-Focused solely on metrics and the thought that all will fall in line (art, fun, etc.) if the metrics and focus testing says so.
-Absentee Exec staff, upper management were hands off with the teams, placing burdens on middle/lower management that they usually weren't skilled for. Until when things went wrong and blaming the Individual Contributors on their failures, or when things went right and patting themselves on the backs with large bonus' for themselves only while ignoring the teams themselves for the hard work.
-Art management is 25/75: A quarter of the art management team cares, mostly, about their teams and the projects the work on. The rest could care less. Some have open resentment for the art teams they manage and have no interest in games or gaming outside of their day job. These are a majority at the company, people managing creatives who make games, but have never owned a console or played any games outside of that one time they downloaded Candy Crush and played it on the train one. Really quite demoralizing.
-Art Directors/Creative Directors are mostly checked out, could care less or are completely out of touch with their teams and or industry. With few exceptions, the art management, all the way to the top comes across misguided and aloof. Spending time focusing on ideas concepts that are either unclear in their benefits to the projects and teams, or outright pandering to upper management that is mandating tasks based off buzzwords they heard at some conference.
-Limited job growth for creatives. The teams options have been narrowing down to casino/gambling games leaving less and less options for creatives to go to, once their game has been shut down or sunsetted to India.
-Product Managers being told they are the designers and creators of the games, and given carte blanche in the say of how games are made. To watch 22 year olds straight out of college, getting paid 25,000-50,000 dollars more than you to interpret a spreadsheet and then tell you how to make games is quite demoralizing. Especially watching the consistent failure rate of that business model. When I left, they were only hiring more PMs and giving them more stake in the overall choices made for the games.
-Massive Attrition. People coming and going and a constant and regular rate. And the layoffs are hugely demoralizing. Everyone is constantly aware that it could happen at any moment, and thus people are never able to relax and just work the best they can. They often working to just not get laid off.
