Jenn's Generally Good Game Production Advice

Jenn's Generally Good Game Production Advice
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I'm a game producer with over 15 years experience shipping games like Return to Monkey Island, the Edible Games Cookbook, and more. I love helping teams ship their games on time, on budget, and with a happy team. I answer questions about game production. Ask me your burning questions!

  1. Am I a good games producer? How to know & what to do if you're not!

    FEB 3

    Am I a good games producer? How to know & what to do if you're not!

    Am I a good games producer? What does one actually look like? And if I’m not good, what can I do about it? This is a special post with a question I ask myself. Hopefully by the end, a bunch of your self-doubt will be banished along with my own self-doubt. Become a better games producer today! We’ll look at what a games producer actually does; then talk abut different types of measurements you can use to get an indication of whether you’re any good at it. We’ll talk about objective measurements like predicting sprint completion rates; reducing unexpected tasks; accurate roadmap; leaving space for other people to talk; and following up with team members. We’ll also discuss things you can ask your team about like whether you’re on top of everything going on; you know priorities; and everyone on the team knows what’s due at the next milestone. We’ll also go into how you can check in with other producers about whether your solution is good or your task is hard. Bonus measurements are also detailed here: https://jennsand.com/advice/good-producer/ After you know how good or bad you are, then you can start to learn from when you’re bad. This starts with knowing how frequently you are bad. And then you need to look at what’s causing the bad so that you can get to the root of the problem and get better. How you’ll get better will depend on whether you have a lack of training; expect hard tasks to be easy; dislike the specific task; are overworked; have something going on outside work; have an issue with an individual or the company culture. By the end of this you’ll know more about how to objectively measure how good of a producer you are and how to improve. Have a question for an expert game producer? Ask me your question here: https://jennsand.com/askjenn/ Text version: [https://jennsand.com/advice/good-producer/](https://jennsand.com/advice/good-producer/) Video version: [https://youtu.be/Lh5gr_m99OA](https://youtu.be/Lh5gr_m99OA) Jenn’s Generally Good Game Production Advice: TITLE 00:00 Introduction 00:40 Should You Listen to Me? 01:33 What does a Games Producer Do? 03:15 Types of Tests To See if You’re a Good Games Producer 04:23 Objective Measurements 06:38 Ask Your Team About 07:47 Ask Other Producers About 08:20 I’m Good, Except When I’m Bad 08:48 Learning From the Bad 09:11 What’s Causing the Bad? 10:52 Be Kind & Produce Yourself 11:27 Conclusions Jenn’s Generally Good Game Production Advice is an advice column for our modern ages and for game developers everywhere. Topics covered will help you ship your game on time, on budget, with a happy team no matter whether you are a producer or someone else on the game team. Find out more about how to hire me: [jennsand.com](https://jennsand.com/)

    12 min
  2. A game producer’s guide to setting up a risk register to track your fears.

    11/26/2025

    A game producer’s guide to setting up a risk register to track your fears.

    Stop staying awake at night worrying!! Create a risk register to help track all your game development fears. Game development is very stressful and there are a lot of different things that can go wrong. Those things might mean your game will suck, development takes longer than expected, team members quit, and more. In the worst case if you don’t predict risks and take steps to address them, your game might not ship at all! Want more reasons why should you create a risk register? Having one will help you stop unconstructive worrying, make sure you remember and predict upcoming events, come up with plans that you can use when you’ll be super stressed, improve game quality, reduce development chaos, figure out what you can do to reduce the impact and probability of the risk, and so much more. What makes a good risk and description? One that isn’t too generic and that will help you understand why this is a problem. That way you are focusing your worries rather than being generally stressed without direction. Risks that you can’t control (like someone else shipping a game like yours) might not seem like good risks, but I’ll talk about why you should still track them and what you can do. I’ll go deep into exactly what I track in my risk registers. Many game companies and publishers have their own ways of showing and tracking risks. I’ll use an example from a hypothetical game to help understand what is being tracked. For each risk I track: a good description; numbers for impact, probability, and total risk; categories; trigger conditions (what to look for so you know the risk is happening); mitigation plans (what to do before a fire breaks out); contingency plans (what to do if the fire has broken out); alert status (how panicked should we be); and status history. Then I’ll discuss how frequently to monitor your risk register and use it. As well as when to engage mitigation and contingency plans. I’ll finish with some summary tips. One of those is that you shouldn’t create a risk register if you’re not going to use it. Instead you should just discuss your fears and worries with your team. Resources: [Example Risk Register in Notion](https://www.notion.so/174a82440e1680a9abc8fbc92d4415ad?pvs=21) Have a question for an expert game producer? Ask me your question here: https://jennsand.com/askjenn/ Text version: https://jennsand.com/advice/risk-register/ Video version: https://youtu.be/5k4aawBntsg Jenn’s Generally Good Game Production Advice: A game producer’s guide to setting up a risk register to track your fears. 00:00 Introduction 00:55 Question & Why create a risk register? 02:21 What makes a good and bad risk? 04:41 The details of all the properties that make up the risk register 08:44 How to monitor your risks 11:00 When should you engage mitigation and contingency plans? 11:40 Summary tips about risk registers 12:46 Conclusion Jenn’s Generally Good Game Production Advice is an advice column for our modern ages and for game developers everywhere. Topics covered will help you ship your game on time, on budget, with a happy team no matter whether you are a producer or someone else on the game team. Find out more about how to hire me: [jennsand.com](https://jennsand.com/)

