taught to be an artist but you're not taught how to how to communicate that work and effectively with other teams is like that and that's one of the big areas where producers come in they form that membrane between all the different disciplines and make sure information is Flowing from one to another as effectively as possible
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yeah absolutely a communication consists of multiple like factors that you have to account for a communication is not something you can learn in like a udemy course it's something you have to build a skill for and get better at over time and the greatest communicators are succinct they're clear and they're concise right they get across what they want in the clearest way possible with diffused words right uh great orator is always on like the great communicators that we aspire to be we want to if explain something very complex without going into the nitty-gritty and get people on board and in game production communication is very similar when we can coordinate with multiple teams for instance to get a feature out the door or multiple departments we cannot sit in hour long meetings and discuss about all the kind of things that we'd like to
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talk about it has to be specific to that meeting we have to get to the bottom of what we're trying to achieve and get the job done right before we leave Communications you want to follow up on that how much of your day would you say is spent in meetings more than I would like to admit probably but it's good it's important meetings like when we have meetings at waste everyone's time we tend to cancel them but most of the meetings that I'm in is with directors leads other producers other leadership members and when we try to get our features out the door we try to establish a better process they're all valuable yeah there was you know I've had five or six titles here in my time here and the second the last one had the word producer in it and it was probably the most time consuming aspect
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of that like when the producer I was suddenly in so many more meetings for visibility and for for knowledge and oh you should just need to know this and stuff like this and was like I'm really I still had all my other responsibilities and it's what led us to uh you know separate the role and to get my own dedicated producer hi David let's go to another pillar risks so this was the one you listed third but I'm gonna go to this one next talk to me about identifying and managing risks yeah so risk management is a huge part of what we do um you know part of making sure you're delivering things on time is is making sure that you're trying to as proactive as possible [Laughter] the thing that you are uh looking out for are are things that can negatively
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impact your schedule right and it's impossible to be able to 100 identify risk at a time off 100 of the time um but uh but you try to identify things as they're happening so as an example um you know if you have a gate review coming up for a particular feature or a ship or something like that um and you know something happens where some you know found work appears like out of nowhere seemingly though hey we didn't know that we needed to add this additional thing right that is a risk at that point okay that we don't quite know what this is yet but it very well could have an impact on the Milestone we're about to to hit we're about this the stage gate we're about to hit so let's you know have a meeting about it let's talk about it and assess what is the scope of this thing that's come out of nowhere uh can we somehow make this work
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within our current schedule by you know bringing somebody else in to help out or reducing the scope somewhere else this is risk mitigation right you're you're taking the problem you're assessing a potential solution to mitigate that problem and you're you're tracking that you're saying okay I've got that documented if this thing comes to pass I know to execute in this way and hopefully if you if you are able to mitigate the risk you keep your schedule on track often the mitigation strategies don't work and or there's nothing you can do there is there is a risk mitigation strategy called accept sometimes you have to just accept the risk or it's a business decision you know what we're willing to accept that risk because of Any number of different reasons right right you know there are a number of situations people who have followed the project for
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a while you know will probably be able to identify several of these at the Times where you know it's it's you have you know we've we've had our quarterly release scheduled for the last couple years and the idea was that the you know the patches would be released every quarter and you know you know and if things weren't quite ready you know they would just you know pull out and be and be left to it to another quarter and sometimes that happens you know lots of things you know oh it's not we thought it was going to be this coordinates and we pulled it out because it risks it's not going to make it we've moved another but sometimes there's something you want so much or it's necessary for the next six months of work or you know it's like this is like no it's like we need to take that risk even if the patch or even if the deliverable slips a week or two or you know so much in order to get that in how is how how is it like figuring that out is
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that is that just the is that just the the decision of one person is that uh the the work of a committee is there a formula to it I mean usually when we identify potential risk for deliverable like a feature or something I think we had a recent example that um we've talked about the ship trespass feature for instance so we had a full blown schedule for the feature on a task level we knew when it would be ready but there was always this risk looming that there could be more edge cases that we have to address before we can release the feature in like a good enough state right so that was one of those risks that we try to mitigate but couldn't and then we didn't feel comfortable with just releasing it anyway because these edge cases needed to be dealt with and so we had to pull it out of that release
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but in under in other instances we it's usually a discussion between production the team leadership and director like Todd we will sit down we'll go over the risk and then we'll give him a few options and discuss it with him and then if he's happy to go down the road of okay let's let's shoot for it right let's let's put a few more people on it so we can get it out on time uh then we'll do that and if he would prefer we keep it we make it good um we get it in a better State then we'll do that instead it's always a coordination effort between yeah leads into that uh at ad um sort of how this process starts is you you look at your release you look at just general or the release you're planning for and you try to identify what are what are our um you know tent pole deliverables right what are the
