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What does it really take to lead creative teams and ship great games?
Hosted by a 19+ year game industry veteran, Producers Producing features candid conversations with fellow producers and honest reflections on leadership, personal growth, and team dynamics. If you're a producer, aspiring leader, or simply curious about how complex work gets done, this show helps you learn, lead, and level up.
Welcome, Tarl, to episode number one of Producers Producing. Thank you for being a willing first guest.
Ryan:I don't
Ryan:wanna say victim, but I wanna say first participant.
Tarl:Where that was going?
Ryan:Yeah. It's an early endeavor. So awesome opportunity to talk to great producers, get to know what they got how they got into producing, what they're excited about, what kind of challenges they faced, tips and tricks for up to and coming producers, and then just any kind of other, you know, war stories or favorite tools and just, you know, stuff like that. Huge agenda other than a good kind of common conversation around what we do and why we do it. So we'll kind of kick it off with the basics, right?
Ryan:So who are you and where are you at and and how did you get into this crazy field of game production?
Tarl:Well, first off, thanks for having me. So it's good to catch up with you. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. My name is Charles Raney.
Tarl:I am a senior producer for Mistray Kite Studios. And I have been in the industry for a long, long time. Twenty I think it'll be twenty three years this year.
Ryan:That's wild. That's awesome.
Tarl:I started in QA at Nintendo. I was brought in as a outsource testing actually a week before 09:11. So
Ryan:that's Wow.
Tarl:That's how long. Yeah. Yeah.
Ryan:Then so we and I was gonna say our our our paths first crossed when you were at QA at at Monolith, you were leading up you were ahead of QA. I don't remember at the time, was QA project specific? Right? So you were Yes. The head of QA for Condemned and then Condemned two.
Ryan:Right. What was it for the entire studio or just on that project specifically?
Tarl:It was just on that project. I was at Monolith, I was hired for the original Condemn, which is a March Xbox three sixty launch title as QA lead and associate producer. And then Condemn two, which is where you came in. Right?
Ryan:Yep.
Tarl:I was
Ryan:Or short time.
Tarl:Yeah. I was I was I I continued QA lead. I was also producer on the multiplayer and then associate producer on kind of everything. And then even got to do a little design work on the on the multiplayer, which is kinda fun.
Ryan:Yeah. That's awesome.
Tarl:I like to call that out because it's like the only actual I've actually produced that wasn't, you know, an entire
Ryan:Right.
Tarl:Machine or whatever. You know? I I always thought that the name was a little bit bloated where we produce nothing except that.
Ryan:But I think that's that's a very that's that's funny. And that's part of the reason why it's like I I jokingly call this producers producing because, you know, I'm sure you've heard it a million times. I've heard it a million times. I'll probably talk about it on every time I talk with other producers, but I can't tell you how many times people have said to me like, produce me lunch or produce me produce me something pizza for, crunch or something. And so then I was like, I get that.
Ryan:I've gotten that all throughout my career. It's like, Well, what do producers do? And I'm like, Well, producers produce. There's all sorts of things that we produce. And we run teams, and we ship games, and we get your lunch.
Tarl:Like, what
Ryan:do you need to make this thing happen? So Yeah. So you started as you started in QA. Yep. Long trajectory and and and good path in QA, and then moved into production at Monolith was did you think you always like, was that your intent?
Ryan:Like, hey, I wanna move into production or were you just like, hey, I'm gonna figure it out. And you had kinda started as QA as a
Tarl:leader at your even even QA, I completely fell into. I I always loved games. And I remember in I think it was in high school, I wanted to learn how to make games. And the only the only thing that really was kind of fitting in high school was a computer programming class. I mean, this would have been early 90s.
Tarl:So Pascal, I don't even know what it was. It would have been archaic and I am not good at math. So it was not for me plus the teacher that did that stuff retired right before I would have been eligible to even think about taking that stuff. So it just never really fit for me. I didn't know enough about how games were made to really know that there was even a path.
Tarl:And then I got my degree in commercial graphics, which was I did a focus on graphic design, but it was at Pittsburgh State University in Pittsburgh, Kansas. And was really more of a focus on print and print management.
Ryan:Like traditional. Yeah. Right.
Tarl:And I did not like that side of it. But I was I was just technical enough with like Photoshop and computers. I mean, Mac stuff. So I did a, like I worked in the computer labs and helped sort of maintain all that stuff.
Ryan:Sure.
Tarl:And I enjoyed that side of it. And I got my degree, but I didn't deserve it. Like I wasn't a good graphic designer.
Ryan:Deserve you. Well, I mean, No funny way
Tarl:to put it. We won't go into all the problems I have with college degrees in general, but I learned a lot and I sure I deserved it, but I was not a graphic designer when I came out of there. Like that was
Ryan:just a
Tarl:thing. But you know, anyway, so I at one point that was in, I moved up to Kansas City and worked for a little print shop and did sort of cook, not commercial art, what was it called? Production art, like it was taking other people's, like paper designs, and then like building it in all just freehand back then. And then, you know, getting it printed on stickers and stuff like that. I hated that.
Tarl:It was miserable. And so, Yeah. I I decided to well, I met a friend of yours now in college, Joe Grigsby.
Ryan:Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I forgot. We have that connection.
Ryan:I totally yeah.
Tarl:That's right. I just I actually just caught up with him a couple weeks ago well. And we were talking about that because I kind of forgot that connection as well.
Ryan:Oh, that is so awesome.
Tarl:I've got
Ryan:to catch up with Joe sometime. Will will will shout him out when I when I post this up.