    13 min
  3. How to Get Everything Done in a Game Jam

    10/19/2025

    How to Get Everything Done in a Game Jam

    Game Jams get people making a game in a very short period of time. Usually people run out of time and their final game is a far cry from their vision. Production can help you figure out what you can fit and and gives you key beats to reach for. To make a game in 48 hours or less, you need to be focused on your goals and shipping the game. Production is like project management for games and it can help you rock the game jam. These easy to follow steps help you navigate what to do before the game jam starts, and all the phases during the game jam. We’ll go into naming the phases, what deliverables are due at the end of phases, the timeline of the phases, what production software to use, and who should be doing the production work. The phases we investigate are brainstorming, prototype, prep for production, production, alpha, beta, and release phases. We’ll discuss how to decide which way to build your game, when to focus on features vs content, playtesting, and a lot more. We’ll also go into depth about which software tools are right for you and give you a template you can use yourself. After watching this video you’ll be ready to succeed at a game jam regardless of whether it’s your first or 100th game jam. Resources: Production software: [Notion](https://www.notion.so/), [Trello](https://trello.com/), [Miro](https://miro.com/index/), or (if you must) [Google Sheets](https://workspace.google.com/products/sheets/). [Task board template in Notion available for duplication](https://www.notion.so/282a82440e16808585f8ce4d6f9498ae?pvs=21) Previous advice blog: [Production in a New Discipline](https://jennsand.com/advice/new-discipline/) talks about vertical vs horizontal development. [Power Up Game Jam](https://powerupjam.com/) — A free global game jam for women. Have a question for an expert game producer? Ask me your question here: https://jennsand.com/askjenn/ Text version: https://jennsand.com/advice/road-jam-map/ Video version: https://youtu.be/gt8m-j90WEo Jenn’s Generally Good Game Production Advice: How to Get Everything Done in a Game Jam 00:00 Introduction 00:31 Question & First Thoughts 01:29 What to do BEFORE the game jam begins 02:03 What to do DURING the game jam 07:28 What is the timeline? 08:13 What tools do you use? 09:31 Who should do the work? 10:13 Conclusions & More Tips Jenn’s Generally Good Game Production Advice is an advice column for our modern ages and for game developers everywhere. Topics covered will help you ship your game on time, on budget, with a happy team no matter whether you are a producer or someone else on the game team. Find out more and about how to hire me: [jennsand.com](https://jennsand.com/)

