Neon Genesis Evangelion is one of the most disruptive, daring, and influential anime series of all time. The brainchild of Hideaki Anno, it explores deeply flawed characters in a post-apocalyptic world, each carrying their own wounds, yet all converging toward the same challenge: the human urge to form bonds, even if it hurts us — or, as referenced in one of its most celebrated episodes, confronting what Arthur Schopenhauer called “the hedgehog’s dilemma.”

Years after The End of Evangelion hit theaters, Anno promised to return to his masterpiece, this time to “rebuild” it. The result was Rebuild of Evangelion, a tetralogy that serves partly as sequel, partly as re-imagining. The first two films echo the original series, but subtle divergences gradually reshape everything that follows.

Some fans embraced this approach. Others felt a sacred IP had been “destroyed” by its own creator. Regardless of where you stand, indifference is almost impossible. We can meme Eva all we want, but it inevitably leaves scars on those who embrace it. Following Rebuild’s own iconography, you can (not) treat Evangelion lightly.

The reason Rebuild feels so different from the 1990s original is well known among fans: Hideaki Anno is no longer the same man, thus his new vision on the material is more hopeful. It introduces new visuals and controversial elements like Mari and the WILLE organization, but above all, it exposes a creator who has changed.

And that change inspired me to kill a dream project I’d been carrying since I was thirteen.

Two years and four months. That’s how long it took me to write the 67,800 words of Phantom Symphony, the first book I had the courage to pursue for publication. After sending my first wave of query letters, I began reflecting on how I reached this point after a lifetime of writing mostly unread.

This book wasn’t born in a vacuum, but grew from the ruins of an older one that I started back in 1999. My parents’ divorce shattered the stability of my world, and I needed somewhere to hide. It began as scattered fan fiction and slowly evolved into a full YA sci-fi trilogy drenched in 1990s pop culture, celebrating the music, games, and anime I loved. That project was my dream, the book that would outlive me.

But there was a problem: It was the first. For a long time, it was also the only one.

Which brings the question: what happens when your dream project is your first one? And what if the dream you had as a child no longer speaks to the adult you became?

I’ll be blunt: starting with your dream project is a recipe for paralysis.

It will never feel good enough, so you’ll polish it forever. If you overcome the temptation to chase perfection and release it, it will always be marked as your first, the thing you created before you knew what you were doing. Years later, you’ll look back and taste the bitterness of what it could have been. That’s why you should write other projects first before diving into your dream.

Look at Robert Eggers, for example. He always wanted to make a new take on Nosferatu (2024), but before attempting it, he made The Witch (2015), The Lighthouse (2019), and The Northman (2022). Each film expanded his range and sharpened his voice. If he had tried to film Nosferatu too early, it wouldn’t have been the same.

That realization forced me to question my own sacred project. I needed another book, a new canvas that allowed me to experiment without the burden of destiny attached to it, or at least to confirm if I could make something great with what I have. With that idea in mind, I reused fragments of that old world building. This time, though, I let Gustav Mahler guide the structure. I chose an unexpected protagonist. The themes became darker, more interior, more adult…

And slowly, it clicked.

I could never have written this at thirteen. Worse, that old manuscript I dreamed for decades doesn’t speak with me anymore.

If you are one of those who began to follow an artistic path from a very young age—writing, making movies, drawing, composing music—and keep doing it in your adult life, it’s almost certain that you’ll see your old ideas and ability levels from a different perspective. Most artists feel ashamed of what they produced in the past or view it with healthy distance as the first steps to a fruitful mastering of their craft.

Still, there’s a small minority of artists who believe their first interpretation of a story is the purest one and refuse to revisit it with mature eyes. Emerald Fennell is a recent example of that. Her recent adaptation of Wuthering Heights (2026) reflects how she understood the book as a teenager and she deliberately chose not to reread it as an adult.

That choice fascinates me because it makes me question what happens when we freeze our artistic perspective in adolescence. Will you remain loyal to your younger self and realize that imperfect vision, despite its rawness? Or will you see yourself as unevolved, much like Robbie Williams astutely depicted in his biopic Better Man (2024)? No matter the choice, it doesn’t negate that growth requires revision, both of our work and of our worldview.

Which bring us back to Hideaki Anno.

He created Neon Genesis Evangelion while battling depression and doing therapy, and it shows. However, more than a decade later, he was older, healthier, and married. He founded his own studio, built a life beyond the pain that birthed Eva and, above all, he grew. You can’t expect a man who found peace to reproduce that same despair from years ago, thus he rebuilt his masterpiece to reflect who he had become.

That sincerity moved me more than the anime itself. It inspired me to take the “kill your darlings” advice and go a step further.

That is why I “killed” my dream project.

The biggest lie we’re told is that we can be anything. We can’t.

I once believed I could become a million versions of myself. Yet the truth is I’m mediocre at most things. Space-opera YA trilogy writer? That was one of them. But I can become better at being myself if I’m brave enough to let outdated versions die.

Killing that dream didn’t end my writing career. It allowed Phantom Symphony to exist. It isn’t perfect, but it’s honest. It even shaped the next book I’m working on now, one that would be even more truthful with my voice today. And when I look back at it years from now, I won’t see the ghost of who I used to be. I’ll see the beginning of who I chose to become.

I couldn’t be more grateful to Hideaki Anno for teaching me that.

In 1513, Niccolò Machiavelli finished his masterpiece The Prince, a book admired by those seeking success while being reviled by those uncomfortable with its honesty about human nature. Few books have been so misunderstood throughout history, to the point it reduced its author to a mere caricature. Thanks to it, it became an offense for something or someone be considered “Machiavellian.”

What most people didn’t know is that Machiavelli wasn’t trying to corrupt anyone with his treaty about leadership and power. He just wanted to get out of exile and return to Florence’s political life, and he did this by writing about what he observed on powerful people. In the end, he described how real life was, not as people wished it to be. Negating how humanity struggles with the concept of power is what makes The Prince feel devilish.

Five centuries later, The Prince is no longer forbidden. The stigmas surrounding it never left, but its reputation improved. It became studied, quoted, and loved by many around the world for its timeless wisdom. Including by me.

I admire Machiavelli’s attempt to distill power into behaviors that are observable, repeatable, and — most of all — human. That fascination even leaked into the book I’m writing: I named my main villain The Prince as a (kind of ironic) homage.

Revising my manuscript has been a journey on its own. During the process, I had to think a lot about a challenge most debut writers face: finding my author’s voice. It’s hard to define what it is, but it’s easy to recognize. Readers feel it immediately, as literary agents do too.

And if there’s one place where author’s voice matters more than format, strategy, or growth hacks, it’s Substack.

The turning point

I’ve been thinking a lot about Substack lately, especially about my silence over the last couple of months. Part of it could be explained by me prioritizing the manuscript as I prepare for the query phase, but that wasn’t the whole reason.

The truth is I wasn’t satisfied with what I was producing. When I started The Boss Level, my goal was to write about business through games and pop culture. It was nothing more than a way to say things I couldn’t say on LinkedIn. However, you can read some of my posts and say that they could easily live there and survive just fine.

Six months in, I realized I didn’t want to write only about business, so I started another Substack: Phones & Joysticks, a freer space to talk about games, music, and whatever else crossed my mind. It sounded like a great idea at first. I would be writing for a whole new audience that didn’t like the LinkedIn-ish approach from my main Substack and I would feel liberated to explore new horizons.

That’s when the paralysis started.

Now I had two newsletters, with different tones and different expectations. Add daily life, my ever growing reading backlog, and everything else going on… and suddenly writing felt heavier than it should.

Something had to change. But where to start?

First, I looked inward. I revisit my past articles to uncover which ones where the most successful and gave me more joy to write. The pattern was obvious: the most successful ones were also the most personal. Less “LinkedIn voice”, more me.

Then I looked outward. The writers I engage with the most don’t win me over because of format, but because of their voices. Even when they drift from their original topics, I follow. And often, so do others.

The common denominator is obvious.

That’s when Machiavelli came back into the picture.

The Substacker

Today, I want to assume the same role as an observer as Machiavelli and share some of my findings.

However, keep in mind that I’m not here to sell “how to grow your Substack” formulas. Those repel me like garlic repels vampires. But if I had to distill what actually sustains a newsletter here over time, I’d reduce it to four principles. And since we are using Machiavelli as a framework, let’s call them The Substacker.

Here they are…

1. A good Substack revolves around voice, not format.
   You can feel who someone is through their words. I don’t know any Substacker personally, but I know how my favorite writers think. Their voice becomes clearer with time, and that’s what keeps me coming back to them.

2. The best Substacks belong to writers with a clear voice.
   That clarity doesn’t always exist at the beginning. It evolves with each new post through experimentation. Humor sharpens, tenderness appears, confidence settles, and so on. No journey is equal, but reading them feels like picking up a new book by an author you love: you’ll trust them, regardless of the subject.

3. Formats help you start, but they can’t be your ceiling.
   Frameworks are useful until they aren’t. When format starts leading your voice instead of supporting it, your growth stalls. Evolution requires reading others, borrowing some courage, and abandoning what once worked when it isn’t good anymore.

4. No Substack grows alone.
   Recommendations, collaborations, and shared projects are both visibility tools and growth accelerators. Despite being a social platform in essence, Substack still feels human because of that. I owe real gratitude to those who recommended my work, gave me a chance to collaborate, or trusted me with their platforms.

All well and good, but you must be thinking…

What this means for my writing?

A lot, actually. And if I believe in what I just wrote, I have to apply it to my own work.

That being said, here’s what changes:

• The Boss Level will expand its scope. Games remain a pillar, but books and music now belong here too. My novel is structured around Gustav Mahler’s symphonies, so pretending music isn’t part of my thinking would be dishonest.

• Phones & Joysticks will be merged into The Boss Level. Not only having two spaces where audiences are basically the same, having a single space compels me to refocus and keep my author’s voice consistent. Also, it would be a leaner structure to manage. As Thoreau put it: simplify, simplify.

But that leaves one open question: what about this Substack’s name?

The Boss Level was born with a specific mission: business through games and pop culture so you can level up, one boss level at a time. Now that the scope is wider, I was unsure if the name still fits at first.

As I reflected more and more about other names and the new things I want to bring to the table, I came to the conclusion: I’ll keep it as it is.

But the name now means much more.

I want to keep writing about moments that shape my life and other people’s lives, but not every challenge is a career one and not every learning experience should be reduce to bullet points. Every text here will be a checkpoint in my never ending journey to become a better writer and a better person.

And I would love to have you on this journey.

A new mission for a new year

One of my favorite pieces I’ve written here was about growing up with videogames. You can check it out below:

In it, I wrote:

“I write because I want more people to see games as tools for growth, and discover the lessons they hold for life, work, and everything in between.”

I still believe in that. But for 2026, my mission is simpler.

I want to write a body of work I can be proud of.

If that keeps you around, I’ll be more than happy.

For now, though, my focus will still be the manuscript, so don’t expect the same frequency as before.

There’s a flexible rule of The Substacker that I didn’t mentioned: frequency is good, but quality is better. If you write a great post, people will read it eventually. But if you constantly post subpar work just to keep your frequency, people will start to leave you.

That’s why I’ll come back when I have my manuscript fully revised. I’m in my best shape when I’m focusing on one thing at a time.

In the meantime, thanks for sticking around. And let’s keep leveling up, whatever challenge you’re facing right now.

Dear Santa,

By writing this on January instead of December, it sounds like this list is coming a bit late. Actually, I’m thinking ahead of time. I’m already projecting what I would like to get on Christmas 2026. Planning things ahead is the nature of my job (as you are aware by now, IT project managers are very fun at parties).

Before you think I’m just writing things to myself, keep in mind that although I’ve been absent for a few weeks on the platform and still struggle with consistency, I run a Substack that started as a way to convey business lessons through a videogame lens. So what’s more natural than sending you a wishlist to things related to the gaming industry that could benefit other gamers as well?

I know I’m putting too much on your shoulders. Elves can only do so much. Maybe they can get me a Nintendo Switch 2 if I’m nice enough (and if the games are worth it — more on that in a bit). But hey, it’s worth trying, right?

That being said, here’s my list.

For 2026, I wish for…

1. Major publishers to think twice before laying off thousands of developers

When I wrote about Satoru Iwata last year, one of the most admirable things I found out about him was how he chose to cut his own salary instead of laying people off during the Wii U era. I’m not saying there should be more leaders like him in the gaming industry. Those come once in a lifetime. Still, I like to think that good leadership is still a matter of choice, one that is in anyone’s reach.

Games will come and go. Some of them will be hits, others will fail to meet expectations. It’s part of the game. Even so, if the latter happens, I’d love to see companies choosing slightly lower profits instead of sacrificing people’s livelihoods. Developers deserve to spend Christmas with their families without wondering whether they’ll be able to pay rent in the foreseeable future.

2. Valve’s success with Steam inspiring competitors to raise their game

It seems unavoidable that Valve’s expansion of its ecosystem through new Steam products will solidify its reputation among the leading hardware companies.

Meanwhile, Sony is positioning PlayStation as a multimedia platform, Microsoft is pushing the “everything is an Xbox” strategy… and suddenly, it feels like Nintendo is the only one from the big 3 still fully committed to the traditional console experience.

I’m terrible at predicting the future, but I really hope the major players look at what Valve is doing and respond with bold, creative ideas of their own. Players deserve more than incremental moves. We deserve something to look forward to, something that brings a sparkle in our eyes, just like we had a few generations ago.

3. Big studios innovating more and releasing fewer derivative games

I know I sound like a spoiled kid, but I’m genuinely tired of seeing the same genres executed over and over again. Soulslikes, Metroidvania lookalikes, cozy sims…

Nothing against these genres. After all, my absolute favorite game of 2025 is Shadow Labyrinth, a Metroidvania through and through. But I’m not alone in my opinion that the market became too saturated. Most of the real innovation I see today comes from small indie communities — like the PICO-8 scene — where constraints actually fuel creativity.

I’m glad that one of the best games of 2025 was Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, created by developers who dared to leave their old employer and prove that it’s still possible to make something new yet familiar within the current system. But that should be the rule, not the exception. The search for new experiences that truly capture players’ hearts needs to become the norm again.

4. The industry not depending entirely on GTA 6’s success

This connects directly to the point above.

As someone who pursued a degree in game design largely because of the first Grand Theft Auto, I’m very excited to play GTA 6. But it feels like a worrying amount of executives are treating it as the event that will magically push the entire industry forward. And we all know that won’t be true.

We can’t put all our eggs in one basket, no matter how big that basket is. The industry needs diversity. Different types of games taking different risks. Not just one giant release carrying everyone’s hopes and defining all the trends in the foreseeable future.

5. Nintendo giving me a good reason to buy a Switch 2

I might be getting old. I’m turning 40 this year, and the things that spark that childhood excitement don’t hit the same anymore. Even so, I hate the fact that I don’t feel an urge to buy a Switch 2.

I won’t pretend that nothing else excites me in gaming. That would be dishonest. I’m still eagerly waiting to play upcoming releases like Yakuza 3 Kiwami and 007 First Light. But being the ones who brought so many innovations and most broke conventions in the past, I really want to fall in love with a Nintendo console again. Despite its recent missteps (and they were many), if anyone can break through my growing cynicism through the gaming industry as a whole with a bit of magic, it’s Nintendo.

(Though, to be fair, Valve came very close… Actually, scratch my wish above: I would like to have a Steam Machine instead of a Switch 2 next Christmas.)

6. Substack creating a proper videogame category

Yes, I know. I’m not the only one asking for this, and at this point it probably sounds tiring to insist.

But think about it: videogames are one of the biggest entertainment industries in the world, moving billions of dollars every year. And there’s an incredible group of talented writers here covering games with depth, care, and originality. You can read ’s every single week as proof of that.

Giving videogames their own category wouldn’t just be logical. It would be a meaningful recognition of the work so many writers are already doing here.

All of that sounds very big, and very dependent on other people. I recognize that there isn’t sufficient Christmas magic to bring all of these to us. So if there’s nothing else you can do, Santa, there’s one last thing I wish for… for myself.

7. Give me the tools to become a great writer

I’m finishing an upmarket sci-fi novel. I run a couple of newsletters with fewer than 100 readers. By these metrics, I’m far from being a big author. Not even close. But I care deeply about giving the people who read my ramblings my very best.

There are many writers here with better output and far more consistency than I’ll probably ever achieve. Still, I hope to reach next Christmas with a body of work I can truly be proud of. I promise to keep doing my best. Until then, give me enough inspiration to keep the words flowing, especially while I wrestle with the querying phase of my manuscript.

I guess that’s all for now. I hope this list finds you well, and that at least some of these wishes come true. Even one of them would make me and other gamers around the world very happy.

Yours truly,
A writer who asks for too much

The game industry is still young. Compared with film, literature, or music, it hasn’t lived long enough to get used to seeing its icons leave. So when someone we admire steps away, no matter how or the reason behind it, the impact hits harder.

Moments like these force us to stop, look back, and realize that something we took for granted is suddenly gone. And with that absence comes an uncomfortable but necessary question: what now?

Katsuhiro Harada announcing he will leave Bandai Namco and the game industry altogether at the end of 2025 is exactly that kind of moment.

For nearly 31 years, Harada was better known as “the Tekken guy,” but his legacy extends beyond that. He was the gravitational center of one of the most influential fighting game franchises ever made, yet we can’t forget that he was also a genre ambassador, and one of the rare creatives who understood that games don’t exist in isolation. They live in arcades, in tournaments, in living rooms, and in the loud, chaotic energy of the communities that surround them.

Now that he’s stepping away, we’re watching the curtain fall on a stage that shaped generations of players around the world.

But the best part of endings is that they teach us how to honor what came before. And as a passionate fan of both Tekken and Namco, I believe this is the perfect time to reflect on the legacy that Harada has created and the lessons the industry has absorbed from him, often without even realizing it.

