From generated assets
to a useful developer product.
Art Forge at Genies · Defining a first release that developers could use in their own creative workflows.
- My role
- Lead Product Manager
- Focus
- Discovery, scope & release sequencing
- Evidence
- About 3 months to GDC · 5 paid studio pilots
Start with basic wearables that developers could customize and use. Let that first release test the product’s value before expanding into more complex assets.
01
The catalog was never going to cover every game.
Developers using our avatar capabilities needed assets that matched their own characters and creative direction. The existing catalog could not cover the variety of assets studios needed for their different games.
I proposed turning an existing asset-generation capability into a focused developer product. The opportunity was to give studios more creative flexibility while reducing their dependence on a fixed catalog.
02
I made usefulness the boundary for the first release.
I worked with developers to understand what they wanted to create, and with engineering to understand what we could deliver reliably. I proposed basic wearables as the initial scope: they met a real need and fit existing characters.
Two weeks before GDC, complex categories still had rigging problems. A visually interesting asset could still be difficult to use in a game. I recommended narrowing the release to the categories that met the quality bar and deferring the others.
We kept the GDC launch date, while accepting that the first version would cover fewer asset types than originally planned.
03
The product extended beyond the generation step.
The workflow had to support evaluating an asset, customizing it for a game, and saving or sharing the result. Generation created a starting point; developers still brought the creative judgment.
My ownership covered product definition, customer needs, prioritization, and release decisions. I worked with design and engineering throughout; research and engineering owned the model and technical implementation.
04
We shipped and earned early commercial commitment.
We took Art Forge from concept to GDC in about three months and launched the initial wearable-generation product. We signed five paid studio pilots: three indie and two AA studios.
The studios were building prototype games. We tracked assets created, saved to inventory, and shared, alongside developer feedback and rigging evaluations. That gave us early commercial commitment and evidence of use during prototyping; sustained production-time savings remained the next outcome to validate.