The culture of “Leslie tickets”
New testimonies have emerged in a BBC article, which discusses the failure of MindsEye. An edifying article, which focuses mainly on Leslie Benzies’ management in this affair. After the release of the game, the CEO would have continued to track down “ the saboteurs », both internally and externally, who would be responsible for the failure of the game, as we read in a transcript of a meeting:
“ I find it disgusting that someone could sit among us, behave like this and continue to work here »
However, perhaps we didn’t have to look far for the person responsible for the situation. First point raised by the article, the studio’s expenses, with a loss of more than 202 million pounds in the space of four years, and this without releasing a single game. The fault is Everywherea sort of game/HUB in which it would have been possible to create all kinds of experience, which MindsEye had to represent. A project that the public had difficulty understanding, which is understandable when even Benzies didn’t really know what he was doing according to an ex-studio employee.
Management was also not listening to internal feedbackeven when the subjects were serious. Margherita “Marg” Peloso, who worked in production, said managers “laughed” when they reported the staff’s concerns to her. Benzies was also accused of “micro-management”, in the sense that he gave tasks to certain people to accomplish without going through the managers of each team. In other words, when he saw a bug or something he didn’t like, those tasks took priority over the rest. According to several accounts, these orders were called “Leslie tickets”, “Leslie bugs” or just “Leslies”.
And of course, it was about crunch for monthswith 8 hours of extra work per week, often unpaid. With all this, and almost 300 fewer employees, MindsEye will probably never know his redemption, and neither will Leslie Benzies.