Mid-Track Crisis

Today I spoke to Roger, Corrinne, and Bob about the feasibility of me changing tracks from an engineer to a producer. This post will kind of be a brain dump of all the things I'm worried about and considering for this transition.

First, I'll talk about why I wanted to (and am almost certainly going to) switch tracks in the first place. The original appeal of the EAE program was the promise of crafting any idea into an actual playable game that I could modify and re-craft to be even more fun. I've been doing stuff like this my entire life, and after being in the program for a semester it appears that although everyone has a say in what the game is, its the producers job to make sure that the vision is concise and clear, and I love that.

I just really love public speaking. The thought of giving game pitches to people about a game that I made and I've put all kinds of work into is so exciting. Looking back on my life, I've really put myself in positions where I can public speak as much as I possibly could, and I've never had any feelings but excitement before, during, and after any major presentations I've given. Producers give presentations, I love to give presentations. Great.

I love to see other peoples strengths and build teams around those. This is probably my favorite leadership skill that I have--the ability to recognize the utility of any person and play to those strengths. I definitely have weaknesses, too, but I feel that this is one of my strongest abilities. The ability to see the value in any and every team member. I've been a team leader of plenty of things that people were only half-heartedly interested in, and being in charge of something that everyone actively wants to be a part of is face-meltingly enticing.

Face-meltingly. You heard me.

Of course, changing to a producer has brought up concerns, as well. I talked with my wife Janice quite a bit about the change and discussed the pros and cons of changing tracks. The biggest concern was losing the degree that had originally attracted me to the program: the coveted CS master degree. I can't think of a more employable person than a mechanical engineer who also is a masters student in computer science. Switching tracks would lessen this ungodly employability, but as Zac Truscot pointed out, I could always get back into the engineering scene by using this experience as leadership training. If  I wanted to switch back. Game development is pretty insanely awesome.

With the biggest concern out of the way, the only thing left are minor issues. For instance, would I always be shuffled in to this role of "not-really-a-producer"? Would my peers think of me as a wannabe producer or would they actually see me differently? Would seeing me differently be a good thing or a bad thing? I don't want anybody to be weirded out by the transition, and it only slightly feels like I just asked to be everybody's boss and Roger said "sure". I could understand resentment at having me be your next team leader.

There's a lot of things to think about, but one thing that I know for sure is that there's definitely more pluses than minuses, and the minuses are worth dealing with to get involved in something that I'm absolutely going to love.