Build a Rocket Boy is the perfect example of the problems with videogame industry.
- Lack of direction: This company is run essentially by one person, the CEO. A person who thinks he knows what's best in every situation and don't you dare disagree with him. He will spend most of his time changing the direction of the game, without having any real focus and will never listen to his team. We've seen so many situation where he just woke up and decided something was not good, or he wanted something new or he wanted to change something, out of the blue, making priorities change because "this is requestes by him". His ideas of game design are old and would maybe have been good 15 years ago and, despite people trying to work with him, giving advice and constructive feedback on how to make things better (workflow, production, game design, fun factor within the game) he always dismisses these and is only interested in his Yes-Echo-Chamber from the people close to him. Not open to hear any feedback from Design, Developers, QA, you name it. He will spend hours nitpicking things different departments work on, small things like assets, art, different bugs, positioning of things, etc, instead of getting together with a creative team and actually come up with ideas and overral design for the game. It's hard to understand why so much effort is put in these things if the company hires people specifically to work on these departments. Also, why do these things immediatelly become a priority? "Well, Leslie asked this..." then we proceed to change pirorities and instead of working on one thing well, we work on 10 things half-baked.
It is clear the games he has worked on were successfull in spite of him.
- Inefficient workflows: Priorities changed left and right, no real direction or purpose for goals and milestones. Workers forced to pick up any CEO request instead of being able to put the good work they know how to do.
-Toxic management: Culture of blame coming from the top. Management is only intersted in saving their jobs at all costs and never interested in protecting their teams or helping them grow to achieve something together. They will keep information, they will pretend to be nice but never actually do something to help their teams. The ones who actually get to lead roles will be the ones who never dare to show any kind of critical thinking, but will always say Yes to whatever the CEO and the higher ups are up to. Leads will never communicate in a transparent way with their teams.
-Feedback is never welcomed. Don't even bother. They are not interested in making efficient workflows or make an analysys of what can be improved and how. This is a place for you to act ike a bot. Receive task > Complete task X > Receive Task > Complete Task.
-Lay offs are often and job security is non existent. The amount of people that lost their jobs for little no to reason and without an explanation is staggering. Changes on happen suddenly, be they outsourced or in the studio. There was never any kind of cohesion within departments. New people will often just get thrown at the job, without proper onboarding or actual training if they are new at something.
- Lack of focus: Too many things to work on instead of making sure we worked on some and delivered good results. Workers are often confused about why they are taking those tasks and why the priorities have changed. Lots of times this led to work being undone and incomplete to focus on the shiny new thing that had just came in.
- Company provides no opportunities for self development. There is nothing regarding courses for improvement, or senior mentorship to learn something, at all. You are there to complete tasks, don't expect anything coming from your seniors/leads/upper management to develop yourself as an employee.
Honestly it's no surprise the game came out the way it did
