The Producer Is Far, Far Away Juan Gril Joju

1. The Producer Is Far, Far AwayJuan GrilJoju CGA Europe: West 2007

2. Why? • We work under these myths: • “Creating a game with people far away is not possible!” • “You can’t coordinate them” • “In order to execute your vision, you need to keep control, and you can’t control somebody who is far away”

3. Current Market Conditions • This is what we hear: • “We spent 600,000 dollars in our latest game”. • “You can’t compete if you don’t have a large budget”. • What do all this mean (in theory): • You need senior team members. • You need a nice office to accommodate them. • You need VCs to fund you. • You need Management to get the VCs out of your way. • And if you can’t, go and work for somebody. • Great environment for innovation, right?

4. Innovation Is In The Garage • But the entire team doesn’t fit in it! • Let’s do a “virtual garage” then!

5. Case Study: Brown Noise Poo Blast Client: Comedy Central Development Time: 3 months Team Size: 8 (4 full-time)

6. Case Study: BNPB: Team Members Locations

7. Joju’s Typical Team Composition

8. The perfect team member • Technically and artistically oriented. • Believes in the collective creativity of a group over somebody’s vision. • Hates to be constantly supervised. • Understands that Monday is Monday and not Wednesday. • Does the best for his/her own sake (after all, his/her name is in the game’s credits).

9. Creativity and Project Ownership • Anti-outsourcing imperative: Doesn’t matter where you are at we’ll make sure there is a two way dialog. • Every team member has contributed in the design of a game we have made. • The Game Designer is the final authority. • But the best leaders are those who first listen to all the options and then make a call.

10. How We Write and Share Documentation • We use Google Docs for writing GDDs. • We share the GDD with all the dev members andthe publisher. • Everybody is notified of a change.

11. Project Management: Structure of a Timeline • Joju’s own version of SCRUM: • New build every 2-3 weeks. • The game’s project is divided in components (i.e.: Core Gameplay Engine, Score Panel). • Every component is a task. We don’t break it down more. • We identify 6-10 tasks that can be solved in the build’s dev time. • The implementation of the task usually is not the final (i.e.: Score Panel 0.3 in build 0.12, Score Panel 0.8 in beta build).

12. Project Management: Visual Timeline • We use Google Spreadsheets for timelines. We share it with all the team members and the publisher.

13. How We Communicate • 5 min phone SCRUM every day, with no more than 2 people at a time. • Available on IM. But if something is not understood after 3 lines of IM, grab the phone. • Remember that people don’t see your face and your gestures over the phone. Be slow and clear. • The Game Designer is the glue of the team. It’s his most important job of the day. • We have a mailing list for the project which we use to update everybody with.

14. Asset Management • SVN or a version control system is a must (you already know about this). • Don’t have money for a server? DynDNS is your best friend. • Save on programmer’s hours by structuring the project so levels, graphics and sound can be changed without recompiling.

15. Thank you Amsterdam! • You can download the presentation from here:http://www.jojugames.com/presentations/ProducerIsFarAway.ppt • Questions? Email juangril@jojugames.com