A former developer at Total War studio Creative Assembly has written a lengthy personal account of his time at the studio, in which he details development problems in the strategy game Total War: Rome 2 and Total War: Attila, and claims that these issues were exacerbated by an inflexible and counterproductive leadership structure and “chronic mismanagement,” sometimes resulting in what he calls a “toxic work environment.”
Julian McKinlay, who between 2009 and 2014 worked on Total War games ranging from Napoleon to Attila, also detailed his experience being blamed by a section of the community for Rome 2’s bug-laden launch after appearing in a promotional video. McKinlay was accused of misrepresenting information about the game. He makes it clear that he was not forced to give the interview, but answered the questions based on what he understood of the then current state of Rome 2.
McKinlay also goes into detail about issues he faced as a programmer, mostly centered around AI, and claims that upper management either misunderstood or routinely ignored issues raised by programmers. He also claims that leadership puts adding new marketable features—and marketing itself—a higher priority than giving developers the support and resources they need.
He also claims that the design and programming teams were at odds over certain features and that upper management often sided with the designers. “The way it looked from my perspective was that the production leadership allowed the designers to do whatever they wanted, and that’s one of the main reasons Rome II went so badly wrong,” McKinlay writes. “The designers instructed us not to improve [the AI] in some ways, because they believed that players enjoyed being able to dominate the AI and that we shouldn’t deprive them of that.”
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“The Total War team was very hierarchical for its size,” McKinlay writes, “and key design and management decisions were made by a handful of individuals at the top without any real oversight from the broader development team.” “The leaders of Total War,” writes McKinlay, “seems to dislike critical feedback and treated it as unwelcome. It was common for important decisions to be treated as final by the time they were communicated to us in the trenches, if they were communicated to us at all.”
As for the aforementioned Rally Point video, McKinlay was the subject of ridicule and harassment after it aired. He says this culminated in death threats, although he adds that he felt there was “no real reason to fear for my safety”. While he says he doesn’t believe Creative Assembly intentionally started these fires, he does believe that “this narrative was actually quite convenient for Creative Assembly, and I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that I became a scapegoat for the project’s failures. .”
McKinlay eventually left the studio during the development of Attila, after friction with the design team over feedback that resulted in him being “chewed out by management,” which he claims was “clear to keep quiet. [him] for the convenience of leading figures who wanted to continue doing things their way, regardless of the consequences for anyone else”. McKinlay left soon after, feeling that he had “made enemies in the leadership of the team and that it would probably affect my chances for promotions and things like that down the line.” In McKinlay’s view, he split after “it became clear that the leadership was going to keep repeating the same mistakes.”
Towards the end of the piece, which is much more detailed and goes much further into the weeds of actual game design than is practical to summarize here, McKinlay poses the following question:
A question to ask is, how well do these experiences represent today’s Creative Assembly? Given the recent problems facing the studio, it seems clear that studio management and creative leadership continue to be the source of major problems, but I should be clear that it’s not for me to say how similar the details of the problems are. last with what I experienced. One thing I will say is that some of the individuals responsible for the problems I’ve described in this statement either still work at the company, or worked until the recent layoffs, which I think says something about the ongoing problems with the company’s culture. studio management.
“Despite ongoing problems with the games and a number of high-profile embarrassments, the series continued to be profitable,” he concludes. “This fact was used against developers like me who argued for best practices, and was often used by creative leadership as a metric to confirm the success of previous projects and decisions, regardless of other ways they could have failed. “
It’s worth repeating that this is the perspective of a developer for an entire studio and one who hasn’t worked there for ten years, even if the recent Hyena saga might suggest that some of the issues McKinlay raises are still ongoing. McKinlay isn’t entirely negative about his time there either, still citing friends at the studio.
Another former CA employee boosted McKinlay’s account. Will Overgard, CA’s community coordinator from 2012 to 2015, shared the post on Xitter. “I still feel guilty about what happened to Julian, so read his statement for me,” Overgard writes. “I’m incredibly proud of what I’ve contributed to CA…but I had a hand in ruining someone’s career and that horrible feeling never left.”
We have reached out to Creative Assembly for comment.