Tarl:Definitely do. Joe's a great guy. Anyway, he had like started studying kind of on his own web design stuff. Okay. And he did some sort of presentation at school on this.
Tarl:I was like, that looks kinda cool. He showed me a little bit and then I kind of went off and learned a little bit of my own and that I never really knew what I was doing or got good at it, but it was fun because it was immediate response. Like you make a change, hit submit, and it like you can see what actually happened. And that was actually really fun. So that was kind of what I wanted to do.
Tarl:So I actually long story, but I moved out to Seattle through like, I got some friends from high school or not even friends like guys I knew that were a couple years older than me. Brother older brothers of friends of mine. They had a place to stay. So I had a free spot and you know, found a job doing web design stuff for a little bit. And I hit that .com bubble at the perfect time.
Ryan:Oh, that's awesome.
Tarl:No. The perfect time to lose your job three times.
Ryan:Oh, opposite. Okay. So that is not awesome.
Tarl:Yeah. Was not. But during that time, think I had like a month between each of those different jobs. And I think had a grand total of like three months experience in about four or five months. And then I think almost nine months of unemployment trying to figure out what I'm going to do because I wasn't really a graphic designer that the .com bubble had burst, there weren't a ton of jobs.
Tarl:And this is back in the days of looking at a newspaper to find a job.
Ryan:Yep.
Tarl:What I found, there was an ad that just said something like, do you want to make money playing video games? I was like, please. Called the number and they said, show up here Monday morning at such a time and we'll talk to you. And I thought it was just an interview, but basically they lined up all the people that were gonna go over to next door to Nintendo and start testing. And I think they had us come back and maybe it was on a Friday and they had us come back on Monday.
Tarl:But there wasn't even really an interview. Was like sign some paperwork and
Ryan:Here you are.
Tarl:Can you speak? Good, you're good Yeah. And so I showed up that next Monday and we were it was like 75 people or something. And we were ushered into this big old room with ton of little CRT TVs and VCRs on them. And then they brought out this big rack of GameCubes before the GameCube was released.
Tarl:And they were the cartridge ones that had the big old cartridge that you shoved down in there. And we started testing Big, like,
Ryan:yeah, like big dev units or were they kinda close to
Tarl:the The unit itself was the same size, but instead of having the little disc tray that popped open, it had this extra piece that was on top and it was like a three times tall Super Nintendo cartridge.
Ryan:That's cool.
Tarl:It had a little handle on the top and that they'd walk those around and like check them out with you had a number that was yours. The game had a number that was yours. You ever go anywhere near a door with this, you probably get shot.
Ryan:They were all watching.
Tarl:Very secure. And then we just played Luigi's Mansion for four weeks or something, three or four weeks on this. And the way I don't know if all Nintendo games work like this. I kind of assume for the most part they do, but in a way basically does localization. Like the testing.
Tarl:There's lot check, which is their certification. They run it through those paces, but it's already been through that in Japan. So there was hardly any bugs to find. Think, yeah, almost all of it was localization. And once that got, once the translation started getting put in, was lots of bugs like that.
Tarl:So did that for a couple of weeks and then had a week off. And I've been working at Blue Cross Blue Shield doing data entry, taking forms that people filled out, and then typing that into their computer systems because it wasn't all digital yet. Very much aging myself here.
Ryan:Oh my gosh. No. I've I have had yeah. This is it's not about me, but I've had a lot of those odd jobs where it was like, and then I did this weird thing that you you youngsters don't have to do at all these days. I had to punch the clock, and then I you know?
Ryan:So yep.
Tarl:But yeah. So I finished finished that project, and then they brought me back for Super Mario World something or other. I can't even remember what it was called, but it was it was the the Yoshi the first time Yoshi was seen Super Mario World on Super Nintendo, but it was on the Game Boy Advance. Okay. So it was that that version.
Ryan:That's so cool. Yeah. Did when you when you started there, you said you just showed up and they were like, alright. Did they did they tell you, like, here's what we want you to do, and here's what you wanna test? Did you I mean, now there's so much process.
Ryan:And is that the right word, but that's like very
Tarl:Right. They had, I mean, there was no test plan. And in fact, the first week was clearly, I learned this afterwards, I didn't tell you this, but it was clearly a trial period. After the first week, they paired it down to 30 people from 30 or 40 from, I think it was around 70 or 80. And there was a bunch of people there from the call center and from various other like customer service and stuff from the main Nintendo office that got to do that for a week to help fill those numbers in.
Tarl:And I think they were also being used to kind of help train people on how to play the game and whatnot. But like there was one guy, an older guy that obviously had never played a video game in his life. And he couldn't get out of the first room. Like he had a call guy, one of the call center guys next to him trying to explain how the controller works to help him. And he just he never could get it.
Tarl:I felt bad for the the call I felt bad for both of them because the call center guy was like, he's supposed to be doing this, but he's also supposed to be helping and working. And he's getting frustrated. He's like almost yelling at this poor old guy. And this old guy's like,
Ryan:I don't know what's going on. Oh my gosh.
Tarl:That was that was interesting. But yeah. Then they then they paired it down from there.
Ryan:It's like user experience testing before it was before it was a bigger thing. Right? It's like I was like, this guy can't figure it out.
Tarl:So Yeah. But then they paired it down to whatever it was 30 or 40, and then broke those people into different groups. And I was on the playthrough group. So I was I played you could get through the game in about eight no. It was an eight hour day and you could get through the game in about four hours, maybe.
