Libsyn Directory

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

Release Date: 10/14/2025

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...

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...

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...

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...

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....

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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

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