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things that are really going to prop up this release and be the big selling points for this release things that are going to excite people right that's so you identify what those things are um and and you then discuss what your level of risk appetite is and basically risk appetite is how how what's our um tolerance for risk with these specific features and generally speaking your tolerance for risk and basically allowing you know potential to go down to her paths that might impact a schedule negatively your risk appetite might be higher for temple deliverables because that's going to be a make or break sort of feature whereas something that may not uh has have as big of an impact that way you don't mind delaying slightly to give it the time it needs um or it could be even a big thing but
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we just like you know what we don't we just this needs a little bit more time in the oven right the risk appetite is low on this so let's go ahead and do that the trick with this is that everybody has to be in alignment everybody has to be this has the same risk appetite and everything has to go the way you expect it to go yes exactly that yeah Captain Louis Coronado in the chat says bro literally everything in Star Citizen is an edge case it's not wrong well let's actually let's talk about that for a second when is game development is is everyone watching and is here and understand is difficult right uh things coming we're trying new things all the time especially for for project R's it's always on The Cutting Edge we're always trying new things and doing these different ways and we're we're swinging for the fences and a lot of stuff um so some of this stuff like just
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hasn't been done before or or that we haven't we don't have necessarily a clear path ahead of us so we start out on a path we generally have an idea of where we're going a trajectory right and things happen along the way that we just didn't expect and it's just because you know what we haven't done this before we haven't tried it before so let's see how this goes as those things come in yeah you have to assess every single thing as it comes in it's game development not game construction yeah it's a good way a lot of this was r d and with that edge cases they tend to you know you said a line here I want I want I want to clarify it here you said because we haven't done this before it's not like we haven't made games before everybody here has worked on another project has shipped to other games and whatnot it is the the weird reality the thing that sometimes gets lost is that if you're
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building something that's truly new if you're building something that's truly different you haven't done that before so you know so the the way in which you tackle it will be different you know ideally you know the way in the way in which you progress through it will be different and the way in which you estimate schedule it and whatever has got to be like uh okay you know we're based yeah your schedules have to be based on prior experience and this is the way we made this thing but we're not making that thing we're actually making this thing like this so we think we can extrapolate from this but it's always you know it's always a guesstimate it's always your best effort you know using all the factors that you have uh and that's a good way of putting it because I don't want to shortchange our extremely talented experienced developers right like they know what
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they're doing so but but often what we're what we're doing is trailblazing right where we have these super talented and smart individuals for reason we want to try new things and we wanted we want to break the mold and we want to do a lot of stuff differently trying to anyway yeah I mean anybody can make an elevator that kills people uh Tech bug Star Citizen says are we on an interview panel or something can we talk about the game yes we're on an interview panel and we're talking about the process of producing the game uh what's the third pillar I've lost it now planning planning yeah okay so talk to me about plan we actually we kind of already went into planes so the planning pillar how do you plan for that a thing that's never been built using a way that's never been builded before two weeks yeah I mean we have what is colloquial
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colloquial called a backlog that's like all the things that we want to do for now and forever effectively and obviously we're focusing on the things that are upcoming next right we have a regular planning cycle where we go through the next three to 12 months and then we start a high level plan we need to establish what our goals are for the next 12 months right and some teams go even further right they have 24 um months like schedules um but this is just establishing like goals at some point the team and the production team have to come together and um break down what we want these goals into into more sorry into more tangible sizable digestible chunks right um that's where production gets really
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involved we break down the work into tasks and we schedule out those tasks those then inform what release we can hit with a particular feature so for ship trash trespass we planned it out for 320 and there was a plan for the longest time and then at some point we figured okay this is there's extra work that we have to do that wasn't that we weren't aware of and to like fairly late into the development process as we started testing the feature and seeing where it breaks right I know there's also it's one of the the there's a it doesn't always happen this way but there are times when ISC you know where we're showing these features work in progress sometimes very Inlet can actually impact that you know it's it's like a ISE is often our chance to get a feature out there a bit early you
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know you know and get some you know present the ideas present the direction that we're going to and then you know see some feedback and go oh okay you know and sometimes that allows us to you know course change a little bit uh here and there yeah you know it's it's a it's a it's an example of how you know we use every tool at our disposal you know obviously there's there's Spectrum where folks can do their feedback and of course we look at Reddit and social media and stuff but uh it's one of the interesting things that have has become more apparent in later years uh that ISE can have a role like some something when people are wondering why sometimes something gets shown this week and not that week and stuff like this it's uh some sometimes a lot of times that's because you know it needs to be in a position where it's showable because that's the visual show and this is the show where you just get to see yes so it
