How to Build a Management Team in the Gaming Industry

I've been thinking about the ideal leadership for a game company. What roles do you want at the top of a game company, next to the CEO? I like flat organizations, but I think the hierarchical model has many advantages that a flat model could adopt.

Foundation

First of all, let's look at the components of a game company's organization that won't budge. The ones you'll need one way or another.

Mission and Values: The foundation of any company is built on the following pillars: the company's mission and core values. The mission is what the company strives for. It's long-term, purposeful, and perhaps unattainable, but it unites the company to work in that direction. Core values are the behaviors that align with the mission; they are the behaviors that guide the group toward achieving the mission.

With a solid company mission, whenever a discussion arises, people should be able to ask, "How does this allow us to achieve our mission?"

Company Culture Pyramid. Some time ago I wrote about what corporate culture is suitable for a game company. You can see the pyramid here.

Communication: To work towards the mission, information and feedback must flow top-down. Communication should be two-way, regular, and structured to encourage a "bottom-up" approach. Leaders are servants and helpers of the company.

CEO: You will have a CEO—the embodiment of the company's mission, the one who sets the pace, brings everyone together, and is the external face of the company.

Investors and Board: The venture-funded game studio model worked well in 2020 and will likely work for the foreseeable future. So, game companies will still have investors and board meetings. From the management team, the CEO and CFO usually attend these. This results in fewer people in the room and much smoother conversations.

Game Teams. Over many years, it has been proven that small game teams are the best unit for creating a commercially viable game. That's four to five people united by a common goal, concept, prototype, and building a game that, through validation and data, can be proven worthy of further investment. Until the game is released, the team stays as small as possible.

Other Key People. Publishing and launching a game is a complex affair involving more people. You get UA, community, support, data analyst, live ops specialists; you name it.

To start from the top, we want to look at the management team. Who is necessary, and what options are there to bring the best of hierarchy into a flat organization?

Management Teams in Games

If you want to move to a flat structure, here's the thing. The whole idea of a flat hierarchy is that you don't need bosses, managers, and supervisors. You don't want a management team bloated with all sorts of CTOs, CPOs, and CMOs.

Core Leadership: Besides the CEO, I would like to see a dual role of one person serving as both COO and CFO, i.e., Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer. They would serve as the CEO's "chief of staff," and under their wing would be the finance team and HR/Ops team. A perfect real-life example is Supercell's COO & CFO Janne Snellman. In the early stages of a startup, the COO & CFO should focus on the chief of staff role. They participated in board meetings, continuing those duties as the company grew. Over time, they build teams that report to the COO and CFO.

Of course, COO & CFO sounds like good old hierarchical leadership, but it brings many benefits to the company: you have someone who maintains stability while the company and CEO focus on successful games.

Why don't I mention CTOs, CMOs, and CPOs (Chief Technology, Marketing, and Product Officers, respectively)? I believe that in the 2020s, there is an opportunity to decentralize these operations. Game teams will foster the creation of positions for people handling marketing, analytics, community care, and player support.

Extended Leadership: In a game company, its lifeblood is its products. That's why you want another addition to the hierarchical model, where you have product owners (also known as game leads) as part of an extended leadership that meets weekly to discuss, share information, and give feedback. Product owners are responsible for their games; they own the game's P&L, meaning they are fully accountable for the game's revenue, costs, and expenses.

In a way, each game team will be its own "startup," managing its own P&L, its own marketing, and everything else. But the advantage is that these "startups" operate under one "roof," where they can exchange learning, knowledge, and resources. Each startup can come up with its own rules on how to achieve the company's mission, which is the only guardrail for them.