The 4 Areas of Leadership Responsibility
Leadership in a game studio isn’t just about shipping games or hitting milestones. It’s about what you choose to be responsible for, even when no one is explicitly asking you to be.
In Leaving the Casino, Jessica Lackey gives us a frame for considering this responsibility that is similar to the Three Arenas frame from my own work. And while Lackey writes mostly for the solo entrepreneur, it is easily adapted to game studios, and I thought it was worth sharing for both its simplicity and clarity.
In short, Lackey suggests that every leader needs to consider their leadership across four areas of responsibility: you, your team, your clients or players, and your community. When one of these is neglected, things eventually start to wobble elsewhere. When they’re in balance, studios tend to feel calmer, clearer, and more sustainable.
1. You
In a small or mid-sized studio, the founder or leader is often the biggest constraint in the system. Your energy, stress levels, financial situation, and creative satisfaction all ripple outward.
Too often, founders wear imbalance like a badge of honour. They hustle, they crunch, they sacrifice health and relationships in pursuit of a launching date or a milestone. But this short-term “hero mode” creates long-term costs. You become reactive instead of proactive, and the company starts to run you instead of the other way around.
Your core responsibility then, is taking care of yourself and paying attention to your own wellbeing so that the choices you make today don’t cost you (or your studio) tomorrow.
2. Team
Your team is not just there to execute your vision. They are the studio. So you better take damn good care of them.
Leadership here starts with basics that are often treated as optional. Fair compensation. Clear expectations. A shared understanding of what “good work” looks like.
When people know what’s expected of them and feel supported in doing their job, they don’t need to be micromanaged. They make better decisions, flag problems earlier, and take real ownership. When expectations are vague or compensation feels unfair, you pay for it later through disengagement, turnover, or silent frustration.
Healthy studios know this, and replace heroics with systems. Clear roles. Realistic planning. Support that removes blockers instead of creating dependency.
3. Clients / Players
Whether you work with publishers, clients, or directly with players, leadership is responsible for setting and meeting expectations, and for doing so in a fair and transparent way.
When expectations are met or exceeded, people leave satisfied. They come back. They recommend you. In an industry where trust is hard to earn and easy to lose, this matters more than any marketing tactic.
4. Community
Game studios don’t exist in a vacuum. What you build, how you show up, and the conversations you participate in shape the broader ecosystem around you.
Your industry community — peers, future talent, and players alike — watches how you behave. Do you advocate for sustainable crunch practices? Do you hire inclusively? Do you share knowledge and lift others up? Leadership here is about platform stewardship: using whatever visibility you have to advocate for causes and principles that matter, beyond just promoting your own product.
The studios I admire most don’t just ship games, they add to the conversation about how games should be made and who gets to make them. That kind of contribution compounds over time. It draws aligned talent, raises the bar for the industry, and anchors your studio in a network that transcends any single release cycle.
Closing thoughts
These four areas are deeply connected. Neglecting one usually means compensating somewhere else, often in unhealthy ways.
Leadership isn’t about control or having all the answers. It’s about maintaining balance across these responsibilities so your studio can grow without breaking itself in the process.
That’s the kind of leadership that lasts.
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