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has to be ready to show for first off but then sometimes there's a point where it's like we're at a Crossroads let's get this information out there and see how people you know respond and whatnot and then we can decide which you know direction to go and stuff like that so I think that probably fed in a little bit to the ship trespass stuff and you know helped us Identify some additional things that we needed to address definitely so planning the risk and risk and risk right um now let's talk about so that's that's the job listing that that's kind of the standard I would say every producer works with risks works with planning and stuff like this but every position in gamedev every position in Game Dev goes beyond what's in the man it goes beyond what's in the Mandate I don't
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know anybody here that just does what was on you know that LinkedIn post when they got hired and whatnot they were always going to something else what else does a producer do I mean for some of the responsibilities I was given here at CAG it's it's all about also supporting the team holistically generally right if there's issues that the team is dealing with if it's tools issues if it's collaboration issues with a different team if they're struggling to find the right information that's kind of where production steps in and supports right so that the developers can focus on development so we try to support the team the team around the team productivity that's a big part right and then we also try to be a good example of how to work as a department right there's um there's
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certain principles and guidelines that we have in production that help us become better at what we're doing right so we have regular learning initiatives that we kick off or other initiatives that allow developers to be more productive on top of that we're dealing a lot with a lot of like cross project initiatives like if there's a big push for stability or performance it's usually producers who manage their process and and kind of drive it for forward so that everyone is aligned and we get the game in Nevada you're responsible for the instability not me that's interesting he's stuck here for the next 40 minutes message me and I'll make sure he never leaves
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you you've used the term support a few times go deeper though what what is supporting these people like you know is is this is this holding their head when they cry it's this like like what is what does supporting people mean yeah it tastes like yeah yeah well I was gonna so I mean you said you kind of joke about that but you know when you talk about those three pillars right I think you either you I I also say that the the foundation and undergirding all those three pillars is people like you can't part of what uh yeah what separates sort of the okay producers from the great producers I think is is the is that that aspect it's it's managing and being able to to have the emotional intelligence to understand people um and a lot of what we do is is some of that there is stress that is involved
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with this with game development there's uh there's a there's a lot of range of emotions and and you know I have literally had a tissue box in my office because I would have a developer come and talk to me he was he was struggling with with uh with various things and and some circulated some not and that was I think something that I was very very happy to do like so I have to have somebody who's uh who needs a shoulder to cry on or needs to vent or something like that like we go through the day-to-day life's uh stresses like these are we have to remember these are these are people that we're talking about here and and that is a motivation of mine and part one of the reason why I came in went into production is because I love working with people and talking with people and helping people to be their best self so I'm glad you didn't use tub Pappy's name there it's one of those sometimes I get yeah
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all right um all right so let's talk a little bit about the hierarchy of producers so uh we do these shows every once in a while uh as uh we move closer towards uh citizencon and quarter three uh people who have followed the project for a while know that our content tends to change a bit in quarter three as things are embargoed and being worked on for citizen con it leaves less for us to do in our weekly content so we tend to take more human interest stuff and stuff in this time uh so which thank you for being here for this right by the way uh we know from other shows where we have artists and and and designers on that there's a hierarchy like Junior uh just the name of your position then position two position three senior lead uh principal in some cases what's the
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hierarchy for producers in in CG well here it's uh you know again every place is going to be different but here um it's sort of sort of the same thing we have assistant producer which is a sort of entry-level role we have an associate producer uh uh and Associate has two levels of one and two and then we've got mid-level producer just producer uh one and two senior producer and then lead producer and then up you go up from there into uh you know a production director you know and Beyond so it's um that's kind of the the general hierarchy within within production so it's pretty it matches pretty well with with what we have at the rest of the company in different departments as well so what's your lead producer what does a lead producer do then yeah so I kind of for me it's it's a lot of of uh I mean
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where do I start um people I I do a lot with people like I manage people um you know Philip and others are on my team and and uh it's it's a uh it's a privilege to be able to uh to help coach and guide and Mentor wherever I can in that area um I considered myself sort of a master of of schedule you know uh whatever's going on I've tried to make sure that I have a handle on on where everything is in Flight whether it's in uh early stages or middle stages or later stages we have a holistic picture of of the entire development of Star Citizen um that's sometimes a challenge because there's a lot in flight at any given time um but I try to maintain a hold on that as best I can um I would say uh you know uh performance is something I kind of keep an eye on in terms of how well we are
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performing as a team if there's areas where we don't have the Velocity we need or if we don't if we're not executing where we need I'll kind of go into that and figure out root cause and try to figure out how to solve that problem follow up on that real quick velocity it's it's not a term I don't think we've ever used the word on any of our programs yeah so talk to me about tracking velocity and stuff because that's something exclusively to producers um yeah I mean so generally speaking every team has a a rate at which they work right and and uh it's easier to measure and for some teams than others if you are a Content producing team and you're pumping out you know the same sort of asset over and over again it's easy to kind of measure props team has made five cups this week yes right like you can measure how how quickly does it take to for one of those cups to go