    11 min
  4. How to Get Your Game Dev Team to Consistently Finish Sprint Tasks

    09/05/2025

    How to Get Your Game Dev Team to Consistently Finish Sprint Tasks

    Do you keep missing sprint deadlines? It happens a lot in game development and you might have given up trying to fix it, but I’m here to offer a very large number of ways to finish your sprints. In this video, we’ll look at all of the many reasons why your team is failing to hit sprints and give practical tips and steps you can take to fix the problem. We’ll start with considering new tasks appearing in the middle of the sprint. Then we move onto tasks taking longer than expected due to pipelines, unclear “done” definitions, new task types, and missing information. Next we deep dive into thorny team and team member issues. This covers team size, more pipeline issues, denial and wishful thinking, team apathy, work preferences, and an individual having issues. Finally we talk about project management issues. This covers buffers, time predictions, unrealistic milestone goals, bad sprint planning, decision making problems, and upper management issues. Throughout it all I’ll be teaching you how to be curious, compassionate, and persistent to get to the bottom of this mystery of what’s going on for your game dev team. This is a long, but essential video to watch if you’re struggling with effective sprints that motivate the team and get everything done. Additional Resources: How to set up degree of done: [video](https://youtu.be/WYZfhSn2NyE) or [blog post](https://jennsand.com/advice/degree-done/) or [audio](https://soundcloud.com/jennsand/degree-done) How to have productive meetings: [video](https://youtu.be/DimLiWDVv5Y) or [blog post](https://jennsand.com/advice/productive-meetings/) or [audio](https://soundcloud.com/jennsand/how-to-have-productive-meetings) How to deal with an indecisive creative director: [video](https://youtu.be/eIEbbQ-yrdo) or [blog post](https://jennsand.com/advice/indecisive-creative/) or [audio](https://soundcloud.com/jennsand/indecisive-creative) Risk Register: [example in Notion](https://www.notion.so/174a82440e1680a9abc8fbc92d4415ad?pvs=21) Have a question for an expert game producer? Ask me your question here: https://jennsand.com/askjenn/ Text version: https://jennsand.com/advice/missing-sprints/ Video version: https://youtu.be/uDI_2QT69Oo Jenn’s Generally Good Game Production Advice: How to Get Your Team to Consistently Finish Sprint Tasks 00:00 Intro 00:52 Question and first thoughts 03:12 New tasks appear 06:33 Tasks take longer than expected 10:32 Team or team member issues — introduction 10:50 Team or team member issues — team size unsuitable 11:14 Team or team member issues — pipeline related bottlenecks & uncertainty who it goes to next 12:12 Team or team member issues — denial or wishful thinking 13:04 Team or team member issues — team apathy & what is the big deal about missing deadlines 14:07 Team or team member issues — team doesn’t like each other 14:39 Team or team member issues — work cadence and work preferences 15:41 Team or team member issues — individual’s personal issues 16:27 Project management issues — introduction 16:37 Project management issues — time prediction issues 18:17 Project management issues — buffers with time prediction issues 18:48 Project management issues — unrealistic milestone goals 19:24 Project management issues — bad sprint planning 20:52 Project management issues — decision making issues 21:35 Project management issues — upper management and creative director issues 21:58 Are you in production? 22:45 How to get the team on board to support fixing the problems 23:43 Wrap up Jenn’s Generally Good Game Production Advice is an advice column for our modern ages and for game developers everywhere. Topics covered will help you ship your game on time, on budget, with a happy team no matter whether you are a producer or someone else on the game team. Find out more about how to hire me: [jennsand.com](https://jennsand.com/)

    24 min
  5. How to deal with an indecisive creative director

    09/01/2025

    How to deal with an indecisive creative director

    Ever had to deal with a creative director or CEO who kept changing their mind? In this post I’m talking about exactly this situation. I’ll give tips and techniques to reduce the frequency and impact of all the changes, so you can keep the ball rolling and ship your game. Tips to reduce frequency include: changing how you respond to feedback; getting the creative director more involved in the day-to-day; identifying which types of things are changing and leveraging that knowledge; stakeholder accountability. Tips to reduce impact include: going back to prototyping; recognising that this is a hard decision; changing something in your game. And I’ll also go into what to do if none of the tips work. After listening to this post you’ll feel confident to tackle the problem head on and as a result will be much happier about the direction of your game. Have a question for an expert game producer? Ask me your question here: https://jennsand.com/askjenn/ Text version: https://jennsand.com/advice/indecisive-creative/ Video version: https://youtu.be/eIEbbQ-yrdo Jenn’s Generally Good Game Production Advice: How to deal with an indecisive creative director 00:00 Preamble 01:04 Question & First Thoughts 01:43 Where to Start 02:45 Tips to Reduce Frequency 06:25 Tips to Reduce Impact 07:39 When All Else Fails 08:34 Conclusion Jenn’s Generally Good Game Production Advice is an advice column for our modern ages and for game developers everywhere. Topics covered will help you ship your game on time, on budget, with a happy team no matter whether you are a producer or someone else on the game team. Find out more about how to hire me: [jennsand.com](https://jennsand.com/)

    10 min
  6. When is a task done? Let’s Define the Finish!

    07/28/2025

    When is a task done? Let’s Define the Finish!

