Who'd you fuck to get this job, anyway?

I work in an industry that is predominantly, heavily, overwhelmingly white and male.  Although the face of the people actually MAKING the games has started to change, the common (incorrect) perception is that women in games fall into one of two categories - Marketing or Artist, with a strong skepticism around ability.  As a former Quality Assurance lead and current producer, I've been asked (more than once), "So, who'd you fuck to get this job, anyway?"

My answer is pretty consistent.  It starts with a level, unblinking stare.  "I didn't get here on my back.  And it would you serve you well to remember that for future conversations.  I'm smarter than you know, I have an incredibly long memory, and a low tolerance for people who make assumptions.  Did you have any other questions?"

Success is a hard thing to judge.  I've never wanted to be the talking head behind a podium at industry events.  I don't want to be on the cover of Game Developer Magazine.  I never use the words "Rock-Star" as a preface to my own introduction.  In the Internet meme "Which Muppet are you?" I scored as Scooter.  I'm the competent one behind the curtain, making sure everything gets done.  I'm the Liz Lemon of 30 Rock - all work, no credit, dealing with the Tracy Jordan's of the games industry.  I'm the ego fluffer, the hand holder, the mom that makes sure people eat, the sound of applause, and sometimes I'm the one that says "Gimme a fucking break.  Pull your head out of your ass and get back to work."

In games, the natural path to production is to start in Quality Assurance.  QA is the Ozona, Texas of the games industry.  An armpit that smells bad, wide spot on the map, where your car breaks down on the long drive across I-10, a place you want to get out of as soon as you can.  A place that has an even LOWER ratio of men to women than "real game production".  I worked really hard in QA.  No one helped me out, other than believing that someone with real testing experience would mean more to the team than yet another person who 'just loves playing games'.  That was my lucky break.

Not an actual QA tester - but not far off.

From that point forward, it's been me using my head and paying my dues.  I mixed hard work, passion and pizazz with a refusal to give up.  I became very astute at seeing when the end was nigh, and I left positions before I EVER got laid off, I worked insane hours, traveled the world, and never said "no" - instead I presented options, "That's technically possible, however we will sacrifice x, y and z to accomplish that.  Are you OK with those trade offs?  No?  OK, let's stick with the original plan."

I've never, EVER forgotten that I am one of the lucky ones.  It's very much a sense of "there but for the grace of God go I".  Particularly in Seattle, a town with a high homeless and unemployment rate.    When I throw in a realization of my medical issues, I am constantly grateful that I have a job, I have insurance, and I have a home.  I look at my medical bills and I KNOW that I am two out-of-pocket treatments away from ruin.   I think about the choices I've made, and the turns that life has taken, and I'm glad that I've had the freedom to make the decisions that were right for my life at the time.  One of the most frightening things to me about the thought of Mitt Romney as President is the idea that there is a feasible future without choice in store for so many Americans.


It wouldn't be a rumination from me without a song quote.

Blame it on the television, blame it on the company;  
Don't blame it on the fundamental fact that no one owes you something.  
"I've come about my share, I only want what's fair.  
Anyone who knows me knows that I'm not greedy.  
Like everybody else, I wanna pay my dues.  
(I only want someone to tell me who to make the check out to.)" 
 - "Pike St./Park Slope" Harvey Danger

I don't really tag myself as liberal or conservative, democrat or republican - I think those words have evolved so far from their original purpose and definition that they're not accurate any more.  But I know I want to live in a country where people have a chance to work hard, to realize dreams, and where a misstep or a setback is not the end of their participation in a productive society.  I think of family members who gave time out of their lives to the military, and some who gave their lives to the military.  I don't always agree with what their assignments were, but I am proud that they would be willing to serve.  I want to help build a country where a persons need for basic (and not-so basic) medical care is separated from their ability to pay for medical care.  I want to work in an industry where gender is not an automatic flag that the only way you could be doing the job you have is because you slept with someone to get there.  I want to be treated fairly, paid equally, and doing my part to support the country that's made it all possible.

Last season, on "Still an Adult".....