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through the process and you can kind of measure that velocity and you can say if we want you know 10 uh props in this next upcoming patch uh you know we we only have enough resources to be able to achieve you know six of them so if we want to increase the velocity then we need to find ways to either reduce scope or add more people and and there's various levers you can pull to try to increase or increase velocity but that's really what it is is trying to measure how quickly are we able to execute on our goals and uh and the reason you do that is so that you can dive into areas where you feel like the velocity isn't quite what you want it to be and you can help solve those problems and what's it give me an example of a team what would be difficult to chart velocity for uh I'd say an R D heavy team
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um you know any of our core Tech teams or or gameplay feature teams it can be difficult sometimes to uh to get a handle on on that because the the work items if you want to call it that the cups that they're putting through the pipe are not cups they're they're foundational technological Marvels that that their that people are building and uh and so it's hard to to measure and quantify and Compares Apples to Apples in that way so what you can look at is sort of individual sort of developer veloci velocity so you can look at down to the developer level like you know how's this person doing versus that person um and that's not sort of a uh it's a way to help alleviate blockers and alleviate help somebody to improve in their craft and and uh does it get as granular as counting check-ins or counting bug fixes and stuff like that
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it can but it at our project uh not we don't get that granular but I don't know if you wanted to add anything to that yeah we don't try to to be um we don't want to watch over people constantly right we entrust our developers that I mean they're professionals right all we care about is that what they think how long it takes is what they feel comfortable with they don't give us estimates to make us comfortable like all we care about is when can we ship something to the players and what we look at holistically is like how much can a team achieve within let's say three months and if that is half a feature then it might take six months to deliver a full feature right so we're trying to be we try to give the developers a space that they need to
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figure out all these difficult problems and that look and not look over like individual check-ins or measure how many tasks per week they've closed off that's not what we do yeah uh Arc VR in the chat says show feat nice Jordans by the way there you go you meant you said something I want to I want to try to push on something a little bit here you said they don't tell you things to make you happy like this I've been in this industry for a while I was a blizzard back when we launched World of Warcraft you know I've been here alone for a little over eight years like this I know that not just here anywhere there is always this temptation
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to commit to more than is possible to to to to to say oh yeah yeah I can get that done in eight weeks and then go back to your seat and go how the am I gonna get that done in eight weeks you know or or to be or or just say oh it's gonna take 16 weeks and have somebody else tell you oh no I bet you I believe in you I bet you can do that in 12 and you're like how do you argue with that person they said they believe in me yeah okay I'll try to do it in twelves this is a this is this is a thing that happens in the entire industry this happens every single place I've ever gone this happens to every single person I've ever talked to and anywhere else this this internal expectations of not
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wanting to disappoint of wanting to live up to you know to what other people expect of you of wanting to always improve hey if I did the last one and eight maybe I can do the next one and six you know it's like how does without naming any names or anything We're not gonna throw anybody on the bus or whatever but how this is a very real thing that you guys exclusively you know deal with it's and I want to hear your opinions on this so give me give me some real talk how is how difficult is this to work with how difficult does this image what are some of the things you have done in the past that have worked to help alleviate this maybe what have you done that didn't work like give me some real talk here I'm actually quite passionate about this because I review all the game design documents
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so the elite designer puts in front of me like if they say this is the amount of work I'll try and question that right because they may they may feel very optimistic that we can achieve something with x amount of weeks months available to us but I as a producer have the responsibility to push back on that and look into those numbers and look into those into that scope that they're trying to achieve and ask difficult questions like are you actually able to do this on your own there's so many things you have to keep in mind right some of our leads to have more than just development work that they have to do there's they have their own people they have a lot of meetings to attend to right they're all everyone I think that I've met in this company is very optimistic about what they can achieve because it's an exciting project but humans are
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incredibly bad at estimating I think there's entire Papers written on it right so what we do as producers is question and push back and wherever we feel like we're not really 100 confident we can build in like buffer right extra time into the development of a future schedule so that we can account for unknown unknowns there's always something that goes wrong there's a tool that's breaking or there's some priority that has to be addressed immediately right bill is broken for three days in a row and nobody can yeah so um that is something that we have to deal with a very big company with so many developers with so many people checking in right you've talked about gamedift before it's it's difficult to get it in a stable enough State very quickly and so sometimes we just have to
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make a push and that can affect a feature's development time right so we as producers try to always push back ask questions try to understand what's the reality of a features development timeline and then building that extra safety net of buffer yeah and then I'd say that you can't always look at just an estimate on its own right like sometimes the developer will say this will take me you know three weeks to do okay cool but you're not working 100 eight hours a day whatever it is for for that amount of time like you you are there's meetings that crop up there's uh there's you know people get sick or they take time off you know there's you can't just look at an estimate somebody gives and just say okay cool I'm just going to take that and plop it into my schedule and that's that
