Producers tend to oversee various portions of the game. We rotate our roles fairly often for a variety of reasons... it means that knowledge spreads throughout the studio so we aren't overly reliant on one person, and it keeps things interesting for us to take on new challenges and learn new areas. Going back to Sims 3 I was responsible for object hookup for EP1 and EP2, I then was the QA producer on EP3 and EP4 to help get what we needed from our testers, I was the world producer on EP5 (for example with that one, I pushed for the 100% new rabbitholes and the custom versions of the Ambitions lots), and I was the Create a Sim producer on EP8 and EP10 (CAS producers have the most say in what clothing gets made).
Mainly that means I oversaw those areas, handled any cross discipline coordination/communication necessary to make them happen, made judgement calls on what content did or didn't go in the game - or how it went into the game, and was ultimately responsible for the quality of those areas when they shipped.
I've gotten my hands dirty with content creation a few times as well... For example I built a number of the tombs in World Adventures, I built every last one of those festival lots that were available when Seasons came out (was my call to make sure we built a custom festival lot for every world - I love cross compatible features), and I built all of the Katy Perry lots (I'm sure that makes me everyone's favorite).
Most of what I do though is feature production. Once a design is written a producer gets assigned to it to help guide it through the initial process where all disciplines get on the same page so they can start building it. Then we continue to watch it as it's actually getting implemented to make sure that all the work was done properly, that the original vision for the design was realized, and that the feature is making the right progress against the man hours estimated for it (and if it's not, finding solutions to make it fit or finding other areas we can take that time from). We work closely with the designers to ensure that features are fun and polished, and if we feel they aren't then it's our responsibility to suggest the right improvements and allocate Change Review time (a process I've explained elsewhere) to getting it where it needs to be. Even if we don't necessarily have deep technical knowledge, we develop a pretty good feel for the complexity of different features, and use that knowledge to push for smart improvements. Anyone can sit there and critique a design or suggest things to add to it, but knowing the basics of what the game/engine is capable of and what tech we can re-purpose to add big improvements without having a huge impact on the schedule or budget is important - if we're working smartly we have more resources to spread around.
A few examples of some Sims 3 features I was heavily involved in most recently... Houseboats, all of the weather in Seasons, Aliens/UFO, and Festivals. If you're genuinely curious how in-depth I get with my features, I'd suggest taking a look at my
Houseboat guide, or my
Seasonal Lot Marker guide. My biggest feature in Sims 4 was the new notification system, and I hope you'll agree when you try it that it's a big step up over any of the iterations of that system in Sims 3. I can't tell you what the code is doing behind the scenes to specifically make things happen, and I'm not an authority on in-depth technical explanations of the work our engineers do and the challenges they face, but I have a pretty decent awareness of what's happening to make a feature work, and I'd venture I could give one of the best rundowns of the capabilities and the design decisions of any feature I've seen through from start to finish.
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