You weren't trained for the hardest part of your job. But that's fixable.
The Game Dev Leadership Accelerator is for leaders who can see the game struggling — and can't figure out how to fix it. You'll learn to spot where the real problems live, align your team on the game you're actually making, and turn all that effort into a game that's actually getting better. Built for producers, discipline leads, engineering managers, art directors, and studio founders.
Enrollment for the November group is closed. Join the waitlist to hear first when the next group opens.
Join the waitlist →Benjamin Carcich • Nearly a decade at Riot Games • Focused on Game Dev Leadership
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If you’re a game dev leader, you’ve probably felt at least one of these.
Your team is busy, but the game isn’t getting better. You can’t figure out why.
- The plan is getting updated. Milestones are being hit. And when you step back and look at what’s actually in front of you — the game isn’t in a good spot. There’s a gap between all the activity and the actual progress, and it’s growing. You’ve tried tightening the process. It hasn’t closed the gap.
You can feel something is wrong — but nobody else seems to be naming it.
- Not with the plan. Not with the milestone. Something deeper. You can feel it in playtests. You hear it in how conversations about direction have gotten vague and strangely optimistic. The metrics look fine. The board is full of progress. And yet when you think about what a player is actually going to experience — something is broken that nobody is naming. This is one of the loneliest places in game dev leadership.
You can’t even get your team to agree on what game they’re building.
- Not the feature list. The game. What it feels like to play. Who it’s for. Why someone would choose it over everything else competing for their attention. Ask ten people on your team right now. Count how many different answers you get. If that number isn’t one — that’s not a communication gap. That’s a leadership gap. And it’s usually not the leader’s fault.
"I feel crazy. Like I know something is off — and yet I don't see anyone dealing with it, nor does it seem like I'm supposed to. Instead, we slowly grind forward without making things better."
You're not a bad leader. You're an untrained one.
The leaders I've worked with who were stuck in this spot were not bad leaders. They were leaders working on the wrong layer — because that's what they'd been trained to do. Process. Planning. Keeping everything organized and moving. All of it real, all of it necessary — and none of it the thing that was actually broken.
This accelerator exists because of that gap. It's what I wish existed when I was in your seat — built specifically to help game dev leaders see what's actually going on and start working on the right layer.
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This is for you if:
- •You're a producer, discipline lead, engineering manager, art director, or QA lead — or a founder leading a small team
- •You were promoted into leadership without training for it — or hired in and left to figure it out
- •You know something isn't working but can't fully name it
- •You want to get better at the real job of leading — not just the admin layer
- •You're willing to do the work, not just consume content
This isn't for you if:
- •You're an individual contributor, not currently leading anyone
- •You want a system to hand to your team — this is about how you lead
- •Your goal is to get better at Jira or sprint planning — that's not this
- •You don't actually care about the people you lead
- •You want a quick fix, not a real shift in how you lead
You’ve probably heard all of this before. None of it fixed the problem.
“Just trust your instincts — you'll figure it out.”
Your instincts were built around your craft — design, engineering, production, art. Those are different instincts than what leadership requires. Figuring it out alone works slowly, costs your team in the meantime, and usually leads you to work harder on the wrong layer anyway. Most leaders who “figure it out” just get better at managing process. That's not the same thing as getting better at leading.
“You need better process. More structure. Cleaner workflows.”
Process is the symptom layer. Fixing it feels productive and doesn't change the underlying problem. If your team doesn't have a shared picture of what they're actually building — if the culture hasn't developed real candor — cleaner sprints just mean everyone is moving faster in slightly different directions.
“You need more experience. Give it time.”
Experience reinforces whatever you're already doing. If you're working on the wrong layer, more experience makes you better at working on the wrong layer. What changes things is deliberate focus on the right problems. Time alone doesn't provide that.
“You need to be a more natural leader. Some people just have it.”
Leadership is a skill set, not a personality type. Introverts, people who never wanted to be in charge, people who'd honestly rather be doing the craft work than navigating org dynamics — all of these people can learn to lead well. It requires the right models and the right feedback. Not the right personality.
Your studio has three layers. You're probably only working on one.
Every game studio has three layers that determine how well it functions.
Process
How the work gets organized and executed. This is where almost all leader training lives: sprints, 1:1s, roadmaps, reviews, capacity planning. It's important. It's also not where most of the real problems live.
Product vision
The clarity your team has about what game they're actually making. Not the feature list. The game. What it feels like to play, who it's for, why it matters. When this is missing, people don't make bad decisions. They make reasonable decisions from the wrong picture.
