We've linked the Gameproducer.net website here on GSW a few times, so I'm really delighted with the first Gamasutra feature in collaboration with them, a multi-person Q&A named 'Producers Of The Round Table - Practical Scheduling For Games'.

GP.net's Juuso Hietalahti helped us round up some really top-notch game producers, including Robbie Edwards, Senior Producer at Red Storm Entertainment/Ubisoft, Peter O'Brien, Producer at Bizarre Creations, Harvard Bonin, Senior Producer last at Electronic Arts, Adrian Crook, Producer at Relic Entertainment, and Frank Rogan, Producer at Gas Powered Games - and we asked them some detailed and practical questions about how exactly you complete game projects on time and on budget.

Again, not to toot our own horn, I think this level of detail and granularity on the game production process is rarely discussed in public, for example Frank Rogan on the tricky issue of task dependencies (the artist can't place X objects in levels because the code hasn't finished Y tool in time): "Dependencies are best dealt with by forward-looking and planning in the pre-production phase. Problems with dependencies are usually the result of communication breakdowns, which is why functional teams exist in the first place – each team has representatives from different disciplines, to bird dog those issues before they become problems."

There's another few thousand words in greater depth than this, so go check it out if you want more insight into just what goes into the making of today's bigger-budget console and PC titles - and it turns out there's an awful lot, as increasingly complexity makes laser-like task planning vital.