Feature: Take This Job and Love It! - Producer - Ted Price
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Name: Ted Price Title: President/CEO, Insomniac Games (but I also function as the Producer) Notable Past Projects: Disruptor, Spyro the Dragon, Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage, Spyro: Year of the Dragon Current Project: Ratchet and Clank Schooling/Degree: B.A. in English from Princeton University General duties of your position/title: (As a producer) Set schedules and budgets. Write project proposals. Participate in design process Work with publisher representatives in production, marketing and PR Oversee all aspects of game development Ensure we stay on budget and deliver a quality game on time How many people are in your department/team? If you are a manager, many people do you oversee? There are over 40 people at Insomniac, divided into 9 departments: ? Gameplay Programming ? Technology Programming ? Systems/Tools Programming ? Environment Art ? Animation ? Character Design and Construction ? Sound/Music ? Game Design ? Office Support The head of each department is responsible for his or her team and reports to me. What was the most valuable bit of knowledge or experience you brought with you to the job? How to create a detailed budget and schedule. Of course, the first budgets and schedules I made in the game business were wildly inaccurate? What was the first major lesson you learned once you started working in the industry? Once you've created an initial budget and schedule that you think are realistic, multiply both by 1.5. Something will always go wrong to create budget overruns and/or throw the schedule off. Therefore plan for the worst - give yourself more time than you think you need and ask for more money than you think you can use. What academic focuses would you recommend for someone who wants to do your job someday? Learn to write and speak well. Communication, both written and spoken, is essential for this job. Most liberal arts courses are good for this - English, philosophy, history, political science, etc. Business courses are also helpful - if you're going to responsible for millions of a publisher's dollars, you'd better not spend them frivolously. And because you have to work with different disciplines within the development world, some experience with programming, art or animation doesn't hurt. Common misconceptions about your job? Producers make an occasional schedule or budget but most of the time they're having expensive lunches or playing golf while everyone else is working his or her tail off. In some cases, that may be true but because the ultimate responsibility for the project rests with the producer, most of them have ulcers, thinning hair, anemic social lives and other stress-induced problems. Is college a necessity, a really good idea, or not required for your line of work? I think college is a good idea mainly because a solid college experience can provide opportunities to work with teams, develop leadership skills and improve analytical abilities that come in handy during production. Of course, you don't need college to get these things - real life experience in any industry can be just as valuable and applicable. College is just a much more fun place to work on this stuff? What tools and software do you use on a regular basis? MS Project (which after several revisions over the last few years is still a pain to use), Excel, Word, and an occasional art tool like Maya or Photoshop. What's your advice for breaking into your line of work? Work at a developer as a tester, a designer, an artist, a programmer - anything that will give you an opportunity to see the development process from the inside. Ship a couple of projects before you even consider looking for a job as a producer. It's pretty tough to jump right in unless you have a thorough understanding of how all of the pieces work together. The reason I can say this is because I wish I had taken that road. I started with absolutely no clue and made a lot of costly mistakes. It wasn't until after three projects that I actually felt like I had a grasp on what a producer should be doing. But it may be that I'm just slow?
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