Building Better Games

Free Live Workshop for Game Dev Leaders: https://www.buildingbettergames.gg/leaders-workshop Are you leveraging external development to lower costs, or are you secretly creating a project-management nightmare? In this episode of Building Better Games, Ben sits down with Catalin Butnariu, Chief Strategy Officer at Amber. They dive deep into the evolving landscape of external development in game dev...

Learn to apply Agile to Game Dev: https://www.buildingbettergames.gg/agilefundamentals Is your game building on solid foundations or building on mud? Building a game from scratch is brutally difficult, and game developers often debate how much to invest in genre fundamentals versus chasing new, shiny innovations during early pre-production. While some push for an ultra-lean approach to reach the e...

Learn to apply Agile to Game Dev: https://www.buildingbettergames.gg/agilefundamentals Are we witnessing a total structural collapse of North American AAA game development, or is the industry simply burning away its own excess to make room for a scrappy, highly efficient new era? In this episode of Building Better Games, host Ben Carcich sits down with Leif Johansen to unpack the current state of...

Level up your leadership: https://forms.gle/nqRTUvgFrtdYuCbr6 Are you optimizing four out of five teams on your project, only to find your final ship date hasn't moved a single day? In game development, when multiple teams or disciplines are working toward a release, exactly one of them will decide when you ship: the long pole. If you can't identify which team is that long pole, you may be wasting...

Level up your leadership: https://forms.gle/nqRTUvgFrtdYuCbr6 North American AAA isn't just struggling in a downturn. It is actively choosing to die. With record budgets and elite talent, senior leaders continue to reach for quick fixes like AI, outsourcing, and layoffs while ignoring the true rot: broken leadership incentives, political empire-building, and a refusal to adapt. In this episode, Be...

Level up your leadership: https://forms.gle/nqRTUvgFrtdYuCbr6 Are you frequently seeking more visibility from your dev teams because there is a ton you don't know? As game dev studios scale, senior leaders often fall into the trap of confusing visibility with control. They end up using reports to soothe their own anxiety about uncertainty. But demanding more visibility does not always fix problems...

Level up your leadership: https://forms.gle/nqRTUvgFrtdYuCbr6 Have you ever found yourself re-checking a team member's work, taking over their tasks to avoid an awkward conversation, or secretly worrying they're going to derail your project? In game development, a lack of trust rarely gets addressed directly. Instead, leaders build workarounds, approval gates, and defensive processes that slow dow...

Access the trust audit here: https://www.buildingbettergames.gg/trust-audit Are you accidentally building a studio culture where no one makes a move without your permission? In game development, leaders often demand high agency and creative ownership, yet unknowingly build low-trust systems designed entirely around control. Over time, adding process after process to prevent mistakes doesn't just e...

Level up your leadership: https://forms.gle/nqRTUvgFrtdYuCbr6 Why is game narrative so frequently dismissed, despite its responsibility for player connection? In this episode, we sit down with industry veteran Richard Dansky to break down why story isn't just dialogue - it's a core framework that helps gameplay make sense. Richard's the former central Clancy writer for Ubisoft with 27 years in gam...

Access the Cohesion Quadrant here: https://www.buildingbettergames.gg/cohesion-quadrant Why do games crafted by world-class designers, artists, and writers still fail to connect with players? When design, story, and art don't agree, players feel the friction immediately, even if they can't put it into words. In this episode, Benjamin Carcich breaks down the DNA Framework (Design, Narrative, Art) d...

Level up your leadership: https://forms.gle/nqRTUvgFrtdYuCbr6 Have you ever wondered if the secret to game marketing isn't a massive budget, but rather mastering the content flywheel and understanding how algorithms actually work? In this episode of Building Better Games, Ben sits down with Zach Letter (Wonder Works Studio) for a deep dive into organic user acquisition, content creation, and the e...

Level up your leadership: https://forms.gle/nqRTUvgFrtdYuCbr6 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 episo...

Level up your leadership: https://forms.gle/nqRTUvgFrtdYuCbr6 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 sm...

Level up your leadership: https://forms.gle/nqRTUvgFrtdYuCbr6 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 tectoni...

Level up your leadership: https://forms.gle/nqRTUvgFrtdYuCbr6 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-suit...

Which of the 7 AAA mistakes are you struggling with? Find out here: https://www.buildingbettergames.gg/aaa-diagnostic 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...

Level up your leadership: https://forms.gle/nqRTUvgFrtdYuCbr6 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...

Access the Calibration Test: https://www.buildingbettergames.gg/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 te...

Level up your leadership: https://forms.gle/nqRTUvgFrtdYuCbr6 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 th...

Level up your leadership: https://forms.gle/nqRTUvgFrtdYuCbr6 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 sh...

Level up your leadership: https://forms.gle/nqRTUvgFrtdYuCbr6 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 immediat...

Level up your leadership: https://forms.gle/nqRTUvgFrtdYuCbr6 Are you running your game studio fast, or are you actually moving it forward? In this episode, we break down one of the most destructive traps in modern game development: confusing efficiency with effectiveness. It's incredibly easy to measure velocity, count assets, or point to a rising graph on your screen. But if your team is flawles...

Level up your leadership: https://forms.gle/nqRTUvgFrtdYuCbr6 Is your release schedule a desperate race or a smooth commute? If every quarterly milestone feels like chaos and stress, you don't have a talent problem, you have a Bus Problem. In this episode, Ben explores "The Bus Problem," a concept inspired by the unpredictable transit systems of Egypt 20+ years ago versus the reliable cadences of...

Level up your leadership: https://forms.gle/nqRTUvgFrtdYuCbr6 What happens when your dream job becomes a political nightmare? Making games is hard, but leading the people who make them can be even harder, especially when you realize that "doing the right thing" isn't always going to get you accolades or even support. In this episode, Ben shares the raw details of his biggest game dev failure, a ca...

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: https://forms.gle/nqRTUvgFrtdYuCbr6 In a world where 5-year AAA production cycles often crash into 5-day culture cycles, shipping a great game is no longer the finish line. It is the opening bell of a survival race. In this e...