Deborah Mars has been managing the chaos of producing for 20 years in publishing, media, and entertainment industries, which has no doubt contributed to her expertise as Senior Producer of External Development at Sony Computer Entertainment America. She sat down with Gamesauce to talk about her life’s calling—producing games that are accessible to players of all backgrounds, including the forthcoming PixelJunk Shooter 2 on the PlayStation Network.
Producer from the start
Mars’ love tangle with games goes back much further than her role as a producer, to the age of playing games like Decathlon on Wang computers. “Back then it was all about who could repeatedly hit the keys back and forth faster,” she recalls. “I was only 4 years old, but I won a lot.”
When the Mac launched, Mars spent countless hours copying lines of code from Mac magazines to create her own games. “Of course we were just inputting the code, but it was incredibly satisfying when it ran successfully. The kicker was that if we made an error, we had to backtrack each line. It shed light early on that I had potential as a producer since it required so much attention to detail and I made fewer mistakes than my brother.”
Producing with a passion
Mars’ passion for her projects has always stayed with her. “Having the opportunity to work on titles like Fat Princess and the PixelJunk series is fantastic and really fits well with my belief in developing games that are approachable and accessible to everyone—casual and hardcore gamers alike, male/female, young/old, you name it.”
For Mars, producing is as much about the players as it is about the game itself. “If you jump into an online game of Fat Princess anytime now through the end of November, you will see that we’ve swapped out cakes for pumpkins. We’ve received loads of fan email, and it makes us feel good about keeping the title fresh and surprising the community with these little enhancements.”
Managing the chaos
In the midst of the fun, Mars reminds us that anyone actively involved in the games industry knows that it’s not easy to make games. “There are times when concepts or projects simply don’t work out as you would have hoped, and it can be a major disappointment.“
However, Mars’ years of experience have led her to a place of calm in the face of difficulties. Mars advises, “Learn to embrace the successes and failures equally. This proves to be quite possibly one of the most invaluable learning experiences you can have working in this business.”
Looking forward to the future
Despite any challenges in the past with other projects, Mars’ forthcoming title PixelJunk Shooter 2 for PS3 PSN has an excited player base eager for its launch. “Dylan Cuthbert and his team at Q-Games are really shaping the game up nicely,” shares Mars.
As always, Mars is driven by her tendencies as a gamer to satisfy the requests of fans. PixelJunk answers to her desire to work on games that appeal to all types of players. It’s the type of game that parents can play casually alongside their kids or completionists can play for hours to earn all of the trophies.
“There has been a huge demand from the player community to have an online component to PixelJunk, and we try to be as receptive as possible to fan support and feature requests. This is the first PixelJunk title that has an online battle mode, and I think it adds a significant amount of depth and strategy to the game.”
For all of those PSN players out there—Mars is listening.
Deborah Mars can’t spill details about new initiatives that Sony is working on, but we’re sure to hear about them soon.
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