Culture
How your team actually behaves. How they communicate. What they prioritize when no one is watching. Whether they can be honest with each other about hard things. A culture that's too positive can be just as broken as one that's toxic — it just takes longer to see.
Most leaders spend almost all of their time on process. It's what they were trained on. It's what feels manageable. And it's the layer least likely to solve the problems that are actually slowing their team down.
The shift that changes everything is when you stop managing the administrative layer of your role and start actually leading the people and the product. Almost no one in game dev tells you those are different things.
I'm not a natural leader. I'm a trained one.
I'm introverted. I don't gravitate toward being in charge. I only ever stepped into leadership when I felt like something important was at stake and no one else was doing it well enough. The org dynamics side of the job — getting people aligned, navigating the things nobody says out loud, leading through uncertainty without pretending you have all the answers — none of that comes easy to me.
And yet I spent nearly a decade doing exactly that at Riot Games, after years of leadership in the military. And along the way I made every version of the mistake I described above — working on the wrong layer, using process as a substitute for leadership, and wondering why nothing was actually moving.
What those years gave me wasn't natural ability. They gave me models. I had to figure out — deliberately — why teams align around some things and not others, what it takes to build real shared vision, what the difference actually is between a culture that makes good games and one that doesn't.
That's where this framework came from. And it's why I believe it's learnable.
Your job doesn’t get easier. You get better at the part that actually matters.
The work doesn’t disappear. Meetings still happen. Reports still go out. The administrative layer of your job is still there.
What changes is everything underneath it.
Before:
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- —You're doing all the things — 1:1s, planning sessions, standups, status reports, stakeholder updates — and none of it is moving the needle
- —You can feel something is wrong but can't name it, and nobody else seems to be talking about it
- —You're working harder than you should have to for the amount of progress you're making
- —You're not sure if the problem is you, your team, your org, or something you're just missing
After:
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You can see which layer the real problems are living in — and you know what to actually do about them
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You have frameworks that let you prioritize what matters instead of just what's in front of you
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You have more options — and those options are connected to how people actually collaborate and make things
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You can exist in difficult situations — even ones that won't change overnight — and still move toward positive impact
The shift isn't always visible from the outside right away. But the leaders who go through this work describe it the same way: the ability to see what's actually going on, and to focus on what actually moves the needle, goes up by an order of magnitude.
What graduates say about the shift
“I didn't realize what it meant to lead — and now I do, and I've been able to change things for the better.”
- "I don't think that's something I would have gotten just through work and osmosis."
— Keaton W.
Producer, Riot Games
- "Was it worth the investment? Oh yeah, for sure."
— Jim H.
Senior Producer
- "The material gave me new angles to think about things I hadn't considered, and the sessions were where I could actually dig into the specifics of my situation."
— Tony S.
Production Lead
- "This accelerator helped me find a clearer direction when I was feeling somewhat lost about the next stage of my career. Looking back, investing in this course was one of the best decisions I've made in recent years."
— Anonymous
Producer
Here's how it works
Join the waitlist
Enrollment for the November group is closed. Join the waitlist to hear first when the next group opens.
16 weeks of lessons
A new leadership lesson unlocks every week for 16 weeks, each with a self-coaching exercise so you apply it to your own team and your own situation.
Weekly live Q&A calls
Bring what is actually happening on your team to the weekly calls with Ben and other game dev leaders, Mondays at 3 pm PT and Tuesdays at 8 am PT. Stay as long as you need to finish.
Need to Decelerate?
10-day full refund. If you change your mind or aren't satisfied for any reason, email us within 10 days of purchase and we'll give you a full refund. And you can cancel anytime, no questions asked. You still finish the module you've paid for, and you can always start again later.
Common Questions
Is this right for me if I'm new to leadership?
When does it start?
Is this specific to game development?
How much time does the accelerator take?
I'm not the most senior person in the room. Is this for me?
I lead a small team. Does this apply?
You're not broken. You weren't trained for this.
That's the whole point.
Most game dev leaders are carrying more than they should have to — not because the role is impossible, but because nobody actually prepared them for it. The framework, the models, the ability to see what's really going on and work on the right layer — that's learnable.
Enrollment is closed for now
16 weekly leadership lessons, 16 self-coaching exercises, weekly live Q&A calls with Ben, and three bonuses: the WGLL Guide, the Game Vision Template and the Political Map Builder.
The November group starts Sunday, Nov 8.
Join the waitlist and you will be the first to hear when the next group opens.
10-day full refund. Cancel anytime.