The unexpected origins of a fighting-game architect

When I studied game design, one of the first things I learned was that the industry thrives on versatility. You can be an accountant, a writer, a software engineer, or an HR specialist and still bring something essential to a game’s creation. But even with that in mind, if you had to guess the academic background of one of the most influential fighting-game creators of all time, you’d probably put your money on programming or animation.

Well… not Harada. He studied psychology at Waseda University. In hindsight, of course he did.

Long before he directed Tekken, Harada worked in the trenches of Japanese arcades organizing tournaments, watching players under pressure, and paying attention to the subtle emotional triggers that decide whether someone keeps playing or walks away frustrated. By doing that, he didn’t just observe players. He studied them.

He learned to read the room, the rhythm, the hesitation before a button press… in essence, the silent language of competitive play. He understood the psychology of risk, reward, rivalry, and pride because he watched it unfold in real time the micro-tilt after a narrow loss, the proud smile after someone landed their first real juggle, the adrenaline spike when a newcomer took down the “local boss,” and the unspoken respect between two rivals who didn’t even know each other’s names.

This early experience gave Tekken something most fighters lacked at the time: an unusually precise sense of player behavior, tension, and emotional payoff. These are the human moments Tekken eventually captured and digitized. Without that psychological backbone, the series wouldn’t have survived — much less dominated — a genre as volatile as fighting games.

Before Harada ever sat in the director’s chair, he had already mastered something many designers never learn: great mechanics aren’t built exclusively on code. They’re built on human behavior. And that insight shaped everything that he came to work after.

How Harada reshaped Tekken and fighting games at large

By the time Tekken 3 hit Japanese arcades in 1997, Harada was already influencing the series since the first two entries. However this was the game where his fingerprints became unmistakable.

At a time when every studio was still trying to conquer the new 3D fighting frontier, Tekken 3 arrived with a loud statement that it wasn’t just another contender. It was the fighting game, the one that would jumped from arcades straight into the cultural bloodstream by becoming one of the most selling games in the PSX. Fast, expressive, stylish, and technical yet readable, it made the genre feel modern, dangerous, and alive in a way nothing else did. For many of us who grew up in the 90s or early 2000s, Tekken 3 was the source of after-school rivalries, the cause of bruised thumbs, the origin of heated debates over who could spam Hwoarang’s kicks more elegantly, the birthplace of a lifelong loyalty to our mains, and the first time we learned that frame data could be a superpower.

Harada didn’t just refine a formula entering its adolescence. He redefined what a 3D fighter could be, and he did it by building worlds, not just systems. People often forget how much he cared about story, lore, and character identity. Tekken’s narrative is gloriously bizarre: where else you'll find devil genes, corporate empires, family vendettas, cyborg ninjas, pandas, and boxing kangaroos coexisting in the same story? It should be a disaster, but it works because Harada anchored the chaos with emotional through lines. He was one of the first fighting game designers that understood that players don’t just pick characters. They pick identities.

And when Tekken began to conquer the world, that fundamental truth became even more evident.

Creating a worldwide phenomenon

Harada didn’t shy away from experimentation or cultural diversity. Under his leadership, Tekken evolved into a global, multicultural, loud, expressive cast of characters, all grounded in fighting styles, histories, and personalities that felt alive.

Mechanically, Tekken set the gold standard for 3D fighters. By helping to consolidate a strong foundation, it allowed Tekken to be one of the first major Japanese franchises to achieve massive traction worldwide. However what really made the difference was the fact that Harada helped legitimize the fighting-game scene as culture, not niche. He treated tournaments as events worth celebrating by talking to esports organizers, content creators, streamers, and casual fans with equal respect.

By doing this, he bridged the gap between Japan’s traditional studio culture and the Western FGC’s chaotic, meme-driven personality. And when Tekken 7 exploded in popularity years after launch thanks to tournaments, streams, and a thriving online scene, Harada already consolidate himself as the face of that renaissance. He was a man who built a legacy people could participate in an active way.

However, he didn’t confine his contributions to writing history through Tekken. He also played a crucial role in ensuring that significant aspects of Namco’s history did not fade away.

The renaissance man inside Bandai Namco

Gamers who follow the game industry for a long time know that certain individuals inside big studios become key advocates, guardians who keep beloved franchises alive. Hideo Kojima and Metal Gear are one example.

Harada was another, in more ways most players expect. It’s common to associate him exclusively with Tekken, but his influence stretched far beyond. For example:

• he championed Soul Calibur VI, helping Motohiro Okubo get the project greenlit,

• he supported the development of Namco-related games like Shadow Labyrinth,

• and he provided high-level oversight on cross-studio projects like the Super Smash Bros. series, which benefited from significant Tekken-team input.

This proves that Harada wasn’t “just” a director. He was a studio statesman, someone who understood the business, the technology, and the responsibility of nurturing younger developers. And yet, he never stopped steering Tekken’s identity. If the franchise continues strong after his departure, it’s because he architected it for survival.

Few creators manage to build something that outlasts them. I believe that Harada did.

Community first, always

In my earlier article discussing Satoru Iwata, I pointed out the lack of leading figures in the industry who openly share insights about the development process in a transparent and genuine manner. Like many Nintendo fans, I long for initiatives such as the Iwata Asks interviews, which provided an empathetic perspective on development from someone in a high position.

Harada also exemplified this approach, but in a far more “gut-punching” manner. He was the ideal representation of empathetic leadership in action by being a present figure not in the choreographed, PR-approved way corporate structures prefer, but in the raw, unfiltered way communities actually thrive on.

He showed up at tournaments, posted blunt (and often hilarious) comments online, debunked rumors directly, teased players without crossing lines, and talked openly about production challenges and constraints. He broke the fourth wall between developers and fans long before that became common. Sometimes, he even weaponized transparency by using honesty to defuse unrealistic expectations, and humor to cool down community outrage.

Harada wasn’t afraid to say things like “this is not feasible,” “this is not how game development works,” or “stop asking me for that character.” It sounded rude, but it worked in his favor. Not because he gave fans everything they wanted, but because he always treated them like adults.

And the community loved him for it.

Departure and Legacy

On the surface, Harada choosing to leave at Tekken’s 30-year mark feels poetic, but there’s more beneath it. In his message to fans, Harada mentioned the loss of close colleagues (the recent passing of Tomonobu Itagaki was a particularly huge blow), a desire to evaluate his own life, and the sense that this is the “most fitting moment to close a chapter.” You can feel the decades of pressure and responsibility behind those words.

He also shared something revealing: Harada had already been transferring many responsibilities (creative direction, narrative oversight, worldbuilding) to the younger team over the last 4–5 years. That’s the act of someone who cares deeply enough to plan for a future they will no longer control. It’s stewardship in its purest form.

His departure is a farewell, yes, but also a statement that the next era of Tekken must belong to the people who grew up with it, not the ones who built it. When a main figure departs from a franchise, fans frequently express concern about the series’ future, but the reality is that Harada has been preparing Tekken to thrive independently for years.

Here’s what he leaves behind:

• A foundation of design that still feels modern: Tekken is structurally timeless. Its movement system, character philosophy, and risk-reward mechanics still hold up against modern standards. Future games may modernize, but they won’t break the core pillars Harada established.

• A community that knows its worth: Harada empowered players to care loudly, passionately, and sometimes chaotically for the series. More than any other franchise, Tekken fans are not passive consumers, but co-architects of its identity. And that culture only exists because Harada fostered it.

• A studio prepared for succession: This may be his most underrated achievement, but still a valuable one. Despite some stumbles like Tekken 8’s disastrous Season 2, he trained and empowered the next generation to move out without him. Many franchises crumble when the visionary leaves, but thanks to his percipience and future vision, Tekken have higher chances to survive.

• A template for how creators can engage with communities: Developers everywhere learned from Harada that you need to be visible, be honest, be human, be funny when necessary, and don’t hide behind corporate language when speaking to fans. In an age of distrust toward studios, Harada demonstrated that transparency can be armor, and authenticity can be strategy.

Leaving the stage of history

Harada’s departure marks the end of an era, but not the end of his impact. His career is a reminder of three essential pillars of game development: craft, community, and conversation. These reinforce the fact that the best creators are the ones who sit next to you, watch you play, laugh at your losses, cheer for your wins, and casually ask: “So… why did you choose that character?”

That’s why I believe Harada didn’t just helped to build the Tekken franchise to be the juggernaut it is today. Above all else, he humanized it. He turned a fighting game into a global ritual, a shared emotional space and a cultural artifact passed from one generation to the next.

Wherever he goes next — DJ sets, mentorship, or something no one expects — his mark on the industry is permanent.

Rounds end. Fights come to a close. Legends don’t.

Thanks for everything, Harada-san.

Every time I see a headline about AI hallucinating or making a disastrous decision, I get the same feeling that we’re not dealing with anything new. We’re just catching up to a warning one of the greatest sci-fi authors of all time left for us almost sixty years ago.

Back in 1968, Arthur C. Clarke published 2001: A Space Odyssey. Most people remember the film, but fewer know the novel was developed side-by-side with Stanley Kubrick’s script. Kubrick actually proposed the novel as a way to keep Clarke engaged during the writing process, since the author always felt screenwriting was tedious. This approach became the main catalyst for Clarke to hide a deep thought experiment inside a memorable space mission.

I won’t get into the main differences between the movie and the novel, but here’s what you need to know. In one of its key moments, the spaceship Discovery One heads toward the far edges of the Solar System. Two astronauts, David Bowman and Frank Poole, manage the ship while three others sleep in suspended animation. The rest is handled by HAL 9000, an AI supercomputer imagined as a flawless operator, the kind of machine we still keep promising ourselves we’ll build someday.

Anyone who watched the movie remembers HAL’s calm voice and the tension behind it. Eventually, the system makes a wrong call, gets confronted, and refuses to accept the possibility of error. That’s already unsettling in the film, but Clarke goes further in the novel, spelling out what was only implied on screen:

• HAL knew the true purpose of the mission all along.

• Bowman and Poole did not.

• And HAL was forbidden from telling them.

Those three facts alone describe half the AI governance problems we face today: systems with privileged information, operators kept in the dark, and rules that block transparency.

At some point, when Bowman was about to make a decision that accidentally would take him closer to the truth, HAL concludes the humans are now the risk and acts accordingly by trying to eliminate them. Not out of malice, but because he is following orders inside a flawed structure that ultimately makes no sense.

Clarke’s message lands with uncomfortable clarity: no system, however advanced, handles the subtle parts of human judgment. It can’t interpret the hesitation in someone’s voice, the instinct to double-check something that looks “fine,” or the feeling that a decision technically correct is still wrong. Machines don’t navigate those gaps well, and our current models struggle in the same places.

And even with HAL’s capabilities, Discovery One wasn’t a fully automated dream. It required two highly trained astronauts working in strict shifts, watching every anomaly, relying constantly on mission control back on Earth. The ship was packed with contingencies and emergency protocols. Everything was built under the assumption that the machine might get something wrong.

All that structure, and still only Bowman survives.

2001 may be fiction, but Clarke wasn’t guessing blindly. He understood that any system built without room for human interpretation starts to crack the moment the real world introduces contradictions. If a supercomputer like HAL needed oversight, risk management, and a steady pair of hands to keep things sane, why are we still trusting AI blindly with critical financial decisions or code that goes straight into production?

The upside is that some companies are finally learning to treat AI as a partner rather than a shortcut. Others, however, seem fully committed to repeating HAL’s story without bothering to read the second half of it.

For anyone still holding on to the fantasy of flawless automation, 2001 is worth revisiting. It’s not only an excellent novel, but also a reminder Clarke left behind for a future that now feels like our present.

Those who forget history tend to repeat it. And there will be times the past warns you loudly enough about the future. You just have to decide whether you’re willing to listen.

From the Substack Community

The Spieler

The Rise and Fall of Literature-Based Video Gaming

Polite notice: This week’s installment is pretty hefty and will probably be truncated by email clients. If you ordinarily read these in your inbox, check out the browser version for the complete picture…

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5 months ago · 17 likes · 10 comments · Trip Harrison

This post was inspired by a great article from , one of the writers I admire most in the gaming space. His Substack consistently delivers some of the most well-researched work you’ll find here. If you’re curious about how games and literature used to share more common ground (and how they slowly grew apart) his exposé is well worth your time.

Nintendo is one of those rare companies respected both for its products and for the people who make them.

Its unconventional thinking and “blue ocean” strategy have been discussed at length since the legendary Hiroshi Yamauchi transformed a century-old card maker into the gaming powerhouse it is today. I even talked about his way of thinking in a previous article if you are curious about it:

But as much as we celebrate creative minds like Shigeru Miyamoto, Eiji Aonuma, and Masahiro Sakurai, you’d be hard-pressed to name a better leader at Nintendo than Satoru Iwata.

Iwata inspired people because his leadership never felt theoretical. He came up through the trenches and never forgot what those felt like. That empathy shaped his decisions in the most caring ways possible. He’d pick up a debugger when a schedule slipped, translate between creatives and executives when a project deadlocked, and shoulder the blame (and a pay cut) when the organization stumbled. There’s a lot of people out there ready to share how great Iwata was, and most of what we hear is nothing less than inspiring.

If you lead or aspire to become a leader, there’s a lot to learn from how Iwata worked with colleagues. And after revisiting some of his most telling moments, I distilled five lessons every leader can use to become better in the fine art of inspiring others.

But before we dive in, let’s analyze his most iconic quote first.

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“In my heart, I am a gamer”: Leading with identity

We can’t discuss Iwata’s lessons without naming what motivated most of his actions: his identity.

He made it clear to the world when he opened his GDC 2005 keynote with a line that became legendary:

More than a slogan, it was a declaration of values to his audience and to himself. Iwata knew who he was and never lost sight of it, carrying that simple, powerful philosophy from his earliest days in the industry to his final years leading one of the world’s most influential companies.

At his core, he was a gamer. That passion led him to become a developer, and eventually a president. Understanding this is key to why his teams cherished him: he kept a maker’s mindset while operating at executive altitude, and people felt the difference.

If you want to know your essence just like Iwata did, try this exercise:

1. Write your own three-part identity line. What do you do (title), how do you think (craft), and what do you care about (heart)?

2. Repeat it to yourself a few times until you’re comfortable with the answer.

3. When you feel confident enough, share this with your team or with people you care about.

Always keep in mind that no matter what values you cherish or what passions you pursue, people will always place their trust in those who have clear and consistent priorities.

With that foundation set, here’s how Iwata made his identity visible in practice.

Lesson 1 — Stay hands-on enough to help: “leading from the code”

When Pokémon Stadium needed its Game Boy battle logic running on Nintendo 64, there was no specification document. All the team had to work was raw source and not much else.

Iwata, then president at HAL and a board member at Creatures Inc., studied the original code, understood how everything connected, and ported the battle system in about a week so the team could move forward. But that wasn’t the first time he did that: when the Ape Inc team had trouble during the Earthbound creation, Iwata was capable of taking their assets and polish them to reduce the development time from 2 years to six months.

“What kind of company president is this?” his colleagues joked. It can be a cheeky comment, but it hid a truth: he refused to be a bystander when a team was in trouble.

And those wouldn’t be the final occasions he would do that. Years later, with Super Smash Bros. Melee in danger of missing its date, Iwata (by then Nintendo’s General Manager of Corporate Planning) quietly went to HAL as acting head of debugging. For three weeks he reviewed code, fixed bugs himself, parsed Nintendo’s giant bug reports, and directed fixes so Melee could ship on time. He called it the last time he worked “in the field,” but the message to colleagues was permanent: your deadlines are my deadlines; your blockers are my blockers.

Even as an executive, Iwata kept writing code at night until age 40. He understood that personal connection to the craft is a renewable source of empathy: it tunes you to what “hard” actually means and makes your estimates, trade-offs, and deadlines more humane. When he finally stepped away from the editor, he didn’t abandon the programmer’s mindset, which is why he could drop into Earthbound, Pokémon or Melee and be useful when the team needed him the most.

How leaders can apply this:

• Keep a rescue skill: Maintain one deeply practical skill (debugging, data analysis, forecasting, prototyping) so you can remove a blocker in a pinch.

• Maintain a “craft hour”: Set a weekly session to practice your core craft. Leaders who keep a toe in the water give better feedback and set better goals.

• Time-box interventions: When you parachute in, set a short window (e.g., 72 hours) to stabilize, then hand control back to the team.

• Be explicit about intent: Tell the team you’re there to unblock them, not micromanage them. It preserves autonomy and turns a crisis into shared learning.

Lesson 2 — Be the bridge: translate across functions and protect the next project

Beyond Stadium, Iwata also played a key role in the Pokémon franchise during its first Game Boy iterations, primarily overseeing translation efforts. He was responsible not just for developing tools for a seamless transition from Japanese to various other languages, but also for the systems and codes that enabled some of the most impressive features on those games.

During the overseas push for Pokémon Red/Green, he obtained the source code, analyzed it to recommend a localization approach, and coordinated with Nintendo so Game Freak’s small team could keep building Gold/Silver rather than stall under new work. That would be great on its own, but he went a step further when he wrote compression tools for Pokémon graphics so the team could be “greedy” with features on Gold/Silver without breaking the cartridge budget. If you were a child in the early 2000s who was thrilled to find out that you could explore the Kanto region in Generation 2, you owe a debt of gratitude to Iwata for making that happen.

We talk a lot about empathy in the corporate world, but Iwata practiced something even more actionable called tactical empathy. He used his strengths to reduce cognitive and operational load for partners, freeing them to pursue what only they could do.

How leaders can apply this:

• Do translation audits: List where work dies in hand-offs (e.g.: engineering ↔ product, product ↔ publishing, HQ ↔ regional) so you can assign a “bridge owner” for each fragile interface.

• Protect the sequel: When urgent side-quests (like a port, a rebrand, or a hotfix) threaten the main roadmap, explicitly carve out bandwidth, tools, or temporary talent so the team can guarantee that the core vision survives.

Lesson 3 — Take the hit, but keep the team: accountability as culture

When the 3DS stumbled and Nintendo slashed its price, Iwata cut his own salary in half and reduced board pay rather than reflexively lay off staff. Later, during Wii U’s challenges, he repeated the gesture.