It's been far too long since the last post.  I could give 100 reasons why, and they'd all boil down to the same basic excuse.  I haven't made the time for it and I've been struggling in pretty much every area of my life.

Since 'last season', I:

• Fractured my left ankle. Again.  While breaking my ankle, I also ripped a tendon away from the attach point and am waiting for scheduling of an MRI to figure out exactly how bad the damage seems to be.  This was 10 weeks ago and it's still unstable and painful daily.
• Sprained my right ankle.  Again.  I ended up just sitting down and crying for a while after that one.
• Survived a round of huge layoffs at work.  Scope of work has changed drastically, and there is a general sense of jumpiness around the building - we all seem to be waiting for the other shoe to fall.
• Lost a very dear friend to suicide.  Depression is a horrible, LYING disease that allows our personal demons to get the best of us.  I miss him, every day.
• Had what was probably the best series of time with my Dad that I can remember in my adult life.  Kids don't fix things, but having a common interest that is a constant source of amusement is a pretty great equalizer.
• Had my uterus try to kill me, twice.  Popular medical opinion seems to be a combination of cysts, early menopause, and possibly the replacement IUD.  Two months ago, I landed in the ER, thinking I was having a miscarriage because of the amount of bleeding and pain.  GYN appointment next week where we "discuss options".  In the meantime, I'm seriously anemic and running on fumes.
• Realized that marriage is hard fucking work. (I knew this already).  Hubby and I have been at each other's throats constantly; arguing, resentful, frustrated and just not communicating.  There are days where I refuse to give up, because, well, I refuse to give up.  And then there are the days where I seriously question what I'm trying to save.
• My son is the most amazing person I've ever met.  He's learning new words every day, and has SUCH a personality.  It is an honor to be sharing his life.
• I lost my mind a little and had my hair highlighted with pink and purple.  Atomic pink and Pimpin' Purple, to be exact.
• I reluctantly agreed to speak on a panel at a "women in games" focused industry event.  It went a lot better than I'd anticipated, and I didn't throw up before speaking.  Win!

I keep asking myself the same question - "Why do I write? What do I hope to achieve?" and the answer is always the same.  I'm lonely.  I'm hungry to have a voice that is heard outside of singing the ABC's to my son.  I want to have a tribe.  I want to have a conversation.  But the responsibility for STARTING the conversation falls on me.  I've decided to expand the distribution of new post notification to a wider (but controlled) audience.  I nominally keep this blog anonymous, as I don't want to turn up on search results talking about things like work, abuse, frustration, or depression.

Thanks for reading, and welcome to the "new season", which is a new commitment for more frequent posts and honest conversations with myself, and hopefully with you, as well.

Free to a Good Home....

It's been one of the strangest times in my career, since I started in the games industry in 1999.  I've always been a hot commodity, the one that gets high profile projects, because I can be trusted to get it done, keep the right people in the loop, and to say "NO" when it's needed.  I typically have a backlog of things to do, just waiting for me to have enough time to do them.

 

Part of the weirdness has been around a reorganization from one big happy studio family with a pool of people and managers that are responsible for specific disciplines (Programmers, Artists, Producers, Designers, QA) to silo'd franchise groups, where the management is responsible for building cross-functional teams that encompass all disciplines.  Those managers still report in to the same higher structure, but from a peon's perspective, it sure doesn't seem like they are talking to each other that much.

 

I love being busy.  I love having multiple projects on the burners at once.  I love feeling like I am an integral part of a healthy, functioning team.  Right now, I'm helping out on special projects, and I have one game that is drawing to a close as my work.  The conversations around "What's next" have been going on since March, and it's starting to get to me, mentally.

 

I wrote a sales pitch to send around to the management team and decided it tells enough of a story of what I do, that I'd share it here.  (sanitized company name and project name)  It's mind-blowing to me that I have to sell myself this hard at a company I already work at.... but at the same time, sometimes it's nice to revisit what I believe makes me tick.
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Hi All:

 

Have you recently had a situation where you’ve thought to yourself “it would be so great if we could only do xyz on this project, but WHO WILL MANAGE IT?”  Do you have a short or long term need for a project manager with a ‘take-no-prisoners’ attitude, and a commitment to details?  Are you working on integration of a parent company (or partner) brand, and you just wish there was someone on your team with a long history of navigating the murky waters of approvals, integration, and last-minute changes?  Is the majority of your time spent on the big-picture with no time left for the day-to-day work of monitoring the pulse of your project? Are you at that point where it’s time to ship it and you need a leader who knows how to motivate, lead from the center of the action, and takes pride in getting it done?

