Abigale, the Sr. Community Manager for Rift, sat down and had lunch with Producer Ken Allen. She got a chance to ask Ken about his background and a ask a few questions from the community.
Here’s a quick blurb:
Osho: What are you responsible for by being a Rift Producer?We have several directors on the team who have producer responsibilities. Each of these producers is responsible for a particular part of the game; game mechanics, game content, art, engineering.
My role is 180 degrees opposite of that. It’s more of an outward facing role.
On this particular project, I’m more involved with activities geared toward getting the game to a published state. This includes tracking our milestones goals, monitoring how well we address bug counts, producing progress reports for our executives, coordinating company-wide play tests and presentations, and basically being the guy on the team people can come to when they have a question and don’t know where else to go.
I’ve also had a big role in kicking off certain non-game initiatives and then handing them off to people hired to fill that role.
For example, I wrote the company’s first publishing standards checklist, supplied the first draft of a template for organizing text that will be localized, created the first installable game disc for play-testing, established initial relationships with ratings boards, reviewed public facing legal agreements (like EULA, Code of Conduct and Terms of Use), created the first matrix for compatibility testing, and so on. And in most cases, as Trion filled the various positions related to those initiatives, I handed off of that work to the new director.
For the full interview check out the Official Forums.
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