Silicon Valley goes Hollywood: The Birth of Producers at EA
An excerpt from an upcoming book by Electronic Arts Founder, Trip Hawkins
In EA’s early years, all game development was done by external software artists, often working alone, who were managed through an arms-length relationship with an EA producer — similar to how a book editor works with an author.
Development teams quickly grew; and soon had leaders that made the relationship more like a producer working with a director on a Hollywood film. In that context, the business is the project, and the producer owns it, is the boss and gets to choose the director, who takes ownership of all creative and technical aspects of production, while the producer takes care of everything else. The producer has the authority to fire the director, perhaps if there is chaos on the set or the shooting schedule is running very late and over budget. Otherwise, they work hand in hand as collaborators and peers in the RACI model, where if one of them has the R (Responsibility) for a task, their partner likely controls the A (Approval) that confirms it has been successfully completed. This is a natural and normal form of collaboration among peers in most corporations, often appearing in the form of supplier-customer relationships like Marketing and Finance providing materials to Sales; Facilities keeping the building safe and the printers working; and Engineering supplying specifications and Bills of Materials approved by Finance to Manufacturing. Basically, whether internally or externally, every task has a customer and a supplier.
The Hollywood Producer & Murphy’s Law
In Hollywood the producer reports to an executive producer who lines up the project budget and is the ultimate boss who can hire or fire the producer. That’s the normal chain of command, although Stephen Spielberg learned to grab more power and security by being both the executive producer and the director. He had complete control because he got to choose the producer and make sure they did all the stuff he didn’t want to do; and they couldn’t fire him as the director because he was also their ultimate boss in his other role. It is not unusual for people to seek more control, especially when things go wrong, which brings me back to EA, where Murphy’s Law was a constant presence. (Like the time a girl broke up with a programmer, who got depressed and disappeared on a long drive deep into Mexico. The game’s only copy of the source code was in the trunk of his car and took several weeks for us to recover.)
My producers got more frustrated over time as projects got bigger and more complex and outside developers became harder to manage and cagier about pretending things were fine, hiding things, and not revealing how they were allocating resources. When a launch date is nearing and a milestone isn’t met, some developers will make excuses and use the schedule pressure as leverage to get more advances. In fairness, they may have done their best and still need to make payroll, or else they could lose key people and the project cannot be finished at all. But as the hole you’re pouring money into gets bigger, they have even more leverage as you have more to lose, and an extra payment, to any hard-nosed producer, is like buying an insurance policy they don’t really want, or a protection racket. Producers are not living inside the external developers’ building, so they feel helpless and powerless. Strategically, we were also aware of market segments and technical areas we wanted to compete in, where we couldn’t find the right developers and an external solution might have taken years to find or develop. This nudged us over the edge into hiring our own developers and building internal studio capacity, which thrilled the producers, who fought with each other for control over whatever limited internal resources we had. Any self-respecting producer liked this situation better because they were in the same building which would make everything more transparent and easier to control.
Lights. Action. Collaboration!
It did not take long for the producers to insist that these internal teams should report to them, and it seemed a reasonable request at the time. They sounded rational, and I was already shifting EA, now five years old, to a profit center model. In Larry Probst, I had a good business operator and organized the perfect basket of elements for him, under a new division name, Electronic Arts Distribution (EAD). I stopped running our Affiliated Label program and transferred Randy Thier over to Larry, who of course already had Sales. I also gave Larry other operational functions including manufacturing, shipping/receiving, trade marketing and collections. Collecting Accounts Receivable obligations was the most unusual feature, as it almost always stays in Finance, an admin function, but with Guido (Bruce McIntyre) we had the right guy who knew how to collaborate with Sales and I knew it would work best if they were all together, under Larry.
Product divisions were created at the same time, each led by a seasoned producer. But problems soon emerged, almost always traceable to the fact that producers were better at managing products than they were at managing people. With creative people, we don’t want to “bruise the fruit” but it was happening a lot, creating anxiety, alienation and burnout; confirming that some producer personality styles didn’t work around quiet, sensitive creators that were obsessed with such issues as background noise, mediocre office lights and glare. It’s another case where the RACI model needs to be used, especially the notion that the same person cannot have both the R, Responsibility, and the A, Approval, for the same reason we have the well-established org concept of “church and state separation”. We discovered problems when the same person controlled both the R and the A, as when we let producers manage their own product testing: under schedule pressure and lacking objectivity, they would too often let buggy products get into manufacturing. RACI works well across peer levels when tasks are thoughtfully examined and departments recognize and appreciate that they depend on each other.
Some people are best suited for individual contributor roles. A select few are natural managers and leaders of people, while others may be able to learn effective people-management skills. Products like games are creative-intensive, requiring more staff contributors that deserve inspiration, motivation and sensitive handling from the leaders in management roles. Studio staff need to feel admiration and technical respect for the studio head, who is often perceived as the best creator and/or technician of the bunch (in truth, many engineers don’t think they need a manager), with a proven track record, and someone whose footsteps other aspiring leaders can follow. Such a person was originally a game designer, engineer or artist and grew into the bigger role because of their natural leadership and supervisory sensitivities and skill. Great producers are more often Type A business-first, analytical, negotiators, GTD (“Get Things Done”) types, strong leaders that think strategically, know customers well and what they want, and probably know plenty about what constitutes good game design and UI/UX. From these descriptive details you can see how success can come more easily when you have the producer and the director collaborating as partners that are drawing from different and complementary skill sets. The really good ones may advance to become studio heads because they’ve learned enough about both roles from their time in the trenches and like the bigger job, just as I learned how to be a CEO from my time as an Apple product manager.
Suits & Ponytails
Successful game studios have often had a founder/CEO that was both a suit and a ponytail, able to be both the business leader and creative director. I fit that category. There are also plenty of studio leaders that are great at managing all the creative production disciplines and providing career paths and good compensation for all but aren’t any good at producing. Still worse is a studio led by a former producer who is not technical or creative enough to earn the respect of studio staff. A good studio leader is neither a producer nor a director — they are the next level up, and the boss of all the producers and directors (Ideally, the boss grew up through the ranks as a producer and/or director and is easy for everyone to relate to and respect). Their job title should be something unique like president, studio head or creative director. In turn, this allows the producers and directors below them to operate as peers, use RACI methods and sometimes switch roles, just like in Hollywood and on sports teams.
Personally, I have been disappointed to see the term “producer” used in many different ways that are structurally *not* like Hollywood and where the shoe does not fit. Hence, in the game industry there is no consistent understanding or use of the term producer or the job description that goes with it. The worst thing is to call the project leader a producer, as it abuses the term: a project leader is technical and creative and spends most of their time supervising others with similar temperaments. A good producer does not need to be either technical or creative and is more focused on business tasks. Some studio chiefs are called producers but are in a different job as the leaders of many project teams. Here again, we see the result of producers insisting on power and control, but mere producers are probably not equipped to supervise creative and technical people directly or make the key creative and technical decisions that determine their collective fate.
Time for Job Titles to Align
The producer role has had to evolve as technology and business models have changed, particularly regarding analytics and metrics of the internet funnel, efficient user acquisition and paying customer monetization. This has resulted in a major change in the game design role, as it means that being fun is no longer enough for any game to succeed. If anything, these industry changes make it even more dangerous to let producers have control over the creatives. It is time for the industry to pay attention to how Hollywood uses the titles and roles of producers and directors and consistently do the same thing.