Ryan:Okay. So your job was to like
Tarl:Almost get through twice. Front to back. Yeah, every day was a new build and just make sure you beat the game. And they really didn't care about anything else. And I did not find one bug.
Tarl:Like there was nothing wrong with the game. Hardly anybody found anything. One guy found something that he could never reproduce and nobody could reproduce. So it was
Ryan:So they were like, just delete that one out of the system. Well,
Tarl:and the way we wrote bugs, they had printed out, like, you know, a printed out Excel sheet, and you would And you would hand it in. Were supposed to be You're supposed to be recording everything on video. You're supposed to reset your tape at zero at the beginning of the day and just play. And then if you did find a bug, so it's a hit pause, write your bug
Ryan:Log the timestamp.
Tarl:Thing, log the timestamp, and then wrap the tape in your in your paper and hand it to one of their leads that was that was sitting there. And then they would take it and put it into whatever their their system was.
Ryan:Well, I mean, that's why the games are so flawless in in terms of bugs because they were like, we don't wanna have all these extra papers and VHS tapes. Yeah. I get it. So it better be better be a bug free bug free experience. That is so crazy.
Tarl:The so the third project I went went on, I ended up coming late the first day because I had a flat tire or something. And I showed up a couple hours late and people were already going. And it was a game that like the type of game that I just never play was Pikmin.
Ryan:And I
Tarl:was like, oh, crap, they're gonna let me go. I'm not gonna make it. By the end of the day, it was kind of the point where I was like, I can I can be good at any game if I just spend time at it? But like by the end of the day, I was I was on the playthrough team again because I was I was already be able to almost You're roasting it.
Ryan:That's hilarious.
Tarl:I'm not good at games by any means, but if you spend enough time at something, you get good enough.
Ryan:Yeah, was nice.
Tarl:It also taught me how to test. Like I kept watching, like there were, again, hardly any bugs in this game. And there was something that happened that one of the leads kind of made an announcement to people just kind of like a general like, hey guys, what you're trying to do here, like you can't go crazy and like push a bunch of buttons in a weird order that no one would ever do. And then they hit the power button and call it a bug. It's gotta be, what would a player actually do that might cause them?
Tarl:And it was basically it was what snapped with me was what is the soft lock, something that it didn't break the game, it didn't stop anything from working, or it didn't stop the game from running, but you can't progress anymore. I started looking at it from that perspective and I was like, okay, what could I do? And I was like, well, when you start the game, you only have one little Pikmin. What if I can't have what if I lose him somehow? Is there a way to lose him?
Tarl:So I started chucking him off the map, and I found the one spot where you could not there was nowhere to get close enough to call him back. And I was like, yeah,
Ryan:I got a bug. Right.
Tarl:And that was the only thing I found the whole time, but I was
Ryan:And then they scolded you. They were like, stop doing that. Yeah. So nothing They
Tarl:were they were actually happy with that one.
Ryan:That's awesome. That's hilarious. So so just to to fast forward a little bit then. So you you, you know, you're at at Monolith. You're on Condemn two.
Ryan:You say you moved into that AP role, and I think that was about the time that our paths had crossed as as well. So kind of what was your I'm curious. What was your you know, you were learning all these lessons through QA, and you were trying to figure it out for yourself. Like, what what of those, like, lessons applied directly as you stepped into that? I know this is kind of a memory jog.
Ryan:Or or you could even apply it today, but things where you were like, oh, yeah. This totally makes sense. Easy transition. Or like, oh, I didn't expect that at all. Yeah.
Ryan:I'm gonna have to kind of, like, figure this out.
Tarl:So from from a production standpoint, you remember Dave, our boss. Mhmm.
Ryan:Yeah.
Tarl:He was I mean, I don't know what your experience was with him. But I love Dave. I thought he was an amazing mentor to me. And a lot of that came from when he hired me, the very like, it was an all day interview, I met with the entire team because I was gonna be a lead and his associate producer. So it was a very important position to make, had to make sure that you had the cultural fit, the personality fit, and obviously the skills to do the job.
Tarl:But one of the things he did that I thought was amazing, I've never seen anybody else do this, but at the end of the interview, and in fact, you might have legal issues if you tried this, but basically he sat me down in his office and said, here's post mortem on your interview. Here's the things I think you do well. This is why I would look to hire you. And here's the things that I'm worried about if I do hire you. And he laid it out like very open and honest with me, which was amazing.
Tarl:That's awesome. At the end of it, the one problem was I left like, am I getting a job?
Ryan:Don't know. Right, does that mean, is there a chance?
Tarl:Are you saying? Yeah. Then he did, obviously I did end up getting the job. And from that point on, he did a really good job. He was a good enough producer that he knew what he was doing and had that team, you know, well run.
Tarl:So he did the bulk of the production work and let me focus on QA. But he brought me in at different points to things that, especially in a larger company or a larger team, an AP is just not gonna be around for. They're not gonna sit in with the, you know, the executive producer from the publisher as they're talking about, is this project even gonna continue? Or what are the main issues with this milestone? And we, you know, we wanna, I don't think, I don't remember on condemn that there was any real issues, but there was, you know, these were high level conversations.
Ryan:These conversations,
Tarl:And I mean, at one point I saw him and, you know, I wouldn't advocate for this, not the way he did it, but he basically said, he's this on the table and said, I'm not doing that, my team's not doing that and walked out. But what I learned from that was you protect your team. That's your job. And there's a right and wrong way to do it. And there's right and wrong time to do that sort of thing.
