E101: How Layoffs Go Wrong—and the Right Way to Do Them
Release Date: 09/30/2025
E122: Why Blizzard Killed Project Titan
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: Is your team busy working, or are they just walking slowly toward the abyss? It’s a nightmare scenario: you’re surrounded by world-class talent and burning through a budget in the 10s of millions, yet the game feels further away from shipping than ever . In this episode, Ben reacts to Lex Fridman’s interview with Jeff Kaplan (former Overwatch...
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E121: The $200M Gamble That Killed AAA Development
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 we chasing unicorns into a graveyard, or is the "Black Hole" game the only way to survive 2026? The math of game development is no longer adding up. As budgets soar into the hundreds of millions, the traditional "hit-driven" model is reaching a breaking point, forcing studios to choose between low-risk IP or the near-impossible gamble of creating the...
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E120: The Hidden Pattern Behind 3 AAA Studio Collapses
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 is the hidden pattern behind why world-class AAA studios, with hundreds of millions in budget, suddenly collapse? In the last 12 months, the industry has watched high-profile projects from Mind’s Eye, Ashes of Creation, and High Garden lead to layoffs, shutdowns, and lawsuits. While many blame "the market" or "toxic leadership," the reality is...
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E119: 7 Questions That Expose What You've Missed
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: If your day is nothing but back-to-back meetings, you might be busy, but are you really helping your team and game succeed. Senior leaders often grind 10–12 hour days yet still miss the most critical questions, such as: Are we building the right thing? What is the biggest risk we face? In this episode, Ben breaks down why we treat thinking as a luxury...
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E118: The Truth About “Culture Fit” in Game Dev
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: Is your "culture fit" interview actually just a trap for hiring clones? We tackle the paradox of culture in game development. While many studios are abandoning "culture fit" to avoid echo chambers and bias, ignoring it entirely can lead to toxic hires that destroy trust and decision-making. Ben breaks down the two distinct types of culture—Taste vs....
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E117: The Real Reason Estimates Fail In Game Dev
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: Stop treating your game dev estimates like a prophecy; you aren't a prophet. If your estimates keep failing, it’s not because your team is bad at math; it’s because you’re using estimation as a fortune-telling machine instead of a decision-making tool. In this episode, Ben breaks down why "perfect" plans are a trap in the high-uncertainty world of...
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E116: The Real Reason Your Game Isn’t Fun (It’s Not Effort)
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: If your team keeps promising that the game will be "fun later," you aren't suffering from a lack of effort—you're suffering from a lack of prioritization. Shipping a mountain of features means nothing if you haven't validated the experience with real players. In this episode, we break down why hiding behind a massive backlog or a 100-page GDD is a "red...
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E115: The Culture Mistake Killing Game Development Teams - 4 Leadership Lessons
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: The game industry is undergoing a massive shift. Between the rise of "black hole games" that consume all player attention and the skyrocketing costs of AAA development, the old playbooks for leadership are breaking. In this episode, Ben is joined by Andrew Brownell, a veteran Game Director at Netflix Games. Andrew brings over 20 years of experience from...
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E114: What Employees Actually Hear When You Say “Raising Expectations”
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: When leaders say they’re “raising expectations,” teams often hear one thing: work more. That gap between intent and impact is why so many game dev organizations feel terrible to work at—and why “raise the bar” messages often land as threat, not motivation. In this solo episode, Ben unpacks the tragedy of perspective between senior leaders who...
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E113: Why More Meetings Won't Fix Your Game Team
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: Stop adding meetings to fix your game. In this episode, Ben Carcich sits down with Glenn Paul Gray, Production Director at PeopleFun, to dismantle the "more syncs = more alignment" myth. They explore how piling on well-attended meetings often creates overhead rather than clarity and why your work system must adapt to the specific stage of development...
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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 about his experience of laying off almost all of his employees and transitioning the studio into hibernation. Trent argues that leaders are often "ignorant and or untrained" in the critical business, legal, and ethical frameworks needed to navigate a shutdown event with compassion and integrity.
In this discussion, you'll learn:
✅ Why financial foresight and business savvy matter
✅ The true costs of a studio shutdown (even hidden ones like clearing out old desks)
✅ How to build a “rip zone” into your balance sheet to protect everyone
✅ Why living your company values—even when it costs hundreds of thousands—builds a true home for talent
✅ A five-point framework for planning, communicating, and managing a human-centric layoff
Trent’s GDC Talk (requires GDC Vault Access) : https://gdcvault.com/play/1035252/Leaders-Working-at-the-Heart
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
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
#GameIndustry #GameDevLeadership #StudioLayoffs #FinancialLiteracy #GameProduction