Game Producer Interview Questions
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Game Producer interview questions shared by candidates
Too many to relate. The standout for me though: Are you more of a Den Mother or a Drill Sergeant?
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I default to Den Mother, but have performed both roles. Told about the time where I had to hold a distant cousin who served under me accountable for his repeated tardiness, eventually leading to him getting booted from the Air Force. Was met with "We're looking for more of a Drill Sergeant." Less
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The “owner” is very much stuck in the 1999’s “beat the workers until morale improves “ style of management. Even if you say you can manage appropriately for the situation - as soon as you said den mother, it was over for you. Think about it though - good products or not - is that the kind of place you want to work? Less
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It's still my first pick. The military has something of a late 70s early 80s style to its management, though I'd argue its leadership is more ahead of the curve. Workers there are viewed as interchangeable parts and an up or out mentality prevails. A task master would still be a comfortable upgrade to the personnel management systems documented in DOPMA. I think you're right though. Perhaps a more hard -a-- line would have communicated my "buck stops here" approach. Next year will be different. Less
They asked about whether I am ready to easily leave my current position, strange question when I had already applied to their position, that already means I am ready to change the job, other questions were the same level of stupidity, seems they wanted to identify my motivation.
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I asked a very similar question and the person actually said no, he just wanted to see what is out there and keep his interview skills active. It was a complete waste of our time. Less
They had a handful of scenario-type questions, like dealing with a difficult employee (what do you do?). They even acted it out a bit as if one of the producers was the bad employee who didn't want to go a stand-up. So that was rather interesting.
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I tried to role-play through it and approach it the way I would in a real setting. I thought it was a fine interview. I would have appreciated feedback to understand what sort of responses they were looking for. Also, I would have appreciated a more prompt response from recruiting rather than waiting for 3 weeks. Less
"Why did you insist on using the singular 'they' in your development schedule?"
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I thought this'd be an innocent question. Most game companies these days try to use inclusive language, such as alternating he and she on their cards, or using the singular 'they' (which is grammatically correct in most modern stylebooks). I explained that since I didn't know the gender of the people I was talking about in the schedule, that I thought it appropriate to use the grammatically correct gender neutral singular they, as is appropriate. I was then grilled for the next half an hour on this one simple pronoun question. I was told first that there wasn't enough room on the cards, to which I answered why not alternate he and she? They danced around the question, said things like "Not enough people use the singular 'they' to matter" to which I suggested pronoun alteration again, to which they said "That's too confusing for our players." Another point about the singular "they" was that they found that it made the rules confusing... to which I, again, said "why not alternate pronouns, then?" They finally said, "90 percent of our playerbase is male, so we don't see any reason to include women in our considerations." Keep in mind that I am a woman, and that I used to play Fantasy Flight products extensively, often with female friends. I said that I found that statistic quite hard to believe. This back and forth continued for quite some time, with me trying to get them to move on to other parts of the interview, or questions about my background, but they kept coming back to this one point of grammar. I am almost certain this is what cost me the interview. Less