Ryan:Of of course.
Tarl:I don't even remember the context of that. I don't think he necessarily did anything wrong, but I don't know if I would have approached it quite that way. But I thought that was actually really interesting. But I got to see so many different things without the pressure of being responsible. Person that's happening there.
Tarl:So I got to witness a lot of stuff that gave me a lot of really good lessons without that pressure of screwing everything up.
Ryan:The person who's gonna be accountable for it.
Tarl:Exactly. Yeah. And you know, I think the other thing I got from so the time between when I worked at Nintendo and went to Monolith, I was the company that had placed me at Nintendo was an outsourced test house. And I did I probably I mean, I probably shipped over 20 or 30 games there as late stage, like alpha plus testing as an outsourced group for for various different publishers.
Ryan:That's awesome. Yeah.
Tarl:But in doing that, I got to see obviously a ton of different games, but also got to work with a lot of different teams and see how games are actually made. And, you know, some the early stuff that I did, some of the bugs I wrote were, you know, came back as like, well, nobody cares about this. This isn't work like, well,
Ryan:part of it was
Tarl:like, well, And also we're not at the stage where we're ready to even be testing this. So you shouldn't be looking at that or those sorts of things. But then also the different conversations that happened throughout Jira at that point, but it would have been like Test Track Pro
Ryan:or Test Track Pro, yeah.
Tarl:All the different comments from the people that were working on the bug, you kind of learn how games are put together and the, you know, how the sausage is made, right?
Ryan:So that
Tarl:was stuff that really helped me in moving forward. And I think why I always, if somebody tells me, you know, their kid is looking to get into video games, they wanna be a designer. I'm like, everybody wants to be a designer. Anybody can have a good idea. A designer is not the guy that comes up with fun ideas.
Tarl:It's the one that implements and make sure it fits with the overall vision and blah blah blah. But if you want to go that route, start in QA. That's an easy job easy job to get if you're in an area where, you know Yeah. You can do that and you you have good written and verbal skills and all that stuff. But that will teach you so much of the foundation of how games are made and give you a lot of insight into different areas.
Tarl:And you might realize, oh, I'm actually pretty good at this programming side of things. Maybe that's the direction I wanna go. And you still have lots of chances to do design type of work
Ryan:and have good
Tarl:ideas, but you might be more well suited to to that sort of thing. So I for me, that was that was a big a big piece of it was just getting to see how that sausage was made.
Ryan:Yeah. No. That's awesome. I mean, I was I was curious how you got into production, and that makes a lot of sense. I mean, you were brought in to do QA and also, you know, with with Dave via an AP for him, and you kind of got that that, I don't wanna say easy ramp in, but you got that support and you got that entry point in, which is awesome.
Ryan:And I think that, you know, I have found personally, I've gone through a couple times in my career where I've had production bosses and producers that were like, I don't even know what to do. And you're like, okay. I'm gonna try and figure it out. And and I've had ones, and and hopefully, I do this myself where I'm like, okay. Well, this is what we're going to do, and this is how I wanna help you.
Ryan:And so, I mean, I think that's a huge advantage and a good, like, really awesome early lesson to learn because then you, like, have that kinda click in your head. Like, hey. I don't wanna do I wanna do that.
Tarl:Right. Right.
Ryan:For the for somebody else. Like, I wanna be that person as often as I can. I mean, that doesn't mean you're always gonna be perfect at it, but it just remains it's just like you have that mental model to know. Right. Like, alright.
Ryan:When I have an AP or a or a producer or whatever, insert level here who Yeah. Working with me, I need to help do these kind of things.
Tarl:Yeah.
Ryan:So then, you know, as you've as you've made your way in your career, have you have there you know, I love the I love the that interview note. I think that's awesome. I I would the, like, the right there postmortem. Mhmm. I had a not to not to make it about myself, but I had an old boss who would love to do he would do something similar, but, like, after meetings and stuff, like, as a mentorship.
Ryan:He'd be like, hey. In that meeting, you did this. Yeah. That was great. But you also said this.
Ryan:And, like, you might wanna be careful because when you say that, it can be interpreted like this.
Tarl:Yes.
Ryan:And it was They did
Tarl:that to me as well. I I think that was that was useful for me as well.
Ryan:Yeah. Overall, I I would say if you're gonna have it or not have it, it's it's great to have. But it can also be it can be a bit of a roller coaster. You have to.
Tarl:Oh, yeah.
Ryan:But you also have to be kind of a you have to have, like, some tenacity to be like, okay, I can deal with, feedback all the time. Right? Yeah. That's feedback.
Tarl:That's true.
Ryan:And it's a lot. I mean, it can be a lot. And that and, know,
Tarl:I love the hall, and you could have put your left foot forward just a little bit more.
Ryan:Right. Right. It was a little bit slow. You know that meeting was really important, so next time I'd love to see you pick up the And you're like, Why are you watching me walk? So I think that's awesome, that feedback, that transition from QA and those things you took away.
Ryan:Have there been any other You've had such a long career in gaming. You've been in production for so long. Anything else that kind of sticks out to you? You talked about if you wanna get into gaming and even if you wanna get in production specifically, good entry points being QA. Are there any other kind of areas or ways that you think somebody who is either early in production in their career or even just thinking about it where you're like, hey, here's a good way to to kind of grow into that, or here's some skills, and here's some things that I would really look for.
