And I told Mike [Capps, Epic Games’ president], “What do I have to do to work here?” And he’s like, well, are you willing to be a test manger for us? Because at the time there was no test bracket at Epic. And I told him that I was actually really interested in production because I’ve been working with some great producers. His response was to ask how would I feel about being a test manager/associate producer, and getting my start that way. Well, yeah, if that’s what it takes, that’s what it takes. And he said hat he needed to talk to the team and make sure that everything was all good. I did some other interviews with other companies and stuff. A week later he called me and said the team wants you to come on board and when could I start? And I moved out there. That was four years ago.
Did you have to deal with any skepticism when you were transitioning from recruiting to testing? In a male-dominated field where competitiveness is such a hallmark, did you feel like people were second-guessing your desire? Or your ability to do the testing, to actually get your hands dirty with the games?
The thing about it is that, I don’t think it’s unique to our industry. Still, when you’re good at something, it’s recognized. If you have the credibility, it doesn’t matter who you are, or what walk of life you come from. Talk the talk. You walk the walk. Sure, people might look at you like, “Who is this blonde chick walking around our offices?” Greg Hjertager–who’s now one of my old friends–was a tester at Microsoft. He’s friends with the Penny Arcade guys and is a super hardcore gamer, right? He gave me on my first day, like the full interview: “Tell me about your favorite game? Tell me about what’s the game you spent the most hours on? Let me know what your favorite experience was? And what are you looking forward to?” He was just like, going through and through, trying to see if I really knew my stuff.
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I actually loved it because video games are one of my favorite topics. I came out of it thinking that that was a friendly conversation. Then, afterwards he said, “Yeah, I think you’re one of the more hardcore people in the team right now.” And I was like, “Oh, so that was a test, and I passed?” And he was like, “Yeah, you’re awesome.” “You’re cool.” And so this is just kind of, initially, what everyone tends to go through. Where people say, “Oh, I don’t know who that is. What are they all about?” But the moment you prove yourself, it doesn’t matter if you’re a chick. It doesn’t matter if you have black hair, blonde hair, red hair, whatever. You either have what it takes or you don’t.
You’re in a production job now. Can you differentiate production from design or is there not much of one at Epic? It seems like every studio defines their various titles differently. So what is your experience day-to-day?
My definition of a producer, especially like a lead producer, it’s someone who does whatever it takes to get shit done. And so for some studios, it is more creative. It can be more design-focused or being the one driving the story. It’s supervising voice recordings. It’s all of that. For some studios, it’s really process-heavy because they need lots of scheduling. They need people to follow up on communication, and stuff like that. So the producer’s job in general is pretty open-ended depending on…
Where you are?
The strange this is hat at the studios now–both at Epic and at People Can Fly– there’s opportunities for producers to do either of those things. Because we appreciate process on the production side, but producers like myself and Rod Ferguson, both are very creative on the games, too. We work very closely with the design team. I work very, very closely with Cliff and Adrian [Chmielarz, Creative Director of People Can Fly]. And everything goes through the core stakeholders, like materials that need approval. I feel very privileged in that I do get to be involved in that. But I’m not, by any stretch of the imagination, designing stuff. I might go, “Adrian, I had a dream last night about this amazing feature. And I know I’m the producer, and I know I should be trying to lower some risk, but I don’t give a crap because this sounds awesome. Can we set up a meeting and talk about it?” And then Adrian will be like, yes. And then we’ll come up with a plan and then I’ll go to Cliff. I’ll be like, “Cliff, Adrian and I came up with something that’s awesome. And I think you’re going to think it’s awesome.” And he’s like, all right. We talk about it and Cliff’s like, yeah, show it to me at the end of the week.