With the countdown to the release of Star Wars: Battlefront II continuing, one of the Producers gives his views on the development of the game...

Producer – Phillip Hong:

“Star Wars Battlefront II is the sequel to the best selling Star Wars game of all time…”

That statement didn’t really sink in for me until I saw it in the trailer projected on the LucasArts big screen at E3. I watched along with hundreds of gamers that had gathered around like moths to the fanboy flame. This was no ordinary game trailer; it was an overture to the finale of a great space opera. See, E3 this year also happened to fall on the same date of another E3… the movie premiere of Star Wars Episode 3. That’s when it really hits. At that moment, the epic Star Wars saga that has hovered over my entire life has transcended from big screen to reality. Somehow I was a part of bringing this excitement to the legions of Star Wars fans. Hi, my name is Phillip Hong and I’m one of the producers at Pandemic Studios working on Star Wars Battlefront II.

There are a handful of Pandemic producers dedicated to Star Wars Battlefront II. They are Chris Williams, Dave Baker, myself, and Jim Tso, who is the Senior Producer on the project. All of us, along with the majority of the Battlefront II team, worked on the original Star Wars Battlefront. We’re really honored that LucasArts has given us the opportunity to expand the Star Wars Battlefront franchise into exciting new areas.

We’re putting in space combat with ships that you can board and fight in. We’ve added a bunch of playable Jedi that you activate as a reward for objectives you complete. We’ve designed an engaging single player campaign that’s based on the 501st Legion (the Star Wars uber-fans that dress up as stormtroopers). We’re also taking you to the battles of Episode 3; so the major battle scenes that had only minutes of screen time can be played for hours and hours. Star Wars Battlefront II is practically an encyclopedia on Star Wars covering the wide range of action you’ve seen from Ep 1 to Ep 6. In addition Battlefront II is releasing on PS2, Xbox, PC, and PSP; and will be localized in multiple languages: French, German, Italian, Spanish, and Japanese.

With all this new content, platforms, and localizations, you can see how you need a team of producers to manage the logistics, prioritize the key tasks, and coordinate the team effort to deliver a final polished game.

As producers, we’re responsible for all of this to come together, yet we’re not the ones physically creating art assets, writing code, or balancing game play, like an artist, programmer, or designer respectively. So how do we do our job? The answer is as cheesy as it is true: TEAMWORK.

A good example of this is in the early stages of Star Wars Battlefront II each producer managed a cross-functional team of programmers, designers, and artists. Each team was grouped together to focus on specific aspects of the game. We called these teams “Task Forces” and our areas of focus ranged from new features like Jedi and Space Combat, to core game features like Shell / HUD and Vehicles.

The producer role was to guide the brainstorming discussion and translate emotional comments and suggestions like, “I want the Jedi to feel like a bad ass…” to tangible tasks like, “ANIMATION: Jedi Back Flip” or “PROGRAMMING: Jedi Force Power: Choke”. By the end of this process we rolled all these up into a mammoth task list. This task list served as a roadmap that steered the efforts of the entire development team.

Managing a cross-functional team is a basic project management role that you’ll find in many professional organizations. We wouldn’t be a game company however if we didn’t put our own creative spin on this. So as producers, we’re also “Captains” of cross-functional multiplayer teams in a highly competitive Star Wars Battlefront II league.

Each of us leads a cross-functional team of programmers, artists, designers, and QA, and battle it out once a week on new Battlefront II maps and game modes. My team, Moon Over Endor, is currently the Cinderella story going from worst to first. We’re on a 12-0 winning streak and nipping at the heels of Vader’s Fist for first place. Yes, we are all big Star Wars geeks.

Of course, there are legitimate merits to these matches beyond bragging rights. After each match all participants report bugs, exploits, and balancing suggestions to the senior producer. That feedback is discussed amongst the department leads and director and in many cases incorporated into the game.

It’s also a reminder for all of us that we’ve signed up to work at a fun factory. It’s our goal that the fun we’re having making and playing this game, will find its way into your hands through your Xbox, PS2, PSP, or PC.

So in closing, being a producer on Star Wars Battlefront II means bringing a diverse team of artists, programmers, designers and QA together to build a wide variety of new content: space combat, playable Jedi, a rich single player campaign and Episode 3 maps. Some strategies we employ to accomplish this are fundamental project management skills, while others are a bit more eccentric. The end result is to deliver a polished and fun game that translates the Star Wars fantasy for gamers from screen to reality.

Star Wars: Battlefront II is out in Autumn 2005 on PlayStation2, Xbox, PC, and PSP – we’ll have more on the game shortly...