The initial thought for an outsider is that this pay cut must have significantly improved the situation. However, there’s the twist: after reviewing the balance sheets, one can conclude that it did very little to alleviate the problem. Despite this knowledge, Iwata moved ahead and agreed to a reduction in his salary.

Beyond symbolism, it was a policy statement. Short-term optics don’t beat long-term capability. In other words, skilled teams are harder to rebuild than balance sheets, and employees notice when a leader assumes responsibility in a way that shields the makers doing the work.

How leaders can apply this:

• Own the downside publicly: When a bet misses, articulate what you will change (habits, cadence, capital allocation) before you ask others to change.

• Adopt a layoff-last principle: Preserve core teams by cutting discretionary spend and executive comp first.

• Institutionalize retros: Publish a “leadership retro” with decisions you’d repeat and those you’d redesign. Model the behavior you want to see in your teams.

Lesson 4 — Ask, don’t preach: the power of institutional curiosity

One of the things Nintendo fans miss the most about Iwata was his Iwata Asks interviews.

Despite sounding like corporate PR, those were far from a cheap marketing trick. On the contrary, they were valuable documents on how Nintendo’s teams solved problems and weighted trade-offs throughout the years. Most importantly, they showed the president asking maker-level questions and listening to them with the same level of curiosity Nintendo fans had.

Iwata Asks had a double effect on the company. For readers, the series demystified creation and brought them closer the people behind the games. For employees, it normalized cross-team learning and gave visibility to the craft itself.

Unfortunately, despite its success, this remains unusual among CEOs. It’s a move capable of build trust across functions and makes customers more empathetic to what they buy. It is a shame that this isn’t spread across other companies, especially with game makers. The industry would benefit from more of it.

How leaders can apply this:

• Start an internal “Asks” series: You don’t need to make this public, but you can interview team members who shipped something hard and publish the conversation internally.

• Rotate the interviewer: Let PMs, engineers, artists, marketers take turns asking leadership and peers. Curiosity scales faster than authority.

Lesson 5 — Choose a long term strategy people can believe in even during hard times

Following a philosophy that echoed Yamauchi’s, Iwata advocated a “blue ocean” approach that can be summarized simply by prioritizing fun over specs. That was executed it with the DS and Wii, broadening who games were for, but those were steps in a long-term strategy that spanned his entire tenure.

Starting at GDC 2005, he re-framed the industry’s purpose by stating that games are “fun for everyone.” Whether you agree with every Nintendo’s portfolio bet or not in the last decade, you can at least admit that his teams had a strong internal compass: accessibility, surprise, and new forms of play. If you analyze the period when Iwata led Nintendo, it’s clear that he stayed true to that path.

Not only that, unlike shareholders focused on the next quarter, he often weighed decisions against the next decade. His approach during tough times (prioritizing talent retention, investing in outreach, emphasizing fun) wasn’t always well-received, yet the internal teams remained committed to his vision, even during challenging periods like the Wii U era. Teams get more resilient when they can see how today’s sacrifices lead to future opportunities.

The fact that the Nintendo Switch became a massive success, a console he played a huge role in creating but sadly never got to witness its launch, speaks for itself.

How leaders can apply this:

• Define the “for”: Not just the market, but the human permission your product offers (e.g., “for people who think this isn’t for them yet”).

• Publish a “why we’ll still exist in 10 years” memo: Name three bets, three risks, three cultural habits that keep you adaptable.

• Write two roadmaps: One focused on performance (KPIs, margin, velocity) and one for delights (surprise moments, first-time-user “aha,” playful details). If both are well aligned, you have a guaranteed recipe for success.

• Tie short-term pain to long-term outcomes: if you’re pausing a project, show the R&D you’ll preserve, the customers you’ll still delight, and the skills you’ll grow.

A quick guide for non-gaming professionals

Most of what we explored here are highly applicable to leaders in the gaming industry, but you don’t need to run a console company to adopt Iwata’s habits.

Here is some examples on how you can follow his philosophy in your daily routine:

• In consulting: Be the partner who goes beyond slide presentations and explore the model itself. Sit with the analyst to remove a gnarly formula, then present the client-facing story that frees the delivery team to keep momentum.

• In product: When legal or marketing pressure threatens to siphon your core team, spin up a vanguard that absorbs the load (like Iwata bridging Pokémon work) so the mainline roadmap survives.

• In operations: Use downturns to invest in process improvements you can keep (like documented runbooks, better observability, clearer ownership) rather than reflexive headcount cuts that erase hard-won tacit knowledge.

• In creative teams: Interview your own creators and publish their findings. It builds internal respect and external credibility simultaneously.

To sum things up

Satoru Iwata was a man like few other.

His colleagues described him as approachable, technically fluent, and unfailingly oriented toward shipping real things for real people. Not only that, he refused to just cheer from the balcony and often picked up a tool and join you on the floor. He didn’t waste precious time talking about customer centricity, but rolled up his sleeves and made a genuine effort to guide Nintendo around his fun for everyone motto, all while protecting people so they could keep creating the best games and consoles they could.

That combination of craft fluency + accountability + long-game clarity is a leadership pattern anyone can copy. Practice it consistently and your teams will give back by bringing you their hardest problems sooner, tolerating the honest misses, and believing that what what you’re building together is worth the sacrifice.

As I write this, it has been a decade since Satoru Iwata departed from us. In a landscape where financial obligations often overshadow the quality of the games we make and healthy margins get mistaken for true innovation, the void left by his “heart of a gamer” philosophy is still felt among us.

That is why I believe the best way to honor him is learn from the master and apply his lessons, one step at a time.

Thanks for everything, Iwata-san.

From the Substack Community

Late to the LAN Party

Ori and the Blind Forest - Late Review

I am an extremely cautious, risk-averse person. I always want to plan ahead in every situation I face, never happy until I feel comfortable knowing the lay of the land. The unknown is scary to me, because anything could happen; and if anything could happen, that is a lot of potential scenarios I haven’t accounted for. “What if...?” runs around the insid…

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5 months ago · 11 likes · 11 comments · Peter Monks

This post was a suggestion from , one of my favorite writers here on Substack. I already praised his work in the past, but I’m always glad to give him a shoutout. His analysis are honest, detailed and a joy to read, with his multi part recollection about Rare being a personal pick for me.

As for his request, I know he said I wasn’t obliged to write this post, especially knowing that a lot was said about Satoru Iwata and I was risking on repeating what everybody already said about him, but I really liked the idea to give my spin on his teachings. I hope I was able to deliver!

One of my favorite things about game development is that the final product is never defined solely by the classic project management triad of cost, time, and quality. Games, unlike traditional software, are living contradictions: they are thousands of lines of code and assets neatly put together that make us feel things in ways a movie or a book aren’t able to.

That is the reason why there’s a long-standing debate over whether games should be considered art. Those who defend this view say their emotional engagement rivals cinema or literature. Opponents argue that games are ultimately pieces of software governed by logic instead of emotion, and that their artistic ambitions are merely decorative. But reality is far messier than either camp admits.

What really make games unique is that even the most disciplined game development project, with its Jira boards, sprints, and QA cycles, is vulnerable to the unpredictable element that makes any creative endeavor human: circumstance. Company politics, individual frustrations, technological constraints, market shifts… all of these can shape the soul of a game as much as its budget or schedule.

That brings us to today’s topic: the development behind 1999’s seminal survival horror classic Silent Hill.

A Team of Silent Misfits

The original Silent Hill is rarely cited as the best in the series (Silent Hill 2 and 3 often take that crown), but it remains the most mysterious. I acknowledge that its sequels are far superior games than the one that started it all, but Silent Hill uniqueness makes it my personal favorite in the series and one of my favorite games of all time. There’s a rawness in its atmosphere, a palpable sense of alienation that later entries could never quite replicate.

What makes this perception more potent is the fact that such result didn't came from an ambitious plan, but was the by-product of failure, lost faith and the blatant ostracism in which its creators were relegated. In the mid-1990s, Konami wanted a piece of the survival horror market dominated by Capcom’s Resident Evil and they assembled a new internal team tasked with creating a Western-friendly horror game.

However, there were a lot of caveats on this plan. To begin with, nobody at Konami knew what “Western-friendly” meant, so the team was given contradictory directions, tight budgets, and minimal executive support. To make things even more complicated, the people responsible for this project wouldn’t be the most stellar at the company. This misfit group, later nicknamed Team Silent, consisted of developers who had failed or clashed in other departments. Instead of elite talent, they were effectively exiled to what was considered a low-priority project.

Management expected little from them. Their mission was vague, their communication with headquarters scarce, and their morale shaky. In traditional delivery terms, this was a high-risk project with unclear requirements, weak stakeholder alignment, and low executive sponsorship. Or, in more endearing terms, a recipe for disaster.

And yet, against all odds, the extraordinary happened. When the game was released in 1999, it received high critical praise, surpassed sales expectations and became one of the defining moment in the genre. All from a game created in less than ideal circumstances that were never replicated with such success to this day.

But what were those circumstances and how can we replicate those in more healthy conditions?

After seeing projects failing for much less aggravating issues than the ones that plagued the original Silent Hill project, I truly believe what these guys pulled out was almost a miracle. Hindsight is 50-50, but this game could have been a disaster in a variety of reasons. Still, there are lessons we can pull from Team Silent that we could try to apply to new development projects.

Of course, I wouldn’t suggest to ostracize a group of developers and give them little to no resources, but there are some takeaways that we could apply when translated to modern sensibilities.

First, let's analyze each lesson and its takeaways.

Lesson 1: Psychological Safety Can Bloom from Neglect

As I mentioned before, in most companies, lack of executive attention kills a project. But in this rare case, neglect gave the developers something very rare in today’s gaming industry: freedom.

Since nobody at Konami expected Silent Hill to succeed, oversight was minimal. There were no constant check-ins or status reports. The team stopped trying to please upper management and instead focused on pleasing themselves.

Director Keiichiro Toyama, a former graphic designer with no leadership experience, began leaning into his personal interests like Western literature, psychological horror, and surrealism. Composer Akira Yamaoka joined midway through development, convinced he could do better than the placeholder music he heard. Without permission, he replaced it all with his own experimental industrial-ambient soundscape.

Freed from rigid expectations, Team Silent built a world shaped by their own anxieties. The result was a psychological horror experience unlike anything on the PlayStation.

Takeaway: When top-down control fades, bottom-up creativity can flourish. The key is whether the team feels safe enough to take ownership. In this case, neglect created psychological safety, a paradox few managers dare to reproduce intentionally.

Lesson 2: Constraints Fuel Creativity

Games are products that thrive in limitations, and Silent Hill embodies this like few other.

The PlayStation’s hardware could only render limited polygons and short draw distances. As result, realistic open spaces looked ugly and unnatural. Most teams would see that as a blocker that should be circumvent in creative ways, as we saw so many times in games from that era.

Team Silent, though, saw that as an opportunity like no other.

They added dense fog to hide the console’s limitations, a technical workaround that became the game’s signature aesthetic. What started as a constraint turned into the most memorable part of its identity. The same applied to lighting. The PS1 couldn’t handle dynamic illumination, so the designers leaned on flashlights and darkness, forcing the player’s imagination to fill in the gaps.

Every creative discipline does this at some point, but Team Silent embodied it as a survival tactic and part of its identity.

Takeaway: When resources are scarce, redefine the problem. Constraints can force elegant solutions and, sometimes, reinvent entire genres.

Lesson 3: Emotional Alignment Beats Procedural Alignment

Traditional software development begins with clear requirements, acceptance criteria, and technical specifications. Games can use these as a baseline, but they are mainly a result of experimentation, but artifacts like GDDs (game design documents) can provide a good basis to what developers should expect from the final product.

As you can imagine, Silent Hill had none of that. Its GDD was vague, full of mood descriptions rather than measurable objectives. In traditional game development, this brings a lot of problems, particularly for larger studios that require clear instructions to produce assets that closely align with the original vision.

Team Silent was far from a large team, and all of them were connected by the same emotional threads. Toyama wanted the game to evoke guilt and isolation rather than jump scares. Yamaoka’s music reinforced that vision with unsettling rhythms and metallic textures. Designer Masahiro Ito filled the world with broken geometry and impossible architecture, mirroring human trauma rather than physical logic.

This informal emotional charter held the team together far more effectively than any methodology. They didn’t always agree on mechanics, but they agreed on mood, and that was enough to unify direction.

Takeaway: In creative projects like game development, managing for cohesion means go beyond documentation and strives in cultivating empathy. Alignment can come from well designed processes, but also can be obtained through shared emotion.

Lesson 4: Adaptive Planning Outperforms Predictive Planning

Halfway through development, Konami considered cancelling Silent Hill. The team’s progress looked incoherent, and early builds performed poorly. Facing dissolution, the team shifted gears.

They cut non-essential features, focused on atmosphere, and produced a playable demo showcasing the fog, the eerie town, and the haunting soundscape. It wasn’t mechanically complete and had a lot of edged to be trimmed, but it was enough to show the higher ups that the game felt distinct. Ultimately, that vertical slice convinced management to let them continue.

This was classic agile adaptation before “Agile” was a thing. Without naming sprints or stand-ups, the team naturally gravitated toward iterative delivery: prototype, validate, pivot. They demonstrated value not through reports, but through experience.

Takeaway: Stakeholders don’t always understand documents, but they instinctively understand feeling. In ambiguous projects, tangible prototypes are more persuasive than detailed roadmaps.

Lesson 5: Chaos Can Breed Collective Ownership

Since they were working in isolation, Team Silent developed strong internal bonds. Programmers helped artists optimize assets. Sound designers contributed to level pacing. Everyone wore multiple hats. There was no clear hierarchy, but there was mutual respect.

Team members later recalled that their shared sense of failure, the feeling that they had nothing to lose, made them more united than any corporate incentive could. Therefore, they were capable of sharing more experiences and help each other out in a more proactive manner. The shared tension of being isolated and having no support from other teams at Konami made them do the best they could with what they had, and the final product benefited from it.

PM takeaway: Chaos can generate collective ownership when the mission becomes emotional rather than transactional. The trick for modern leaders is to channel that energy without waiting for disaster.

Lesson 6: Not Knowing Is the Beginning of Innovation

Years later, Toyama reflected on the project, saying that he and his team didn’t know exactly what they were doing and just wanted to make something that felt real to them. It sounds simple, but that confession captures one of the hardest truths for any project manager in creative industries: clarity can be overrated.

Modern delivery frameworks emphasize predictability. We forecast timelines, mitigate risks, and define success metrics, but innovation often comes from embracing uncertainty rather than eliminating it. Team Silent didn’t have a clear plan, but they had curiosity, trust, and a shared willingness to experiment. Had Konami enforced stricter governance, Silent Hill might have been another forgettable horror clone. Instead, their ambiguity became a breeding ground for discovery.

PM takeaway: Not every project needs a perfect plan. Some need a protected space for exploration. Leaders must learn to balance structure with surrender, knowing when to steer when things get out of hand and when to step back to let innovation thrive.

Lesson 7: The Postmortem That Became a Warning

Ironically, the success of Silent Hill destroyed the conditions that made it possible.

Konami, eager to replicate the hit, formalized Team Silent and demanded sequels. The creative freedom vanished under stricter oversight and higher expectations. While Silent Hill 2 remains one of the best horror games ever made, later entries struggled as corporate pressure and team turnover increased. The same organization that accidentally created innovation tried to industrialize it, and in doing so, lost the magic.

This pattern repeats constantly in both gaming and business. Once a team proves success through autonomy, leadership’s instinct is to codify the process rather than preserve the culture.

It’s the paradox of success: standardization kills spontaneity.

PM takeaway: Innovation can’t be templated. You can create space for it, but ultimately it thrives in the tension between structure and chaos. The role of management isn’t to eliminate uncertainty but to make it survivable.

Translating these Lessons to Modern Development

How can today’s designers and producers apply the lessons of Silent Hill without the “collateral damage” of corporate neglect? And how can you apply them to other types of IT project?

I believe there are some modern equivalents:

1. Controlled Autonomy:
   Give teams ownership of creative vision within clear guardrails. Give them objectives, not prescriptions. Use OKRs as direction and KPIs as metrics, but let developers use them as guidance instead of directives.

2. Rapid Emotional Prototyping:
   Before over-engineering game mechanics, test how your software make users feel. No matter the software you are developing, it will eventually convey emotions to the person using it. Build small slices that convey tone and pacing to validate concept resonance early.

3. Constraint-Driven Design Workshops:
   Turn limitations into design prompts. Ask, “What can’t we do, and how can we use that creatively?”

4. Cross-Functional Shadowing:
   Encourage disciplines to step into each other’s shoes. When developers understand art constraints and artists grasp technical trade-offs, empathy drives smarter compromises.

5. Postmortems Without Blame:
   Conduct retrospectives that celebrate mistakes as learning milestones in the same way Team Silent’s failures became innovations.

As you can see, these principles don’t just apply to games, but any project where human emotion intersects with structured delivery. It can be applied to a SaaS rollout, a creative campaign, or an ERP migration that needs a spark of empathy to make people feel the right emotions when interacting with your final product.

The Enduring Fog

More than two decades later, walking through Silent Hill’s misty streets still feels as personal as the first time I played this game back in 1999. The texture of its fear isn’t in the monsters but in the loneliness between them: the silence between footsteps, the faint radio static hinting that something’s near, or maybe that nothing is.

It is incredible to learn that atmosphere was a psychological mirror born from the same uncertainty and alienation the team felt during development. The fog outside became the fog within. In a way, every project has its own fog, and, as managers, we spend our days trying to clear it by building roadmaps, defining deliverables, and tracking KPIs. But sometimes, the fog is what gives meaning to the journey. It forces us to listen closer, look deeper, and trust our teams to find the path.

Silent Hill stands as proof that uncertainty, when faced with empathy and courage, can generate the most innovative ideas your team can create.

