I’m so excited and honored to be part of RocketSnail Games now!
I have to pinch myself as it all feels so… surreal. It’s been two weeks already, and I want to make sure I’m posting regularly to keep everything in check and on-track.
You probably want to know what we’re up to! We will share details soon enough.
Remember in the old Club Penguin days how we used to talk about “the journey”? Now that we’re living in a post-Penguin world, the journey continues. After all, community is a journey, not a destination.
The next leg of our journey is to continue with the dreams we had before Club Penguin even started.
Many of the ideas we had for Club Penguin were too big for the tech of the time (i.e. Flash.) Now we’re in a place where the tech has caught up! So it’s time to revisit the ideas that we all had from before Club Penguin, but applying all the lessons we’ve learned from Club Penguin and other projects afterwards.
First, let me give you some context about what I’ll be doing. In my heart, I’ve always been a Producer.
Growing up, I was obsessed with the creative process of bands writing and recording music. In particular, the role I identified with the most was the Producer. That person who picked just the right microphone to capture just the right sound at just the right moment — capturing magic!
A Producer could mean different things depending on the industry you’re in.
- In the music industry, a Producer is a creative shepherd or counsellor, focusing on bringing out the best of the artists they’re working with. A Producer often records the artists, although they often have a team of Engineers helping to set up mics, configure synths, and stuff like that.
- In film or television, a Producer spends a lot of time in spreadsheets and project management tools. They arrange financing and bring together the key people needed for the project. And they oversee all the elements of pre-production, production, post-production, and release.
- In SaaS software development, a Producer is typically called a ‘Product Manager’, where they’re responsible for both product planning and marketing. The same rules apply here: managing a product through its lifecycle, gathering and prioritizing requirements, defining vision, and working with Designers and Developers to ship great products.
In gaming, a Producer wears most of the hats above! A Producer will:
- Craft mission and vision with company leaders
- Roadmaps and plans
- Schedules
- Asset lists and sourcing
- Budgets
- Manage teams
- Stimulating creativity, acting as a catalyst to ideation and big dreams!
- Holding teams accountable
- Keeping teams focused
- Ensuring on-time and on-budget deliveries
- Reporting on status
- Triage issues with QA
- Improve projects, processes, etc.
- Represent the product internally and externally
So these are the things I’ll be focusing on for this mystery project! But of course, with a twist… the twist is that I’ll be working directly with the Community on this project. I’ll be sharing a lot of stuff directly with the Community as I go. And I’ll create lots of ways for you to help shape this project into something you love.
That’s the next step in the journey towards the next Big Update.
Eventually, we’ll be blogging, podcasting, and shooting videos for the project. And those will live on a new domain somewhere. A clean, fresh start!
Here’s a little bit of what I’ve been up to for the past two weeks since joining RocketSnail:
- Help edit and define our pitch to potential investors.
- Write design docs based on Lance’s vision and industry insights.
- Meet and align with the various teams (engineering, team leads, etc.)
- Meet with Johnny (aka Businesmoose) about his other project to identify where he’ll need assistance.
- Discuss and plan potential community podcast with Johnny.
- Configure a Discord channel for potential use. (Not sure if we’ll use it yet or not, mind you.)
- Begin building and prioritizing a project backlog and roadmap.
In my next post, I’ll share a bit about a typical product ‘lifecyle’. This will give you some better context for where we’re at now. And it will give you a sneak peek into the world of game development. Let’s face it… for all the fun stuff like art and music, there’s a lot of less fun work to do to bring ideas to life.
What do you think of the Producer role? Does it sound like fun, or a whole lot of work? Hope this post was insightful. Let me know what you think in the comments below.
Until next time… Build on!