Production 101 - Start Here
A plain-English guide to game production for the curious and the early-career
What game production actually is, without the jargon
Who this series is written for and what you can expect
Why the producer role is harder to explain than most jobs in a studio
How to get the most out of the posts ahead
There is a running joke in game studios that nobody really knows what the producer does. They’re in every meeting. They send a lot of emails. They track things in spreadsheets. But ask someone on the art team or in engineering to describe what a producer actually contributes, and you’ll often get a shrug.
That’s not laziness on the part of the people being asked. It’s a genuine ambiguity that sits at the centre of the profession. Production is a coordination and oversight discipline, which means its outputs are often invisible. When it works well, things just happen. When it goes wrong, everything grinds.
This series is my attempt to fix that ambiguity, one post at a time.
The first ten Production 101 posts have been reworked. Several were among the first things I published here. It showed. Not any more.
Who this is for
Production 101 is written for two kinds of people.
The first is someone outside production who works with producers daily; an artist, a designer, a developer, or a QA tester who wants to understand what’s actually going on when the producer is asking for updates or reshuffling the backlog. Understanding the logic behind production decisions tends to make the whole studio run better.
The second is someone considering a move into production. Maybe you’re already in a studio and you’ve noticed you spend half your time helping people get unblocked. Maybe you’re coming from outside the industry entirely and you’ve read that producers are needed everywhere. Either way, you want to know what the job actually looks like before you commit.
This series won’t talk down to either group. I assume you’re intelligent and curious. I don’t assume you’ve shipped a title or run a sprint before.
What you’ll find here
Each post in this series covers one concept, one tool, or one skill. Some will be definitional: what is a milestone, what does a risk register actually do. Others will be practical: how to run a standup that people don’t resent, how to write a status update that gets read.
I’ll use real examples where I can. I’ve been working in game production for thirty years, across mobile, F2P, LiveOps, and co-development. A lot of what I’ll share comes from things I got wrong before I got them right.
The posts are designed to stand alone. You don’t need to read them in order, though the early ones do lay groundwork that later posts build on. Think of it less as a course and more as a reference shelf you can dip into when a specific problem comes up.
A note on scope
Game production covers a lot of ground. Different studios organise it differently. A producer at a forty-person indie works nothing like a producer managing external vendors for a AAA publisher. I’ll try to flag where practices vary, and I’ll be clear when I’m describing how I’ve personally done things rather than claiming there’s one universal right answer.
Production is a practical discipline. The theory only matters insofar as it helps you make better decisions in the room, on the call, or in the document. That’s the lens I’ll apply throughout.
The first Production 101 post covers what a producer actually does on a day-to-day basis. Start there if you’re new to the role. Or browse the archive and find whatever’s most useful to you right now.
Production 101 Archive:
Just released:
31-May-26 JUST
Upcoming topics:
7-Jun-26
#15 — Understanding Publishing Platforms
#16 — QA’s Role in the Production Process
#17 — Pre-Production: What the Producer Does Before Production Starts
#18 — Running Meetings That Aren’t a Waste of Time
14-Jun-26-26
#19 — Risk Management Beyond the Status Report
#20 — Managing Up: Working With Studio Leadership
#21 — Live Ops Cadence: Building Events and Handing Them Over
#22 — How Producers Work With Data
21-Jun
#23 — Onboarding to a Project Already in Flight
#24 — Getting Your First Producer Role
#25 — Working With a Creative Director
#26 — Producing Across Time Zones
28-Jun-26
#27 — Before You Touch an AI Agent, Learn What It Actually Is
I came here off the "Read More" link at the bottom of the article which referenced "the other long-winded tomes of the Game Production Alchemist". I was hoping for a little more insight into the Alchemist himself, his history, his writing career, his game production career, etc. Instead, I see this series. Hmm...