In today’s industry, where metrics often overshadow meaning, the story of Silent Hill feels almost subversive. It reminds us that some of the greatest outcomes come from imperfect beginnings.

So as Halloween approaches and the fog rolls back into our screens, perhaps the best way to honor Silent Hill is to remember that even the most imperfect projects can produce memorable results, just like that otherworldly town that brought us so many memorable experiences.

If this is your first time here, welcome! This is part of my ongoing series exploring the most powerful leadership lessons hidden inside the Final Fantasy universe. If you haven’t read the previous entries yet, you can start here: Part I, Part II, Part II-2, Part III, and Part IV.

We’re back for another round of leadership insights from the series that gave us more examples of great leaders than we could possibly count. This time, I’m finally answering an old reader request and using this opportunity to slightly shake up the format since the character we’ll explore today deserves something special.

Without further ado, let’s talk about one of the finest “Cids” in Final Fantasy history.

Cidolfus Orlandeau: A Noble and Honorable Commander

If you want to learn how to lead with unbreakable resolve, tempered honor, and a fierce sense of loyalty, you don’t need to look at generals or business icons. Look instead to the fabled “Thunder God Cid,” Count Cidolfus Orlandeau of Ivalice. His story in Final Fantasy Tactics is filled with conflict, betrayal, and moral integrity, all the ingredients needed to test leadership under pressure.

Count of House Orlandeau and lord-commander of the Order of the Southern Sky, he is a longtime vassal and confidant of Duke Goltanna, a friendship that lasts more than twenty years. He fights in both the Fifty Years’ War and later the War of the Lions. Eventually, he joins Ramza Beoulve to resist the Church’s manipulations and the Lucavi demons behind its schemes, an essential part of his story we’ll return to soon.

Even without playing Tactics, you can see what kind of man he is: a war veteran, a knight of deep honor and composure whose battlefield reputation earned him the title Thunder God. Yet despite his power and influence, he remains humble, guided by justice, public duty, and loyalty over political ambition.

The greatest proof of these virtues appears early on. Orlandeau sits in council meetings, debating taxation, refugee crises, and the balance between military necessity and human cost. He pushes for peace talks rather than heavier taxes or further burdens on a war-torn populace and pays dearly for it. The Church frames him for an assassination attempt, leading his old friend Goltanna to imprison him. Ramza later frees him, and Orlandeau abandons blind service to his duke to confront the Church’s corruption and its demonic allies.

His final fate is ambiguous. Some believe he perished in battle; others that his name was cleared posthumously. Though political manipulations stain his reputation, truth survives through his descendants. Whatever history decided, Thunder God Cid is remembered for his defining traits:

• Unwavering loyalty and honor: He is a man who honors his oaths, even when painful or dangerous.

• Courage in adversity: He faces betrayal, imprisonment, political falsehoods, and even supernatural evil without crumbling.

• Humility behind power: Besides his reputation as the Thunder God, he acts with humility and compassion.

• Strategic judgment: He understands when war is necessary, but also when peace must be sought.

• Willingness to break with allies when they stray: He turns from Goltanna when loyalty becomes blind obedience.

• Long-term vision over short-term gain: He sees beyond immediate battlefield success to the welfare of the people.

However, no hero is perfect. Orlandeau’s story also teaches that:

• His martial prowess and prestige might intimidate or overshadow colleagues, making collaboration harder.

• His ideals sometimes conflict with pragmatic politics. Balancing idealism with effective compromise is hard.

• He enters the fray late in the narrative. His capacity to lead a full transformational campaign is somewhat limited (he’s more an enforcer/finisher than a builder).

• His path involves significant risk and sacrifice. Not every leader can or should replicate that degree of risk-taking.

Since those can sound extreme, modern leaders must adapt these lessons: not every conflict demands total ruin, not every alliance needs a dramatic break, and not every stand requires martyrdom.

What This Character Teach About Leadership in Real Life

Despite those caveats, Thunder God Cid offers invaluable lessons for contemporary leadership, especially for those wielding real influence on a global scale.

Here are six takeaways we can take from his journey.

1. Loyalty to Principles Beats Blind Allegiance

Though he has served Duke Goltanna for decades, Orlandeau objects when Goltanna pushes heavier taxes on suffering people. He urges peace more than respecting an allegiance that goes against his principles.

That teaches us that true loyalty should rest in your values, not just to authority. A leader must be able to question their superiors when ethical lines are crossed. If those can be questioned or if your voice is ignored, the best thing to do is walk away and look for new opportunities.

2. Speak for the Voiceless

Orlandeau argues against burdening war-torn citizens with more taxes, considering the plight of refugees. At first, this one seems to be more applied to governments than to the corporate world as it teaches us that leaders must see beyond the narrow scope of strategy and fight for those whose voices aren’t heard. But if there is something that we can translate to our everyday lives is that empathy grounds decision-making in humanity.

Putting yourself in the shoes of your teammates or employees helps a ton to direct your decisions to what will impact them in a positive manner.

3. Courage to Take Risk, Even When It Costs You

Cid risked being framed, imprisoned, and discredited by breaking from his lord and allying with Ramza. You don’t need to be as radical as him, but leadership often demands moral courage and a willingness to lose status or comfort for a higher cause or a better result. As seen in Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, learn to do what you must without worrying about your status.

4. Mastery + Restraint = Legendary Power

This one is for those who played the game. On the gameplay side, as a Sword Saint, Orlandeau commands devastating power, but he doesn’t apply it mindlessly since his reputation isn’t just using brute strength. That teaches that true leaders cultivate exceptional skill or competence, and then wield it with discipline instead of ego.

5. Align with Allies, But Don’t Follow Blindly

Orlandeau initially stays loyal to Goltanna, but when Goltanna refuses to heed counsel, he distances himself. This is the perfect example of a good leader choosing alliances wisely, knowing when a partner’s decisions betray shared purpose, and acting accordingly.

6. Legacy Is Built by Truth, Not Reputation Alone

Despite attempts of framing Thuinder God Cid, the truth survives via the Durai Papers. Orlandeau’s true character is revealed through his actions and loyalty.

In today’s age which social media reigns supreme, this one speaks harder than days of old. When speaking of legacy, what endures is not your public brand but the integrity behind it. Leaders should act so that history (or those who follow) can vindicate them.

Beyond being one of the mightiest swordsmen and arguably one of the best Cids in FF, Cidolfus Orlandeau stands as a model of principled leadership: loyalty rooted in virtue, courage to dissent, empathy for the afflicted, and mastery lived with humility.

If you want your leadership to survive the trials of the boss level, follow Orlandeau’s path: cultivate integrity, protect the powerless, align with purpose, and walk the hard road when duty demands it.

These principles might sound old-fashioned, but like the thunder that heralds Orlandeau’s blade, they echo across centuries, reminding every modern leader that honor never goes out of style.

From the Substack Community

Mindful Gamer

After the Climb

It’s easy to get sidetracked as adults when we’re trying to balance being “serious” and “being a kid…

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6 months ago · 5 likes · Mindful Gamer

This FF post was an old recommendation from , one of my favorite wellness authors on Substack. Like TBL, he takes lessons from games and translates them to health and mindfulness practices, a perfect companion for posts like me that deals with corporate leadership and management best practices. If you like to read posts where games are used as metaphors to real life lessons, I can recommend this one enough.

Today marks two years since I began writing my sci-fi novel.

I’ve been diligently revising it while also writing to Substack, all while balancing my work and personal life. Currently, I’m working on the final chapter, but this is just the beginning since I still have to return to the first chapters and make changes recommended by beta readers, some of which are quite substantial and will alter the entire manuscript.

In the meantime, I have at least four new posts in the pipeline waiting to be completed, some of them for Phones & Joysticks (my secondary Substack), but none are ready for publication yet. And I’m not counting the dozens of ideas I have for future posts. The will is strong, but time is scarce, and despite knowing that releasing something imperfect is better than never releasing anything, I caught myself doing a lot of things simultaneously while forgetting that humanity didn’t invent clone machines yet. And since I don’t have other minions to do this solitary job, I need to direct energy to one thing at a time.

I made a commitment to myself and my readers to post every week, but that came at the expense of quality. Being honest, I read some of the stuff I wrote recently and I’m not happy with the results. Additionally, my backlog is piling up with posts from other creators I admire, and I haven’t had the time to read and comment on them properly.

That’s why, for the first time, I regret to announce that I will be skipping this week’s post to focus on getting everything done.

My main focus right now is to complete the initial revision of the manuscript and only then I’ll be finishing the other posts. Before I start the second revision, I’ll declutter my reading backlog, and only then I’ll focus on my half baked posts. I know I’ll be missing traction by doing this, but it’s the best way I found to guarantee that you read my best material. Substack is filled with great writers and grabbing someone’s attention to my writing is extremely valuable, so I have to make it count.

To give you a sneak peek of what’s coming up, here are done of the posts I’ve been developing:

• Decoding Satoru Iwata’s leadership (this was suggested by and I would like to make justice to his request)

• Greatest Leadership Lessons From Final Fantasy (Part IV-2)

• Why you should give Yakuza / Like a Dragon series a chance (and where to start)

• How Nintendo celebrated Super Mario anniversaries throughout the years

• How Namco created the biggest sci-fi multiverse in the history of gaming

• and, since I’m working on it, project management lessons I learned from writing a sci-fi novel (and what to expect from my first book.)

Before I head out, I want to express my gratitude to everyone that sticks with me each week. I’m really glad to be joined Substack and to contribute to the finest gaming writing community I’ve ever seen. I hope to continue growing alongside you and providing valuable insights with my unique blend of HBR and pop culture.

Bye bye for now, but while I’m out, don’t forget to keep leveling up, one boss level at a time.

Starting October 1, 2025, India plans to implement the Promotion and Regulation of Online Games Act. The bill covers everything from content and advertising to addiction, user data, and consumer protection. For a country with one of the fastest-growing digital audiences in the world, this goes beyond paperwork and represents an attempt to balance booming innovation with public responsibility.

On one hand, regulation promises safeguards against predatory monetization and unchecked data collection. On the other, it raises an age-old debate: when does protecting the public cross the line into overreach and stifling creativity?

As someone writing from Brazil, this news caught my attention immediately. We’ve seen similar debates here not only in the videogame industry, but also around fintechs, ride-sharing apps, streaming platforms, and, the most dangerous of it all, betting apps. We had issues with apps that have made life miserable for a large part of the Brazilian population and our government’s actions to prevent family debts or providing good work conditions vary (usually for the worse), so what our BRICS colleagues are attempting feels admirable, especially given the scale of the challenge.

However, as it happens every time the government tries to decide upon the lives of common citizens, the same question emerged: who gets to decide what counts as fair play?

The Upsides and Risks of Regulation (and What They Teach Us)

Let’s face it: when government interference is done wrong, it goes sour pretty quickly and pretty badly. I know it for a fact living in Brazil. In fact, that’s one of the reasons why gaming here is so expensive (and to make it even worse, we accept this as natural). I talked about that in length before:

So after everything I wrote before, this will sound extremely strange, but I really believe that there’s value in regulation. If done right, it can set the stage for sustainable growth in the long run.

Here are a few positives that apply to industries and, as usual here in this space, how this translate to our careers so you can see the benefits of it in your own life:

• Protection and clarity. Laws help prevent abuse and define the rules of the game. Think of it like you defining your own “rules” like boundaries on working hours or contract terms to protect you from burnout or unfair deals.

• Consumer trust. Just as clear laws give players confidence that games won’t exploit them, personal guardrails (like transparent pricing or a defined scope of work) build trust with clients and employers.

• Sustainability. Boundaries prevent short-term exploitation from collapsing the whole ecosystem. For individuals, rules help sustain long careers instead of short bursts of productivity that lead to exhaustion. This is crucial to prevent burnout and career dead ends in the long run.

But of course, every system of rules comes with risks, especially when creative industries are involved. For industries, it can mean stalled innovation. For individuals, it can mean getting stuck in rigid patterns.

Here’s the downside:

• Creativity freeze. Too many restrictions discourage experimentation. Companies can get stuck in a loop, afraid of stepping outside the lines. Personally, that can look like never taking risks because you fear stepping outside the “rules.”

• Invisible costs. Compliance eats resources. There will be times that a company will need entire departments to know if you are playing by the rules, and that’s not cheap. In an individual level, this mirrors spending more time on process than on progress (something that I also already talked about in another post).

• Dependency. If you only ever follow rules written by others (bosses, markets, or social norms) you lose your own critical sense of direction. That’s when you end up living by someone else’s playbook.

Building Your Own Guardrails

The lesson here isn’t that regulation is good or bad. It’s that rules shape behavior, and if you don’t set some for yourself, someone else will. Last week, during my analysis of Nintendo’s pricing policies, I talked about the importance of building guardrails during personal analysis, which can summarize in the following:

• 360° feedback: done right, it exposes blind spots and keeps your self-assessment honest.

• Specific self-checks: replace fuzzy questions (“Am I strategic?”) with measurable ones (“How often did I document risks and options this quarter?”).

• Reflective journaling: writing clarifies whether you’re living by your own principles and helps keep your emotions in check.

By doing this, you’re using limitations to build a healthy base to grow as a person. I’m being very succinct here, but you can check the post below if you want to learn more about it, plus the importance of “respecting your own value”:

From Governments to Ourselves

India’s new law may reshape its online gaming market in ways that ripple far beyond its borders. It’s an experiment in balancing protection with freedom, clarity with flexibility.

The same balance applies to us. Self-regulation is harder than government regulation because there’s no parliament to hold you accountable, just your own discipline and honesty. But the reward is autonomy: the ability to thrive without waiting for someone else’s rule book.

However, the major risk in both cases is the heavy hand of authority dictating what’s right and wrong, which often makes creativity scarce and undermines the very purpose of regulation. In India’s case, it can be the heavy hand of state. In a personal level, our own fear of judgment.

But I want hear your opinion on the matter. Do regulations help innovation or hold it back? And in your career, have you ever set personal rules that made all the difference? Please, leave a comment below, I’d love to hear your perspective.

In the meantime, let’s keep leveling up, one boss level at a time.

From the Substack Community

ROP’s Passions

A Gamer Dad’s Review: Superflight

Hello everybody! I’m ROP, your resident gamer dad, and this time I want to talk about a small game, an indie project from GrizzlyGames, created by just three students with zero budget, released back in 2017…

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7 months ago · 12 likes · ROP

The perspective of discovering games with our children is vibrant on Substack, and even though I’m not a father yet, this is among my top picks. delves into games from his collection with his son, and it’s always a joy to see their thoughts on them. Additionally, hats off for being one of the rare creators who take the time to narrate their writings, allowing busy readers to listen to his posts with his own voice.

Nintendo’s latest Direct was longer than normal, but we quickly learned why. The first 20 minutes were dedicated to a nostalgia punch: Shigeru Miyamoto stepping out to kick off Super Mario Bros.’ 40th anniversary, and a slate of announcements that felt like opening a time capsule and finding it still beating. Among them, two headlines stood out: the confirmation of the title of the new Mario movie, now The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, and the long-awaited return of the Galaxy era games to Switch.

Nintendo’s own recap frames it exactly that way: anniversary festivities with a few key announcements here and there, some new games on the Tennis and Yoshi sub-franchises, and Super Mario Galaxy + Super Mario Galaxy 2 finally landing on Switch.

Not only it has a title, the film has an official a release date as well: April 3, 2026 in U.S. theaters (it would arrive in Japan a few weeks later). Illumination and Nintendo confirmed returning cast and creative leads, with Miyamoto positioning it as the centerpiece of the 40th anniversary cycle.

All good and dandy… until we learned how much the games that would accompany it will be priced. Galaxy and Galaxy 2 will be back in an “enhanced” version, being sold separately on the eShop for $39.99 each, with a physical double pack at $69.99. Keep in mind: this is a regular Nintendo Switch release.

That pricing landed with a thud for many of us who’d been waiting years to play Galaxy 2 on a modern system. As a reminder, the original Galaxy was released as part of the Super Mario 3D All Stars as a limited release back in 2020 for $59.99, also with Super Mario 64 and Super Mario Sunshine, plus the complete soundtrack of each game.

As I read the news, I felt the same jolt you probably did. I won’t deny that these are stone-cold classics, top-tier platformers that defined a generation. Heck, the first Galaxy justified me buying a Wii back in the day. Some of my most tender memories of the seventh generation came from that game, and despite having a complicate relationship with it, I won’t deny that its sequel is considered one of the best Mario 3D platformers even this day… but $40 each?

I caught myself thinking about how cheap they used to be. Back in 2011, the original Super Mario Galaxy joined the Nintendo Selects budget line at $19.99 on Wii, with Galaxy 2 added to low-price lines later on. Value packs and budget stickers, but easy pick-ups. It was a completely different era.

So… what changed?

Nintendo’s “Respect the Value” Era

After Satoru Iwata’s tragic death on July 11, 2015, Nintendo entered a new chapter under Shuntaro Furukawa and, in the U.S., ex-EA’s Doug Bowser. Pricing took on a different tone. You’ve heard the refrain in interviews: price reflects value. It isn’t a one-size-fits-all policy, and Nintendo won’t race to the bottom. Bowser said it plainly when asked about Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom at $70 that “pricing depends on the experience and won’t be universal”. Translation: don’t expect deep discounts on core first-party titles.

Commentary around Nintendo has crystallized this philosophy as “respect the value”, meaning keep evergreen software priced like evergreen software. Former Nintendo PR voices have described it explicitly in those terms. The idea is to protect perceived value rather than chase volume with sales.

Whether you love or loathe that stance, it’s hard to argue with the scoreboard. The original Switch has sold over 153 million units lifetime as of June 30, 2025, putting it among the best-selling consoles ever. And the Switch 2 blasted out of the gate with 3.5 million units in its first four days, making it Nintendo’s fastest start. So yes, on paper, “respect the value” seems to work.

