   Producing / Directing
  I want to get involved in the gaming business, but am interested in it from a producer / director's position (i.e. Shigeru Miyamoto, Hironobu Sakaguchi, etc.). What type of experience exactly is needed to do this? Some help, resources and other things would help. Thanks.   
  In theory: you've been an engineer or artist or something "productive" on a game team.In practice: you know people who know people who will make you a producer or you go to a good school and apply as an assistant producer.In general, the producer position is a business/finance position as well as a creative director position.  An MBA or finance backgrounds or marketing backgrounds are all pluses. (Marketing because a large role is selling your idea to publishers / demoing the idea to execs at your company)It's a position with about a thousand in-roads.-me   ;  As Paladine pointed out, there are many routes to becoming a Producer. No matter what route you take, however, the key thing you need is experience. Being that a producer role is a managerial role, a business degree or better yet an MBA will certainly help a lot. What you really need, however, is experience making games. A producer should know how art and technical pipelines work in the production of a game so that he may facilitate them.   ;  I went to an anime convention over the weekend and there was man who owned his own video game company there (6 offices regionally in the United States with a 7th one planned in New York). The name of his company is Archaic Jump Productions and they're developing for many platforms (Wii, PC, etc.), including paper and pencil RPGs. I mentioned to him that I'm learning to program and want to be a producer one day. He said that the programming route and the producing route come from two different perspectives and he'd need to see me head and be in charge of a team before considering giving a position like that. However, regarding programming, he told people that whichever language you want to learn depends upon what you want to develop for and recommended many start with Visual Basic as their first language.What really surprised me is when he said that people should choose their major in order to have job security. He received a business degree and a psychology degree (I think) for his own job security. His company personally doesn't look at people's credentials . . . they're more concerned with what they can do.Does this sound sound?;  A quick search for Archaic Jump Productions revealed no company website, only a few references to them from anime conventions. Visual Basic is not a language I would recommend to those who are interested in learning to be game programmers.Anyways, yes, programmers and producers are two entirely different jobs. A Producer needs experience managing, whether as a technical, artistic, or completely business manager. A producer job is not something you just typically want right into out of college. You need to breathe the industry.   ;Quote:Original post by zer0wolfA quick search for Archaic Jump Productions revealed no company website, only a few references to them from anime conventions. Visual Basic is not a language I would recommend to those who are interested in learning to be game programmers.Anyways, yes, programmers and producers are two entirely different jobs. A Producer needs experience managing, whether as a technical, artistic, or completely business manager. A producer job is not something you just typically want right into out of college. You need to breathe the industry.So basically, I can take any route and if I'm really good at it, might be considered for a producer position one day?I've considered maybe doing Computer Science and a Business degree. Is this sound?   ;  I've a suggestion, you should look into art design or something of the sort, it can come in handy very very often, the two or three directors i have met suggested art to me, Art is a large piece of the game design puzzle, not as big as programming to say. but art most definatly helps in possible project headings and construction. having concepts and the ability to put them on paper never hurt anyonehope that helps at all.   ;Quote:Original post by KStrassmanI've a suggestion, you should look into art design or something of the sort, it can come in handy very very often, the two or three directors i have met suggested art to me, Art is a large piece of the game design puzzle, not as big as programming to say. but art most definatly helps in possible project headings and construction. having concepts and the ability to put them on paper never hurt anyonehope that helps at all.That'd be nice, but I never really was "artistic". I've thought of doing some fiction writing on the side, as a hobby. I don't know how similar that'd be.;  Basically, you're asking to be able to manage a process, and the best way to do that is to have been part of the process. Nobody is going to ask you to manage a software development project if you have no experience of being on one, as there's no way you could make accurate estimations of the workload. Similarly nobody will expect you to be able to plan out all the different parts of a game unless you've shown the ability to do this already.So the route most likely to get you to a producer/director position is probably to have been a designer. But even to be a 'designer' you often need to have had some other practical experience first - art, programming, level design, scripting, etc. Even Miyamoto started as an artist. You don't just jump in at the top level - unless you find someone to hire you with more money than sense.   