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The Weight of Expectations Flattens Success
Sebastian Ruiz
November 06, 2023
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The Weight of Expectations Flattens Success
I was one of those gifted kids with the weight of a small town's expectations on my back. I could've been a doctor, an engineer, or a chef. I took a job as a janitor in a warehouse to shrug off the weight of expectations. Didn't last long. Word got out to the CEO that he had unknowingly hired Good Will Hunting. He tried moving me to head inventory. I refused. He offered me an office job or no job. I offered the broom. He softened his tone and asked that I get them through a business audit.
(Via Getty Images)
Four weeks later, their affairs were in order for the first time. He requested my help for a stubborn industrial pelletizer that was eating up costs. I made it profitable in a month. My role was now to save failing projects. I got them their OSHA certification, I set up their first milk delivery, and I gave their repair shop its first green month after years of red. It went straight to their heads.
The CEO, HR, and head accountant stopped asking for my input. The old projects weren't being maintained as I instructed, new projects were piling up, and I was micromanaged three ways until eventually I couldn't deliver on their algorithm based expectations. I was stripped of everything and handed back my broom. This story isn't unique to me or the field of logistics. In fact, it happened to me two more times in two different fields. It's practically the circle of life in the entertainment sphere, starting with the trusting of talent and ending with death by the thousand cuts of executive tampering.
January gave us the Forspoken flop, steered away from its original design to include as many overdone trends as possible. Square Enix yanked Luminous Productions back into the fold.
February saw Overwatch 2 finally release amidst a troubling development cycle that led to Jeff Kaplan's departure from Blizzard after 19 years. It's currently one of the lowest rated games on steam, a long way down from its peak in the zeitgeist.
In May, Arkane Studios, proficient in single-player immersive sims such as Dishonored, Death Loop, and Prey, released Redfall, a lifeless bug-riddled online multiplayer looter shooter. In the same month, Daedalic Entertainment, known for point-and-click adventure games, collapsed at the finish line upon Gollum's release, a third-person action adventure IP cash grab that was reportedly underpaid and overworked by abusive leadership. Daedalic Entertainment is no more.
That was all during a slow spring. Since then the year has alternated between major game releases and studio layoffs. When Xbox's emails were leaked in September, Phil Spencer (Xbox's head of brand) pointed the finger at himself and the publishers for the state of the industry. They're too scared to take risks, so they stick to milking the same old intellectual property. If they do take risks they panic at the first sign of a bad return on investment and overmanage the burning mess to release - they then sell the studio for scrap and turn out the workers.
There is a silver lining. Many of the biggest games in recent memory have come from studios known for their willingness to give creative control over to developers. Nintendo's Tears of the Kingdom, Larian Studios' Baldur's Gate 3, FromSoftware's Elden Ring and Armored Core 6, etc. Even EA, considered one of the worst companies of the 2010s, seems to have loosened up as a publisher and allowed its studios to deliver relative hits in 2023 with Dead Space, Wild Hearts, and Star Wars: Jedi Survivor.
As it stands, these are the outliers and there's no telling if more will fall in line.
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