In response to recent allegations about my leadership style at FaceMelter Games

As Chief Creative Officer and Head Visionarian here at FaceMelter Games, nothing is more important to me than the happiness and well-being of my team. I’ve always considered being a two-time “Auteur of the Year” winner at the Game Awards to be a group achievement.

Look, these awards and sales figures don’t just happen on their own. It takes a whole team to make a video game — to faithfully and unquestioningly execute the creative vision exactly as it’s laid out across scraps of notebook paper and late-night emails. That’s something I might have been taking for granted.

Like many of you, I was distressed and chastened when the recent allegations came out about our workplace dynamics. It does no good to point fingers. Let’s agree that we all share some of the blame for the high turnover, endemic burnout, and abusive management style that our company has allegedly been experiencing. After all, it takes two to tango.

I take my leadership role seriously. Do I have high standards? Absolutely. Do I sometimes push teammates a little hard? Sure, but only to help them reach their potential. Do I solicit sensitive information about my employees’ personal lives so that I can weaponize it at a time of my choosing in order to assert my dominance? If so, I assure you it was only and ever in service of making the very best games possible. Maybe I just cared too much.

I’ll say it again: making games is a team effort. And without a happy and high-functioning team, there’s no way I’d be able to book speaking engagements, highly-compensated consulting roles, and seats on so many industry boards that, frankly, I’ve lost count, and still ship games. (And we will ship another game eventually.) You think one person could do that all on their own? No sir. It takes a team — or, as I like to say about everyone here at FaceMelter Games, a family.

Yes, the game industry has been good to me. When our first Well-Regulated Militia game broke sales records, absolutely it paid off big for me personally and for all FaceMelter executives, Maybe not for the 80% or so of the staff who had been working as contractors, but that’s not my fault, that’s just how it works. Sue me if I want to pay that success forward. (Don’t actually sue me.)

For now, I’m going to take a step back and listen. Learn. Grow. For those of you out there who have been troubled by my leadership style, I want you to know that I hear you. I caused you to lose sleep, weight, and even your hair? I hear you. I broke up your marriage? I hear you. I drove you out of the industry entirely? I hear you. And I will do better.

Because at the end of the day, the most important thing about an unfortunate episode like this is that we all end up in a better place than we were when it started. We all got into this business because we love video games, and some of us also got into this business because we love being famous. If you can’t make a living doing what you love, what’s the point?

So to those of you whose self-worth may or may not have been driven into the ground during your time at FaceMelter Games, I hope you take heart in knowing that this has been a valuable learning experience for me. And the next time I co-found a studio, easily raise funding, and give a talk at GDC about the importance of diversity and inclusion, I hope you, too, can feel proud knowing you’ve helped me get to this point.