Building Better Games - Benjamin Carcich

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https://www.buildingbettergames.gg
99 shares
https://www.buildingbettergames.gg/succeeding-in-game-production
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https://forms.gle/nqRTUvgFrtdYuCbr6
71 shares

https://www.linkedin.com/in/benjamin-carcich/
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https://www.linkedin.com/company/building-better-games/
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https://www.linkedin.com/in/doublearon00/
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https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZpMT-dUwQR-R4Mb4uub6Sw
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https://www.youtube.com/@buildingbettergames
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https://www.youtube.com/@BuildingBetterGames
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E106: Why Jira Hurts Game Studios

Tuesday, November 4, 2025 • Duration 33:10

If you're a leader in game dev who feels stuck, able to spot problems but struggling to make a real difference, there is a path forward that levels up your leadership and accelerates your team, game, and career. Sign up here to learn more: https://forms.gle/nqRTUvgFrtdYuCbr6

Are you inadvertently forcing your team to serve a tool, instead of letting your tools serve your team and game?

In a recent conversation with Clinton Keith, Ben asked how Clint would help all of game development. Clint's response? "Delete Jira" - and Ben laughed to keep from crying.

Jira is a powerful tool, but in the hands of uninformed game development leadership, it often becomes a weapon against the very teams it's meant to help. Ben, who has used Jira and other tools as a producer within large studios, dissects the common, catastrophic misuses of Jira.

While you might be better off deleting the tool, the real work is about fixing the broken cultural and organizational patterns that turn a simple work management system into the "boss" of your game studio. Learn the four cascading failure patterns that are draining your team's effectiveness and how to correct them, making collaboration and player outcomes your true north.

What You'll Learn In This Episode:

Why senior leaders keep breaking Jira without realizing it
How Jira causes centralization and decision bottlenecks
What Jira DOESN'T tell you, and why that makes it dangerous
How perverse incentives emerge from overreliance on Jira and other tools like it
The reason you end up feeling like a slave to the tool
How to avoid the traps Jira leads you into

Connect with us:

🔗Ben's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benjamin-carcich/

🔗BBG's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/building-better-games/

🔗Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/buildingbettergames/#

🔗Website: https://www.buildingbettergames.gg

🔗YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZpMT-dUwQR-R4Mb4uub6Sw

#gamedevleadership #jiraantipatterns #gamedevelopment #agilefailure #buildingbettergames

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E105: Your "2-Day" Task Takes 2 Months. Here's the Fix.

Tuesday, October 28, 2025 • Duration 01:04:30

If you're a leader in game dev who feels stuck, able to spot problems but struggling to make a real difference, there is a path forward that levels up your leadership and accelerates your team, game, and career. Sign up here to learn more: https://forms.gle/nqRTUvgFrtdYuCbr6

How much is your bad code costing you, and how much is your team's suffering just a ritual of amateur theatre?

In this episode, Engineering and Agile expert Tim Ottinger and Ben challenge the core belief systems that plague software development, from the focus on individual productivity to the self-inflicted wounds of long release cycles. They break down the shocking truth about what slows software projects down, the high cost of errors in a complex system, and why doing work when it's easy is the only way to avoid the crushing complexity of doing it when it's hard.

What you'll learn in this episode:

● Why teams might refuse to change and improve the way they work

● The importance of finding problems now, rather than waiting till later

● Why "crunch time" is killing your output, not boosting it

● When to be throwing work away and when to be making things real

Bibliography:
https://www.industriallogic.com/blog/faster-and-more-predictable/

Paired Programming Illuminated by Lori Williams and Robert Kessler:
The Goal by Eliyahu Goldratt

More about our guest:

Tim Ottinger is a legendary figure in software development, having programmed since 1979 and been active in the early days of Extreme Programming and Agile. As a Senior Consultant at Industrial Logic, co-author of Agile In A Flash and a contributor to Clean Code, Tim brings decades of practical experience to dissect what goes wrong in most software development and how you can start doing better.

E96: Setting Goals: It's Not Just About Shipping A Game, with Melissa Phillips

Tuesday, August 26, 2025 • Duration 59:12

Setting goals is harder than you think.

In this episode, Ben Carcich is joined by Melissa Phillips, founder of Games Leadership, to dive deep into a topic that leaders often approach with little understanding: goal setting. From a professional perspective, goal setting is about helping people find fulfillment in what they are doing. Melissa discusses how goals have evolved from a basic survival need to a more complicated, individualistic pursuit.