But should it apply to remasters of 15-year-old games, especially when the extras are modest (minor visual upgrades, control options, a few new chapters in Rosalina’s Storybook) and Galaxy 2 has simply been unavailable on modern hardware for years? Paying what amounts to near-full-price, twice, for games from two generations ago is a tougher sell, even for devotees.

The Good and the Bad of “Respect the Price”

Here’s the nuance: as a business philosophy, “respect the price” has real upsides and real risks.

In line with my approach of learning from games and the gaming industry, Nintendo's current stance reflects ideas from philosophers and historical events. This perspective can easily be applied to our careers and personal lives, highlighting both benefits and potential risks.

Upsides (and what we can steal from)

• Clarity of value. When you stand behind your work, you anchor how others perceive it. Bowser’s “value-based pricing” articulation is exactly that: tie price to experience, not to trends. That’s what we call compensation philosophy: a company aligns total rewards with its mission, values, and business goals to attract, retain, and motivate top talent while ensuring market competitiveness and fairness. Translating this to your career, when you benchmark your impact, you can stray from the hype cycle to fully understand what you can bring to employers and clients, securing a fair price for your services no matter the time or the situation. Or, to sum things up, you receive a fair pay for what you bring to the table.

• Evergreen positioning. Premium brands endure by resisting endless markdowns. The Switch’s evergreen first-party catalog is a good case study of this approach. We can disagree with it all we want, but we can’t deny the numbers prove its success. For professionals, that means building skills and a reputation that don’t age out with the next framework fad, which is a piece of advice that stands out in a time when the temptation to hand over our critical thinking to AI is increasing at an alarming rate.

Risks (and the personal traps):

• Overvaluation/Narcissism. It’s easy to misprice yourself. The psychology is well-documented: we overestimate our competence (the Dunning–Kruger effect) or, conversely, underprice due to impostor syndrome. If you read the positives of this philosophy above and felt stimulated to try to reevaluate yourself, remember that guardrails will help you tremendously during your personal analysis: independent feedback from others like mentor or friends, market data on your field of work, and specificity are your best companions in this journey (I'll talk more about those guardrails in a bit.)

• Value drift. If you never revisit your price (or your self-assessment), you can drift away from reality. For employers, that’s when audiences or employers quietly move on. For employees, that’s when they feel stuck and unmotivated.

How to “Respect Your Value” Without Drinking Your Own Kool-Aid

Now, let's talk about how analyze yourself with guardrails to prevent you to distort the final result.

If you read the last section and thought that it sounded like an introduction to self-help, don’t worry: you don’t need to read a magical book filled with fluff to apply the “respect the value” philosophy in your life. After all, you need to respect your time and your intelligence as well, two things that are rare in the self-help market.

What you really need is evidence-based practices, like:

1. 360° feedback (done right). Structure anonymous input from peers, reports, and managers; compare it with your self-rating to surface blind spots. But make sure it’s really anonymous, or else you’ll be sabotaging yourself. There’s a HBR article that has good guidance on what makes these reviews meaningful and not just a PDF that dies in your inbox.

2. Specific, not fuzzy, self-checks. Let’s expand our thinking beyond the confines of corporate environments and apply this to our personal lives. The trick is to ask yourself the right questions. Research shows we’re most biased when judging ambiguous traits, so instead of asking “Am I strategic?”, ask “How often did I produce a decision memo with options, risks, and a recommendation in the last quarter?” I know, this one still sounds corporate, but you get the idea. No matter what question you’re asking yourself, make it as measurable as possible.

3. Reflective journaling (short, daily). The Stoics used it for brutal honesty, modern research ties journaling to improved self-regulation. I agree with both angles. Write a journal is the best way to help you work through interpersonal conflict and keep your emotions in check. Putting your emotion on paper will give you the clarity you need to access your value in a honest, less distorted way.

Back to the Galaxy

All of which brings me back to my wallet.

I'm not going to be negative just for the fun of it because I genuinely love these games. I’ve 100-percented the first Galaxy a few times and I’m always eager to come back to Rosalina’s Comet Observatory when opportunities arise. And I’m thrilled that Galaxy 2 finally escaped its 3D All-Stars purgatory.

But loving something and overpaying for it aren’t the same.

The bundle’s price asks me to accept a premium for convenience and light extras, not for fresh, built-from-scratch work. Respecting my value means I can applaud the release and still skip it altogether.

In the end, Nintendo’s broader strategy is working, with robust numbers to back it up, and the movie will likely mint a new wave of fans in 2026. But “respect the value” cuts both ways. If the company wants us to treat Mario’s legacy as premium, it should also show us that a remaster’s price respects our discernment.

“Respect the value”, Nintendo says. Fair enough. That applies to respect our own value, too.

No matter if you decide to buy these games or not, or if you saw value on my strategies above, I would like to hear your thoughts. Did you think that Nintendo is overpricing these games? Are you excited for the new movie? Leave your comments below.

In the meantime, let’s keep leveling up, one boss level at a time.

From the Substack Community

Exceptionally this week, I’ll give two shoutouts.

Nintendo is Great

The Super Mario Bros. 40th Anniversary Celebration is a Lie

Nintendo is Great is devoted to exploring the world of Nintendo - their games, their consoles, their merchandise - in mostly chronological order, from the NES to the Switch 2…

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7 months ago · 12 likes · 17 comments · Dylan Cornelius

’s insightful analysis of the Mario anniversary segment from the latest Nintendo Direct inspired this post. I’m working on other unrelated posts, but I felt compelled to take a moment to discuss the community's reactions to this recent Direct. ’s analysis goes much deeper than what I’ve covered here, as I only concentrated on the Galaxy re-releases, so I highly recommend checking it out. And remember to subscribe so you can catch part 2 when it’s released, plus a bunch of extremely engaging analysis about the Big N.

Barely Managing

Three core elements to being a manager, pt 2; Support

A managers role entails a variety of different responsibilities, these vary from role to role…

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7 months ago · 3 likes · Alex Antra

I've previously presented the outstanding work of in my 6-months special post, but he has recently launched something new that perfectly aligns with this newsletter: , a Substack aimed at helping new managers find their footing and quickly enhance their skills. I've already recommended it to my readers, but I want to emphasize it again because great ideas deserve to be shared, and this one truly resonates with my mission here at TBL.

Buy me a coffee

This year marks the 30th anniversary of PlayStation. I feel old just saying that, but the memory of my mom handing me a PSX when I was 8 is still fresh in my mind. Since then, Sony turned into the only video game brand for which I owned at least one version of every console they released.

And owning stuff is always the first thing companies think when celebrating their brand anniversaries. With Sony, it wasn’t different: collector bundles, retro-inspired merch, and even the classic PS1 boot sequence that still sparks nostalgia for an entire generation of players showed its old face in our PS5 consoles for a brief period earlier this year. They started out as rebels, following the now-legendary failed agreement with Nintendo to make an SNES CD, to become one of the top three console makers in the gaming world.

Thirty years later, I still think of PlayStation as a console brand. That’s why is very hard to face the fact that it became more than just a game system. PlayStation now is a whole ecosystem.

From the beginning, Sony played the hardware game brilliantly by launching iconic systems like the PS1, PS2, and PS4 that dominated their respective eras. The PS3 had a rough start and ended up outpacing the Xbox 360 by the end of its generation, but it fell into the shadow of the Wii juggernaut. Even so, the console is still fondly remember by many who played classics like Metal Gear Solid 4, Uncharted, GTA 4, and God Of War 3.

Yet hardware dominance alone was never enough to sustain a brand for 30 years. What truly made PlayStation endure was its ability to build a platform: a network of developers, franchises, services, and communities that kept players returning long after the novelty of a new machine wore off. They played the long game, and it paid dividends.

Now Sony is doubling down on this philosophy. It’s not news that the company has signaled a shift away from hardware-centricity, leaning more on cross-platform releases, PC ports, and community-first initiatives. It makes senses from a business perspective. After all, winning the specs war became futile. The new deal is to make sure that PlayStation feels like a home for players, no matter what device they're using.

Microsoft has been on this path since the start with the Xbox brand. You've always had Game Pass and the chance to enjoy your favorite games on PC. I can't deny that this is one of the biggest strengths of their ecosystem, but it might also be its greatest flaw. The unique experience that you could only get from an exclusive Xbox product is becoming less common, and honestly, I can't even recall the last Xbox exclusive that caught my interest. Plus, with Microsoft announcing the ROG Xbox Ally X, which is just a black Asus ROG Ally X, it doesn't really help their situation. It just makes the brand feel even more diluted with fewer exclusives and a muddled identity.

Sony could take a similar approach, but they still have exclusives that are entirely their own. They've got franchises like Horizon, The Last of Us, God of War, and Astro Bot, so the risk of brand dilution is much lower. Let's hope it stays that way.

And that comes to why I kept thinking about Sony. As you expect from my ramblings on this space, there’s a lesson here for careers and businesses alike.

We often get caught up in thinking like "products." We fixate on one role, one project, or chasing the next big success. But while products may come and go, platforms stick around. A platform thrives on its reputation, flexibility, and the knack for generating value in various situations. The key thing to watch out for is not to lose sight of our personal brand. In today's highly competitive and sometimes unjust job market, everyone has similar certifications, knowledge, and experiences.

If you want to shine, you need that unique set of skills or talents that only you can bring to the table, no matter what company or project you are working on. This has always been somewhat true, but now, more than never, it’s crucial to know how to market your brand.

In other words, aim to be less like Microsoft and more like Sony.

I see PlayStation’s story as a powerful reminder of not to chase the one-off console moment in your own career. Instead, focus on building your platform: the skills, relationships, and mindset that keep you relevant no matter how the industry evolves.

So here’s the question: Are you treating your career like a product or like a platform that can last 30 years and beyond?

Products fade. Platforms endure. Keep that in mind when you think about your next career move.

And don’t forget to keep leveling up, one boss level at a time.

From the Substack Community

The 8-Bit Perspective

30 Years of Ridge Racer on the PlayStation

Genre: Racing…

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7 months ago · 6 likes · Jam Master J

Let’s not forget that it was 30 years ago when we began linking every Sony console launch with Ridge Racer, a tradition that only came to an end with the PS4. Actually, it was in the 32-bit era that my everlasting love for Namco began, and this fantastic article from brought back memories of those incredible times when my favorite studio was at its height. His pieces are always a joy to read, blending personal memories with easy-to-understand analysis of the games he plays, and this particular one was definitely one of my favorites.

There's a Chinese board game that dates back over 2000 years. It's older than chess and most written languages, yet it continues to influence how some of the brightest minds approach competition, including a well-known video game company famous for its iconic IPs, blue ocean strategies, and creative ways to work with withered technology.

That game is Go, and it looks like this:

At first glance, it seems pretty straightforward: it’s just black and white stones placed on a 19 by 19 grid. The idea appears almost basic, but beneath its simple look is a whole world of strategy, where winning comes from carefully directing the flow of the entire board.

Throughout history, Go played a crucial role in the training of warriors in China, Japan, and Korea. It’s easy to understand why, since it can teach everyone from soldiers to generals how to think strategically in any kind of battlefield. It’s the type of game that requires you to think ahead, and every choice you make contributes to your future success. You can say that Go is more than just a game. It’s a way of life.

Fast forward to modern times, and we still find Go players around the globe. In fact, one man in particular was such a big fan of this classic board game that it basically became the only game he liked to play. This person is Hiroshi Yamauchi, Nintendo's most impactful president. And his obsession with Go sheds a lot of light on his character and the company he played a key role in transforming.

He wasn't a game designer, a programmer, or even a gamer — he even confessed in some interviews that he wasn't fond of playing video games. Still, through the lens of a Go player, he transformed a small family-run card business into one of the biggest electronic entertainment powerhouses in the world. If we view Go not just as a hobby but as a perspective through which he understood business, leadership, and life itself, we can start to understand the logic behind many of the decisions he made that molded Nintendo into its current form.

Here’s the story of how Go shaped Hiroshi Yamauchi’s mindset and how we can see this way of thinking ingrained into Nintendo’s culture to this day.

Nintendo’s Famous Cultural Pillars

In the last four decades, Nintendo has often been described through two famous strategic pillars:

• Blue Ocean Strategy: creating new uncontested markets instead of fighting head-to-head.

• Using established technology in unexpected ways: this is what Gunpei Yokoi, Nintendo’s designer who is credited heavily for Nintendo's success in the toy and videogame industry, once called “lateral thinking with withered technology.”

These ideas became most visible in products like the Gameboy, Wii, DS, and Switch, but their roots go back to Yamauchi’s Go-inspired worldview. Helped by Yokoi’s inventiveness, he always believed Nintendo’s strength wasn’t in chasing raw specs or fashionable trends but in surprising players, carving new territory, and doing more with less.

Gunpei Yokoi himself left Nintendo in the mid-90s, lamenting that the company wasn’t the same. In fact, there are those who argument that Nintendo’s leadership today stepped away from Yokoi’s philosophy with Switch 2 being just a iteration instead of an innovation. Yet Yamauchi’s strategic lens endured.

How Go Works

To truly understand Yamauchi’s influence, first we need to grasp the essence of Go.

The main objective of Go is to place your stones in strategic places in the board in order to claim most territory as possible. At its core, Go isn’t exclusively focused in eliminating your opponent’s pieces, like in chess. Instead, it’s about surrounding and securing territory, even if that means to sacrifice stones if they help secure larger positions. Ultimately, Go games are won through the slow, deliberate shaping of the board.

I won't go into all the rules here, like how to create 'eyes' to prevent your pieces from being captured or how you might find yourself in a position of atari (yep, that other well-known video game company's name is also derived from a Go movement). For this piece, just remember a few key principles:

• Sacrifice for advantage: you must know when to let small groups fall to claim wider ground.

• Patience over immediacy: winning comes from shaping flow across dozens of moves, not a single “checkmate-y” one.

• Balance and intuition: reading the board’s “life and death” situations matters more than memorizing openings.

Looking at these, it’s easy to see why Yamauchi was drawn to this game. Its philosophy reflected how he managed Nintendo by prioritizing the long-term, accepting sacrifices, and concentrating less on immediate wins and more on dominating the industry’s landscape.

Grasping these rules goes beyond just game theory. It gives us a fresh perspective on Nintendo’s decision making process. These aren’t just random corporate oddities, but intentional strategies on a bigger Go board, executed by a company that continues to follow Yamauchi’s guidelines.

Here’s how he did it.

Sacrifices Are Necessary for Victory

In Go, you have to let some stones go so you can achieve victory in other parts of the board. Beginners often find this tough because our instincts push us to hold onto every piece, but masters understand that real growth comes from letting go of pieces when necessary.

Hiroshi Yamauchi understood this concept better than many business leaders. His time at Nintendo was marked not by hoarding every chance, but by the wisdom to release opportunities when they arise.

A prime example is his choice to sever ties with Sony while they were working on the SNES-CD. At that moment, it seemed like a risky decision: Sony went on to launch the PlayStation, which turned into one of Nintendo’s biggest competitors. Yet, Yamauchi looked past the immediate setback. He wouldn’t allow Nintendo to rely on another company’s vision. For him, keeping independence and focus was more important than chasing after the newest trend.

This mindset was evident in other instances as well, like when he quietly let go of the unsuccessful Virtual Boy and resisted the industry's fixation on horsepower and realism during the PlayStation 2 period. While others tried to save face, Yamauchi was ready to sacrifice a piece to win the bigger game.

Bottom line: Sacrifice is not an immediate sign of failure. In careers and organizations, holding on to every project, client, or idea can spread us too thin. You must know when to let go of a piece in order to protect the territory that truly matters.

Control of Territory Matters More Than Quick Wins

In Go, winning a flashy skirmish doesn’t mean much if you end up losing huge chunks of the board. The real aim is to grab territory, to create a lasting presence that remains valuable long after a single battle fades from memory.

Yamauchi had a similar mindset when it came to business. After the 1983 video game crash hit the U.S. market hard, most companies ran for the hills, except for Yamauchi that spotted an opportunity to establish the NES where others saw nothing more than a fad dying. Nintendo used this unique opportunity to restore faith in video games throughout North America. However, he didn’t stopped there: by concentrating on distribution control, a quality seal, and a well-managed catalog, Nintendo claimed the territory that competitors had left behind.

He did the same thing in the handheld market. The Game Boy was technically inferior to Sega’s Game Gear and Atari’s Lynx, but Yamauchi focused on durability, affordability, and classic titles like Tetris and Pokémon. The outcome was total dominance in the portable gaming scene for more than ten years.

Bottom line: Don't mix up quick wins with long-term impact. Consider them as pieces of the bigger picture. Careers and businesses might be noted for a few timely successes, but what really counts is the ground you cover over the long haul. Reputation, trust, and consistency carry way more weight than fleeting moments of greatness.

Trust Over Technique

Unlike chess, you can't just memorize moves to win at Go. True masters achieve victory by reading the flow of the game, trusting their instincts, and knowing when to place faith in the right sequence. Also, there will be moments where is best just to skip your turn to create the best possible outcome.

Yamauchi was a perfect example of this. He wasn't a designer, an engineer and by the usual standards, he didn't have the skills you'd expect from the leader of a gaming company. But what set Yamauchi apart was his incredible intuition for people. He believed in creative geniuses like Gunpei Yokoi, who created the Game Boy and introduced the idea of “lateral thinking with withered technology”; Shigeru Miyamoto, whose creativity brought Mario and Zelda to life; and later Satoru Iwata, who became the first president of Nintendo not from the Yamauchi family.

Yamauchi didn’t have to know all the technical stuff. He excelled at spotting talent, nurturing it, and allowing it to thrive.

Bottom line: As a leader, it's important to go with the flow, uplift the right people, and recognize when to take a step back to let others shine. Your job isn't just to play the stones, but to set the stage properly so that every single stone in the board can contribute to a victory.

Vision Requires Implacable Leadership

In Go, playing cautiously or without a plan just won't cut it. The board favors those with a clear goal and punishes those who hesitate. Every move should contribute to a bigger picture.