Tarl:You know, again, I I don't know that it's it's necessarily production specific, but I think for anyone that wants to get into the game industry, it's I mean, I I don't know if this is exclusive to the game industry, but, like, I don't know how a plane is made. And a plane is not something I can go out and I mean, maybe you can buy some really intricate models or I'm sure there's tons of YouTube videos at this point in time.
Ryan:Right.
Tarl:But I one of the things I've done like, I I've done this for I mean, I remember making doom two levels with the the wad editor in in college. Yeah. You know, I'm I am not I am not a professional game developer in that perspective. Obviously, I I am as a as a producer, but I I think one other thing that has helped me is my my just my love for games. And like you were saying, I I think before we we started recording that, you know, you need you you wanna have some sort of creative outlet.
Tarl:For me, I've you know, for it's been, holy crap, it's been fourteen years, I think. Well, no, it's a little less than that. When I went back to Berlin the second time, which would have been in 2013.
Ryan:That was with Jaeger?
Tarl:Yeah. With Jaeger. And they had they were one of the very early adopters of Unreal four. And Unreal has four and five have that blueprint system Mhmm. Which is I mean, it's programming, but it's visual.
Tarl:And that, like when I first saw it, it scared me and somebody told me it's like visual c plus plus I'm like, no way. But then I started learning it. I freaking love it. I spend so much time on that. I've built so many different.
Tarl:I have this one game that's basically just like a collection of different features or mechanics that you would find in all these other other games. Just like
Ryan:That's awesome.
Tarl:I'll I'll play a new game. I'm like, oh, I bet I can make that. And then I go have fun making that and kind of No kidding. Yeah.
Ryan:Yeah. Yeah.
Tarl:And and that to me, that really helped in in the same way as like, you know, I I I've said this in interviews before recently, like, I've done just about every, like specialty of production that exists. Yeah. Probably not everyone. I'm sure there's some weird ones out there that I haven't haven't touched or anything, but I've done almost everything. And I've and I've I've been producer for teams that touch every single discipline.
Tarl:So I've got a really well rounded view range of how that work is done. Even if I don't fully understand it. Like, know what skinning and waiting is. I couldn't explain to
Ryan:you what means
Tarl:or I certainly couldn't do it. But I understand well enough. And I think that's the really long winded way of getting back to your question, but understanding the more intricate details of how a game is made. Because a lot of the things that I've found that I've, you know, problems that I've been asked to solve as a producer were things where, really good example, and I always use this in interviews, but we had one company I worked for, I won't throw anybody into the bus. We had this real bad bottleneck where rigging, waiting, and basically the technical animation was kicking out all this work over the basically just throwing it over the fence to animators and animators were bogged down with having
Ryan:Exactly.
Tarl:They were having to do all this cleanup of, you know, naming conventions and setting everything up in in the proper hierarchical structure and all that sort of stuff. And
Ryan:Which animators love to do traditionally.
Tarl:Exactly. Yeah. That's I mean, that's basically what they got into animation for. And what we, you know, in in kind of investigating this whole thing, realized that the that that there was way more time available to the technical animators to do that work so that when it got to the animator, they could actually start animating. And so we just changed up the process and said, okay, we're moving this chunk of work back down the chain.
Tarl:You're gonna do this. It's gonna take you a little bit more time. You're gonna have to be a little more diligent, but you're the one setting it up anyway. So it makes the most sense Right. And so, and that that fixed that, you know, that that bottleneck to to a certain extent.
Tarl:I mean, obviously didn't make everything perfect. But the cool thing about that though, was I learned something about that process and we were able to sort of inform the rest of the team how this process goes. And so I think so many times you I mean, how many people have you worked with that don't even play games? Right?
Ryan:Surprisingly. Exactly. Right? Surprisingly large. Yeah.
Tarl:And so when in in the same way, like, you're a guy that has been in the game industry for fifteen years and you're an amazing technical animator, but you don't know what happens with the object that you're working with when you're done with it? Doesn't make any sense to me. Like that's everybody should have a general understanding of the order of operations.
Ryan:What that pipeline looks like.
Tarl:Yeah, exactly. All those pipelines, all those workflows, how all that stuff comes together. And, you you get rid of a lot of the sort of misinformation or not miss, I don't know what the word I'm looking for is, but basically, you know, people, I always used to hear the comment, I think it was that monolith, people would say, well, content can't break the bill. Whatever. Content can break anything.
Tarl:And like anything can break anything, right? And it's those sort of like little and, you know, far more technical people will explain to you exactly what what's going on. I
Ryan:mean, I
Tarl:don't need to know that.
Ryan:Why it did or what it can.
Tarl:But I understand that is a stupid statement. And I will say in a much nicer way, that's not exactly the We need to be a little careful here. Let's not just go checking a ton of stuff in at the, you know, the day before the milestone or whatever.
Ryan:Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Well, and and I and I feel like too, you know, you're talking about, like, learning blueprints and learning all that and and and getting your hands dirty with that. It it you know, nowadays, there are so many more avenues for not just like education in game development, like schools that cater to it, but you can just start making, like you were saying, you're just making content for for for you, you know, UGC.
Ryan:You can start, you know, like, not just modding something, but you could actually put something out into a marketplace that is a game and that Yeah. You could monetize. You could make money off of. So
Tarl:And, you know
Ryan:that that that's a good way to learn. Right?
Tarl:Yeah. And, like, the, you know, the Fortnite, I literally just worked on this a couple months ago. The UEFN, Unreal Engine Fortnite. Like, there's everything you need is right there. All you have to do is learn the, you know, their new coding language, the first stuff to actually make stuff happen.
