EQII's New Producer Brings 20 Years Experience

ZAM:  Most of what Brenlo talked about in last the Producer's Letter is coming in the next Game Update, but there's a couple things coming up that the players are wondering about.  One thing mentioned there and at the Dev Chat we did recently was moving away from Freeport and Qeynos as starting cities.  Have you had a chance to look at that at all yet?

Dave:  I've had a casual conversation with people about it, but I don't know much of the details yet.  I don't know the reasons behind it.  I hesitate to talk about it because I don't know all the details.  If you call me up next week I can probably talk about it. 

ZAM:  Be careful, I'm going to pin you to that one!  I'd love to talk to you more frequently.

Dave:  I don't mind!

ZAM:  What kind of a producer are you?  Are you a sit back, project manage, leave everybody alone dev?  Do you like getting your hands dirty?  Do you micro-manage?

Dave:  I absolutely don't micro-manage.  There was a time back in my career that I did try that out, and I found out it really is not the path to success with creative dev teams.  But on the other hand on most of my previous projects I've been both the producer, the creative director, and often the lead designer for a lot of the games that I've done.  Teams used to be smaller than they are now.  A lot of that, back when, like with 20 people and below teams.  Nowadays I have a lot of design background.  I've done a lot of creative stuff, I understand mechanics, I understand most of what the programmers are telling me, and I can even talk to artists (laughs).  So in general what I do is I shape wherever possible.  I discuss whether or not features are the best bang for the buck.  Like there's always good ideas, you can have a list of a hundred great ideas.  But then you have to assess what's going to bring the most fun factor to the game and then you have to discuss it in logical terms.  So one of the things I bring to the table is breaking things down.  A lot of times dev teams have a tendency to gut-check things.  And I'm not saying this team is specifically, but a lot of dev teams do, they're emotionally invested in a feature and it may not be the best feature for the game.  It may not do a lot except feed this one specific niche of players.  And what I do is I ask, "Well, that's a great feature but what can we do that's going to appeal to more people in the user base.  How much fun can we have with these things, what's the potential upside on these things, why do you think it's a good feature."  And so that's a lot of what I bring to the table.  I've had so many of those discussions in the past I can help people break stuff down like that.  And so I would expect that most of what I'll be doing is helping them focus in that sort of way.

ZAM:  That sounds great.

Dave: Yeah, it's a fun gig.  Working with dev teams and helping to focus creative direction is, I dunno, it's what I like to do for a living.

ZAM:  What a horrible problem to have, to really enjoy what you do for a living. 

Dave: (laughs) Yeah, well in this industry you either love it or burn out.

ZAM:  One of the things we have going on in the game now is we've got a horrible lag issue.  Several devs including Greg "Rothgar" Spence have been beating on lag like crazy, is this going to keep up?  Are you going to keep them focused on that?

Dave:  Yeah.  I don't know the solution details, but yes, we're going to be focusing on that.