Awesome Game Production 
A curated list of awesome resources, related to game
production process - books, articles, tools, project management,
methodologies - aimed to help game producers deliver their games.
Video
game development (or production) is a process of developing a video
game by a single person or a team of developers, not necessarily
professionals or employed by someone to do so. This list is focused on
game
producer’s role - a person, who manages and orchestrates the game
production process in multitude of ways. Hence the shortened list
name.
This list does not cover specific disciplines like game design,
quality assurance, programming. Refer to the Gaming section
of the “master” awesome list for other gamedev stuff.
Majority of the provided resources are in English, but I might
include items in other languages too, if you help me by creating
a pull request. Look for a flag next to the link.
- 🔥 - awesomeness over 9000: highly practical and easy to use
- 🎓 - absolute basics
- 🤯 - a complex topic, that might be hard to understand
Contents
📚 Books
Some books might not be as good as the others, but still hold some
value to producers. Refer to the Articles
section for more practical resources, and consider below books for your
next evening reading session.
- Agile Game Development
with SCRUM - The book provides detailed explanations and real-world
examples of how SCRUM can be used to increase productivity, improve
communication, and deliver high-quality games on time and within
budget.
- Agile Game Development:
Build, Play, Repeat - Comprehensive guide to implementing agile
methodologies in game development, covering topics from team dynamics to
production processes. The book features case studies, practical tips,
and exercises that provide readers with a hands-on approach to creating
successful games with agility.
- Blood, Sweat, and Pixels:
The Triumphant, Turbulent Stories Behind How Video Games Are Made -
A behind-the-scenes look at the making of several popular video games,
detailing the challenges faced by game developers and the intense
pressures of the industry.
- Disrupting the Game: From
the Bronx to the Top of Nintendo - Highlights the challenges Garcia
faced as a woman of color in a male-dominated industry, and provides
valuable insights into leadership, innovation, and diversity in the tech
industry.
- The Art of Game Design: A
Book of Lenses - If you’re transitioning to
a management role from game design, chances are you’ve read this one. If
not, still consider it as it will help to understand the why’s behind
design decisions and challenge your team or your client.
- The Game Production
Handbook - Comprehensive guide to game production, covering topics
such as project management, team building, and production processes. The
book includes real-world examples and case studies from successful game
studios, and provides practical tips and advice for game developers at
all levels.
- Practical Project
Initiation: A Handbook with Tools - It is what it says. Can’t get
more practical than this. It is not gamedev related, but you might want
to pick up a few tricks for your next pre-production.
- The Game Producer’s
Handbook - Practical guide to game production, covering all aspects
of game development from initial concept to final release. The book
provides insights into production methodologies, team management, and
project planning, and includes tips and advice from experienced game
producers.
- 🎓 Producing Games: From
Business and Budgets to Creativity and Design - Read if you don’t
know a thing about how games are made, or skip otherwise. This book is
old, but the production process hasn’t fundamentally changed.
- User Story Mapping:
Discover the Whole Story, Build the Right Product -
This book is about way more than just how to
do story mapping. What stories are really about? How do you actually use
them to change the world? If you’re not using stories like it is
described in this book, then you’re not using stories at all.
📰 Articles
Links to articles, hosted elsewhere. These may disappear or change
location overtime, which is when you might want to ask Wayback Machine for help.
Game Producer Role and
Skills
- 🎓 What
A Video Game Producer Actually Does - A nice summary by Jason
Schreier - the dude, who you should probably follow.
- 🎓 So,
You Want To Be a Video Game Producer? - The article explains what a
video game producer does, their career path and title development, and
the key skills required to become one.
- 🎓 So,
You Want To Be a Video Game Producer? Part #2 - Focuses on the
skillset of a video game producer, which includes project management
methods and tools, communication and people skills, problem solving,
technical skills, and a genuine interest in playing and knowing about
video games.
- 🎓 So,
You Want To Be a Video Game Producer? Part #3 - Provides five steps
for landing a job as a video game producer, including identifying your
realistic career level, optimizing your resume and cover letter,
applying to multiple companies, preparing for interviews, and networking
with recruiters.
- What
Makes a Good Game Producer? Part 1 - Explores the qualities and
skills that make for a successful game producer, including leadership,
communication, and adaptability, with insights from experienced industry
professionals.