Tarl:That can be even very minimal. Can make, I mean, you can make a pretty simple, you know, some sort of platform or sort of thing that you don't really need a whole bunch of code other than this is the end of the level and here's a trigger to say how fast you did it and that type of stuff. So you can do some really simple stuff that just kind of ramp up and start to understand how all those things come together. And Yeah. You know, at this day and age, YouTube and, you know, there's a million kajillion, you know, content creators out there that will teach you anything you wanna Anything
Ryan:you wanna know. Yeah. Yeah.
Tarl:You just have to take your time.
Ryan:Yeah. And it makes a lot of sense because, you know, I think from understanding how a game is is potentially made from almost like a not not tactical is not the right word, but like like the the nuts and bolts of it. You could probably learn a lot learn a lot of that on your own. You can you can mod. I think where it comes that next part where it gets where you need that on the job part is like, well, how what is it like to work with a team?
Ryan:What is it like to, like, manage manage my expertise with others? Or what is it like to lead others? And what's it like to deal with crazy you know, with what's it like to deal with difficult people or difficult publishers and difficult relationships and stuff. And so that's the that's the fun part. That's the fun part.
Ryan:Yes. Yeah. That's that's for a future future podcast with Carl. It'll be more of the the, some of the battle stories.
Tarl:War stories. Yeah.
Ryan:I bet you have I bet you have a few fun ones for sure. So I'll I'll I'll edit this, but for the sake of time, one thing that, you know, I know you've probably gone through this, in the past of in being interviewed and also interviewing other producers. So what type of what type of producer are you? And I say that because I I do believe that not all producers are cut from the same cloth. Everybody's kind of different in how they manage or what they're not just what they're good at, but also what their style is.
Ryan:So Right. You know, if you had to if you had to kind of label yourself or put yourself in an archetype, if you're a D and D character
Tarl:I don't play D and D, so I don't know if I can
Ryan:I don't play a lot of D and D either? So it's not good for me to use that as a reference point.
Tarl:But I would I've never really thought about this in those terms until you sent me sorry, behind the scenes here. He sent
Ryan:me a question No. I think you gotta give people a heads up. Yeah. Just so you know what we're gonna talking about.
Tarl:I did kind of think about that a little bit. And I mean, as stupid as this sounds, I'm just the get or done type of person. And I answer this question in interviews all the time. I literally had somebody in an interview once asked me, like, with a straight face, what is the best production methodology and why? I was like, there isn't one.
Tarl:Everybody is different, every team is You do something that works amazing here. You take that exact same thing and try and use it with a different group of people and it falls flat on its face. I'm very pragmatic and practical. What do we need to get done? How do you wanna do it?
Tarl:As a producer, I have very little care in how things get done. And my job in and of itself is to make sure that you guys can get your job done. It's my job to facilitate and communicate. I'm supposed to make sure that you are not blocked from being the best animator that you can be. You need information on what these animations should look like, where they need to go, where they get checked in, those sorts of things.
Tarl:It's my job to help facilitate those things happen. So it's just putting two or 20 people together in a room and saying, figure it out. The only thing I really care about is, and this depends on the job, the company, the publisher, all the different things. But the only thing I care about is I have to at some point be able to tell someone how things are going. So if you've got a giant team, you need something like Jira.
Tarl:You need all sorts of tools to be able to kick out all these graphs and diagrams and stuff to show how we're doing, how we're tracking, all that sort of stuff. If you're three guys, you can do it in post it notes. And you can say, well, you know, this is gonna take a little longer than we thought. And, you know, let's move those other post it notes off the board for now or whatever.
Ryan:Right.
Tarl:Like that that side of it doesn't matter to me. What and you have to be able to work with a team to find something that they're comfortable with and that they're willing to use. You over process something, no one wants to use it, including producers. It's the equivalent of TPS cover sheet.
Ryan:Right. Yeah.
Tarl:This is stupid. It makes no sense. Why are we doing it? Well, corporate said we have to. Well, guess what corporate can do?
Ryan:Yep. Well and then, you know, and I think there's, like, levels all over the place of that, you know, depending on where you're at or depending on project you're on or what the publisher wants or the partner wants and all of that. But I I too tend to, you know, I always follow like a people first kind of, you know, of of being a producer. So if there are always frameworks or ideas that I have or opinions that I have, I mean, you know, I'm same for you. You have a lot of experience.
Ryan:You're gonna have a point of view. You're gonna have a perspective.
Tarl:Right.
Ryan:But it's first and foremost, like, does this work for you all? Right. Is this helping? And and if it's not, let's modify it. And then if there is nothing there, well, let's start let's start easy.
Ryan:Let's let's wait into it with some easy ways, not a over the top way. And so you get that buy in, get that trust, and then modify it. I mean, do agree it can't be it depends on the team, team size, but I've often often found like, it it can't be nothing. We can it's Right. You know?
Ryan:I mean, unless you don't unless you've I don't know. There's probably situations where it could be. But, I mean Yeah. You know, get something in there. Get something in there lightweight.
Ryan:Get something that you can evolve. Get something that drives helps to drive conversation and helps to solve problems, but mostly gets out of the way.
Tarl:Yeah. Exactly. That like to and again, in the interview question, that's generally how I answer. Said, if there's nothing if nothing exists, I'd probably just start with scrum because it's well documented and it's intended to be iterated upon.
Ryan:So Yeah.
