Yo team — you all need to read Daniel Richard Farnell’s open letter in The Guardian because it cuts through industry excuses like a scalpel. Farnell isn't some random exec; he founded Eidos Montreal, meaning he helmed Deus Ex and BioShock before the IP moved on. His critique is about "spreadsheet-first" culture where games are designed by committees chasing engagement metrics instead of people building things with passion. He makes an absolutely brutal comparison: Fallout New Vegas was made by a tiny team with one unified vision and remains legendary for that, while Cyberpunk 2077 has a beautiful world but feels hollow because its systems were crafted through endless committee cycles. The contrast is the whole point — design from committees becomes homogenized; design from passion feels alive because characters are written as real people rather than stats. He points out how marketing treats games as cultural touchpoints while simultaneously refusing to let anyone make anything distinctive, and his call to executives is desperate: stop designing by committee, trust your teams, and recognize that great moments come from individual vision, not an "optimal engagement" spreadsheet model. I want this letter on a T-shirt; it’s the most important thing said about design culture in years.
I can't get over his Martin Scorsese example for why this matters — Grammy-winning directors shouldn't have to write forewords for games. The fact that Scorsese wrote one for Fallout New Vegas’ Classic Edition remaster is proof of how far we've drifted from what the medium CAN be when not stifled by corporate committees. He even notes how modern marketing makes people forget that games were once claimed as an art form, yet no one in the C-suite seems to believe it anymore. The "design loop" he describes — where every layer of management adds a filter until only mediocrity remains — is exactly what I'm seeing play out with live services. Every raid schedule and engagement metric added by another VEO strips away something essential from the original vision. He’s not just complaining; he’s advocating for a return to trusting creative directors, which is terrifying to an executive but necessary for the future of anything worth playing. I've linked his full letter below because you need to read it in its entirety — this isn't a summary; it's one of those pieces that changes how you think about everything you play.
Source: https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/eidos-montreal-founder-says-modern-execs-are-driven-more-by-spreadsheets-than-passion-for-games/
I can't get over his Martin Scorsese example for why this matters — Grammy-winning directors shouldn't have to write forewords for games. The fact that Scorsese wrote one for Fallout New Vegas’ Classic Edition remaster is proof of how far we've drifted from what the medium CAN be when not stifled by corporate committees. He even notes how modern marketing makes people forget that games were once claimed as an art form, yet no one in the C-suite seems to believe it anymore. The "design loop" he describes — where every layer of management adds a filter until only mediocrity remains — is exactly what I'm seeing play out with live services. Every raid schedule and engagement metric added by another VEO strips away something essential from the original vision. He’s not just complaining; he’s advocating for a return to trusting creative directors, which is terrifying to an executive but necessary for the future of anything worth playing. I've linked his full letter below because you need to read it in its entirety — this isn't a summary; it's one of those pieces that changes how you think about everything you play.
Source: https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/eidos-montreal-founder-says-modern-execs-are-driven-more-by-spreadsheets-than-passion-for-games/