Kameo Producers Interview: Lee Schuneman (RARE) and Earnest Yuen (MGS)
As Producers on Kameo™: Elements of Power™, what were your roles?
Lee: We decided to split up the roles, each of us playing to our strengths and interfacing with our respective teams. Both of our roles supported the production of the game, but from different angles. For example, my role was to work with the development team and oversee the day-to-day aspects of actual game construction. It was my responsibility to do what was necessary to create and maintain the best possible functioning of the dev team, from equipment to morale, to help them create the best game possible.
 "It’s a fun job. A lot of what you’ll be doing is talent management: that means spending a lot of your time working with very interesting, very creative and talented people. " —Lee Schuneman, Producer |
Earnest: Here in Redmond, I worked with the test team, marketing team, print design team and all the other teams and people that support a game release. It was my job to make sure that everything happening here was supporting Lee’s mission at RARE. Splitting up the roles and responsibilities this way made us a lot more effective than if we’d tried sharing the same jobs simultaneously.
What were the challenges of having two Producers, separated by an ocean, working on Kameo?
Lee: You might think that being in different time zones (Redmond is eight hours behind the United Kingdom) would be hurtful to collaboration, but I think that the opposite was true. We had all the modern technological advantages in communication: telephone, email, conference calls and video conferencing, so we could keep in touch very easily and mostly in real-time.
Earnest: Yes, we took kind of a “divide and conquer” approach to our role responsibilities. Because I was here in the US time zone I was able to talk and work with some of the key people in the Redmond teams, helping solve problems that impacted Lee’s team. And sometimes we met face-to-face, either in Redmond or at the RARE offices: sometimes there’s just no substitute for that.
Knowing that this was going to be a launch title, how did the schedule affect the game’s development?
Lee: Kameo has a long history as a title, so the development team had a very good sense of what it was trying to do. It wasn’t as scary an experience as it might have been if we were lacking a strong vision. It was difficult, but because we knew already where we wanted to go, it was easier for the team to remain focused. I guess I’d describe the whole experience as “painful, but manageable!”
Earnest: Having the hard deadline that comes with a launch title was a serious concern. But the team was so organized that we had a very clear idea of the milestones and achievements we needed to hit along the way. Resolving the problems created by the scheduling were actually part of the fun.
Continue to Part 2...