Tarl:Start with the basics and then figure out what works for you, what doesn't, and iterate from there. But if something already exists, I'm not gonna come in and change everything. That would be mean, how cocky would I have to be to think I know better than you and to come in and just change everything because well, this is the way I used to do it. No. Yeah.
Tarl:Let's look at what you're doing. Where are your bottlenecks? Where where communication break breakdowns, that sort of stuff. And then you start to kind of just plug away at fixing those little issues. Yeah.
Ryan:Yeah.
Tarl:But and and for me, like I hate meetings. I I understand that they're necessary sometimes, but, you know, so many companies like, oh, I got a question. Let's all have a meeting. Right. People are piled in a room and two people are talking.
Tarl:Like, why is everybody here? This is stupid. Right.
Ryan:You could have just did this on Yeah. This on Slack or sent them, like, a a, like, a quick Loom video or something and just ask them what they wanted and just video record it if you want.
Tarl:So, yeah, I'm I'm very much against process for process sake And even even process that is necessary should be as minimal as possible to get the job done. Yeah. I just it's it's such a waste of time in in so many cases, and it it causes additional complexity, is gonna slow down the actual work that needs to get done.
Ryan:The actual thing that you're doing, which is making making a game, making an awesome Yeah. Yeah. I I I tend to agree. And I've I've I do feel like if there's nothing there and and I have been a I have done this myself too, so it's not a you tend to put in maybe too much where you're like, alright. Well, now we're doing daily stands, and then we're doing you know?
Ryan:And we're gonna do a two week sprint and we do this retro and then and maybe that doesn't work. Or maybe the team is like, we're having too many meetings.
Tarl:You're like,
Ryan:okay, fine. Well, we'll have less meetings. Right? Exactly. I I always ask, you know, I always say when I'm working with a team, you know, let if you can get give me some trust and give me some, you know, an opportunity to, like, iterate through this with me.
Ryan:You be honest with how it's going. And Yeah. You know, we'll we'll get through it together because not everything you do is any part of making a game is always gonna be the exact right thing. Well, maybe I should rephrase that, but there will be times that it is. But like, know, it's part of being a team and part of going through that development is that you can say like, hey, listen, we don't have anything.
Ryan:So let's try this. Yeah. If it's too heavy, too much, and we have too many meetings, maybe everybody, maybe the team loves getting together every morning because they're all remote. And it's the only time they all talk to each other or they're, know, and they need that. And so it could be a waste of time.
Ryan:Right. But it's a good bonding, you know, and they all love it. So you just you kinda leave it as is because it helps in other ways. Right? But Yeah.
Ryan:Yeah. I
Tarl:know. Yeah. That I mean, that's I think that's a very good a very good point that it's not everything is intended to move the product forward. Sometimes it is just let's all be on the same page. Let's get to know each other, build that camaraderie because that when when things get nuts at the end of a project or,
Ryan:you know Right.
Tarl:Hopefully we aren't crunching and all that sort of stuff. But you know, it is gonna get nuts at some point, whether it's working long hours or it's just really stressful because we've got deadlines to hit and, you know, things aren't working or whatever. You need to know who you're in the trenches with, who you can how they like to work, what the what type of personality they are so that you're you're not suddenly meeting these people for the first time when you're, you know, a year and a half into a project and like, oh, that guy doesn't like to be talked to when he's he's got his headphones on.
Ryan:Yeah. Yep. Yep. Absolutely. I mean, there's always times, you know, in any kind of creative project, creative endeavor, especially in games where you're you're like, hey.
Ryan:I need to lean into a little bit of, you know, into this with you to help help the project Yeah. Or vice versa. Like, hey. You know, I need to do this for you or for the team. And, you know, you have that have that bond.
Ryan:Right? You have that kind of you've been going through it together. So I know we're like I'll edit this part too. We're like super over. So I do wanna ask if you have any favorites.
Ryan:Do you have any favorite kinda go to tools as a producer of things that could be personal? Like, AI love using OneNote to take my notes, and that's been amazing. My favorite tool for a team is X. Any go to kind of productivity?
Tarl:I mean, I don't know that I mean okay. If you don't, I'm gonna kinda get myself in trouble here.
Ryan:Oh, no.
Tarl:Not really. But, currently, the the group that I'm working with is using something called ClickUp. Okay. And it's
Ryan:I've heard of it.
Tarl:I love it for my own personal stuff. I've been trying to get my wife to use it so that we can keep track of all the crap I gotta do around the house and things like that. Right. But at your own Yeah. And it's it's really it means it's really robust.
Tarl:You can have lots of different lists for things so you can break things out the way you want all this sort of stuff. But we're using it with a much larger team trying to use it in a similar way to like Jira. And it just it just doesn't work that way. Not built enough. Right.
Tarl:So that one that one's kinda difficult. So for for personal, like, even even just personally tracking my own work work stuff, love ClickUp because it's I just know how it works. It's got you can look at it in a list view, you can look at it in a Kanban view, ton of different, actually, different views of the same data. And I I really like that. Jira is, you know, industry standard, and it's everybody's got their love hate relationship with it.
Tarl:Yep. Yep. Some really great things about it, especially if you go use something else and you're like, oh my god. Where's where are all these things?
Ryan:I know a lot of I know a lot of big fans and I know a few people who are definitely not as well. Right.
Tarl:And, you know, I think that goes back to what we were talking about earlier with just, you know, methodologies. It has to be able to scale and just some things just don't they work great when you got a a 20 person team, and then all of a sudden you double that and you're it's just not gonna work. So you've gotta you've gotta be you've gotta be willing to to make those changes. Honestly, beyond that, I can't I can't think of anything that
Ryan:If you had
Tarl:your way love.