- What
Makes a Good Game Producer? Part 2 - Delves deeper into the role of
a game producer, including project management, risk assessment, and team
coordination, and provides tips for aspiring producers on how to develop
their skills and excel in the role.
- Five
tips on being a better producer - The title might feel gimicky, but
there are a few very important pieces of advice, which are worth
considering.
- 🎓 Production
Pipeline: a Design Tool? - A broad overview of a common production
timeline: milestones, deliverables, dos and don’ts. Beware though, as
presented pipeline is just one of the many: different studios tend to
flavor this pipeline with their own set of adjustments.
Game Production Best
Practices and Tips
- 🔥 Breaking
The Wheel - Justin Fischer’s absolutely awesome collection of best
practices and tips to leading game production. Must read.
Agile Project Management
Open Minimalist Modules
If you’re new to project management and/or production role, I
strongly recommend you familirize yourself with these super practical
and easy to understand project management systems and set of
principles.
- 🎓 Nearly Universal Principles of
Projects - NUPP is a collection of nearly universal principles of
projects: those we’d do well to follow in all projects, regardless of
the methodologies and approaches that we use, to maximize our
success.
- 🎓 P3.express - P3.express is a
minimalist, practical project management system. It’s easy to learn,
easy to use, and easy to teach.
- 🎓 micro.P3.express -
micro.P3.express is a flavor of P3.express designed for micro-projects
with approximately 1 to 7 team members.
Designing a Production
Process
- Designing
a Production Process: Part 1 - Provides an introduction to designing
a production process for game development studios, covering topics such
as team structure, workflow, and asset management.
- Designing
a Production Process: Part 2 - Delves deeper into the components of
a production process, including milestone planning, risk management, and
quality assurance.
- Designing
a Production Process: Part 3 - Focuses on production methodologies,
providing an overview of popular approaches such as Agile, Waterfall,
and Scrum, and discussing the advantages and disadvantages of each.
Schedule Management
- Evidence-Based
Scheduling - A system, that produces reliable shipping schedules,
based on the past performance of the team. It uses Monte Carlo
simulation to generate distributions of possible ship dates, and then
combines them with the team’s availability to give a reliable date
range.
- When
will the Agile Project be done? - How to make an educated forecast
of the project’s end date, based on the team’s velocity.
Post-mortems
Many post-mortems here are back from the day, and might seem outdated
and not useful. But after reading through them you’ll quickly realize
the teams back then had the same issues. Use these articles as a lense
to look at your problems.
- Ensemble
Studio’s Age of Empires II: Age of Kings - Age of Empires II: Age of
Kings was developed by Ensemble Studios with the aim of improving upon
the original game in every aspect, from graphics to user interface.
Modern game developers can learn from Ensemble’s dedication to
innovation within the genre and their use of tools and automated testing
to streamline their development process.
- Baldur’s
Gate II: The Anatomy of a Sequel - Baldur’s Gate II, developed by
BioWare, focused on improving upon the original game by refining the
development process, learning from past mistakes, and incorporating
player feedback. Modern game developers can apply these lessons by
prioritizing features, establishing clear development guidelines, and
fostering open communication between team members to create an even
better sequel.
- Blizzard’s
Diablo II - Diablo II, developed by Blizzard Entertainment, focused
on refining and expanding the gameplay mechanics of the original Diablo,
while also addressing player feedback and criticisms. Modern game
developers can learn from this approach by continually iterating on
their game’s core elements and incorporating player feedback to create a
sequel that captures the essence of the original while offering fresh
and engaging experiences.
- Irrational
Games’ System Shock 2 - System Shock 2, developed by Irrational
Games, was a sequel created under challenging circumstances, including
inexperienced developers, tight deadlines, and a small budget. Modern
game developers can learn from the team’s ability to adapt to these
constraints and design within their technological limitations, as well
as their focus on simple, reusable gameplay elements and cooperative
development to create a worthy sequel.
- Epic
Games’ Unreal Tournament - Unreal Tournament, released in 1999, was
developed by Epic Games and Digital Extremes, who had an unusual
development cycle and a very loose development process. The game managed
to evolve from a single-player game into a deathmatch-oriented design
and ultimately earned more than five “Game of the Year” awards and is
consistently rated in the top ninetieth percentile in reviews.
📺 Videos
- Producer
Bootcamp: High Performance Producers - Gearbox Software’s Aaron
Thibault helps viewers build personalized progress charts in the pursuit
of improving their production mastery.