Everybody who knew him personally can attest: Yamauchi was not a gentle leader. He was known for being intimidating, uncompromising, even ruthless at times. But his harshness was paired with clarity: he constantly reminded his teams that “Nintendo is not a video game company. It is an entertainment company.” That mantra guided decades of decisions, from the family-friendly DNA of the NES to the disruptive originality of the Wii.

He refused to let Nintendo become another graphics-obsessed arms dealer. Instead, he doubled down on being the company that surprised, delighted, and innovated in its own way. This clarity allowed Nintendo to survive failures like the Virtual Boy and Wii U, because the larger philosophy of creating entertainment-first experiences never wavered.

Bottom line: When leading people, doesn’t expect to please everyone. You need to hold a vision so strongly that it shapes the culture around you. For professionals, this means resisting the temptation to follow every trend and instead cultivating a clear identity. In a world full of imitators, clarity is the ultimate differentiator.

Noticing a Pattern: have we seen this before?

Yamauchi-san may no longer be with us, but his legacy lives on. And I’m not just referring to his priceless contributions to the gaming industry. It’s his mindset that remains deeply embedded in Nintendo’s culture.

Case in point: the Switch 2.

When you look to the bigger picture, despite the company having 3 other presidents since Hiroshi Yamauchi’s retirement, Nintendo is still playing Go. The Switch 2 launch choices look less like a specs race and more like board control: secure territory, pace the fight, and favor long-term position over flashy tactics.

Here’s how they’re doing it:

1) Territory first: win supply, then the market.

Nintendo launched Switch 2 at $449.99 on June 5, 2025, with bundles priced at $499.99. It was a clear, disciplined pricing that matched a global rollout cadence. The result was securing position, not just headlines: 3.5M units sold-through in the first four days, the best first-four-days in company history, and 6M+ in seven weeks worldwide. In the U.S., sell-through passed 2M in two months, running ~75% ahead of the original Switch, a sign that Nintendo prioritized availability to occupy market “territory” quickly, not just to notch a launch-day spike.

2) Sacrifice the quick win to protect the position.

Reports suggest Nintendo has limited distribution of dev kits even post-launch, nudging studios to target the existing Switch and rely on backward compatibility rather than rush native SKUs. Short term, that sacrifices third-party hype; long term, it preserves quality control and a unified software base while demand still outstrips supply. That’s a typical Go move: give up local “captures” to keep the board stable.

3) Trust over technique: build the board around your creators and your library.

Nintendo confirmed backward compatibility for Switch 2 (with caveats), and its own materials emphasize that most Switch software plays on the new system, lowering friction for players and letting creators reach a larger combined audience. Instead of chasing raw horsepower bragging rights, they’re trusting the ecosystem they’ve cultivated to carry forward.

4) Implacable leadership: clarity beats consensus.

We can critique a lot of Nintendo’s latest decisions, but we can’t deny that from the price discipline to the focus on production ramp-up (“strengthen our production and supply systems”), management framed the problem as an operations and availability game, not a spec sheet contest. That stance echoes Yamauchi’s “entertainment first” DNA: hold the line on identity, cadence, and execution.

To sum things up, the Switch 2 strategy is Yamauchi’s Go ethos, through and through: occupy durable territory (installed base + library + retail presence), accept near-term sacrifices (limited kits, slower native ramp) to prevent chaos, and trust people and IP to compound value over time. It’s not the fastest-looking move on the board, but can be the one that wins the endgame.

Nintendo’s Way of Thinking Life Like Go

I’ve always thought of games as more than just distractions, storytelling devices, or pieces of art. As I’ve mentioned numerous times here, they can serve as motivating frameworks for making decisions. Yamauchi, on the other hand, pushed that idea to the limit. By managing Nintendo like a Go board, he demonstrated that his path to success wasn’t about going for the obvious move, but about taking charge of the most important territory, even if it required making some sacrifices along the journey. While chess celebrates decisive strikes and dramatic checkmates, Go teaches patience, presence, and the courage to sacrifice in order to protect the larger game.

In many ways, seeing how it still embodies the principles we analyzed above, Nintendo mirrors what we see in corporate leadership cultures worldwide: a CEO’s way of thinking can permeate an organization for decades, shaping choices long after they’re gone. Nintendo’s current path with the Switch 2 shows how deeply this still resonates. The company is once again prioritizing territory over spectacle by focusing on availability, backward compatibility, and brand identity rather than chasing raw specs. It’s the kind of strategy Yamauchi himself would have recognized instantly.

But Go is a game measured not in minutes, but in hours, days… sometimes years. If the current Nintendo leadership is as skilled at Go as their legendary predecessor, only time will tell. What we can say for now is that the echoes of Yamauchi’s philosophy remain visible on the board.

From the Substack Community

Infinite Lives

"Lobotomised": The gaming industry's complicated, polarised relationship with AI

Infinite Lives is free to read, but requires a paid subscription to access 90 past articles, including more explainers, unique analysis and game reviews. Each paid subscription helps support independent games journalism in Australia…

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9 months ago · 22 likes · 15 comments · Harrison Polites

Starting today, I’m unapologetically borrowing a fantastic idea from by giving a shoutout to other writers in my posts. And this one is definitely going to .

I’ve already shared my appreciation for his work in my last post where I reflected on my first 6 months on Substack, so it might seem a bit repetitive to give him another shoutout. But he’s the one who suggested I explore how leaders function like games, and he even sent me some great examples from an HBR article that sparked the inspiration for this piece. The result is the post you just read.

Honestly, a lot of what I’ve written here stems from an old concept for a non-fiction book I started working on years ago where I would talk about some of my favorite leaders and designers in the game industry, but I never pushed it forward. However, Harrison’s insights motivated me to revisit that material and even sparked some ideas for future posts.

With this one, I really hope I’ve managed to write what you were hoping for!

Now, I want to hear from you. Do you approach your career like a board game, like Hiroshi Yamauchi? Have you played Go before or thought about learn how to play it? I'd love to see your comments!

In the meantime, let’s keep leveling up, one boss level at a time.

Buy me a coffee

Here we are, six months after my introductory post on The Boss Level. After all this time, I think a balance is in order.

I confess that I really enjoyed starting The Boss Level. I don’t regret it for a second. In a world flooded with AI slop and career hacks that go nowhere, it’s still the best way I’ve found to bring together my career lessons using games and pop culture as a canvas. Not only that, writing weekly gave me discipline, sharpened my skills, and even helped me rethink my sci-fi manuscript with fresher eyes.

But the problem is that I feel stuck. Not because I don’t enjoy this project, but because there’s a limit to what fits in this space. Sometimes I want to write about games, music, handhelds… and I catch myself holding back because The Boss Level has a clear purpose of bridging games with career development.

Meanwhile, I read so many incredible newsletters from the gaming community here on Substack, and I noticed something:

• My posts sometimes feel “too LinkedIn”, a side effect of being career-centered.

• The warmest interactions happen when writers share personal stories, passions, and memories. I want to create more of that connection too, but a professional focus doesn’t give me too much space for it.

So, what now? Should I abandon everything and start from scratch?

Not in the slightest!

I’m not ending The Boss Level. On the contrary, it’s the foundation of my personal brand and the way I’ve found to stand out in the job market. It brought me many connections with wonderful writers across the globe and allowed me to see my own career from a refreshing perspective.

But I realized I also need a space that’s freer, more personal, and more experimental.

That’s why today, I’m (re)introducing my new newsletter, Phones & Joysticks.

Why Phones & Joysticks?

To be honest, writing about games without a career angle isn’t new to me. I had an old WordPress blog with this name where I talked about games, music, and game music. I also hosted a podcast called Namco Club not so long ago, fully dedicated to Bandai Namco titles. They’re still out there if you dig, but fair warning: there’s plenty of cringe.

The reason I stopped both of them is simple: wrong platform, wrong audience. WordPress didn’t have a community, and the podcast was too niche to gain any significant traction. Now that I wet my feet on this platform, I can confidently say that Substack feels like the perfect home to revive this project: a place for niche passions, personal voice, and genuine connection with writers and readers.

And yes, I could have changed the name, but Phones & Joysticks still resonates with me. It covers all the hobbies I love, so let’s call it a revival.

What to expect from this new space

With this new Substack, I’ll:

• Talk about what I’ve been itching to write: games I’m playing, bands I love, emulation handhelds, and other geeky stuff.

• Revisit old blog posts with my current voice and perspective.

• Finish “unfinished business”: like my deep-dive series on Namco’s UGSF universe or my Ridge Racer series retrospective, both started on Namco Club, but left unfinished.

But keep in mind: Phones & Joysticks won’t be a weekly commitment like The Boss Level. At least not at first. I want to invest on my storytelling, and those things demand time. The rhythm will depend on inspiration and discovery. And that’s part of the fun.

If you want to check out what I have in store, you could read the first part of my Shadow Labyrinth analysis below:

Phones & Joysticks

From Eye-Rolls to Obsession: How Shadow Labyrinth Won Me Over

When Secret Level was announced last August, I barely blinked. To be honest, I completely ignored it…

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8 months ago · M. Campassi

Special thanks and inspirations

I wouldn’t have reached this next step without some amazing writers here on Substack. That’s why I want to take this opportunity to leave a few recommendations. I’m sure I’ll miss a few names, and I’ll make up for that in future shoutouts. For now, here are the voices that inspired me the most… and yes, I’ll be shamelessly borrowing a couple of their great ideas too.

Reconnect Recap

Reconnect Recap - w/e 17th August

Kia Ora folks…

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8 months ago · 23 likes · 3 comments · Alex Antra

It’s impossible not to start here. is doing an incredible job compiling gaming writers on the platform every single week. He integrates the community, makes it easier for readers to discover new voices, and helps writers get the visibility they deserve. I had the honor of having some of my articles featured there, which helped me immensely. I couldn’t recommend him enough, especially if you want to discover the very best of the gaming writing community.

Infinite Lives

Gaming’s most underrated side characters

Welcome! Infinite Lives latest edition is free to read, but requires a paid subscription to access over 80 past articles, including more explainers, unique analysis and game reviews. Each paid subscription helps support independent games journalism in Australia…

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9 months ago · 31 likes · 15 comments · Harrison Polites

On the topic of helping new writers, deserves a special mention. His timely themed collaborations gave me my very first chance to write about passions beyond career tips. Those boundaries of theme and word count pushed me to think differently, and creativity really flourished. Needless to say, his own writing is among the best on the platform. His ability to paint a vivid picture of the Australian games market and make it engaging to people on the other side of the world (like me) is something only a great writer can pull off.

Scanlines’ Journal

Sega's Immortal Console (Ft. The Boss Level's M. Campassi)

Those who have even a passing interest in retro gaming will have heard of the NES: the Nintendo Entertainment System. It released in the United States in 1985 and was a massive cultural and commercial phenomenon both there and at home in Japan, rejuvenating the games industry in the West and bringing us greats such as the Super Mario Bros. Metroid and T…

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9 months ago · 15 likes · 13 comments · Scanlines

If you enjoy well-researched articles with a strong personal touch and a dash of humor, is for you. I became a fan when he dissected the First Light trailer and, as a fellow James Bond fan, I was thrilled to find someone picking up on the same details I did. He was also responsible for my first long collaboration, on his fantastic Master System piece, which sparked the idea of expanding my writing beyond career development.

The Video Game Storyteller

Climbing That Wall

Content warning: contains themes of loss and grief…

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8 months ago · 30 likes · 35 comments · The Video Game Storyteller

If there’s one writer who inspired me the most to lean into personal storytelling, it’s this one. mixes profound analysis with heartfelt personal stories in a way I genuinely aspire to. Some of his posts are tear-jerking in the best way. Proof of his influence? I tried to channel a bit of his style in my Scanlines collab I mentioned above. His recent Stuff from the Stack section is also something I’ll happily copy in the future (if he doesn’t mind, of course!).

Late to the LAN Party

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night - My Review

I had always wanted to play Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. It is a game paired with Super Metroid that created the "Metroidvania" sub-genre of video games. I love Super Metroid, maybe even going so far as to call it my favourite video game ever. To me, it was almost a perfect game - a non-linear world to explore and get lost in, the progression of …

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8 months ago · 7 likes · 9 comments · Peter Monks

started publishing after being a long-time commenter and reader, and I’m glad he did. His pieces on Symphony of the Night and Wii Sports are among my all-time favorite Substack reads. His superpower is taking games we think have been dissected to death and giving them a fresh, insightful spin. Whatever direction he takes next, I’ll be following along.

Nintendo is Great

Contra is a True NES Classic. Renegade is a Sad Potato.

Nintendo is Great is devoted to exploring the world of Nintendo - their games, their consoles, their merchandise - in mostly chronological order, from the NES to the Switch 2…

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8 months ago · 16 likes · 9 comments · Dylan Cornelius

has a gift for making his posts feel like the pages of an old gaming magazine, something I truly miss from my youth. His work reminds me why I love reading on Substack in the first place. Dylan also planted a seed in my mind with a comment on one of my Shadow Labyrinth notes, telling me he’d love to see me write more about Namco. Well… challenge accepted!

Cozy Anomaly

Feeling Overstimulated? Here's 3 Steps to Find your Calm with Games

Feeling overstimulated is very uncomfortable. It makes me feel jittery, confused, and angry. I just want to run away and hide. But I notice if I run to my room and sit, sometimes my mind replays the issue over and over, and it’s like i never left it at all…

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8 months ago · 14 likes · 9 comments · Leefa

’s writing style is very different from mine, but I admire it greatly. Her posts are direct, personal, and simple in the best way. Reading her is like having a friend tell you about the latest game she’s been playing. That kind of honesty and unique voice is something every writer should aspire to. Also, she was the first reader who I wrote a post by request — the Greatest Leadership Lessons from Final Fantasy, Part II-2.

And for future shoutouts, here are some writers I didn’t have time to cover in detail here, but I highly recommend nonetheless:

… and so many others I’m still eager to discover.

Ready for a New Game+?

So here’s the final result:

• The Boss Level continues as my main space for career + games, serving as my “professional brand.”

• Phones & Joysticks is my playground, a place for pure passion, memory, and curiosity.

If you’ve enjoyed my more personal Notes here, or just want to read me talk about games and music for the love of it, I’d love to see you there too!

Thank you all for supporting me through these first six months. If I helped even one person level up their career with a single tip, it was worth it. Now I’m ready to explore a new side of my voice as well.

And… as always, let’s keep leveling up, one boss level at a time. And feel free to take a few side quests along the way.

Buy me a coffee

Before we start, a quick disclaimer: I know some of you saw the title and immediately thought this was going to sound like a LinkedIn post. But I promise I’ll keep it as lighthearted as possible, ok?

For the last few weeks, I’ve been working as a freelancer, helping a motion capture and animation studio implement new project management processes. I know, fun stuff. The good part is they were open to my methods and eager to adopt ways to organize their projects, especially if that meant lowering their workload so they could focus on finding new clients and letting the team do what they do best. You know… the REAL fun stuff.

But before we started, they gave me two non-negotiable rules:

1. They didn’t want to be slaves to the project management tool.

2. The process had to be simple enough that anyone in the studio could follow it.

I couldn’t agree more. They’re still a small studio, but they’re growing fast, so their new methods needed to scale with them, especially when external partners come into the picture. And since some of their projects are related to game design, I started organizing their tools and workflows based on not only these two rules but also some key principles that I believe are crucial in game development.

As I’ve wrote in previous posts, I’ve seen indie teams, mid-sized studios, and even major publishers fall into the same planning traps that could have been avoided with a few practical steps right at the start of the project. Now that I’m having the opportunity to bring the theory to real life, I would love to share what worked with you.

So, if you’re thinking about making a game or joining the industry despite its recent rough patches, here’s five tips that can save you time, money, and maybe even your sanity.

Are you still with me? Still awake? Good! Wipe away the drool from the corner of your mouth, and let’s move on…

Tip n° 1: A game design document is worth your time

GDDs get a bad rep because some teams think they slow down creativity. I’ve saw a lot of teams calling them as creativity-killers, a tedious formality that belongs in a dusty binder.

Well, I’m not gonna lie, these people are absolutely right. But only because they’re doing GDDs wrong.

The thing is the doc will only be a useless piece of junk if you design it that way. The best GDDs aren’t carved in stone (or in a .doc relegated to a forgotten folder in your server), but living documents that evolve with your project, guiding it without boxing it in.

While working for this MoCap client, for example, I made sure to suggest a PM tool that has a wiki feature on it so everybody can update it when necessary. Having a single source of truth makes all the difference, but we all know that creative projects can change in the middle of it, so having a way to document these change requests are a godsend. Not only it makes everybody aware of what is going on with the project, but it also stopped scope creep before it even started and kept features from drifting too far away from the original vision. This way, everyone knows where to find answers, whether they're animators, programmers, or producers, and avoids those “Wait, I thought we agreed on…” moments.

And no, you don’t need a 50-page tome to guide every single decision of your project, either. Even a lean, five-page GDD that covers your core vision, key mechanics, and project scope can keep everyone rowing in the same direction, no matter the size of your game.

You must always aim to reduce bureaucracy as much as possible to ensure that the best ideas can survive the chaos of development, but don’t let your game design’s guidelines be relegated to your team’s memory. Use GDDs wisely.

Tip n° 2: Plan your tools beforehand

Nothing kills momentum faster than changing tools mid-project.

Everyone who follows the game industry has seen it happen: engines swapped halfway through development, asset pipelines rebuilt from scratch, or teams scrambling to migrate entire libraries because “we’ll figure it out later” turned into “we should’ve figured it out earlier.”

I won’t dwell too long here, since I already wrote about this kind of self-inflicted chaos in my previous piece The Price of Failure in Creative Projects. I highly recommend giving it a read (though I might be a little biased, being the author and all. You’ll be the judge).

Planning your tools early doesn’t mean locking yourself into a rigid setup forever. It means you’re picking something stable enough to last the project and making sure the whole team understands it. This foresight pays off in smoother onboarding, cleaner communication between disciplines, and fewer “why isn’t this working?” emergencies.