Ryan:If you if you could, if you had to move the team to a new tool or if you were like, hey. The tomorrow, they're like, alright, Tarle. We need to reboot how we're how we're, you know, looking at our work and how we're managing it. You would put them into Jira?
Tarl:Yeah. It would it would be Jira. I mean, it's it's so industry standard at this point. It it's it's gonna be way easier to onboard new people. It's it's got the majority of the tools that you need to be able to track work and, you know, filter things out and look at it in different ways and all that sort of stuff.
Ryan:Right. Right.
Tarl:It's got its, you know, it's got its its weirdness and, you know, it's got some limitations and, you know, it's it's unfortunate that it seems to be, like, the only option. So we don't have a ton of competition. So there's bugs and feature requests that have been sitting around for twelve years in their background. Yeah. Yep.
Tarl:Like, that that type of stuff is annoying, but I don't know what else I would use
Ryan:Yeah.
Tarl:If I wasn't gonna use that.
Ryan:Yeah. I I got turned on, and and it's funny because for for for those that know me well, they'll they'll be like, oh, you're you're paid by them. That's why I always say it. But I've been a huge fan of Favro. I transitioned some of the teams when I was at Congregant onto that.
Ryan:As also a very much so a love hate relationship with that for for other users. I personally really loved it because it is built for game development, but it's also like Trello on steroids.
Tarl:Is it spelled like John Favro?
Ryan:Yeah. F a v r o. And Oh, wow. Okay. I will just say, because I don't wanna I I trust me.
Ryan:Anybody anybody that I know that hears this will be like, of course, she's mentioned that because I do really I do really like the tool, and I love the team. They're super responsive. They are always working on features that will get on the phone and help walk you through use cases or setups. It is meant for game dev. Mhmm.
Ryan:It's worth checking out if you do ever want and trust me, this is, you know, not the point of this. But when we're talking about tools, because, you know, you also mentioned that that love hate I've had. Lot of people are like, I just don't like it. People are like, oh, it's fine. But you and I have been in this industry for a long time.
Ryan:I don't think I've ever used a single tool. It doesn't matter what it is where people are like
Tarl:Yeah.
Ryan:This is fantastic. I love it. It's like an insert insert thing, and half the team hates it and half the team loves it.
Tarl:And it's always it's always a grass is greener on the other side. We need to move to something else. Whatever this thing is, it's like, okay. What if we do that? Are you are you gonna like that?
Tarl:I guarantee you're gonna hate half half of it too.
Ryan:Alright. Yep.
Tarl:If if I had a smaller team, I would look at using another tool that I cannot think of the name all of a sudden, codex. Okay. C0decks.io, I believe. Excuse me. It was actually it's a it's a web based thing.
Tarl:It's it's sort of developed. Sorry.
Ryan:Uh-oh. Fix it in post. Yeah.
Tarl:I've been talking too much.
Ryan:No. That's okay.
Tarl:Friend of mine actually created or kind of came up with the concept and worked with worked with a web developer to to kinda make it. But it's based on the idea. My my buddy who who created it, he he loves board games and specifically collectible card games. And so he kind of built it around the idea of building a deck. So, basically, I think I think the idea of of the app itself is like everything goes in as just basically data.
Tarl:This is these are individual chunks of, you know, this a card is the same as a Jira task or, you know, whatever a single entity is. But then you basically layer on top of that the different filters that you wanna see and it presents them in a card fashion. It's actually Cool. It got picked up, purchased by some other friends of mine from that were from Yeager that that broke off and started their own little indie studio. I can't I can't remember the name of it.
Tarl:It's in German, and I probably wouldn't pronounce it right anyway. But they they made the game
Ryan:I won't make you try.
Tarl:Yeah. And I can't even remember the name of their game. I apologize, guys. But they they picked it up and they've been they've been developing it and and selling it through through their company. And it's I think it's fairly popular in sort of the German indie scene.
Tarl:And it I mean, it's it's in English and everything.
Ryan:Yeah. Yeah.
Tarl:It's actually Awesome. It looked really cool, and I thought it would be for again, for smaller teams, I think it would work really well. I don't I'm not sure it's really built for Yeah.
Ryan:Sure. It's scale.
Tarl:A big yeah. Bigger teams. But Yeah. Yeah. Worth worth taking a peek.
Ryan:Awesome. Awesome. I'll have to check that out. Well, any other parting words? Anything else?
Tarl:Nope. You alright?
Ryan:I'm gonna let you cap your your your coughing, your coughing fit. Tarle's been awesome catching up with you today. Thank I appreciate you being the the first first of of what I hope will be many producers to have on, because I think it's just a I mean, I've been in it for a long time. I love production. I am a producer's producer.
Ryan:So I love talking with other people. And, you know, you pick up little tips and tricks and just, like, hearing ways that other people approach problems. I think it's awesome. And I would love to have more of that opportunity to, like, have that kinda common production world where we can kinda share more knowledge and stuff like that. And it doesn't always seem to be project specific.
Ryan:You don't have to tell me what your Sure. What your game right now is doing and how it's doing it. I wanna know who you are and what you do and why you do it.
Tarl:No. This is this is ton fun. I I'm looking forward to seeing other people you talk to.
Ryan:Thanks again, Tarl. I really, really appreciate you being on episode one and let's do another one in the future.
Tarl:Sounds good. Thank you. This is fun.
Ryan:Alright. Thank you.