HAVE I GOT AN ANSWER FOR YOU!  That’s right, it’s ME!

As projects draw to a close, and changes are happening in the individual franchises, I wanted to reach out and see if there are areas where I can help YOU with the needs of the individual projects for our company.   No job is too small, no job is too tall.  



I am:

• 

  (Not an actual Zombie)

  A people-focused project manager with a love for making games.   
• Passionate about working with a team to create AWESOME products, while sustaining a pace and quality of life that supports the company's core values.
• Not afraid to get my hands dirty in the trenches.   
• A voracious consumer of casual games content.
• In possession of the following super powers: directness, common sense, and an uncanny ability to get sh*t done.

My satisfaction comes from helping a team see projects through to completion, and helping their creative dreams make it out to the big world.  I have extensive experience in making branded products, with a significant portion of my career invested in shipping Hasbro branded projects, as well as creating adver-games for companies like Unilever, Chrysler, and Visa.   I’ve also worked with Warner Brothers, DreamWorks, Nickelodeon, HIT Entertainment, Johnny Wright Productions (*N’SYNC), Horn Abbott, and Mattel to deliver interactive products that are true to their respective brands.  Between time in QA and time as a producer, I’ve been directly responsible for 40 projects, with credits in over 100 games

Here at our company,  I’m currently working on finalizing some dangling details on the current iOS project.  Earlier this year my team shipped this iOS game, and I also managed the updates to our two most recognizable brands world-wide to have functioning product on the launch date of Lion OS last fall.  In the last 8 years as a producer,  I’ve managed internal teams, external teams, licensor approvals, multiple outsource resources, voice-over direction, done guerilla QA testing, written design documents, made a little (bad) art, and done a little programming.  Outside of work,  I’m a proud mom, wanna-be writer, musician, uuber-nerd, smack-dab in the middle of our target audience, and a controlled force of nature. 

Feel free to poke around my linkedin profile, read my recommendations and do not hesitate to let me know if you have needs for your franchises.   I’m not afraid to work hard, I own it when I make mistakes, and I never ask a team to do what I’m not willing to do myself.  I look forward to making YOUR life easier, while working together to make great products that we can all be proud of.

Best Regards –

Trivial Pursuits

As mentioned in a previous post, once upon a time, I produced a Trivial Pursuit game for PC, Xbox and PS2.  My brain holds onto a lot of bits of information from that project, I proof read, verified sources, and edited thousands of questions by the time the project was done.  One of the best parts of the project is that I sourced and directed a set of celebrities to read the questions for each category.

One of the celebrities we hired was John Cleese, and he opted to read the History category.  I sent the script off to his agent, and went into the recording session in Santa Barbara feeling prepared for the experience.  I should add, this is the FIRST voice recording session I ever directed.

As we were going through the session, John was getting more and more annoyed with the topics of the questions.  Apparently, John Cleese used to teach history at a prep school in England, and he felt that we were mis-representing current events as History.  He was right, it was America focused, and not deep history, our goal was to create a game where the average 30-40 year old American SHOULD know the answers to the questions.

Less than an hour into the session, he was visibly agitated, and I don't even remember the question that put him over the top.  All I know is this was my first ever voice recording session, and the talent looked at me through the glass, called me an 'illiterate con-artist' and stormed out of the studio.

I looked at my co-worker, and said "Oh shit.  What do I do now?"

"Get him back!  GO! GET HIM BACK!"

So, I went.  John was getting into his car and I started explaining what the goal of the game was, and how we arrived at the content that we did.  He said he understood that, but that I shouldn't call it 'history'.  I explained that we didn't actually CONTROL that nomenclature, Trivial Pursuit is a branded product, and the brand owners defined it, and that they had approved the content.  Finally, I closed it, like any good used car salesman would, I asked him the action question.