- My
To-Do List: Organizing a Producer’s Work - Oculus’ Bernard Yee
provides a suggested to-do list for people who manage a team and
project’s to-do list, why they are important and how to be effective on
a daily basis.
- Taming the
Chaos: Lessons in Project Management - Clinton Keith explains how to
deliver great games on schedule without breaking the bank or the backs
of your team.
- Up
Sh*t Creek: Pro Tips for Managing the Unmanageable Project - Amy
Dallas explores a mindset for producers that can help one be successful
when faced with managing a seemingly impossible project and shares some
survival tips to keep you focused when everything seems to be going
sideways.
- User Story
Mapping: Developing a Shared Understanding - Jamie Winsor shares how
user story mapping is used to cut development waste and align team
members behind a single, well-defined goal.
- Anatomy of Modern Game Design
Documents - Your game will start with a GDD and the production
process will stem from the design documentation regardless of the
production pipeline. Making sure you’re having right documentation at
the right time can help you avoid overhead during development big time
(slides are here).
- 🎓 How to prepare yourself
for Game Production - A detailed and very well explained summary of
what a producer’s job is about, but it contains a few gamedev specific
terms.
- 🎓 So You Want To Be a
Producer - We’ll put summary for newcomers. Consider watching other
Extra Credits videos about game development (they used to focus on those
back in the day).
- Embracing Ambiguity: How to
Do Good Work When You Don’t Know What to Do - Ruth Tomandl discusses
the concept of ambiguity and methods for determining whether it’s a
problem or not in game production.
- 🤯 What is Earned Value
Management? EVM in a nutshell - EVM explained in 3
minutes. Hopefully, will whet your appetite for the EVM topic.
- How The Witcher Devs
Turn Great Ideas Into Game Features - Timestamped video, where Lead
Game Designer from CD Project Red talks about their approach to breaking
down the game into features and prioritizing them. Can
be used as a framework as-is in your production.
- 🔥 One-Page
Designs - You know how in agile you want to make sure your user
stories are concise and not too detailed to incentivize
communication? This video explains how you could apply the same
principle to game design documents. Visualizing to make sure everyone
discussing the design is on the same page also reminded me of the User Story Mapping book. Watch, because it
might just change your GD pipeline.
- Game
Development Caution - Timothy Cain discusses the shift towards a
culture of caution in game development, contrasting his experiences with
project management and creative processes during the development of
titles like Fallout and The Outer Worlds. He reflects on how this
caution impacts creativity, innovation, and the overall charm of games,
urging a return to passion-driven development.
- 🔥 This
Problem Changes Your Perspective On Game Dev - An interesting
perspective on game development: design process is a search algorithm in
pursuit of the deepest point in a lake, symbolizing the best possible
game. This metaphor serves to illustrate the importance of strategic
experimentation and exploration in game design, emphasizing the balance
between speed and accuracy, the dangers of local minima, and the value
of daring to explore new ideas. A very simple way to explain how one
should prototype a game.
- 🔥 The Red
& Green Flags of Studio Leadership - While Rami Ismail is
talking about studio leadership in general, I actually think he
describes the very essence of how a producer needs to lead in order to
gain trust of their team and become their best friend. A
must-watch.
Courses
- Deeply
Practical Project Management - This is what you’d call a “no BS”
course on project management. Concise, to the point, and highly
practical. It is not focused on game development, but I think you should
still take it, because it closes many (if not all) gaps with just one
course (~9 hours). Once completed, just adapt to your needs or just use
some of the principles. It also includes numerous document templates and
examples.
As a producer, you might need a few tools to help you deliver the
damn thing. Some of these may not be useful to you directly, but I might
have include one if I think you should at least know such a tool exists.
This is to help you gain a few credits in your team.
- Machinations - A tool, that
helps prototyping game mechanics, economy flow and states either for
production or for demo purposes. This tool has been mentioned by Jesse
Schell in his Book of Lenses, so its old but it
has transformed over the years. Not necessarily a tool for a producer to
use, but it is often overlook, so go ahead and give your game designers
a tip.
- Excalidraw - A free and open source online
drawing tool. Neither gamedev or project management related, but is so
versatile, I find myself using it quite often.
