Introduction

This week we heard from Jade Carter, a producer at Snap Finger Click and an alum from WSA who graduated with a 2:1. Her career path wasn’t a straight line into games. She worked a regular 9–5 office job while applying for roles, and eventually broke in through QA at Futurlab. From there she moved to Studio Gobo, stayed in QA for a while, and eventually transitioned into production.

She’s worked on some huge titles, including Hogwarts Legacy, UNO, LEGO Horizon, and Mini Mech Mayhem, which was pretty inspiring considering where she started.

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What is Production in games?

Before she became a producer, Jade said she didn’t really know what role she wanted to go into. Production, as she put it, “found her.” She described the role as a mix of timekeeping, planning, and communication; basically the person who makes sure the team can actually finish the game on time and within budget.

Her day-to-day involves a lot of JIRA, building roadmaps, talking to clients, and keeping meetings on track. One thing that stood out to me is that producers plan for unexpected problems by blocking out 10–20% of development time as a buffer. Hearing that made production feel a lot more strategic than I expected.

She also talked about working on cinematics for LEGO Horizon, which sounded like a highlight for her. It made the role sound surprisingly creative at times, which I didn’t expect.

Working Remotely as a Producer

Jade also talked a bit about working remote. She was recently diagnosed with autism and ADHD, and found that she works far better from home.

She said that, at first, remote work felt unproductive mainly because people couldn’t see each other working. But communication improved over time. Nowadays, it’s just part of the job, especially at smaller studios like Snap Finger Click, where they work in monthly milestones rather than sprints.

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Advice on Breaking Into the Industry

Jade was really honest about how tough the job hunt was. She applied for around 20–30 positions, got ghosted by half of them, landed a few interviews, and one job offer. It was reassuring to hear that persistence is normal.

Some of her standout advice:

• Keep your CV to one page.
• Write about your uni projects and anything that shows passion for games.
• Research the studio before your interview.
• QA is one of the strongest entry points into the industry.
• Studios want people who are genuinely enthusiastic about what they’re making.

Her experience on Hogwarts Legacy also highlighted how useful QA is for building knowledge. She said spending years testing the game helped massively when she moved into production.

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Key Takeaways

Something Jade emphasized again and again is that the uni to industry transition isn’t as scary as it seems. A lot of the basics we learn at WSA (Meeting deadlines, communicating well, understanding different kinds of people) transfer almost directly into studio life.

She spoke about accountability, reliability, and adapting to the people you’re working with. There’s no room for disappearing on tasks or missing deadlines in a real project, but if you’re reliable and communicate, teams will want to work with you.

Reflection

I didn’t expect this talk to resonate as much as it did, especially because I’m more on the programming/design side than production. But hearing Jade describe her path made the industry feel a lot less intimidating. She didn’t have a perfectly planned route, she didn’t specialise early, and she still ended up exactly where she needed to be.

As someone who enjoys both the technical and creative sides of development, that was reassuring. Her story was a reminder that careers in games aren’t always linear, and that it’s okay if I don’t have everything figured out right now. What matters is enthusiasm, persistence, and being someone a team can trust.