"What would it take to get you back behind the microphone, Mr. Cleese?" I asked, with my best, most charming smile.

"Five Thousand Dollars", he replied.

I quickly ran some budget numbers in my head, and thought of what my boss would say if I came back to tell him I'd lost John Cleese while standing outside the studio in downtown Santa Barbara.

"DONE.  Let's get back to work"

I went back into the studio, and sat behind the control board.  My hands were shaking and I was actually seeing little black spots.  I pretended to be pulling something out of my bag while I took a few deep breaths with my head down near my knees.  I realized I was actually going to throw up, so I spun my chair around and grabbed a garbage can.  I discreetly dry heaved into a garbage can while my co-worker and the studio rep looked on.  Then I wiped my mouth, grabbed my water, took a deep drink and spun back around.

"Alright, John.  Are you ready to get started?" I asked through the communication system.

We finished out the day, I got what I needed, and I put a call into my legal group to amend the contract to include an additional $5,000 talent fee.  The next day I was driving down to San Diego for a lunch date with a friend.  My cell phone rang, and I answered it.  It was John Cleese.

"Hello, I wanted to talk to you for a moment.  I believe I owe you an apology.  My wife and I were drinking some wine last night, and she reminded me that it's called 'trivial pursuit', not 'important pursuit'.  I shouldn't have called you names and stormed out, that was unprofessional of me."

I reassured him that I understood his frustration, and very much appreciated the follow up call.  Then he got to what, I believe, was the REAL reason for the call.

"I was wondering, can you treat the additional money as 'expert consultation' or something like that?  I'd rather not pay my agent fees on the additional money." He was very matter-of-fact about the request, and I am such a people-pleaser-person that I really wanted to be able to honor his request.

"I'm so sorry, John.  I can't do that.  I've already had my legal amend the contract and it went out to your agent this morning."  I really was sorry, I wanted him to continue acting like he liked me!

"Well then," he replied, curtly.  "Very well.  Goodbye."


One of my first bosses in the industry once told me this bit of wisdom.  "We make games.  No one dies.  You can't eat your liver over it."

As I've been struggling with getting my next project lined up, and dealing with self-esteem issues around feeling unwanted because I haven't figured out where I can best be effective at my job, (not to mention my insecurities about motherhood) I am reminding myself that creating entertainment is truly a trivial pursuit.  The important stuff is outside of these walls, just there waiting for me.

Hell Week(s)

As I've mentioned before, I am a producer for a video game company in Seattle.  I've been in the games industry since 1998, and been a producer since 2002.  I've shipped A LOT of games in that time.  Some of them, I'm very proud of.  Others, I can find things to be proud of in the process and in the way the work was done.  When people ask me what it means to be a game producer, I often reply one of two ways: "I make other people make video games" and "I make miracles happen.", depending on my mood.

I've worked a lifetime in the past 14 years.  60 hour weeks were light, 80 hour weeks were normal, 100+ hour weeks were hard, but not uncommon.  I've always prided myself on never asking my team to do anything that I'm not willing to do.  I turn the lights on in the studio in the morning, and I turn the lights off at night.  I make coffee runs, I order the pizza, I scour the bug database, I run interference for my dev team when PR or marketing come calling, I find the perfect song to fit a mood and blast it out far too loudly late at night.  I've been known to bribe people with baked goods, to wear a stupid hat when things get stressful, to fire off the applause box when the team needs a boost, and to be the bad guy, when a bad guy is needed.

I've had a critical realization in the past month.  I still take great pleasure in shipping games, I still love the energy that flows during the weeks where we final, I still get a thrill when I see that finished product and I KNOW that I played an essential role in bringing the team to the place where we could say "It is finished, warts, feathers and all, it is done, and we can be proud of this.".  But that's not how I define myself any more.  I'm not as young as I used to be, a 16 hour day at work takes it's toll on me, but it's not just that.  I will continue to give it my all in a fair days work, but I do not like missing bed time with my boy.

