E93: The Collapse of the Games Industry with Trent Kusters
Release Date: 07/15/2025
E110: The Truth About Game Studio Politics (And How to Win Without Becoming a Monster)
Building Better Games
If you’re a leader in game dev who feels stuck, there is a path forward that levels up your leadership and accelerates your team, game, and career. Sign up here to learn more: You're doing the work, fighting for your team, but your ideas stall in meetings and people with less context somehow have more influence than you. It can feel like the only way to win is to become the political operator you hate. In this episode, Ben breaks down the simple, three-part system for influence—the Influence Trifecta—so you can drive change for your team and career without selling your soul....
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E109: Is Ethical AI in Game Dev Even Possible?
Building Better Games
If you’re a leader in game dev who feels stuck, there is a path forward that levels up your leadership and accelerates your team, game, and career. Sign up here to learn more: Leadership in game dev is hard, but choosing to ignore the biggest technological shift of our generation is a high-stakes gamble. In this episode, we talk with Benjamin Chevalier, Chief AI Officer at Mighty Bear Games, who has a uniquely informed perspective as an Art Director turned tech leader who has spent two decades building games for Ubisoft, Disney, LucasArts, and King. Ben Chevalier outlines his pragmatic,...
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E108: 3 Leadership Mistakes Quietly Crippling Your Game Studio
Building Better Games
If you’re a leader in game dev who feels stuck, there is a path forward that levels up your leadership and accelerates your team, game, and career. Sign up here to learn more: Are you leading a team that has plenty of people but can’t seem to get moving? You care deeply about your team and your game, but projects crawl and decisions drag in the. It's almost never just a talent problem. Instead, it's three quiet leadership mistakes that choke momentum. In this episode, you’ll learn what those three mistakes are, how they’re showing up in your studio, and what you can do instead so you...
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E107: Stop Hiring “Testers.” Start Doing QA.
Building Better Games
If you’re a leader in game dev who feels stuck, there is a path forward that levels up your leadership and accelerates your team, game, and career. Sign up here to learn more: You can't just test quality into a game at the end. You have to build it in from the start. Ignoring your Quality Assurance team's full value is a fast way to lose millions. The state of game development is at a challenging inflection point, characterized by high-risk live service ambitions and a brain drain of senior talent. Host Ben Carcich sits down with Nathan Tiras, former Game Dev veteran (Riot Games,...
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E106: Why Jira Hurts Game Studios
Building Better Games
If you’re a leader in game dev who feels stuck, able to spot problems but struggling to make a real difference, there is a path forward that levels up your leadership and accelerates your team, game, and career. Sign up here to learn more: Are you inadvertently forcing your team to serve a tool, instead of letting your tools serve your team and game? In a recent conversation with Clinton Keith, Ben asked how Clint would help all of game development. Clint’s response? “Delete Jira” - and Ben laughed to keep from crying. Jira is a powerful tool, but in the hands of uninformed game...
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E105: Your “2-Day” Task Takes 2 Months. Here’s the Fix.
Building Better Games
If you’re a leader in game dev who feels stuck, able to spot problems but struggling to make a real difference, there is a path forward that levels up your leadership and accelerates your team, game, and career. Sign up here to learn more: How much is your bad code costing you, and how much is your team's suffering just a ritual of amateur theatre? In this episode, Engineering and Agile expert Tim Ottinger and Ben challenge the core belief systems that plague software development, from the focus on individual productivity to the self-inflicted wounds of long release cycles. They break down...
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E104: Game Dev Leaders: Save Weeks of Thrash in 20 Minutes
Building Better Games
If you’re a leader in game dev who feels stuck, able to spot problems but struggling to make a real difference, there is a path forward that levels up your leadership and accelerates your team, game, and career. Sign up here to learn more: How do you save weeks of thrash when your team is busy and perhaps even crunching, but your key goals aren't moving? This solo episode with Ben reveals the hidden cost of avoiding difficult conversations and the simple, 20-minute fix that can unblock your entire game development team. The problem isn't your process, your backlog, or lack of...
