Thinking about player value should be top of mind as a game-oriented product manager. Scratch that. Thinking about value should be top of mind as any flavor of product manager.
How you define and prioritize value as you're developing your game is going to be one of those things that should keep you up at night. And I would completely expect that you're also working hand-in-hand with your production team (or this other side of the job if you're dual-hatting) to help define priorities based on value and impact to your audience.
As more talk about "smaller games" with "faster development times" that are "less risky" gets around and sits in the investing mindspace, the importance of being able to provide a clear vision, not only of what the game is, but also how you are prioritizing the development is going to be paramount.
This means also defining what your quality bars need to be, early on. These need to form part of the "repeating the product vision, early, often" to help the keep the focus on what needs to get done, and when to call it done (for now). If we're not defining what is "good enough", in terms of the experience, we can easily spend years tweaking, polishing, rebuilding the inventory system for the third time, because we've, as the ones helping maintain the vision, failed to get the message across.
This also means being able to test earlier in the cycle. Which will reinforce the need to prioritize based on value. What features will bring about the experience that I want players to have (and I'll temper this... within reason)? What of those bring about that vision quicker? What of those things that we are working on have the most impact on both the vision and the experience? And (if you're a PM, you already know what I am about to say) what is the smallest expression of any of this so I can test and validate my assumptions about my audience faster?
The more we think about this, the more we put it all into practice, the better chance we'll have in releasing games that accomplish our creative and business goals.
/r