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um we have we do track um and then ask teams to account for time for unknown unknowns which is the things you don't know that you don't know um that uh because they always it always happens that things come up that we just could not foresee and so we don't max out our team schedules we if they give us an estimate over three weeks we might actually put it in the schedule for something like four four and a half weeks because we know that there will things to be crop up bugs will come in they'll need fixing um so that there's an element of that as well of trying to keep in mind the whole context of things whereas the developers scope of what they know about is that the stuff they've been asked to do producers have to be mindful of everything that's going on in the project so that we can be like well I know that there is a release happening
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around that time and that likely we will have to monitor uh the bugs that are coming in this team is often supporting the releases and fixing bugs so I'm going to take your three-week estimate I'm going to add a little bit of time there because I know that you will likely have to get pulled off because and re-prioritize to help support the release or something like that yeah that was actually leads into my next question it's you know we've talked a lot about you asking people and getting that and this that question was about you know convincing them to give you honest estimations reasonable estimation stuff there have to be times where you've done this long enough you've worked with some of these people whoever these people are you know here there anywhere like this and you know better and like okay that person said six weeks
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but they're not thinking about this and they're not thinking about this other thing they're forgetting that they've got this other thing coming up in four weeks we're like this we need to build this to eight not not to six you know there are there are there a lot of times where you have to do that where you have to is that part of the producer's responsibility to take that information and then reinterpret it at times I mean ultimately it comes down to trusting what the developers are giving us but then always having a backup plan right I don't want to question every estimate that I get from a developer because they know best as a producer my role is to get the information that I can gather and add some extra caveats to it and as my risk mitigation process for instance at buffer so there's been times where I've asked are you sure this is just
00:37:18
going to take one day okay because you have a meeting all week though like in the entire afternoon so smaller half a day that you have actually time for this like yeah okay let's let's make it two right um but I don't try to criticize or like trying to disseminate what what they're thinking this would take yeah I I ask because there's uh we both work with devs from slightly different directions but you know when we're when we're filming uh ISE or even this show SEO we have we have often got to you know get their schedules and be like okay when you know we have to kind of plot out when they're going to have time that time has to match up with when other people are going to have time and then when we have resources because we don't necessarily have all our resources just free free and available every single day and stuff like this and there
00:38:06
there have been times where we were just talking about it earlier today reasons like we thought we were going to film something on one day and then we found out we weren't like uh you know we showed up to shoot one time and the developer was like oh I got married yesterday so I'm not coming in today or you know so that's like did that skip your money because yeah that totally skipped my mind when I when I agreed to do this like this so I have to imagine stuff like that affects you as well because it affects me almost every single week it does definitely there's a lot of things that they may not be aware of in the in the current moment right and then yeah it's okay we can always adjust that's why we have to buffer right yes or as a a a a a galastica in the chat uh just put can't bring it up right now we went
00:38:53
to shoot uh some bit with the VFX team uh earlier today and the you can't see it but the entire VFX department has been empty they're upgrading their desks this weekend oh wow so we went to film and just the entire area was gone we're like what and they're like oh yeah I forgot to tell you our entire area is evaporating for a day it's like yeah so so like you're you're talking about you know the trust in the devs and whatnot and I just I just know from experience there's there's you absolutely have to you absolutely do but there has to be another layer of I'm going to check over here and we're going to check over here because there's because they're always very focused on their work I think it's just asking the right questions right it's it's a collaborative process uh schedules the game development is a collaborative process schedules are no different it's you have to have the developer input absolutely because they
00:39:41
have to be the ones to to tell you how long the thing is going to take but then you also have to have the producers context and you have to have to have the lead who has probably more years of experience and can say well you didn't think about this oh yeah I didn't think about that right it's a collaborative process that's because I think not everybody is in the right mind space at the exact moment that you ask them they're they're yeah there are plenty of times I can't even remember David's name I did as long as I don't know it it's just that sometimes I'm just I'm not in a place yeah uh so let's talk about how producers integrate into the teams so uh one of the stories that we tell a lot is like this is the mission feature team and this is eupu uh we're in the process of putting together a new North American pu team you know which we'll talk about you know in a bit uh these teams have
00:40:29
artists they have designers they have programmers they have QA people and they have producers so does that producer belong to that team do they do the do they do they run that team do they assist that team do they still exist in a producer hierarchy over here and they're just kind of Moonlighting over here how's this structure work I mean on the feature side which I'm over overlooking I see produce part of those those teams is leadership right you have your elliotts and your ads and your looks but then there's also also an ash who is part of that team who's the producer for the mission feature team he's just as much part of the of the mission feature team's leadership as Elliot is for instance he's not getting
00:41:16