What you'll learn in this episode:

Why money is a terrible goal
The problem with only having giant goals
The importance of celebrating small wins
A surprisingly effective way to find your true goals
Why communicating goals to others matters
The reality of your changing goals

A successful game begins with better processes. This conversation is a great example of the mindset we teach at Building Better Games.

Learn more about Melissa Phillips (Founder, Games Leadership)

🔗LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melphillips1/

🔗Website: https://www.gamesleadership.com/

🔗 Games Leadership Blueprint Course
(A 12-week program helping leaders craft a sustainable and personalized leadership model.)

Connect with us:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benjamin-carcich
Substack: https://bencarcich.substack.com
Website: https://www.buildingbettergames.gg
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@BuildingBetterGames

E6 Hiring Part 1: How to Hire the Right People for YOUR Org

Season 2 · Episode 6

Thursday, April 7, 2022 • Duration 01:13:01

Understanding how people join your team and who they should be is a sacred process. Companies live and die on their ability to hire effectively. Join us as we go through the key (and core) principles of how we approach hiring, what companies get wrong, and discuss practical tools that you can use to set your team and yourself up for success (and finding great people).

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E5 How to Turn a Video Game into a Successful Show: Arcane with Alex Yee

Season 2 · Episode 5

Tuesday, March 29, 2022 • Duration 01:26:03

Arcane released in 2021 and quickly became the highest rated series on Netflix, recently winning 9 Annie awards. We've seen our share of video game flops in film and TV, so we wanted to get a better understanding of why Arcane succeeded. In this episode, we talk to Alex Yee, one of the show's original creators responsible for writing and producing Arcane. We talk about how the show came to be, leadership, and his creative work in video games and television.

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E4 Managing Others Pt 2: How to be a Good Boss

Season 2 · Episode 4

Tuesday, March 15, 2022 • Duration 01:21:39

Part 2 of Managing Others! This time we're talking about accountability and advocacy. With accountability, we look at how you can set expectations within your org as a leader and someone responsible for growing others. With advocacy, we look at a crucial role a manager plays for their employee and the company. Take a listen, and let us know what you think!

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E3 Managing Others Pt 1: How to be a Good Boss

Season 2 · Episode 3

Tuesday, March 1, 2022 • Duration 01:10:26

Nearly every adult has had a boss. Many people have been a boss. Yet so few people have thought about what it means to be a good boss beyond the superficial. What makes a good boss? What role do they play in the work lives (and lives!) of the people they manage? Ben and Aaron start off the podcast with a debate about what should make bosses tick, then explore two of their people management pillars: Growth and Integrity. If you're looking for some controversial statements, take a listen!

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E2 How You Lead Creative Content Teams with David Klaus

Season 2 · Episode 2

Tuesday, February 15, 2022 • Duration 01:16:19

Content pipelines! There's little info about them outside of the game industry, and even within it we tend to view them as some reductionist and step by step repeatable process, a machine you shove artists and writers and designers into to get 'game art stuff' out the other end. In this podcast we talk to @David Klaus, an Agile Coach and former producer who led one of the most profitable teams in the history of game development, to talk about how you lead, serve, and support developers as they make fantastic and useful art.

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E1 People, Products, And Playtests: Staying Connected To Your Players

Season 2 · Episode 1

Tuesday, February 1, 2022 • Duration 01:07:01

It's our first episode of Season 2! We've renamed ourselves Building Better Games, and we're going to start by talking about the importance of maintaining a connection between game devs, the game they're making, and the audience. Get ready to talk about playtests, product thinking, and player empathy. Enjoy!

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S1 EP19 Real Life: Game Design From The Trenches with Ryan "Morello" Scott

Season 1 · Episode 20

Tuesday, January 11, 2022 • Duration 01:28:17

In episode 19, @Ryan Scott joins Ben and Aaron to talk about Game Design. The conversation ranges from what makes a good game designer, to the relationship between product leadership and design, then over to modern trends and a shared skepticism of NFT-oriented games. Hope you enjoy it!

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Building Better Games – Details, episodes & analysis

Podcast details

Recent rankings

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Shared links between episodes and podcasts

RSS feed quality and score

Publication history

Latest published episodes

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Apple Podcasts

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Building Better Games – Details, episodes & analysis

Podcast details

Recent rankings

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

Shared links between episodes and podcasts

Other99+

LinkedIn67

Youtube29

RSS feed quality and score

Publication history

Latest published episodes

Similar podcasts and content

Related Shows Based on Content Similarities

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

Related Shows Based on Content Similarities

Other99+

LinkedIn67

Youtube29