Former Total War developer Creative Assembly has written a lengthy personal account of his time at the studio, detailing the problems with the development of the strategy games Total War: Rome 2 and Total War: Attila, claiming that these problems were exacerbated by an inflexible and counterproductive management structure and “chronic mismanagement,” which sometimes leads to what he calls a “toxic work environment.”
Julian McKinlay, who worked on the Total War games from Napoleon to Attila between 2009 and 2014, also detailed his experiences, which some of the community blamed for Rome 2’s buggy launch after appearing in a promotional video. McKinlay was accused of misrepresenting information about the game. He makes it clear that he was not coerced into giving the interview, but was answering questions based on what he understood of the current state of Rome 2 at the time.
McKinlay also goes into detail about the problems he faced as a programmer, which largely centered around artificial intelligence, and argues that upper management either misunderstood or routinely ignored the problems raised by the programmers. He also claims that management puts adding new sales features—and marketing itself—a higher priority than providing the support and resources that programmers 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. “From my perspective, it looked like production management let the designers do what they wanted, and that’s one of the main reasons why 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 enjoy being able to control 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 small handful of individuals at the top without any real oversight from the wider development team.” It seems that “Total War leaders, writes McKinlay, “they resented critical feedback and saw it as unwelcome. It was common for important decisions to be considered final by the time they were communicated to us in the trenches, if they were communicated to us at all.’
Regarding the above Rally Point video, McKinlay was subjected to ridicule and harassment after it aired. He says it culminated in death threats, though he adds he felt he had “no real reason to fear for my safety.” While he says he doesn’t believe Creative Assembly stoked those fires on purpose, he believes “the story was actually quite convenient for Creative Assembly, and I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that I was scapegoated for the project’s failures.” .”
McKinlay eventually left the studio during Attila’s development, after friction with the design team over feedback led to him being “chewed out by management”, which he claimed was “clearly intended to silence”. [him] for the convenience of managers who wanted to continue doing things their way, regardless of the consequences to anyone else”. McKinlay left soon after, feeling that he had “made enemies in the management of the team and it’s probably going to affect my chances of getting promoted and things like that”. According to McKinlay, he parted ways after “it became clear that management was going to keep repeating the same mistakes”.
Towards the end of the piece, which is much more detailed and gets much deeper into the weeds of actual game design than is practical to summarize here, McKinlay asks the following question:
One must ask, how well do these experiences represent today’s creative congregation? Given the recent issues facing the studio, it seems clear that studio management and creative direction continue to be the source of major problems, but it should be clear that it’s not for me to say how similar the details of the recent issues are to those I I experienced. One thing I will say is that several of the individuals responsible for the problems I described in this statement are either still working at the company or were until the recent layoffs, which I think says something about the ongoing problems with the studio’s management culture.
“Despite ongoing issues with the games and a number of major embarrassments, the series has continued to be profitable,” he concludes. “This fact was used against developers like me who advocated better practices, and creative leadership often used it as a metric to confirm the success of previous projects and decisions, regardless of other ways they could have failed.”
Worthy of McKinlay isn’t entirely negative about her time there, either, still referring to her friends at the studio.
One other former CA employee bolstered McKinlay’s account. Will Overgard, CA Community Coordinator from 2012 to 2015, shared a post on Xitter. “I still feel guilty about what happened to Julian, so read his statement to me,” Overgard writes. “I’m incredibly proud of what I contributed to CA…but I had a hand in ruining someone’s career and that horrible feeling never went away.
We’ve reached out to Creative Assembly for comment.