camera time but he's playing a huge role in actually allowing the team to deliver what they are looking to achieve right he's making it all happen um in on the schedules coordinating between departments QA publishing getting directors on board getting their them them to sign off on what we're trying to achieve it's driving that team from a production perspective and supporting them right like Jake said uh shoulder to cry on that's what producers often have to provide because their frustrations that the team has to contend with and the producers always like the calming and reassuring voice that this is a problem it's it's good to be annoyed by it but let's sit down figure out the process to fix it right it's the voice of reason the voice of um a better future so to speak I'm glad you
00:42:07
mentioned that there there's been a thing there's a thing that I sometimes I I've been saying I found myself without intending to saying more recently every single thing that our backers our citizens our players whatever you want to call them every single thing they're saying about our stuff when we release a patch when when we release a feature when something goes to PTU when it doesn't go to evocative every single thing that we see people saying on Twitch on YouTube on Spectrum or whatever has been said internally that has been said internally just a few days before that just a few weeks before that like there there is when it comes to our views on the game when it comes to how
00:42:57
much the game means to us when it comes to how invested our people are in the game it there's no there's very little difference it's it's we're just these our people here are just as invested as the folks you know who have you know been following this project for you know for eight years uh somebody in the chat was talking about he goes he always says this every single week I'm like well you know you watch every single episode you know I'm gonna repeat myself sometimes but you know some people don't watch every single episode and I'm not very good at this so sorry um but it's so those feelings though those oh this isn't quite how we wanted it or oh that isn't quite working the way it isn't why can't we fix that thing why can't an elevator kill the person again you know kind of thing it's like how you you
00:43:46
said part of your job is dealing with that frustration you know you know internally like a like like our own little internal uh uh a triage team in a way would you say that was right yeah we we actually have like a a weekly bi-weekly meeting that is just venting right it pretty much is that right it's not supposed to be just a place to vent it's a place where you can share your frustrations and we play the week every uh the game every week right we have play test internally that every team does and after it is it's like okay uh there's a lot that we need to fix here right it's an opportunity for us to get a reality check and we try to play as much on life as well I try to do it all the time to get uh the thing on the post in the current situation in the game and then have that
00:44:34
feed into the decision-making process that we do with directors and leads right everyone is acutely aware of the issues that players have right now we share those frustrations 100 I'm I'm seeing the post I'm seeing videos of people talking about what they like and don't like and it matches almost 99 with what I'm hearing internally in meetings with regular Developers so I feel like we are very aware but there's a challenge in just addressing what is currently the biggest problem at face value it's almost a little bit more complicated than it appears to be especially when it's like deep rooted in some of our text tag it just requires a bit more brain power than just one developer going off and doing a bunch of bug fixes yeah we we tracked the um we do have a process for
00:45:23
tracking these this all all the basically player feedback essentially and so we we do have an acute awareness as Philip said of of what the issues are it always just comes down to priorities right and and I mentioned earlier how we have an expectation during our planning that we allow for time for unknown unknowns uh we also have an expectation that players or that players that teams uh account for time to address what we call Quality of Life issues uh and and Bug fixing and so along with the feature development commitments I guess we need to develop this specific feature we ask for teams to account for I know none owns we ask for teams to account for uh check that we ask for teams to account for quality of life and Bug fixing and so it's just a matter of what percentage of the team's times are spent on each of those allocations and often feature new
00:46:13
feature development is is dominates the team's schedule but there are times where we ask we pull those levers around and we say okay we're going to spend more time on quality of life this quarter the more time on bug fixing or more time than Tech debt but that's just the challenges of having both a live product and an alpha development game at the same time right so those are always just different level levers that we have to pull Tech Travis in the chat says why not scale back some features until the game gets into a more playable state that is always the question that I I feel like we ask ourselves that question internally every single week it's that that's the that's the that's the constant challenge the the expectation of you know that there's the patch expected all right you know the the folks expect the patch and then folks expect you know
00:47:03
a certain threshold of content to be in that patch none of that determines how fast the project gets developed how fast the feature get you know to get successfully you know built how fast bugs are found and destroyed and whatnot so there's there's all and and that's what we talked about earlier sometimes when it's when it's a thing that you know it's egregious and we can do it like we pull ship trespass back we pull it out like no it's like and sometimes you go forward and it's like you know it's like we think this we think this is in a place where it can still generate good feedback we think it's in a place where it can still uh be useful for testing or it can still be useful for you yeah you know for analytics and stuff so even though it's not perfect you know we still put it out there because it serves a purpose to our game development to get it out there and to
00:47:50
get it in the hands and stuff and there's always that like I hear this conversation constantly there's always this back and forth between whether that should be pulled whether that should you know go in you know just with a little more you know pillowing around you know to to make it safer it's like this it's a it's a it's the for it's the forever right we've done something similar for 319 when we introduced the ability for tractor beams to remove and reattach items we knew that there would be issues with some of the chefs because they are not up to Gold Standard yet but we accepted that as like a as a risk because we felt the future was in a good enough state that it would add so much more value to the current game we now have the ability to when you go out for a salvage contract find loot and strip
