The Publisher/Developer Relationship 15
Via a Gamers With Jobs Press Pass post, an interview with Dorian Richard, the Atari external producer for Neverwinter Nights 2. The Game Tycoon piece discusses the relationship between publisher and developer, and touches on some of the challenges of creating a sequel to a title like Neverwinter Nights. From the article: "GT: What are the most common challenges you face when interacting with developers? DR: There's inexperienced developers, and there's experienced developers. Inexperienced developers tend to lack staff with sufficient scheduling and managing experience. They might be good at certain development tasks, but they don't know how to read warning signs and manage people, so they frequently fail to recognize when a big slip is looming. They don't plan for likely emergencies, like a key team member getting sick or having a family emergency."
It's Called "Systems Engineering" (Score:3, Informative)
Now, of all topics, SE is one that I hate the most. You will not encounter such a dry and boring subject in a long while. But I will not deny that it certainly provides structure and security in managing projects and identifying milestones.
If you like what you heard in Richard's interview, then I suggest you skip the rest of what he says and go to INCOSE [incose.org] to check out the society that studies how to avoid the pitfalls of inexperienced developers. One good project manager should be able to protect your developers from hurting themselves or a project.
I certainly hope no one is putting together a team that is just going to sit down and wing it while developing a project. Perhaps Atari didn't believe there to be a need for project management
"She," not "He" (Score:2, Informative)
Maybe it shouldn't matter, but there are far too few women in the game industry as it is (let alone at the Producer level).
I worked with her for a little while at Atari. She gave a lot of freedom to developers in terms of creative space, but was serious about keeping devs to their schedules, and good at it (which is a rarity in games). Dragonshard came together in a hurry when she got on board.