Hello, allegro! Long time, no see.

I've got an interesting life development that needs my immediate response. For the past two years, I've been working as a Technical Strategy Architect. Basically, I write up documentation, specifications, form the estimate, collaborate with IT departments, oversee the developers, act as Scrum Master, test implementations, research, investigate, report to the wider team and stay in the hotseat for seeing a product launch.

It's been a pretty awesome role. I don't code, so I've gotten really rusty in that area, but I know enough about code to work with the people who do to make everything come together efficiently.

The big problem for the past few years is my work has 0 to do with games. That's a hard pill to swallow. My six months at a game studio still trumps my 4 years at this agency. So I've been seeking an industry jump to get back to my passion. I see my role being close to something like a Producer, so I've been seeking the "Associate Producer" role to get my feet wet.

Yesterday, I was informed the Technical Strategy Architect role is going away and that I need to choose between Senior Developer (they'll give me time to get back up to speed) or Technical Project Manager. They want me to decide today.

I've been weighing options and struggling to figure out what has the better long term gain. I've flip-flopped at least 5 times in the past 24 hours.

Thoughts?

During the 6 months I worked at the game studio, "producer" was the most enticing role. That's more akin to "manage". I don't really want to code what someone else tells me, I want to contribute to the idea of what it is that is going to be built (kind of like the designer track).

But "managing vs coding" is trumped by "work on games vs work on eCommerce products". If "coding" is my "in" for "working on games", then "coding" it is. Then hopefully I can restructure my career path once I'm back to my passion.

I think you should start by defining your goals and then trying to assess which role better promotes those goals.
I'm not quite sure I understand the available options, is Senior Developer actually "coding games" and Technical Project Manager actually "managing eCommerce projects"?
And what is the goal? Becoming a "game producer"?
If I got all that right then it sounds to me like

Word of God is legit.

I bought myself a little more time (the weekend). Thanks for the feedback all!

@Matthew: It definitely can. The thing I like about coding is it's a puzzle that can be solved (most of the time). Resolution brings a lot of gratification. With management, people are the problem and as the great Dr. House once said, "people don't change."

@Slartibartfast: Absolutely. My pipe dream has always been to start my own game dev shop in my mid-40's (got a good 10-15 years to prep for that). The immediate goal has been "get back into the games industry", regardless of what title I hold (QA, programmer, scripter, designer, producer, etc.). So I'm torn between what's good for solving the immediate goal and the endgame goal.

@Kris: Yes, after work and then entertaining my son and then spending time with the wife, I can choose to work on programming or sleep. I've found ways to keep going, but the time is very limited.

@Chris Kato: I do fear that life of bad work-life balance. But still, the 6 months in the game studio was more fulfilling than the 4 years at this agency. When I pass, I want my legacy to be about the games I've made, not the apps I made for large retailers. Who knows, I might return to the game industry and hate it, but I need to see for myself.

I am definitely not planning on burning any bridges. The company I work for now has good people, job security and they've invested a lot in me.

Thanks for the input, everybody!

I ultimately went with technical project manager. The deciding factor to me is I can manage at work, code at home, but not vice versa.

Last year, I started three game projects. They didn't amount to much, but I learned from each and got a little further on each subsequent try (last one coming out of the prototype stage). I've been designing a new idea for the past two months and will soon be developing a coding schedule to try and get this one to take off.

Game industry might not open its doors to me for a while, so finding a way to work on my passion makes life more fulfilling, even if at times it feels like work on top of work.