00:48:38
the ships from their components and make some cash on the side right or re-equip missiles for some of your vehicles there was value in just pushing forward and not scaling back and not saying okay let's get all these ships sorted out and hold the feature from getting released we felt like it was the right car at that time it's that same debate it's the date that's going on in twitch chat right now it's the debate that'll be on salty my extreme later today hi salty Mike you know anyways it's just it's it's whether things should go out whether things should be held back oh that's too many things being held back you know then now the patch has to be delayed and also get more stuff in but if you delete the patch too much I thought we were going to pull things out so we didn't have to delay the patch it's just this constant never-ending you know shifting of levers part of that too is going back to what a producer's role
00:49:26
is in all this um because every single one of those things right um putting out new features uh addressing stability and performance issues bug fixing and releasing patches uh you know the the events we do every year preparing for citizen con these are all goals that are set by um our Business Leaders right they set the goals this is what we want to do um what they don't know is if they come in and they say hey this is a new initiative we want to do for this for this next release how does that impact everything else we were already planning on doing right so as a producer you know new request comes down how how does that impact the current state of things and something that I feel like um you know we've we've improved at over the years but still could very much improve on just full disclosure here is is better communicating impacts on you
00:50:14
know this this new thing came in here's here's what uh here's what that impact might be you know this we want this new feature okay well do You Realize by requesting that new feature it means means this team's allocation towards quality of life and Bug fixing actually shrinks like was that something that we were aware of and often that's not the case um so we have to be better at communicating that as well and I would say over the years we've improved that uh Leaps and Bounds and where we were you know four or five six years ago right but uh but you know but we can always do better at that so I'd say it's that is something we're constantly assessing is of all these things we're trying to juggle which thing is the most important uh at any given time because that does change dependent quarter quarter and what uh you know essentially what what would we lose by focusing on
00:51:03
this versus that and that sort of analysis and what I call scenario building if like if we do this then that means this if we do that that means that um that sort of that's the communication management aspect of this right where you come in and here's the impact do we want to go left do you want to go right uh and then we hope and hopefully help make make our Business Leaders make a more intelligent decision that way oh my gosh I called salty Mike out in chat and now they're arguing and chat about whether salty Mike's a good person or a bad person I'll tell you mics you should just never call anybody out anymore because you can't yeah bring it on yourself you know that right yeah you just bring it on yourself we like salty mine he keeps dishonest uh you know that that's going to be in his show real isn't it so all of this sounds like you know
00:51:53
we're having this conversation we're having this conversation today you know not in an effort to excuse anything to you know make excuses for anything to draw it's part of the Mandate of scl is to you know have the discussions that you're not going to see at another game developer you're not you're not going to see an hour-long candid conversation about the intricacies and the challenges of of production you know from from from from BioWare or Bethesda as much as I love both of those developers it's like that's just not the kind of content they do uh that's that that's what you know the purpose of this show you know has become I want to start exploring these aspects of game development of the process of making games uh as it applies to our game but also all these other games and stuff I
00:52:42
I want to thank you for for you for for being as candid as you have been stuff especially when I've poked into some areas that I know are you know can be soft or it can be uh sore rather let's talk about some big wins so Jake you've been with this project for almost as long as I have or as long as I have a thank you be 10 years in January yeah you've been here just longer than I have been uh and you've worked other places before Phil you've worked other places before when I say what's a big win for production I mean obviously shipping a thing on the day we said it was going to go out but where does that happen [Music] what's a big win for production I mean earlier this week we were given we were actually talking about about some of this because you know I think
00:53:31
when we part of what prediction production does too is is identify areas of improvement okay this is how current process is going is it working or is it not if it's working how can we make it better if it's not working let's throw it out and do something new right like these these are the sorts of questions that we ask ourselves um when you introduce something new a new process um often it's it takes like a quarter or two before you really start to see the effects or fruits of that process change um but I think what to me what a big win is on the production side and the reason I bring it up is because it's fresh because we were talking about that this this week um is when you see benefits of that process taking effect you know you brought up the example of ship trespass earlier I think the reason you can correct me from if you think I'm wrong here but the reason why I think that we were able to make that call that
00:54:19
say Hey you know this isn't quite ready let's push it out is because we introduced a new a new process at the start towards the start of the year at the end of q1 where we were measuring uh progress at the various stage gates in a different way and so we were able to catch changes to schedule earlier on in the process for for some of these features that then allowed us to make calls about is this going to be ready in time or not sometimes things catch us by surprise and that's never a good feeling and it's something that you know as producers it drives us crazy like when things come out of left field and you just weren't prepared for it nobody told you you didn't communicate to you they didn't use your your excellent communication management plan that you set up um you know these are the things that drive us crazy but uh so we tried to set up process in such a way where we aren't surprised we mitigate deviate the
00:55:08
