2026/11 - Producing Games in a Shifting Market : Adapting Team Structure, Scope & Production Strategy (Sylvain Sechi)

• Understand how current market changes affect game production choices, team organization, and development priorities
• Learn to adapt a production plan when market conditions, player expectations, or project assumptions change.
• Master practical ways to integrate AI into everyday production workflows while keeping human judgment, creative direction, and accountability at the center.
• Understand the principles of organic and viral marketing and how they can help a game build visibility and player interest without relying only on paid campaigns.
• Learn to identify the main production risks early and adapt priorities before they become critical issues.
• Master practical techniques to integrate community engagement, creator-friendly content, and shareable moments into the production and launch strategy.
• Know how to adjust production priorities based on player feedback, market signals, and project performance.
• Master a practical approach to making scope, staffing, and production decisions in an uncertain and competitive market.

Session 1: Producing Games in a Shifting Market

• Producing games in a shifting market: player habits, increased competition, discoverability challenges, longer game lifecycles, and their impact on production decisions
• Reading market signals: distinguishing meaningful changes from temporary trends; identifying useful signals from players, competitors, platforms, and the market
• From market signals to production decisions: translating changes into decisions about positioning, scope, priorities, and production assumptions
• Case Study: analysis of a game project facing a significant market shift and discussion of possible production responses

Session 2: Adapting Scope, Team Structure, and Production Plans

• Aligning ambition and production capacity: balancing game ambition with budget, schedule, team size, skills, and production constraints
• Adapting team structure during production: recognizing organizational bottlenecks, unclear responsibilities, overloaded disciplines, and changing project needs
• Staffing, co-development, and outsourcing trade-offs: deciding what should remain internal, what can be externalized, and when additional capacity creates value
• Milestones as decision points: using production reviews to validate assumptions, challenge priorities, and decide what to continue, change, reduce, or stop

Session 3: Managing Risk and Making Better Production Decisions

• Identifying production risks early: creative, technical, organizational, financial, and market risks; assessing their potential impact on the project
• Making decisions under uncertainty: combining player feedback, production data, milestones, and market signals to support production decisions
• Where AI can support game production: summarizing information, identifying patterns, preparing scenarios, supporting planning, prototyping concept and features and project reviews/postmortem
• Building useful AI-assisted workflows: choosing appropriate tasks, preparing context, reviewing results, and integrating AI into existing production practices
• Human judgment and accountability with AI: identifying where creative direction, confidentiality, validation, and human responsibility remain essential

Session 4: Using AI in Game Production when it makes sense

• Designing for organic and viral growth: understanding what makes games generate conversation, visibility, community engagement, and creator interest
• Designing shareable and creator-friendly experiences: identifying gameplay systems, moments, stories, and features with strong sharing potential
• Connecting production, community, creators, and launch strategy: integrating community and creator considerations early enough to influence development priorities
• Building an adaptive production strategy: combining market, player, production, and community signals; deciding what should remain stable and what should remain flexible; adapting the plan without destabilizing the project

For companies wishing to have their training costs covered by their OPCO, registration must be completed no later than two weeks before the start of the training to meet the OPCO’s processing deadlines. In all other cases, registrations can be accepted up to two business days before the start of the training. Accessibility: We are available to work with individuals with disabilities to assess the accommodations needed so they can comfortably participate in the training programs offered.