Celebrity game devs always result in this dynamic to a degree. Hideo Kojima and David Cage are also creative leads that can get carried away if they don’t listen to other people’s ideas.
this post was submitted on 05 Apr 2026
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Fallout
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Read a blurb that this is apparently why Gabe stopped after Portal 2.
A person can be an otherwise good or decent person, and also be a bad or incompetent leader, orchestrater, organizer, conductor, etc.
There's a hell of a lot more to being able to successfully organize and manage a complex artistic and engineering project... than being adorkable.
Being able to recognize when people seem to be hero worshipping you, when you're not getting any kind of constructive criticism or pushback... that is one of the skills a good leader has.
When you do not have that skill, you end up with a toxic positivity hugbox, and you end up out of touch, confused why people seemingly are angry with you for your good intentions.
Its not the intentions people dislike, its the execution.
I have a guy on my board of directors, I don't really like him, but he in invaluable to our team because he tells me no.
The most valuable feedback I’ve ever gotten in my career has been the hardest to hear.
my board of directors
That's a pretty good collective term for your personalities 😁
🤣
he [is] invaluable to our team because he tells me no.
Those people are the most important to have on the payroll. Give that man a bushel of added bonus perqs.
Todd Howard saw a scathing critique of the United States' red scare era and thought to himself "this game loves United States ultra-patriotism and the 50's aesthetics".
Yes-men are the least of his problems.
... you do realize the patriotism etc in Fallout is meant to be tongue in cheek, right?
I'll give you that every new game loses more of that edge and trends closer to venerating it, but we're still well within the satire range.
Everything went to hell because of it. The vaults are almost all horrifying experiments instead of actual shelters... etc.
It sure as hell isn't lionizing patriotism and the attitudes of that era, unless you're only reading surface level deep.
Paladin Danse goes out of character in order to admire the U.S.S. Constitution (a robot-owned ship no less) even though the BoS hates the U.S. for nuking half the world. He then goes on to view Chinese ghouls as evil for being Chinese.
Hancock is not really a charicature or satire of American patriotism. The devs clearly want him to just be a patriot.
The minute men have blatantly nationalistic aesthetics (including their general dressing himself like George Washington). They camp out in the so very subtle "Museum of Freedom".
None of these things are done ironically. These people who live in a world destroyed in equal parts by the U.S. and China should logically hate everything the U.S. was and claimed to stand for. Instead, they constantly brown-nose a country that no longer exists.
Nobody in Fallout 1, 2 and NV (except for the Enclave) would ever consider pre-war U.S. as a force for good or something to look back to with pride. The Enclave are the bad guys for good reasons.
The only actual joke patriotism in Fallout 4 is Moe and his Swatters.
Your two examples of unironically pro-American character consist of a programed synthetic robot and a rotting zombie.
The subtext isn't exactly subtle.
surface level critique
The author of the article states
On one hand, Mejillones is arguing that Howard needs to be challenged more, but on the other Kuhlmann seems to think Todd Howard games need more Todd Howard in their DNA.
Howards could be more involved in the design process of their games, while also being challenged by his peers like anyone else working on the project. Yes-sayers avoid personal conflicts while ultimately damaging the project around them.
innerworkings
\sigh