surprises as they come up and so I think we rolled out a process change towards the beginning of the year that I think has started to pay dividends and it wasn't a big thing it wasn't like a gargantuan massive huge thing but it showed that oh we actually made something better we did something we made an incremental change that made the process better and over the course of almost 10 years now that's the you know just to get personal for a second that's the reason why I stick around as long as I have uh one of the reasons is because incrementally each year I see the improvements I see us getting better at this over at and I say at this there's a lot that's wrapped up into that statement but uh but you know at least internally it feels like we are we ratchet up year after year in terms of how uh how we run things and how we do
00:55:56
things internally in my case I'm here for vs CR has my has my mother could you mom will find you someday uh okay so that's a that's a win but give me a Horror Story give me a production Horror Story without naming names you know we're at we're at the end here uh we've already we've already gone over a couple lines this week give me a production Horror Story you have a good one I'll let you take this one okay um and then you've got one about Arena Commander I do I do it was not at CNG um it was a different company I think it was probably 30 minutes before life and we would release our game on Steam right so on the steam back end there's this little thing that you have to put in if
00:56:43
you want to get something to be able to be purchased on the actual store that's the go live date that you have to set and 30 minutes before the go live date we've realized that nobody has actually said anything in that field so Panic sets in and fortunately I was working with a company that had good relationships with valve and so we kind of picked up the red phone and said Gabe make this go live please effectively um but in those 30 minutes I've never been distressed out this was yeah this was a crazy moment and I'm happy that five minutes before life it was actually live so up until the day of release nobody had noticed that there wasn't a go live date on this game page I guess
00:57:31
uh lucky that you had Gabe's phone number you know yeah but it's one of these things that you should have known it's probably on a checklist somewhere but nobody triple quadruple checked yeah well because it's a thing that you don't you're not looking for it every single day you're only looking for it at the end so it's like it's it's it's those one-off things it's it's hard you can't build a you can't build a a ritual a habit of checking to make sure you have your go live day uh Jake I want to hear yours I mean yeah so you know I was thinking about this uh you know it's funny you know some of what I would call horror stories in the in the moment I now look kind of weirdly look back on fondly um I don't know what that says about me but uh but I remember the early days here
00:58:19
um in trying to get that first publish of Arena Commander out the door and the the money yeah it was like 1.0 but I think it was what it was if I can't remember now the very first one was point eight point yeah okay yeah so uh but the the days leading up to that were were intense I'll just kind of call and just say for what it is you know but uh late nights people uh sleep in under their desks and stuff like that but what was great about the whole thing was that often at that time the Austin Studios air conditioning would go out for no reason um so it was really really nice to be up super late at the studio with no air conditioning and hot Austin uh uh Summers and uh or I guess at that time it was in Spring but uh but that was it's it was things like that that I look back and go like man I don't know that
00:59:08
that was trying let's just put it that way but I look back now and I kind of laugh about it because I'm like man like that's you know you just you have I don't know what it is it's like this camaraderie building that also happens some of those people I still were still here still here I still work with and you know built relationships with and you kind of you know uh build build those those friendships that last a lifetime through trials like that so if it was spring it was 1.0 so you were right yeah yeah no we I think we all have those horror stories that turn into Fun fond memories are at least not are less horror stories like like somebody mentioned the the holiday live stream to me like three weeks ago and I didn't go into a PTSD nightmare so you know healing is possible the feeling is possible it's good to know
00:59:57
that's it everybody thank you for uh hanging out with us for a discussing production this is a topic that uh you know if you watch I've done about 1450 videos for cig and I think in all of them we've done maybe five total that have been about production once we made a schedule with Eric iron Davis that was super exciting uh you know so it's not a production that gets that gets covered a lot if we only do it five times you know nobody else is doing it like ever you know so I really appreciate you taking the time to to be here and to do the show and for you to let us take advantage of you while you were here to do it in person how did you do it and uh could I also just say one quick thing sure that I I while I got the opportunity in the platform to just
01:00:45
thank the community um I love uh talking about this but but one of the things I mentioned earlier why I stay year after year and and uh one of the big reasons why I stay after year after is this community it's the players it's it's it's the um I've watched the streams I watch the Youtube videos I love seeing how much fun people have and I love the fervor around the project even even the the sometimes uh negative fervor it motivates us it keeps us going but the positive stuff is is also fine it's also good uh but I love I love this community I think it's it's second to absolutely none um and uh and I just wanted to say thank you to the to the community so even Doc Martin 007 who says it's an uninformative stream
01:01:32
that's good I'm glad we could be informative thanks for watching uh uh yeah so uh thanks for watching uh remember that it's the foundation Festival I believe is going on right now there's a free fly available you can check out the robertspaceindustries.com website for all the details on that and of course if you're in the uh uh Paris area there is a bar citizen Paris tomorrow uh I believe it's tomorrow because I'm getting on an airplane tomorrow morning uh so uh that's that's in Paris uh uh twitchcon is in Paris that's in Paris uh a couple fires and some Outreach or extra in Terrace but it's a big place and so check your Maps check for safety areas so far everything's looking okay so uh if you're in the area and you want to show up you should show up for that I'll be there and we'll have a couple of
01:02:19
giveaways and stuff to to do so we'll have that uh and of course remember that ISC is still in Hiatus it'll come back towards the end of this month uh with a bunch of looks at the continue to look at uh the cigs development uh it might have a thing with the bfx team it depends if they get their desks back so for Star Citizen live I'm Jared that was Jake that's Phil thanks for watching and we'll see you all here next week everybody take care

Transcript from YouTube’s automatic captions — punctuation and Star Citizen jargon are approximate. The video itself is hosted by CIG on the official channel.