- 🎓 ChatGPT - Every time you
are about to Google something, I would strongly advice first to ask
ChatGPT your question. We, producers, might often need to reference or
look up a term or a concept, which is where ChatGPT shines.
- GPT for Google Sheets and Docs
- An awesome Google Workspace extension, that allows querying ChatGPT
from within sheets or docs. You can generate data and modify any data
tables or just text in any way using forumulas and functions directly in
the documents.
- SteamDB - As they say, database
of everything on Steam. Very useful to follow your competitors and
compare the numbers.
- VG Insights - One of the
better analytics tools and sources of estimated sales data. They also
have some unique tools other similar services don’t, e.g. revenue
calculator, unit sales estimator and some others.
- Steam
Wishlists To Sales Calculator - Simple tool to help you ballpark
sales numbers based on the wishlists count on Steam. It is not as
accurate, as some other tools are, but is the simplest one.
- GameDiscoverCo Plus -
(requires paid subscription to
GameDiscoverCo
Newsletter) GameDiscoverCo’s data backend providing analytics on
games’ “hype”, discoverability and more. Additionally, you get access to
a number of e-books on game discovery and budgeting.
Templates
📨 Subscriptions
To stay up-to-date, consider subscribing to all or some of the below
resources. These are not production related (as in Project Management),
but as a producer, you kinda want to know a little bit about everything
in gamedev. So pick your poison.
YouTube
- GDC - Game Developers
Conference YouTube channel, all sorts of talks on anything game
development related. It’s huge and is updated frequently, but you’ll
have to filter the information you need.
- Noclip - Video Game
Documentaries - Crowdfunded documentaries about the production
process of different kinds of games. Kind of a peek behind the curtains,
sometimes with interesting “post-mortem” type of insights.
- Game
Production Academy - Videos on agile topics for Game Producers.
Check out their web-site
for extra articles.
- Timothy Cain -
I’ve listed one Tim’s video in the Videos section above, but I strongly
suggest to subscribe to his channel, it’s just full of stories and
experience, that will help you have good context on game development all
around.
Newsletters
- Deconstructor of
Fun - Not directly production related, but offers in-depth analysis
on recent gamedev events, e.g. Brawl Stars ditching lootboxes: why, how
and what was the outcome. You want to know about things like this when
leading the production of your next mobile action game. And they also
have a podcast.
- The GameDiscoverCo
Newsletter - Focused on the business
side of game production and game discoverability, their in-depth
analysis on Steam-related topics is gold. Must-read.
- Lead52 - Weekly newsletter on
leadership, which is concise and thought-provoking. It’s not going to
dump a ton of information on you but rather spark ideas on how you can
grow as a leader.
Podcasts
- The Art of LiveOps - This show
seems to have ended, but some (if not all) episodes are still relevant
in 2023. If you’re managing a live mobile game, give it a listen.
- Deconstructor
of Fun - The difference with the newsletter is that it has more
stuff to read, like industry news, new game releases, in-depth articles
on some general gamedev topics. Still, their podcast is great if you’re
on the go.
RSS feeds and other sources
- fedoruk.works - Quality project
management content, not game development specific
(
).
- Kryuchkov about outsourcing
- Software Delivery Management Consultant Alexander Kryuchkov shares his
advice about managing projects. I like him a lot because basically every
post is highly practical and is packed with experience. Must read for
any Project Manager
().
- William
W. Davis - Insightful LinkedIn posts on agile in project management.
William is also an author of the Statistical
PERT.
- Game Developer -
RSS feed of the gamedeveloper.com (ex. gamasutra.com) - both news and
articles, all about game development (including production).
- Naavik - A very high-quality
business-focused blog to stay up-to-date on the industry. Check out
their “Deep Dives” series for case studies on the failures and successes
of pupular titles and studios.
🌐 Websites and other
resources
- Global
GameDev Salaries 2020-2021 - A Google Sheet with salarie statistics,
put together by Evva Karr
*
- H1B
Salary Database - Not sure how accurate this data is, as I’m not
from USA.
- Seyed’s
Publisher Database - A very detailed list of game publishers with
some extra notes on most of them. Go-to resource for finding yourself a
publisher.
- How To Market A Game -
Chris knows a thing or two about game marketing and discoverability. As
a Game Producer, you will cross paths with marketing quite often, so go
follow him.
Contributing
Contributions welcome! Read the contribution guidelines first.
* Evva Karr
gameproduction.md
Github