Senior Producer at Nickelodeon Kids and Family Games Talks About His Job
Don’t fall in love with your own ideas. What kind of interaction do you have with other team members? Be disciplined. What do you find most rewarding about your job? Remain curious. It is easy to get lost in the technical side of things. Producer? -Bonnie Phelps, Dean of Institutional Advancement Know how to do that. The players only care about having fun. I currently work for Nickelodeon Kids and Family Games group in SF as their senior producer of games. What entertains you? is my advice. Can you give an example of something that surprised you about your job when you first started? I began my career as an animator and special effects artist working for ILM and Hanna Barbera-Wang Films. Work hard. How did Cogswell help prepare you for this career? As a producer you are the beginning, middle and end. It’s not always that simple! I have produced over 30 “E” rated games, including the Family Feud and Risk games and several Hasbro titles including Boggle and Trivial Pursuit while at iWin.com. Be in touch with your emotions and what triggered them – so that you can touch the emotions of your players with the same mechanics. But the business is to entertain others. People interactions and trying to figure out what is fun. The teams vary in size. Cogswell rounded me out. Get down to the minutiae of that in a film, game, a play – or a walk in the woods. One definition of a producer I love is, “The producer is the guy you throw out the window if it’s late, over budget or just plain bad.” I agree with that. What advice would you give students preparing for a career as a Sr. Don’t! And just being around other smart people with ideas other than my own is always healthy and inspiring. Cogswell graduate, Kevin Richardson, offers insight into his job and how to prepare if this is your career goal. Company name, your job title, a brief description of your job responsibilities and how long you have worked there. What projects have you worked on in the past? If it doesn’t hold my attention past that, I move on to the next one.
Can you give an example of what you might do on a ‘typical’ day? The best games I bring to a team review, and those that we pick I contact the developers (wherever they may be in the world) and make them an offer for a non-exclusive publishing arrangement. My job is to scout the world for interesting flash games to put up on Shockwave, a family friendly gaming site, as well as produce multiplayer games and some exclusive games such as racing games using the shockwave 3d platform. On a typical day I am playing tons of games, usually for 30 seconds at a time, just the way our player’s would. How does what you do move the project forward? Stay objective, but bring passion to your work when you think you are onto something. Kevin graduated in 2003 with Bachelor of Arts in Computer and Video Imaging – the precursor to Cogswell’s Digital Art and Animation program. What qualities does someone need to have to be successful in this field? Focus on the fun, not how you are going to get it done. And working with smart people. Describe your piece of the production cycle. It is a business. By being pushed into places out of my comfort zone I was stretched as a person. Prior to iWin.com, I worked at The Learning Company/Mattel Interactive where I was Executive Producer on numerous Reader Rabbit and ClueFinders adventures and at EA/Pogo where I worked on Tumblebees ToGo. It really depends upon the scope of the project, but for a flash game usually between 3 to 6, depending on factors such as: is it a multiplayer game, the complexity and so on. How big is the team you are part of for a typical project? In addition to my job at Nickelodeon, I just launched my own casual independent game series for download under the Gamespin banner, Ghost Town Mysteries. I usher the contract through legal, make sure they are paid, and also handle getting the actual game into our publishing and high scores system.