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E103: Leadership Under Fire: Surviving a $100M Game Studio Crisis
Building Better Games
If you’re a leader in game dev who feels stuck, able to spot problems but struggling to make a real difference, there is a path forward that levels up your leadership and accelerates your team, game, and career. Sign up here to learn more: What happens when doing the right thing could get you fired? Every game dev leader faces this nightmare: being held accountable for results but not empowered to make the decisions needed to achieve them. That tension creates chaos, burns out teams, and kills great games. In this powerful episode, Ben sits down with Clinton Keith, author of Agile Game...
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E102: 5 Game Dev Delusions That Kill Studios
Building Better Games
Stop leaving reality behind and ship better games! If you’re a leader in game dev who feels stuck, able to spot problems but struggling to make a real difference, there is a path forward that levels up your leadership and accelerates your team, game, and career. Sign up here to learn more: Is your studio living in a delusion that will only end in pain? Seemingly great teams burn millions of dollars only to shut down because they left reality behind. This episode breaks down the five game dev delusions that kill studios, which I've seen in well-funded, 100+ person teams, unfunded indies, and...
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E101: How Layoffs Go Wrong—and the Right Way to Do Them
Building Better Games
Ready to take your game development career to the next level? Join the Game Dev Leadership Accelerator: https://forms.gle/nqRTUvgFrtdYuCbr6 Do layoffs mean studio leadership is bad? While the popular answer is often "yes," the truth is more complex. Layoffs can reveal many things, from bad times in the market to failures to manage finances to corporate greed. But if you’re a leader, the real test is how you behave when your company’s survival is on the line. Trent Kusters, the co-founder and Studio Head of League of Geeks, joins Ben Carcich for a deeply personal and frank discussion...
info_outlineHow will the game industry adapt? Are we hurtling towards a gig economy?
In this powerful conversation, we sit down with Trent Kusters, co-founder and studio head of League of Geeks, to talk about the future of our industry. Trent takes us on a deep, honest exploration of the game industry’s current state, from platform power struggles and algorithmic curation to the erosion of full-time game dev careers.
This vital conversation goes beyond just metrics, delving into the human element, sustainability, and the legacy we're creating for the next generation of talent.
Here's what we'll learn in this episode:
- The emergence of a game dev gig economy
- Full-time game dev jobs are becoming more rare
- How power is consolidating with platform distributors
- Indie success is now a scary prospect, with a lot less clarity
- Why Leaders need sound financial foresight and tight governance
- How algorithm-driven curation misses humanity and judgment
- Why it takes 10 years to make a game studio
Resources mentioned:
Doughnut Economics by Kate Raworth: https://www.amazon.com/Doughnut-Economics-Seven-21st-Century-Economist/dp/1603586741
Insomniac Games Founder, Ted Price | The AIAS Game Maker's Notebook Podcast: https://youtu.be/5NaHG3T35vs?feature=shared
Creating a Rhythm-Action Game with Hi-Fi Rush Director John Johanas | AIAS Game Maker's Notebook: https://youtu.be/eFtGxFnOwtY?feature=shared
Matthew Ball's Presentation: The State of Video Gaming in 2025: https://www.matthewball.co/all/stateofvideogaming2025
Shams Jorjani's "The Business of Video Games" featuring Xalavier Nelson Jr.: https://www.podbean.com/ew/pb-jyh9a-18333d4
Learn more about Trent Kusters:
League of Geeks Website: https://leagueofgeeks.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/trentkusters/
X (Twitter): https://twitter.com/trentkusters
Recommended games to check out!
I Am Your Beast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4RHkNCLtIU&ab_channel=IGN
Town To City: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRY-RgWh6hg&ab_channel=IGN
Caves of Qud: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2c6burNvtsU&ab_channel=KitfoxGames
Want to know when you’ll be done? Master game and software estimation so you can make better decisions sooner.
Learn more in our Advanced Estimation Course: https://www.buildingbettergames.gg/advanced-estimation-course
Connect with us:
Ben’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benjamin-carcich/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/building-better-games/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/buildingbettergames/#
Website: https://www.buildingbettergames.gg
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZpMT-dUwQR-R4Mb4uub6Sw
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