Hubby was very supportive, he's known me long enough to know how I get when I'm in shipping mode. My eyes get a little crazy, my brain gets laser focused, and everything else takes a back seat.  The difference this time around is this is my first time shipping a game at the end of an arthritis treatment cycle, and with a pretty significant jump in the severity of arthritis.  I actually delayed treatment to be in the office for my team, a decision that I really struggled with at the time.  There were people at work pushing me to do what I needed to do to take care of myself, and people asking me if I could delay longer so I didn't have to miss any time.  That was another eye opener for me.  I compromised and pushed treatment out by two weeks, and came into work in the late afternoon after resting a bit at home to work a full day's work with the team that was trying to make a final build.

There were several nights where Hubby picked up BabyBoy and brought him to work for the three of us to have dinner together, before taking him home and putting him to bed while Mommy stayed and worked.  Other nights, I sang lullabies to BabyBoy while I was still at work and he couldn't hear me.  There were Saturdays where I brought BabyBoy to work with me, in hopes he would take his normal afternoon nap in a pack and play at my desk (he didn't).  We tried to make it work, and I certainly do not think BabyBoy OR Hubby are worse off for the experience.  But that doesn't mean I liked it.

Crunch time is crunch time, whether it lasts 3 weeks like ours did or 3 months like it used to in the early days.  We only had 2 nights that went past midnight; most nights wrapped up by 8.  We worked three 10-6 Saturdays.  In the grand scheme of things, it was a mild crunch.  I tried hard not to laugh like a cynical old man, telling stories of my "up-hill in the snow walk to school back when I was a boy" when the others complained of how hard we were crunching.  People still gave up time with their families, and with their lives and I wanted to be respectful of that reality, while thinking "you suckers wouldn't have survived the path I've lived to get here today", really loudly in my head to drown out their complaints.

The good news, my new game has cleared Apple certification and will be released in early March.  I've taken a week off for R&R (and for gathering up baby stuff to donate, finishing BabyBoy's quilt that I haven't touched since he was born, catching up on writing this blog, and perhaps cooking a meal or two for my family). I also had a pretty good response with arthritis treatment, there are spots where I have pain, but I am able to simply notice that pain and then move onto the next thought, instead of having the primary brain power dedicated to not whimpering out loud in pain while I attempt to process coherent, professional thought with what's left behind of my focus.  I also got lab results that show that my Ferritin level is at 260, 4 months after treatment (and I have to tell you, that is a MIRACLE number for me.  It will be fascinating to see how long the new type of infusion holds anemia at bay).  B12 and Vitamin B are both in single digits, so there's still work to be done, but I'll take my successes where I find them.

Last week, I went and spoke at a career day at a local college that is focused on video game disciplines for their degree programs.  I actually don't much enjoy public speaking, I talk too fast, turn bright red, and tend to throw up in garbage cans from stage fright before I speak.  This talk went incredibly well, I was on a panel with 5 other discipline leaders from my company, and I was surprised that there were several questions directed at me during Q&A.  Afterwards, the coordinator came over to ask me if I would consider facilitating a women's group for the semester, mentoring their 1% female student population.  I thought about that for a moment, and I told her "yes".  I've been doing this long enough I feel I have valuable information to share, and as a woman who was 1 of 4 women in the active production group in 1998, I've done a little path-paving for the next generation.  Perhaps I can refocus some of that old satisfaction from working harder and longer than anyone else to ship games into the satisfaction of knowing I might bring insight to a woman just starting out in the industry and help make her first steps on the path a little easier.

Tardiness

As a professional, I've always taken being on time seriously.  In fact, I'd much prefer to be early than to be late.  However, I work in the games industry, and there's a certain "we're creative, we don't follow rules" attitude to that culture.  Meetings that start within 15 minutes of scheduled time are celebrated as a success, but it drives me absolutely ape shit.  I'm a project manager, my time, much like a lawyer, is tracked in billable increments, which all go against the bottom line of project overhead.  If I stopped to count up how many meetings start late in a project, you start to see why project deadlines often get blown off and missed.  Lateness is lateness, and it all adds up.

