Libsyn Directory

E103: Leadership Under Fire: Surviving a $100M Game Studio Crisis

Release Date: 10/14/2025

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...

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,...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

E100: Don’t Hire Until You See These 3 Signs

Building Better Games

Ready to take your game development career to the next level? Join the Game Dev Leadership Accelerator: In this special Q&A episode for Episode 100, we're answering your most pressing questions from the Game Production Community Discord! Join Ben Carcich as he dives into critical topics that every game development leader faces, from navigating project pivots to building a healthy team culture. We'll explore: ✅ When to scale your team up (or down) ✅ How to prepare for meetings and ensure they are actually valuable ✅ Why "safe" project pivots don't exist and what to do instead ✅ The...

E99: Stop Using 2-Week Sprints - Here's Why They’re Failing You

Building Better Games

Stuck in slow loops and broken systems? The Game Dev Leadership Accelerator can help you make lasting change. Sign up to learn more: Why do most teams default to two-week sprints, even when they're wrong? In this episode, Ben Carcich breaks down a simple model with three dials that you should use to tune your iteration length. He explains why iteration length is a product lever, not a calendar convenience for your leadership, and how choosing the right rhythm for your team can reduce thrash, increase learning speed, and improve value delivery. What you’ll learn in this episode: The...

More Episodes

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 Development and one of the pioneers of Agile in the games industry. Clinton shares raw, unfiltered stories from real studio crises, including the moment a CEO threatened his team’s lives to force change. This isn’t a lecture; it’s a candid look at what happens when pressure spikes, trust erodes, and leaders have to choose between survival and integrity.

Together, Ben and Clinton break down the industry’s most toxic patterns, from “efficient waste” caused by rapid scaling to the trust issues that cripple creative freedom. They also explore how proven frameworks from the military and medicine, like the OODA Loop, can help game studios move faster, safer, and with more clarity.

👉 Watch this episode for a brutally honest look at what real leadership takes in game development and how to lead when the system itself feels broken.

What you’ll learn in this episode:

✅ The Accountability Trap: Why even great leaders get stuck in broken systems (and how to break free)

✅ Scale Creates Waste: The hidden cost of growing your studio too fast

✅ The Trust Fix: Why control kills creativity (and how vulnerability builds real leadership)

✅ Beating Bad Systems: How to call out problems and keep your job

✅ Lessons from the Military & Medicine: Battle-tested frameworks that make your team faster and safer

🎮 About Clinton Keith:
Clinton is a Certified Scrum Trainer and coach who has worked with over 150 studios worldwide. With experience ranging from building fighter jets to developing Midtown Madness and Midnight Club, he’s helped countless teams reduce crunch, improve collaboration, and build games that truly deliver value.

Learn more about Clint:

🔗Amazon Page: https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B003AAP51G

🔗LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clintonkeith/

🔗Website: https://clintonkeith.com/

Connect with us:

🔗Ben’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benjamin-carcich/

🔗BBG’s 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

#GameDevLeadership #AgileGameDevelopment #GameIndustry #StudioCulture #GameProduction

TOPICS