Steve Boxer speaks to Paulina Bozek, Executive Producer of SingStar, in the first of a regular series looking at the people behind the games…

The heady days of the 1980s, when two guys in a bedroom could knock out a fully-formed game in three months, are long gone. These days, making videogames is a complex business, involving programmers, artists, animators, level designers, motion-capture specialists, project managers, producers, writers, composers, QA testers, marketing people and all sorts of other specialists. So we thought it would be good to find out what daily life in the games industry entails for people with a wide range of jobs, and to discover how they got into the industry, plus pick up their tips for how you could do likewise. So, if you’re wondering what it’s like to work in the games industry, read on.

The first subject of this regular series is Paulina Bozek, the Executive Producer of SingStar, based at Sony’s London Studios. Originally from Montreal, Bozek has risen through the ranks, working on SingStar from its earliest days, and now, she is effectively the SingStar head honcho. So what does that entail?

“We’re in a situation at the moment where there’s no such thing as starting or ending a new project: it’s just ongoing. Right now, we’re thinking about the next series of updates. The ideas are all sketched out on paper, we know what we want to do, and we’re getting to the stage of doing it.

Nowadays, we have a creative director, who looks after a lot of that stuff, plus senior producers, so I’m not involved in everyday stuff: I’m generally dipping in and out and being nosy. It means dealing with creative people like programmers, designers and music people all the time. Just discussing the nuts and bolts of how we’ll get everything working.

When we moved to full production, I’d be spending a lot of time online on MySingstar and the SingStore. I get really immersed in whatever is happening before making any decisions on what should come next. I’ll be observing as much as possible. I’ll be talking to the PR and marketing to get a sense of what’s working and what isn’t, and getting as much feedback as possible. We’ll create personas of imaginary SingStar people, and pin pictures of them on the wall.

We’ll sometimes design features and ask: “Will Sam like that feature? What would Sam do with this?” Last time around, we had three personas. One was a young girl, Sam; then we had a girl in her twenties and her boyfriend, who was quite an influential factor – he was the guy who bought the PS3. And then there was a mum. We’d talk about them as if they were real people – about new features, and how they would relate and react to them. Shortly after that, we’d realise we had far too many ideas and too little time. So then, there would be a big exercise of prioritisation: trying to understand which ideas were most valuable and worth doing.

We won’t necessarily think about milestones too much — we’re used to releasing very often. So we judge the features first, deciding what’s the best thing we can do, what’s the coolest thing we can do. And then we break it up iteratively, based on schedule. So if we find that all of this is going to take way too long, then we’ll discuss what we can do in the time-frame. We’re working in an agile way at the moment, so everyone does their thing then gets back together and says: “What have you accomplished in the last month?”

Last week we did intro videos, shooting video which works in the game and as a commercial video. For two days, we were off-site with the director, working with 18 actors. We also did the photo-shoot for the front cover. For both of those things, I watched about 200 Pop Idol-style auditions – castings of people singing. So I felt like Simon Cowell.

We do loads of focus tests and usability studies, because we’re always trying to make the interface really intuitive and simple. So we often have people in the studio , which might be kids, mums or people who have never played games. We do loads of PR, obviously, and shows.

Music-wise, I deal a lot with Sergio Pimentel, Sony’s in-house music-licensing expert. He knows inside-out what we’re looking for. We talk about the target audience and the demographic, and the kind of music we want – plus marketing wish-lists. He also makes recommendations and yes, record labels do sometimes come to us. Which is often great, but sometimes those bands haven’t made it yet and we have to be careful, because we want to make sure the music makes an impact by the time the disk goes out, rather than being something that everybody had high hopes for but didn’t quite happen. Sergio is always telling us what has cleared, so sometimes we’ll all get super-excited. We’ve cleared 1,500 songs for SingStar, but we can still get really excited by one track.

How did I get into this business? I was studying – I came to London to do my masters. Before that, I was already in games in Montreal, working for Ubisoft. My background was media, and games seemed really exciting, because they involved technology and media at the same time. I was not a hardcore gamer when I was growing up, but I played – it was a pick-up-and-play experience for me.

So I got into Ubisoft, working in PR first, then I moved into a bit of project-management – I worked on Gameloft at Ubisoft which, back then, was a multiplayer online company. I left to start travelling in Europe. Then I came to London to do a masters in sociology. After finishing my studies, I joined Sony – as an associate producer, in 2003. At that point, SingStar was already in its earliest form – it existed as technology. And I worked a little bit on Eye Toy as well, in the earliest days of Kinetic. But SingStar started to take shape and become bigger, so I stuck with that.

Outside of work, I’m into music. I like new-sounding stuff, which could be electro, or some other beat-driven sound. But I like pop as well – stuff that comes out which is really different. I like a lot of guitar-led indie music – as well. At the moment, I’m listening to Vampire Weekend – they sound like ska or afrobeat. I went to see Black Kids at the ICA – they’re really good. They’re from Florida, and there’s a lot of hype around them. MGMT I like a lot. And Kanye West – I think he’s amazing. Plus Chromeo for light relief. Other than that, I’m really into art and culture – I go to galleries and read books. And I travel when I can find the time.

What tips would I give to people looking to get into the games industry? Contact people directly, and tell them about what you can do, what your ideas are — be ambitious about it. Be observant, and think of new and exciting things you could bring to the industry. It’s so new, it’s still growing and changing. I think that if you get a foot in the door somehow and engage with someone about your ideas – and your ideas are really good – people would listen. People are looking out for what they can do next – whatever is fresh, exciting or different.”