Let me add a disclaimer here:

This is a personal weblog. The opinions expressed here represent my own and not those of my employer. I'm not going to tell you who my employer is, but if you happen to figure it out, I'm not representing them.  Got it?

There.  That's out of the way.  I work for a game developer that is sort of notorious for not following traditional schedules or milestones.  Our games ship when they're done, not when we say we'll ship them when we first start a project.  This has been the single hardest adjustment to my style as a producer since I started with this organization.  In my past positions, I live and die by the schedule.  I've primarily worked on branded product that is tied to events: movie releases, ad campaigns, major sporting events, etc.  Those dates do not change.  The product that you deliver might change during the course of the project for a variety of reasons (contract signed late, customer made a change in the scope of work, approval process delays, as a few examples), but the date DOES NOT CHANGE.

It is bad enough at work that each clock on the floor is set to a different time - varying between 5-15 minutes ahead of the actual time.  That doesn't solve anything, it just makes people MORE likely to ignore the clock and make excuses.  I've never been a fan of the "I'll set my clock ahead, so that way if I snooze I can still be on-time" mentality.  You're not actually fooling anyone.

My meetings start on time.  I start talking when the designated time arrives, even if I'm talking to an empty room.  And I do not repeat myself.  If no one shows up by the time 15 minutes has passed, I walk out and I do not rush back in to cram through the topics when the tardy ones come looking for me.  I will send a follow up e-mail that covers off on why no decisions were made, and propose a new time for the meeting.  I've become a bit notorious for this, and it's becoming a less common occurrence that people are late, at least not to my meetings. I've heard muttering about "Oh, that's Rae's meeting.  You better be on time because she will bust your balls if you're not!" and the like, but that's something I can live with.

To me, if you accept a meeting, you accept your role and responsibility in that conversation.  Yes, things happen and if you call or text and say "I'm 5 minutes away, I apologize.", I will say thank you when you walk in the room. But just wandering in because you can't allocate your time and honor the commitments you make says that you do not respect me, you do not respect what I'm doing, and you don't respect yourself as a professional.

Doesn't that sound so admirable?   Let me just say, this is something I've had to work VERY hard at.  Ask my best friend, she can probably account for a year of her life spent waiting for me during our time sharing rides to school in Junior High and High School.  She never left my ass, but she SHOULD have.  I was always in a state of "hair on fire and ass is catching", I always had an excuse and and apology at the ready, and at some point, I finally grew out of it and started taking punctuality seriously.

So, here's the reality of my life today.  Despite my best efforts, the ONLY PLACE I'M ACTUALLY ON TIME IS AT WORK.  BabyBoy is 14 months old, and I haven't been on time to 99% of the things we have done since he was born.  We were late to the birthing center tour.  We were late the morning of his scheduled c-section birth, we were late to freakin' CHRISTMAS BRUNCH and we were bringing the main course!  (Hubby's reasoning: "They can't start without us," which was technically true, because we had at the FOOD for 15 people, and we were nearly 45 minutes late!  How rude can you possibly be?)  I've become fanatical about being on time at work because it's the only place in my life where I feel like I have any control left.

There's got to be a balance here, somewhere.  We're both adults, we're both professionals, we both understand the value of time.  Starting our shared time together in a mad rush for the door, with me in a state of low-grade piss off  because I've done all the work to prepare BabyBoy and straightened up the house and have STILL been kept waiting is no way to enjoy our time together.  I've started padding the time I tell Hubby that we need to be places so at least we hit closer to on-time than we have in the past, but that feels manipulative and childish. Knowing our relationship, knowing myself, and knowing Hubby, the change will most likely have to be with me.  We're not known for our ability to talk rationally and compromise.  And that just makes me feel resentful.  This isn't a topic like "what direction does the basket for zippy cup parts face in the dishwasher?", it's common courtesy.  If you say you'll be somewhere, be there when you say you'll be there.

How do I get the point across without being a shrew?  I hate being late.  I think it's disrespectful and it makes me anxious and edgy to do everything in a manufactured emergency rush.  It's that simple.