{"id":273,"date":"2025-12-05T18:07:25","date_gmt":"2025-12-05T18:07:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/et4g23-yr3\/?p=273"},"modified":"2025-12-06T01:16:19","modified_gmt":"2025-12-06T01:16:19","slug":"jade-carter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/et4g23-yr3\/2025\/12\/05\/jade-carter\/","title":{"rendered":"Jade Carter"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Producer at Snap Finger Click
Alumni at WSA
Games Design and Art<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[LinkedIn Link]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Introduction<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

This week we heard from Jade Carter<\/strong>, a producer at Snap Finger Click<\/strong> and an alum from WSA who graduated with a 2:1. Her career path wasn\u2019t a straight line into games. She worked a regular 9\u20135 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She\u2019s worked on some huge titles, including Hogwarts Legacy<\/strong>, UNO<\/strong>, LEGO Horizon<\/strong>, and Mini Mech Mayhem<\/strong>, which was pretty inspiring considering where she started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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What is Production in games?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Before she became a producer, Jade said she didn\u2019t really know what role she wanted to go into. Production, as she put it, \u201cfound her.\u201d 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her day-to-day involves a lot of JIRA<\/strong>, 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\u201320% of development time as a buffer. Hearing that made production feel a lot more strategic than I expected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019t expect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Working Remotely as a Producer<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She said that, at first, remote work felt unproductive mainly because people couldn\u2019t see<\/em> each other working. But communication improved over time. Nowadays, it\u2019s just part of the job, especially at smaller studios like Snap Finger Click, where they <\/em>work in monthly milestones<\/strong> rather than sprints.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Advice on Breaking Into the Industry<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Jade was really honest about how tough the job hunt was. She applied for around 20\u201330 positions, got ghosted by half of them, landed a few interviews, and one job offer. It was reassuring to hear that persistence is normal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of her standout advice:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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  • Keep your CV to one page.<\/strong><\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • Write about your uni projects and anything that shows passion for games.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • Research the studio<\/strong> before your interview.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • QA is one of the strongest entry points into the industry.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • Studios want people who are genuinely enthusiastic about what they\u2019re making.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n

    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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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    Key Takeaways<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

    Something Jade emphasized again and again is that the uni to industry transition isn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    She spoke about accountability, reliability, and adapting to the people you\u2019re working with. There\u2019s no room for disappearing on tasks or missing deadlines in a real project, but if you\u2019re reliable and communicate, teams will want to work with you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Reflection<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

    I didn\u2019t expect this talk to resonate as much as it did, especially because I\u2019m more on the programming\/design side than production. But hearing Jade describe her path made the industry feel a lot less intimidating. She didn\u2019t have a perfectly planned route, she didn\u2019t specialise early, and she still ended up exactly where she needed to be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    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\u2019t always linear, and that it\u2019s okay if I don\u2019t have everything figured out right now. What matters is enthusiasm, persistence, and being someone a team can trust.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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    These were the notes I took during the talk<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Producer at Snap Finger ClickAlumni at WSAGames Design and Art [LinkedIn Link] 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\u2019t a straight line into games. She worked a regular 9\u20135 office job while applying for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-professional-contexts","category-semester-1"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/et4g23-yr3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/et4g23-yr3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/et4g23-yr3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/et4g23-yr3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/et4g23-yr3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=273"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/et4g23-yr3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":300,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/et4g23-yr3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273\/revisions\/300"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/et4g23-yr3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/et4g23-yr3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/et4g23-yr3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}