E141: Why Talented Game Teams Still Ship Boring Games
Release Date: 08/05/2026
E141: Why Talented Game Teams Still Ship Boring Games
Building Better Games
Level up your leadership: Every great game you have ever played relies on a hidden shape underneath its experience, and most game dev leaders can't name it. When you can't name a design pattern, you can't use it on purpose. That’s how talented teams spend years pouring sweat into content, only to release a game that just doesn’t engage its players. In this episode, Benjamin Carcich breaks down “interest curves,” a game design lens from Jesse Schell that dictates how player engagement actually works. Drawing from juggling acts, Howard Shore’s Lord of the Rings score, and nested loops...
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E140: Why Bad Ideas Beat Good Ones in Game Dev
Building Better Games
Level up your leadership: Have you ever walked through a building and assumed you knew enough to be a civil engineer? When game dev leaders look at design, narrative, or engineering problems and think, "I could do a better job than that," they often mistake surface-level observation for actual craft expertise. In this episode, Benjamin Carcich breaks down why smart leaders fall into the trap of second-guessing specialized disciplines—from game design to AI-assisted engineering—and how "swooping in" with uninformed solutions damages your game and your team's trust. What You'll Learn in...
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E139: Why an Ad-Tech Insider Says Ads Will Help Game Devs
Building Better Games
Level up your leadership: Is the video game industry being kept afloat by tech giants willingly lighting billions of dollars on fire—and what happens to your studio when the subsidy stops? In this episode, Ben sits down with Colan Neese, SVP of Gaming at Screen Engine/ASI and author of the Patch Notes newsletter, to deconstruct the shifting macroeconomic tectonic plates of gaming. They dive into the reality of platform economics, why Microsoft is losing an estimated 64 cents on every dollar invested in gaming, the likely rise of ad-supported models in the PC/console ecosystem, and the...
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E138: He Gambled His Last $500K on a Roblox Game!
Building Better Games
Level up your leadership: Does hyper-scaling your game studio actually destroy the soul of your product? When outside capital flooded into WonderWorks Studio following Roblox’s IPO, founder Zach Letter did what every investor screamed for: he scaled his three-person team to nearly 100 employees, built a massive physical studio, and hired a traditional AAA C-suite. The result was a toxic corporate culture, a mountain of high-maintenance work-for-hire contracts, and the near-death of their original IP. In this episode, Ben sits down with Zach Letter to deconstruct the grueling reality behind...
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E137: Why AAA's $200M Games Keep Failing
Building Better Games
Which of the 7 AAA mistakes are you struggling with? Find out here: Game budgets are skyrocketing to $200M+ while hit rates are actively going down. The games industry is spending more money than ever, on the biggest teams it has ever had, over the longest timelines in history, using a playbook that was out of date a decade ago. In this episode of Building Better Games, Benjamin Carcich breaks down the systemic flaws currently sinking AAA studios. You'll discover how shifting portfolio math has fundamentally changed the business and why relying on rigid project management over true human...
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E136: AI Won't Save Your Game, Here's What It Actually Does.
Building Better Games
Level up your leadership: What if the secret to leveraging AI in game development isn't about just writing code faster, but getting your team to be more rigorous before a single line is even written? In this episode of Building Better Games, Ben talks with Landon (CTO) and Jean-Eric (Product Lead/Producer/Tech Artist) from Believer. Together, they pull back the curtain on how agentic coding tools and custom internal bridges like Claireon didn't just accelerate their systems development from months to a single week—they completely flipped their production pipeline on its head. They dive deep...
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E135: Why Big Game Dev Plans Never Succeed
Building Better Games
Access the Calibration Test: When every team in your studio tells you they’re 80% confident in their timeline, why does the final project almost always miss its deadline? In this episode of Building Better Games, Benjamin Carcich exposes the mathematical trap that undermines and then wrecks well-planned game development projects. When multiple teams average their confidence instead of multiplying it, a studio's actual probability of shipping on time can plummet from a perceived 80% down to a brutal 1%. Ben breaks down why humans are naturally overconfident estimators, how dependencies...
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E134: Why "Don't Rock the Boat" Fails Game Dev Teams
Building Better Games
Level up your leadership: Is keeping your head down killing your game? Many game dev leads survive by following a simple, unwritten rule: don't rock the boat. But staying silent when you see a broken system isn't "playing it smart,” it’s dodging your responsibility. True leadership isn't about having a perfect record or a flawless game plan; it’s about having the courage to stand in the public square, plant a flag, and risk being wrong for the sake of your team. In this episode, Benjamin Carcich breaks down the uncomfortable reality of what it actually means to lead in an agency-based...
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E133: Everyone Said Dispatch Would Fail. 4 Million Players Disagree.
Building Better Games
Level up your leadership: Can you defy the industry experts by refusing to compromise on your creative vision? When the entire gaming industry declares a genre dead and claims nobody is buying narrative-driven games anymore, most studios pack up and pivot. But the team at Adhoc Studio did the exact opposite; they stuck to their guns, bet on their passion, and shattered every single expectation. Their debut game, Dispatch, blew past the skeptics to achieve a 97% overwhelmingly positive rating on Steam and over four million copies sold worldwide. Bridging the gap between two fiercely distinct...
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E132: Why Helping Every Team Is Making Your Game Studio Worse
Building Better Games
Level up your leadership: Is your calendar a graveyard of back-to-back “team rituals” for 4 different orgs while your actual strategic work gathers dust When you are a game dev leader straddling multiple layers of a studio, it is incredibly easy to fall into the "comfort trap" of doing what you already know how to do: running local team meetings, fixing immediate processes, and trying to play hero for every unstaffed team underneath you. But when you try to be everything to everyone, you aren't actually helping—you are stretching yourself to a breaking point and starving your...
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Every great game you have ever played relies on a hidden shape underneath its experience, and most game dev leaders can't name it.
When you can't name a design pattern, you can't use it on purpose. That’s how talented teams spend years pouring sweat into content, only to release a game that just doesn’t engage its players.
In this episode, Benjamin Carcich breaks down “interest curves,” a game design lens from Jesse Schell that dictates how player engagement actually works. Drawing from juggling acts, Howard Shore’s Lord of the Rings score, and nested loops in League of Legends, Ben demonstrates why player interest has very little to do with mechanical difficulty or content cost—and how you can map engagement to keep players coming back.
What You'll Learn in This Episode:
- What an interest curve is—and why it determines whether players stay engaged or lose interest
- The four stages of every great interest curve: the hook, rising peaks, strategic valleys, and the climax
- Why developers often mistake development effort for player value, leading to weak pacing and player drop-off
- How to design moments that maximize player engagement instead of just increasing production cost
- A practical way to map your game's interest curve with your team and align everyone around the player experience
- How playtests can reveal the exact moments where players become bored, confused, or disengaged
- Why the same principles behind great games also apply to movies, presentations, and even business meetings
If you're a leader in game dev who wants your team aligned on what actually keeps players engaged—rather than just making games harder or more expensive to build—this episode is for you.
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/@buildingbettergames
If you want me to help producers or studios build better games through effective systems and leadership, you can reach me at: info@valarinconsulting.com
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