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Samuel Rantaeskola's Blog
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Samuel Ranta-Eskola works as a Senior Production Expert at Hansoft with the primary role of helping game developers around the world with best practices in production. Samuel has been working with large scale game, software development and project management for 12+ years in various roles within engineering and production. Most recently he worked as a Senior Producer at Starbreeze, where he was leading large productions in association with EA.
Linkedin:
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/samuel-ranta-eskola/1/bb4/806
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Expert Blogs
Is the project manager role outdated?  |
| Posted by Samuel Rantaeskola on Mon, 27 May 2013 10:38:00 EDT in
Production,
Console/PC
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| The traditional project manager keeps track of all the work in a project and makes sure that things are moving along nicely. This mentality has also influenced the producer role. Is that really the best way to approach the situation? |
| Read More... | 14 Comments |
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Have fun making money and games! |
| Posted by Samuel Rantaeskola on Wed, 17 Apr 2013 05:45:00 EDT in
Social/Online,
Production
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| Empowered teams and creative freedom is the holy grail of game development. Casual game teams are pioneering a new approach on how to build high quality products at a low cost in an extremely motivating work environment. How to set up a garage of garages? |
| Read More... | 8 Comments |
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How to not fail in scale |
| Posted by Samuel Rantaeskola on Fri, 12 Apr 2013 09:43:00 EDT in
Console/PC,
Production
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| Next gen is lurking around the corner. With that, the scale of large productions is going to ignite in a sea of flames. Organizing teams with that amount of people requires extraordinary thinking to remain efficient and retain a creative environment. |
| Read More... | 4 Comments |
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Why cross-functional? |
| Posted by Samuel Rantaeskola on Fri, 25 Jan 2013 05:26:00 EST in
Production,
Console/PC
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| Moving to a truly cross-functional organization is a big leap for a game studio. Old structures need to be torn down, which is not easy. But there are so many benefits with a more team focused environment, let’s examine some of them. |
| Read More... | 6 Comments |
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The devil is the details |
| Posted by Samuel Rantaeskola on Fri, 11 Jan 2013 08:14:00 EST in
Console/PC,
Production
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| Backlog management seems to be one of the most difficult things to do properly. In this post I share my learnings from countless backlog discussions in 2012. |
| Read More... | 2 Comments |
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The Game Plan: Jammin' |
| Posted by Samuel Rantaeskola on Tue, 18 Dec 2012 03:10:00 EST in
Console/PC,
Production
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| Game jams or 'Google time' can be a powerful tool to build teams within the team. This post is summary of a discussion I had on this topic with Carl Vikman from EA DICE. |
| Read More... | 0 Comments |
[More Samuel Rantaeskola Blogs]
Samuel Rantaeskola's Comments
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Comment In: Is the project manager role outdated? [Blog - 05/27/2013 - 10:38]
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Couldn 't agree more on ... Couldn 't agree more on the naming convention problem. |
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Comment In: Four ways next-gen consoles could fail, according to Riccitiello [News - 05/20/2013 - 04:01]
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I think he forgot about ... I think he forgot about the key challenge, which is accessibility. When you want to play a console game today it takes several minutes before you 're actually playing. Mobile games are instant and always within arms reach, PC 's tends to be always on and are time until you ... |
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Comment In: Have fun making money and games! [Blog - 04/17/2013 - 05:45]
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I haven 't read it ... I haven 't read it yet. It 's on my to-read list though. r n r nTo be clear, I don 't want to come out as an inventor of this method, it 's just a summary of what I felt would have been a nice way of restructuring a ... |
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Comment In: How to not fail in scale [Blog - 04/12/2013 - 09:43]
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Losing control allows you to ... Losing control allows you to build speed at the cost of a lack of control in direction. The trickiest thing is to find the balance between these two. In general, I think AAA productions tends to lean too much towards control and would benefit from loosening things up. As you ... |
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Comment In: The devil is the details [Blog - 01/11/2013 - 08:14]
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Let 's assume that you ... Let 's assume that you plan a project into a high level of detail a year or two forward. The likelihood you will execute on those small goals a year from now is pretty low. Things change, new ideas pops up and reviews of current features opens new roads. Spending ... |
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Comment In: Why cross-functional? [Blog - 01/25/2013 - 05:26]
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Good point And there is ... Good point And there is no such thing as a magic bullet, any development method will require a lot of work and discipline. r n r nI probably should have mentioned somewhere that this is focused on iterative development. As you mention there are smarter approaches when it comes to ... |
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