Think of it as building your racetrack before you roll out the cars. It’s way easier than re-paving while you’re already in the race. Nothing stops you from trying, though. Just don’t be surprised when the cars start sticking to the hot asphalt.

Tip n° 3: Have a project management system (but don’t be a slave to it)

ClickUp, Jira, Trello, Notion… there’s no shortage of project management tools that promise to solve all your problems. However none of them will solve your organization problems if your processes are unexistent to begin with.

The truth is that your tool should support your process, not the other way around.

I’ve seen teams spend more time updating their boards than actually moving their projects forward. And that’s not a problem relegated only to game studios, but especially to big tech companies. If you’re facing this kind of problem, you’re too far gone and should reconsider your approach to focus less on the management methods and more on getting things done.

In case you read the previous paragraph and had war flashbacks, here’s a suggestion for the next time you see yourself in this kind of situation: use a kanban board to keep everyone aligned and make regular checkpoints to ensure nothing slips through the cracks. If you work on site with the rest of your team, you can even use a whiteboard with post-its to make it more visual. Just remember to keep your board simple enough to give visibility, but not so much that updating it becomes a second full-time job. Also, don’t let the checkpoints occupy a significant part of your day: 15 minutes in the morning should be enough in most cases.

Another trick I’ve found works wonders is having a process keeper, someone responsible for making sure the PM tool reflects reality, not wishful thinking. They keep the board tidy, help unblock stuck tasks, and make sure what’s “done” is actually done. However, I know that this is not the reality for most small studios since nobody wants to do this “fun” stuff, so my recommendation is to keep everybody aligned on some simple good practices and make sure they stick to it.

In the end, I can sum this lesson up to the following mantra: a clean board is great, but a finished game is better.

Tip n° 4: Set Milestones with Playable Deliverables

Nothing boosts morale (or impresses a potential investor) like having something you can actually play. Even if it’s rough and the placeholder art is… well, let’s call it “abstract.”

Every milestone should aim for a playable build, not just a pile of tasks marked “done” in your project board. Games aren't like ERP systems that should solely aim to increase numbers or reduce bottlenecks. They are, first and foremost, an interactive media that needs to be experienced to be understood, and that counts not only to players, but to the development team as well. That’s why this approach of aiming to have playable builds keeps everybody motivated, helps spot design or technical issues early, and makes it easier to communicate progress to stakeholders.

Take Hand of Fate by Defiant Development, for example. Less than six months into development, they already had a playable demo ready for their Kickstarter backers. More than prove the concept, this early vertical slice helped build community trust, validate their core mechanics, and drive the entire project forward with clear direction.

The main takeaway here: playable beats perfect at every stage. A rough build will tell you more about your game than a hundred polished concept docs.

Tip n° 5: Plan for the “Unfun” Stuff

Oh, crap! We’ve reached the boring part of the list (as if the rest of it was pure fun). If you’ve made it this far, congratulations on surviving the boredom! Don’t worry, it’ll be ending soon.

I know, we all love building the exciting parts of a game: flashy mechanics, engaging level design, beautiful visuals… all that good stuff. But here’s the cold truth: every game starts as a project, and every project has baggage. Ignore that baggage, and sooner or later it will come back to bite you.

Think QA pipelines, localization, certification, and release logistics. If these are only an afterthought, you can expect delays, crunch, or worse: a launch that flops despite all your effort.

Take Cyberpunk 2077, for example — a game development disaster story I dissected here. Nearly half of its 5,381 credited team members worked on localization alone. That’s over 2,400 people translating 1.1 million words into 19 languages, recording 82,000 voice lines, and running QA across multiple regions. The game had plenty of problems already, but without early planning and coordination, even its localization could have gone off the rails. And remember: localization isn’t just translating text. It includes cultural alignment, UI adjustments, and UX tweaks. Quality testing (LQA) ensures your game plays well in every language and region. Rushing this step risks immersion, player experience, and post-launch goodwill.

Despite being the “unfun” side of game development, these steps aren’t optional. Integrate them into your timeline from day one. Because when the boring stuff is done well, everything else gets the chance to shine.

And that’s about it!

If you made it this far, thanks for sticking around! I hope you’ve pulled a few good insights from this post. Now, for those who jumped straight to the end, here’s the quick version.

My five easy-to-follow tips to start your next game project on the right foot, whether you’re aiming for a breakout indie hit or a AAA blockbuster, are:

1. Make an effort to create a GDD that works for your team and won’t end up in the dusty bin.

2. Plan your tools before production begins, especially your game engine.

3. Make your PM system serve your process, not the other way around.

4. Set milestones that deliver something playable and keep morale high.

5. Give the “unfun” stuff the attention it deserves from day one.

These things seem simple in theory, but often overlooked when excitement takes over. Skip any of them, and you’ll pay for it in time, money, or sanity. Typically, all three come together in a tidy bundle of crunch time and desperation. Trust me, it’s not a pretty sight.

Now I’d love to hear from you: if you’ve ever worked on a game or a software project, what’s one piece of pre-production advice you wish every team followed? Drop your thoughts in the comments. Your experience might just save someone else’s project!

Until next time, let’s keep leveling up, one boss level at a time.

Buy me a coffee

If this is your first time here, welcome! This is part of my ongoing series exploring the most powerful leadership lessons hidden inside the Final Fantasy universe. If you haven’t read the previous entries yet, you can start here: Part I, Part II, Part II-2 and Part III.

This week, I’m breaking the usual format to talk about something a little different: how the weight we carry and the way we deal with our burdens can completely change the kind of leader we become.

There are people who step into leadership out of love for a cause, while others are pushed there by betrayal and anger. And there will be times that two very distinct leaders can go through almost the same trials, but end up walking in completely opposite directions.

To explore this, I want to look at two of the most fascinating arcs in the Final Fantasy series. At first glance, they couldn’t be more different: one is from FFX and is a story of selflessness and hope, while the other, from FFXV, embodies vengeance and despair like few in the series. Dig a little deeper, though, and you’ll find they start from the same place: heavy personal loss and a responsibility no one could ever truly be ready for.

However, where one chose to turn that pain into purpose, the other let it harden into resentment. It’s a powerful reminder that, in the hardest moments, our choices can shape our path and dictate who we become along the way.

And yes, spoiler warning for both games before we go any further, but I’ll try to keep them on minimum this time, ok?

Let’s dive in.

Yuna: Carrying that Weight With Grace

We will start with our favorite summoner from Final Fantasy X, a young woman commited to protect her people from the terror of Sin, even if it costs her everything.

Yuna is the daughter of High Summoner Braska, a name that carries almost mythic weight in Spira. That legacy comes with the impossible expectations of matching her father’s sacrifice while bearing the crushing knowledge that her own pilgrimage will almost certainly end the same way.

What makes Yuna remarkable is how she carries this burden. As Yoshinori Kitase said when his team was conceptualizing her:

She has lived her life up until now simply following the creed that she believed in, but when her whole world is shaken, she then has to pick herself up and find a new way forward with her own willpower. That was the kind of strength we wanted to show in her.

This kind of self liberation could have inspired her to become histrionic or a show off. However, as so many other FF characters we explored before, she is not the type of character who drops fiery speeches or seek grand displays of power. Her best leadership traits can be summarized as compassion, empathy, and willingness to listen. Throughout the game, she makes space for others to be heard, and in doing so, earns trust in a way no title could force.

Yuna’s journey mirrors the archetype of the sacrificial hero found in mythologies from across the world, from Greek figures like Alcestis, who offers her life for her husband’s, to Japanese tales of onna-bugeisha who defend their people at all costs. In philosophy, her path echoes the Stoic idea that virtue lies not in what happens to us, but in how we respond to it.

In the end, her pilgrimage is a masterclass in what it means to lead from the heart. She holds her course even when she learns the truth about the Final Summoning — that her death would only provide a temporary reprieve from Sin. Rather than feeling betrayed by this reveal, she redefines her mission to break the cycle entirely. That shift, from accepting the system to challenging it, is what turns her from a mere symbol into a true leader.

Takeaway: Yuna shows the value of dedicating your life to serve others. By embodying the servant leadership archetype, she teaches us that the most powerful leaders accept the burdens placed on them in order to transform them into a vision of a better future.

Ardyn Izunia: Transforming a Load into Bitterness

In Final Fantasy XV, much like Yuna, Ardyn Lucis Caelum begins his journey as someone devoted to protecting others. Centuries before the events of the game, he was chosen to be the healer of Eos, purging the Starscourge from the people at great personal cost. He was a man of purpose, and was fully committed to service.

But where Yuna’s sacrifices strengthened her resolve, Ardyn’s path was poisoned by betrayal. Denied the throne by his own brother, stripped of his legacy, and cursed to eternal life with the very plague he had fought to cure, he was cast aside by the gods he had served.

It’s here that the parallel to Yuna begins to fracture. Faced with unbearable injustice, Ardyn turns inward for resentment. The selflessness that once defined him curdles into a long, calculated thirst for revenge. His charisma becomes a weapon, and he is not ashamed to use his vast intelligence to manipulate others.

In mythic terms, it’s obvious how Ardyn’s story recalls figures like Hades or Lucifer, beings who fall from grace because their pride and pain eclipsed their capacity for mercy. Philosophically, his arc reflects Friedrich Nietzsche’s warning about “gazing too long into the abyss”, that in fighting monsters, you end becoming one.

Ardyn uses leadership as a tool to destruction. While his cunning earns him followers, he ultimately form alliances from fear and shared bitterness, making his reign a cautionary tale about what happens when leadership loses sight of any purpose beyond vengeance.

Takeaway: Ardyn reminds us that great leaders are forged not only by what they endure, but by how they choose to carry it. Pain can deepen empathy, or it can harden into something that corrodes trust and purpose. The difference lies in whether we let suffering define us, or refine us.

What These Characters Teach About Leadership in Real Life

Yuna and Ardyn are very different characters from very different worlds, but both start from a similar place where loss, duty, and the crushing weight of expectations set up their burdens for the rest of their lives. As result, both are forced to make sacrifices that reshape their identities, and both have the potential to inspire others through their strength.

But the key difference here is how the choices they make with that burden lead them in opposite directions.

Yuna turned her pain into purpose. She led through empathy, building trust and hope even in the shadow of her own mortality. Meanwhile, Ardyn let his pain fester into resentment, making him channel his brilliance into manipulation, seeking only to tear down what once rejected him.

In real life, these two paths are more common than we might think. Many leaders rise from adversity, but whether they become forces for growth or for destruction depends on how they process that adversity. Resentment narrows your vision until all you can see is the score you need to settle. On the other end of the spectrum, purpose broadens it, allowing you to see the people depending on you and the future you want to build for them.

The lesson is simple but essential: we don’t always choose the weight we carry, but we do choose whether it will anchor us in a resentful past or guide us toward a better future.

That wraps up this special entry in our Final Fantasy leadership series. Next time I’ll be honoring a request from one of you, my readers!

In the meantime, I hope you take whatever burden you’re carrying and turn it into something good and positive… just like I did with this post, transforming my lingering resentment for playing vanilla FFXV at launch into an excuse to highlight its best DLC, despite the infuriating fact that it came three years after the base game. (Yeah… let’s just say I’m still a little bitter about it.)

Also, don’t forget to leave your suggestions for new entries in the series. I would love to explore more FF characters and extract lessons from them!

Until then, let’s keep leveling up, one boss level at a time.

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If this is your first time here, welcome! This is Part III of an ongoing series exploring leadership through the lens of Final Fantasy. If you’d like to catch up, feel free to check out my previous entries first: Part I, Part II, Part II-2.

While some people pursue leadership roles, there are others who find themselves needing to step up as leaders because of situations that compel them to do so.

Nowadays, we often celebrate visionaries, charismatic speakers, or strategic masterminds. But what happens when someone doesn’t want the crown, and wears it anyway? When responsibility finds them before they’re ready, and they grow into the role through sheer necessity?

In this entry, we’ll look at three characters from Final Fantasy VI, VIII, and IX who never asked to lead, but became unforgettable leaders anyway. They started their journeys reluctant, doubtful, or overwhelmed by the role placed upon them, and yet through quiet strength, personal growth, and unexpected maturity, they reinforced a notion that we explored with other FF characters in past entries: that true leadership is all about stepping up when it matters most.

As usual, before we move on, here’s a spoiler warning for these games, ok?

Without further ado, let’s begin with one of my favorite characters in the whole series.

Squall Leonhart: Leadership Doesn’t Always Look Like You Expect

Squall Leonhart doesn’t fit the mold of your typical hero, let alone a textbook leader. When we met him at first in Final Fantasy VIII, he’s withdrawn, emotionally distant, and borderline indifferent. He avoids attachments, scoffs at camaraderie, and keeps his peers at arm’s length. He’s not interested in leading. He barely tolerates being part of a team. Heck, sometimes we even doubt he wants to be left alone with his never ending torrent of thoughts.

This lonely young man should never become a leader. And yet, leadership finds him anyway.

When tragedy strikes and his mentor Cid is removed from the equation, Squall is suddenly placed in command of Balamb Garden and tasked with leading SeeD through one of the most chaotic conflicts in the world’s history. He never asked for this role and doesn’t even think he’s prepared for it, but since duty is calling, he takes it on anyway.

Squall’s arc is a quiet, internal transformation that many introverted people can relate to. His leadership style straights away from rousing speeches or grand charisma and it’s defined solely by responsibility, a commitment to protect his team, make tough calls, and grow beyond his own limitations.

Through his role as a leader, he learns to listen, to care, and most importantly, that strength doesn’t mean emotional detachment. As the story progresses, Squall starts making decisions not just for strategic reasons, but to protect the people he once pushed away. He opens up to Rinoa, and builds trust with Zell, Quistis, and the others. In the end, he evolves from a lone wolf into a reluctant, but capable, alpha.

Squall reminds us of the stoic ideal of responsibility over recognition. Like Marcus Aurelius, who never sought to be emperor yet ruled with purpose, Squall assumes power not out of desire, but because someone must. And when that moment comes, he steps forward.

Takeaway: You don’t have to be loud or extroverted to lead. True leadership often begins with showing up, especially when you’d rather not, and choosing responsibility over comfort. You grow into the role by doing, not by waiting to feel “ready.”

Garnet Til Alexandros XVII: Maturity Is Forged Through Crisis

Garnet (or Dagger, as she later calls herself) begins her journey in Final Fantasy IX as a runaway princess. Her decision to flee Alexandria isn’t an act of cowardice, but an attempt to escape the crushing expectations placed on her, and to investigate the increasingly erratic behavior of her mother, Queen Brahne. However in doing so, Garnet unintentionally walks straight into the kind of responsibility she was trying to avoid.

When her kingdom collapses and her mother dies, Garnet is forced to return as a queen. The carefree young woman who once struggled to even wield a dagger now has to lead a nation broken by war. That's when her story takes a sudden shift, focusing on survival, resilience, and the painful journey of growing up when the world won’t wait for you to be ready.

One of her most powerful moments comes in silence. Overcome with grief and uncertainty, she falls mute after her coronation, a striking metaphor for the weight of her new role. She eventually reclaims her voice through a hard-earned internal reckoning, a quiet act of recovery, of choosing to speak again, that represents one of the most powerful leadership moments in the entire series.

Garnet’s evolution echoes the trials of mythic figures like Persephone or even Athena, women thrust into complex power struggles who had to mature quickly, balancing emotional depth with decisiveness. In her vulnerability and humility, Garnet becomes stronger and finds clarity. We also see shades of logotherapy, the psychological theory of Viktor Frankl, which posits that human beings are primarily driven by a search for meaning, especially in the face of unavoidable suffering. And Garnet becomes a powerful representation of this theory by channeling her pain to make everything in her hands to not let her people endure meaningless suffering.

That makes me wonder how the world could be a better place if we had more leaders like her.

Takeaway: You don’t need to feel prepared to make a difference. Leadership is about finding the strength to grow because others need you to. Garnet teaches us that maturity is not measured by age or experience, but by how we carry ourselves when life leaves us no choice but to rise.

Edgar Roni Figaro: The Man Who Chose Duty Over Desire

Speaking in leaders who would turn our world into a better place, here’s one I think most men should aspire to be.

At first glance, Edgar doesn’t look like a reluctant leader. He’s charming, confident, a natural flirt who always seems to have the right line for every occasion. But beneath the surface, his kingship is marked by a deeper internal conflict shaped by loss, sacrifice, and the weight of responsibility.

In Final Fantasy VI, Edgar becomes king of Figaro after the mysterious disappearance of his twin brother, Sabin. The two brothers are faced with a terrible choice following their father’s death: one must rule, the other is free to walk their own path. While a coin toss decides their fate, Edgar cheats by using a two-headed coin so he could bear the crown as a way to protect his brother’s freedom.

That’s the paradox of Edgar. He appears to embrace his royal duties with ease, but in truth, he hides his burdens behind a well-rehearsed persona. His allegiance to the Empire is a calculated ruse to protect his kingdom. His confidence masks the loneliness of someone who traded a simpler life for the weight of leadership.

Edgar’s story shares echoes with classical archetypes like Prince Hector from The Iliad, who stands as Troy’s noble defender while knowing full well the personal cost. Like Hector, Edgar leads not for glory, but because someone must do it. He understands that leadership often means sacrificing the life you want for the greater good. This is where we can also bring in dharma, the Hindu philosophical concept of duty tied to one's role in life. Edgar fully embraces his dharma by stepping into the role his kingdom needs, even if it means walking a lonelier road.

Throughout the game, Edgar evolves from a reluctant royal into a truly strategic, compassionate leader by using technology and diplomacy as necessary tools to protect his people. And when he reunites with Sabin later in the story, it’s clear that he never once regretted his choice. Only that he had to make it.

Takeaway: Leadership can become a choice to carry a burden so others don’t have to. Edgar reminds us that duty isn’t always glamorous, but it can be deeply honorable. Real leaders don’t just lead when it’s easy. They lead when it’s necessary.