    It feels great to mark a task “done”. But what does that mean? Is it something that can be shipped in the final game, something that is barely functional or something else entirely?! Not knowing what “done” means for different tasks can cause many problems from team frustrations to missing deadlines to wasted work. My system is to create a degree of done chart with multiple levels for different disciplines. I’ll talk about how to create the chart and to use it so you all know when you’re crossing the finish line. If a task isn’t done to the right quality or realisation or level, then it won’t fit in with other items and also could mean the game isn’t as finished as you think. If you create shippable level quality right from the beginning you’ll end up throwing out work as you figure out that something doesn’t fit into the game as a whole. A degree of done chart gives you a practical and clear language that you can use with your team to get on the same page about what level you’re reaching for right now for this particular type of task. That is, what DD3 is for code is different to an art asset. I have a reference example for you to use as well. You can use a degree of done chart for individual tasks, to define milestone goals clearly, and to make it easy to see progress on an entire level with one glance. Find out how to make a degree of done chart, and use it in this super informative video. Then you and your team will be able to discuss milestones clearly, will know what quality bar they are reaching for right now and can iterate on work with confidence until you’re ready to ship. Reference Material: [Example Degree of Done chart](https://www.notion.so/Degree-of-Done-Example-197a82440e1680328300ccd4fada7adf?pvs=21) Have a question for an expert game producer? Ask me your question here: https://jennsand.com/askjenn/ Text version: https://jennsand.com/advice/degree-done/ Video version: https://youtu.be/WYZfhSn2NyE Jenn’s Generally Good Game Production Advice: TITLE 00:00 Introduction 00:56 Question & Why should you care? 02:00 How do you know what done is? And how do you get started? 02:39 What is a Degree of Done chart? 04:29 How do you build a Degree of Done chart? 05:07 How do you use a Degree of Done chart? 07:17 Final Thoughts on Degree of Done 07:43 Conclusion Jenn’s Generally Good Game Production Advice is an advice column for our modern ages and for game developers everywhere. Topics covered will help you ship your game on time, on budget, with a happy team no matter whether you are a producer or someone else on the game team. Find out more about how to hire me: [jennsand.com](https://jennsand.com/)

    8 min

  7. 07/07/2025

    How to be a good game producer for a genre/discipline you don’t know

    Often people say that to be a good producer for a discipline you need to have been in that discipline yourself. People also might think you can’t do a good job as a producer if you don’t play the genre of game that you’re working on. But you can’t do all disciplines and play all game genres!!! So how can you be a good game production? I turn traditional advice upside down and discuss how it’s a super power to come into conversations with naive curiosity. You’ll get practical advice on how not to be intimidated when talking to game development teams where you’re clueless. You’ll learn all the key aspects you need to ask about. I’ll also discuss my favourite way to describe two key different ways people make games: vertical or horizontal development. Learning the pros and cons of these two methods can help you and your team plan how they want to make your game at a top level. We’ll be focusing on narrative games, but all the advice is applicable to other genres. You’ll be ready to be an expert in no time and everyone will say you’re a great game producer. Have a question for an expert game producer? Ask me your question here: https://jennsand.com/askjenn/ Text version: https://jennsand.com/advice/new-discipline/ Video version: https://youtu.be/JaDuiLZLmAQ Jenn’s Generally Good Game Production Advice: How to produce a game in a genre you don’t know. 00:00 Introduction 00:50 Question & Initial Thoughts 02:12 Talking to People 03:10 Vertical vs Horizonal Game Development 05:57 Conclusion Jenn’s Generally Good Game Production Advice is an advice column for our modern ages and for game developers everywhere. Topics covered will help you ship your game on time, on budget, with a happy team no matter whether you are a producer or someone else on the game team.

    7 min

  8. 07/01/2025

    My Biggest Production Hack

    As a game producer with over 15 years experience in the games industry, what’s my favourite production hack? When you hear what I say you’ll either thing I’m lazy or a genius, you decide! Game production is often about a lot of grunt work without many hacks. My hack relies on the facts that there is no perfect way to make a game, game terminology is inconsistent, and plans always need to change when making games. I’ll talk in detail about what I do and I’ll even give you a bonus hack too. Have a question for an expert game producer? Ask me your question here: https://jennsand.com/askjenn/ Text version: https://jennsand.com/advice/my-biggest-production-hack Video version: https://youtu.be/plpMq5plPQc Jenn’s Generally Good Game Production Advice: My favourite production hack 00:00 Introduction 00:58 Question & The Hack 02:23 Why my hack works #1: No perfect way to make games 02:39 Why my hack works #2: Terminology is inconsistent 03:32 Why my hack works #3: Plans need to change 04:26 tl;dr Summary 05:00 Wrap Jenn’s Generally Good Game Production Advice is an advice column for our modern ages and for game developers everywhere. Topics covered will help you ship your game on time, on budget, with a happy team no matter whether you are a producer or someone else on the game team.

    6 min
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About

I'm a game producer with over 15 years experience shipping games like Return to Monkey Island, the Edible Games Cookbook, and more. I love helping teams ship their games on time, on budget, and with a happy team. I answer questions about game production. Ask me your burning questions!

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