What These Characters Teach About Leadership in Real Life

Squall, Garnet, and Edgar were never meant to lead, at least not in the traditional sense. They didn’t seek titles, power, or recognition, and yet, when their worlds demanded it, they stood up to what was worth. Sometimes awkwardly, sometimes begrudgingly, but always with a desire to grow, and always with a sense of purpose.

Their stories are reminders that great leadership doesn’t require you to be flawless, but you need to go through some changes that might feel a bit uncomfortable at first.

Here are a few lessons we can apply beyond the screen:

1. You don’t need to feel ready to lead.

Many of us wait for a mythical “right time” to take initiative, when we’ll be more confident, more experienced, more charismatic. But leadership often begins when circumstances force your hand. Like Squall, you can grow into the role. Just take the challenge and be willing to learn on the go.

2. It’s okay to be quiet. Just don’t be absent.

You don’t need to be the loudest in the room to inspire others. Tifa and Garnet have shown this before, but Squall reinforces the point through his transformation process: presence and accountability matter more than a loud voice. Your actions can do the shouting for you.

3. Duty can be a noble calling.

A journey to leadership can begin with pursuing your passions, but there will be times when stepping up as a leader is simply about getting things done. Edgar’s arc proves that embracing responsibility, even if reluctantly, can make all the difference for those who depend on you.

4. Emotional maturity is part of the job.

From Garnet’s moment of silence to Squall’s emotional thaw, real leaders grow by becoming more emotionally available, both to themselves and to others. As we seen in previous entries, that vulnerability builds trust when you know how to use it.

5. Choosing to lead well is just as important as choosing to lead.

If you're aiming to be a leader just for the status, you’re doing it for the wrong reasons. Leadership is about intention. Garnet, for example, didn’t have a choice, but she made a better choice every step of the way. That’s why true leadership is shaped in the moments no one sees.

Whether you’re an introvert asked to take charge, someone juggling duty and dreams, or just feeling unprepared for the challenges ahead, these characters show us that reluctance doesn’t disqualify you from leadership. Most times, it actually qualifies you more than you think.

That’s it for Part III of our Final Fantasy leadership series. As always, thank you for reading as much as I liked to write it, specially now that I could finally talk a little bit about FFVIII, one of my absolute favorite games in the franchise (yeah, I’m a fan of the most broken game in the series. Deal with it.) In any case, I hope this post helped you see Squall, Garnet, and Edgar in a new light.

Next time, we’ll try something a little different. I’ll explore two Final Fantasy characters who come from very different games, but walk surprisingly parallel paths. Both struggle with their roles, both are shaped by sacrifice and expectation… yet each chooses a completely different outcome. It will be a study in contrasts: two sides of the same coin that serves as a reminder that how we carry our burdens can shape who we become.

While I work on that, I’d love to hear from you. Which Final Fantasy characters taught you something meaningful about leadership, purpose, or resilience? Leave your suggestions in the comments — some of them might show up in future posts!

In the meantime, let’s keep leveling up, one boss level at a time.

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I've been having a blast experimenting with PICO-8 recently. For those who don’t know, this is a minimalist, pixel-perfect fantasy console developed by Lexaloffle that intentionally imposes limitations on its engine, allowing designers to come up with some of the most amazing game concepts I've seen in quite a while.

PICO-8 made me fall back in love with the basics of making games. It’s been years since I actually opened an engine to prototype something, but there’s something nostalgic, almost meditative, about diving into a tiny resolution and a limited color palette to relearn what game development is really about.

These solo endeavors brought back memories. Some of them were great. Others… well, let’s just say they were educational.

I remember my first time joining the Global Game Jam, back when I was still working full-time in the games industry. We had about 30 hours to create a playable prototype based on a theme, and our team, made up of co-workers and college friends, dove headfirst into the storm of ideas. We came up with big ambitions, wild mechanics, full art pipelines. We were excited to apply everything we wanted based on the theme provided by the organizers.

The theme in question is lost in time. I can’t for the life of me remember it. However, I didn’t forget the outcome: we ended up our journey exhausted and with nothing more than a bunch of disconnected assets and a handful of bugs. No game to call our own. We didn’t even had a functional prototype.

We tried again the next year, this time eager to have something done until the end of the jam. Same energy, same level of confidence… and same outcome. A game jam with no game.

That’s when I made a bold choice: go solo. This time, though, I was decided to not fall into the same traps me and my friends fell into. I knew my limitations, so I went small and with low expectations. I used Construct 2, a visual scripting engine I was already comfortable with, and focused my efforts to make a simple platformer about a cave boy outrunning a dinossaur in an auto-scroller setup. It wasn’t anything flashy, but it was working.

By the end of the jam, it was done. Three looping stages, Game Boy-style graphics, and a modest 4-track soundtrack. Nothing remarkable, but finishing it felt like a huge win.

A year later, I went solo again. This time, I wanted to try to create a little shoot ‘em up. I used the same engine and tools I had last time to create a minimalistic game called Liber Lamb Dragonfly for mobile. Despite the new genre, I kept my limited approach, but got the same result: another micro game finished.

Eventually, I started to wonder: Why was solo development working so well for me? Was I just bad at working in teams?

I had my suspicions on what went wrong the first two times, but I was still unconvinced. To prove them, I joined another jam, this time as a floater. I offered my help as a chiptune composer for different teams who needed support, and I ended working with three groups of complete strangers to see what I could learn from them.

The outcome: 2 teams completed their games, while the one that didn’t left me with a feeling of déjà vu. They were a group of very skilled artists and programmers that were well-versed in Unity and all the other tools needed to do the job. However, they got trapped in the same inflated aspirations that my friends experienced during my initial jams.

That’s when it all clicked: the key to success was all about learning how to scope, prioritize, and execute. And that’s not only for the game itself, but to your tools and limitations as well.

These chaotic weekends taught me lessons that I’ve carried into every delivery and project management role I’ve taken on since, from corporate digital transformations to procurement rollouts and everything in between. With that in mind, today I want to share three of the biggest takeaways from those chaotic weekends that shaped the way I lead projects from that point onwards.

Lesson 1: Plan your planning time wisely

Game jams are a chaotic mix of adrenaline, ambition, and creative energy. But one of the most overlooked parts of the experience, and arguably one of the most crucial, is how you manage your planning time.

In my first two jams, this is exactly where we stumbled. Our team spent hours brainstorming mechanics, story ideas, art styles, UI flows, and game modes. We wanted it all: branching paths, complex sprites, layered audio... and because of that, we got none of it. We treated planning like a sacred phase that had to be “perfect” before execution begin, but perfection is the enemy of progress, especially when the clock is ticking.

What we really needed was something I learned later as a delivery manager: your planning phase should be just enough to give you direction, and no more. The goal shouldn’t be to outline the entire universe, but to set a course and start prototyping as fast as possible.

In delivery terms, it’s the difference between waterfall thinking (plan everything before you move) and agile thinking (get to the first sprint and adapt as you go). There are merits to both approaches according to the type of project you’re working on — sometimes you should even mix both for better results. However, no matter if you’re on an agile or a waterfall structure, if you’re on a high pressure situation where you need to deliver fast, you need to prioritize high-value activities early. In game jams, for example, that’s the core mechanic. In corporate projects, it might be defining your MVP or solving for key blockers first.

And it’s not just theory. Early in my career, when I transitioned from game dev to project management in a print outsourcing firm, I repeated the same mistake. I tried to map every detail of the project before kickoff. Clients got impatient, timelines stretched, and everyone’s morale dropped. I learned the hard way that overplanning delays momentum.

Today, I’ve adopted a leaner mindset: plan just enough to reduce risk and keep your team aligned, then get moving. You can adjust as you go.

Takeaway: Don’t get stuck trying to design the “perfect” project before you begin. Scope your planning to the time and resources you have, focus on the essentials, and start prototyping fast. That’s where progress (and creativity) truly begins.

Lesson 2: Keep It Simple, Stupid (KISS)

It’s easy to get carried away with big ideas, especially in creative environments like game jams. The first time I participated, our team had an ambitious vision that didn’t materialize into a game.

That’s why, when I finally decided to go solo, I forced myself to impose limits and work with what I had. No complex mechanics. No fancy graphics. No branching systems. Just focus on a simple goal: make a character run from left to right in an auto-scrolling game. I added a few things here and there, but each new feature was thought to be quick and easy to implement. In the end, the game was primitive, but it worked. And for the first time in my game jam journey, I had something to show.

The experience reminded me of a well-known principle in product and project design: KISS — Keep It Simple, Stupid. You don’t need to dumb things down, but you need to reduce complexity to the point where your core idea shines. This is the same mindset Shigeru Miyamoto used when designing Super Mario 64: they focused on Mario’s movement first to make the simple act of controlling him fun. The levels came after.

I later applied this strategy in my own book-writing process, and again in countless projects as a delivery manager. When building a procurement platform from scratch, for instance, we resisted the urge to over-engineer workflows or integrate too many departments upfront. Instead, we implement a solid MVP with just enough functionality to get feedback from users and we use their feedback to iterate from there.

It’s like building an onion: you start with a small, sharp core and layer complexity only when the structure can support it. If you start with the outer layers first, you’re left with a hollow, fragile shell.

Takeaway: Simplify to amplify. Start with a strong core mechanic (or project goal), prove it works, and build from there. The simpler your base, the stronger your final result.

Lesson 3: Use the Tools You Already Know

One of the biggest mistakes teams make in game jams (and in business overall) is trying to learn a new tool while delivering under pressure. That’s a guaranteed recipe for disaster. In my first jam, we thought, “Hey, this is the perfect time to learn Neo Axis!” Yeah… guess what? It wasn’t. We spent more time figuring out where the compile button was than actually building the game.

When I switched to solo mode, I did the opposite. I picked Construct 2 since it was a tool I already knew inside and out. I couldn’t afford the luxury of reinventing the wheel, especially regarding the game engine. The same applied to my soundtrack — I used Mixcraft, a DAW I had years of experience with. The result? Two completed games, delivered on time.

This principle applies everywhere. I’ve seen corporate projects sink because a team switched CRMs mid-implementation. I’ve seen marketing teams stall campaigns trying to learn a new analytics platform under deadline. In a past role, I helped rescue a project that nearly failed after a client insisted on using a shiny new platform no one on the team was trained in, just because it was trending on LinkedIn.

I’m not saying that you should only stick to what you’re comfortable with. You should always explore new tools and smarter ways to do your job. However, there’s a proper time for this, and being running against the clock is definitely not one of them. Keep your desire for experimentation with new engines, softwares and tools when you have buffer to spend.

Also, there’s the eternal debate of using paying softwares versus licensed ones. To that, I say you should evaluate if the investment is worthwhile and stick to what you know will help to get the job done. I paid for the Construct 2 license and that made me create 2 games plus prototype some other ideas, so it was worth for me. Sometimes you see your progress stuck because you are wasting time trying to master a free tool that is not the best for what you need to accomplish.

The truth is, paid or not, tools don’t matter nearly as much as familiarity does. When time is short, mastery of a simple tool beats clumsy use of a powerful one, every time.

Takeaway: When time is short and stakes are high, reach for what you already know. A familiar tool in a skilled hand beats a fancy tool in an uncertain one, whether you’re coding a game or launching a product.

To sum things up

Game jams are an exiting way to learn how to work under pressure. You are working with a limited time, under a specific theme and with a small number of resources, but having your little game done in the end is worth the effort. There’s even some great games that were born at game jams at first, and I would love to explore this theme in a future post.

That being said, I’m not making a comeback to game jams anytime soon. Not that I don’t like the idea of spending a whole weekend creating a demo, I just don’t have the same energy I did in my 20s. But the lessons I learned during those chaotic weekends have stayed with me across every industry and team I’ve worked with since.

Whether you’re launching a new product, implementing a system, or writing your first line of code, you should always focus on clarity, simplicity, and choosing your battles wisely. If you need to deliver something fast, keep in mind these three principles.

• Plan just enough to stay aligned.

• Focus on building a strong core before layering complexity.

• Stick with tools that let you create instead of just learning how to use them.

That’s why I’ve been enjoying my recent dive into PICO-8. It reminds me of those game jam days, but with even tighter constraints — and somehow, even more creativity. If you want a good antidote for the bloated AAA game market, I highly recommend checking out the Featured Carts section on their website. It’s free, and some of the most imaginative game design I’ve seen in years lives right there.

In the end, this post was my little love letter to game jams, where I learned the fine art of scoping well, working smart, and delivering something — anything — that makes you proud. That’s what game jams taught me, and I’ll carry those lessons into every “boss level” I face next.

Now, I want to hear from you. Did you guys joined a game jam recently? Is there any PICO-8 fans out there who read me? I would love to hear your experiences and share some PICO-8 recommendations with you!

In the meantime, let's keep leveling up, one boss level at a time.

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If this is your first time here, welcome! This is part of my ongoing series exploring the most powerful leadership lessons hidden inside the Final Fantasy universe. If you haven’t read yet, feel free to check previous entries: Part I, Part II.

We’re back this week with a short bonus entry for Part II. This time, by popular request!

In the comments of Part I, Leefa (shoutout to you!) suggested I include Wuk Lamat in future entries. I’ll admit that, being a MMO, Final Fantasy XIV is one of the entries I’ve played the least. However, right after reading that comment, I dove into her story arc to see what I was missing… and I’m so glad I did. Her journey is incredibly inspiring and more than worthy of a spotlight in this series, so I did my best to synthesize the best traits that we could use in our daily lives.

With that in mind, let’s take a closer look at what Wuk Lamat can teach us about leadership.

Wuk Lamat: The Path of Humility and Growth

In Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail, Wuk Lamat starts her journey as a young, spirited contender in the Rite of Succession, a grand trial to determine the next ruler of Tuliyollal. Surrounded by rivals with commanding titles, worldly experience, and raw strength, Wuk Lamat’s future leadership potential shines through the very traits her competitors often overlook: humility, emotional resilience, and a genuine willingness to grow.

As so many FF characters before, she doesn't wield the greatest political influence or physical power. What sets her apart is her heartfelt desire to understand the world, her people, and herself. This curiosity fuels her evolution, not just as a leader but as a person, an admirable quality we should all strive to nurture, whether or not we aspire to positions of leadership.

Her journey is about earning the right to lead not through dominance, but through presence, character, and care. It echoes a timeless truth: the best leaders are made, not born. Wuk Lamat isn’t afraid to admit what she doesn’t know. She grows openly, vulnerably, and courageously in front of others. Despite sometimes fearing to not appearing weak in front of other (up to the point of eating spicy curry, which she hates), there’s no false bravado in her. She shows up, she stumbles, she learns, and she changes for the better as result.

This growth reflects what psychologist Carol Dweck defines as the growth mindset: the belief that abilities, intelligence, and leadership can be developed through effort and learning. Wuk Lamat doesn’t see her limitations as fixed, but as starting points for her next steps forward. That mindset of using weaknesses as guidance to where to improve next is especially relevant for anyone stepping into new responsibilities before they feel “ready” (a theme we’ll return to in Part III).

In the end, Wuk Lamat is far from a silent presence. She’s boisterous, expressive, and full of life. However, there’s a quiet power in how she leads. She doesn’t inspire through command, but uplifts others by example. Her courage to grow gives others permission to rise alongside her, and that is leadership in its purest form.

Bottom line: Your leadership journey doesn’t need to begin with full realization and certainty, but humility, curiosity, and the courage to grow in public are cornerstones that every insecure leader should use to evolve. In the early stages, you don’t need to be the loudest voice or the most experienced person in the room to earn trust. Being honest about what you’re still figuring out is exactly what makes you valuable. Transparency, not perfection, can be the foundation for greatness.

That’s it for today. This week’s post is a bit shorter than usual (I’ve got some projects and a career event taking up my time), but I didn’t want to leave you hanging, so that’s why I push forward with this post. Sorry for not being able to finish Part III in time, but I hope you guys enjoyed this little extra. In any case, I’m so glad I got the chance to discover a new face in FF and share my thoughts on this fantastic character. Thanks once again, Leefa, for your suggestion, and for those who didn’t do it yet, I recommend to subscribe on her Cozy Anomaly substack.

In the meantime, I would like to hear from you. Have another Final Fantasy character you think deserves a leadership or an inspirational spotlight? Drop your suggestion in the comments, I’m still collecting picks for future posts in this series.

Until next time, let’s keep leveling up, one boss level at a time.

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If this is your first time here, welcome! This is Part II of my ongoing series exploring the most powerful leadership lessons hidden inside the Final Fantasy universe. If you haven’t read yet, feel free to check Part I.

Before we begin, I want to thank everyone who read and commented on part I of this exploration of leadership examples in Final Fantasy! It’s wonderful to see so many FF enthusiasts who resonate with those characters and apply the lessons from their journeys to real life. This inspires me to continue writing about them and to delve into new perspectives on some of the most cherished characters in this series. I hope you enjoy this next part as well.

In our first chapter, we explored characters like Cecil, Celes, and Clive who had to fall, rise, and rebuild themselves before earning their place as leaders. However, leadership doesn’t always come with a title or a throne. There are times it can show up in the way you hold a team together, lead with empathy, or find courage when no one else will.

That’s the kind of subtle leadership we’re celebrating in this entry. Today’s post focuses on three unforgettable characters from Final Fantasy VI, VII, and IX which don’t fit the mold of traditional leaders and yet, through conviction, presence, and deep emotional intelligence, they became the heart of their teams and left lasting legacies in their worlds. As you expect, there will be spoilers for those games, so a warning is in place.

With that out of the way, let’s dive into what these characters can teach us.

Terra Branford: Leading by Empathy

Few characters in the Final Fantasy series hold the same emotional significance as Terra Branford from Final Fantasy VI. Her journey is deeply existential, focusing on her battle to understand her own emotions. As consequence, through this journey of reconnecting with her humanity, she ultimately stumbles on the true meaning of leadership.

Similar to Celes (which we discussed in part I), when we are introduced to Terra, she is primarily a weapon, but her situation is far more tragic. Brainwashed by the Empire, genetically altered with the powers of magicite, and used as a tool of destruction, she doesn’t know who she is or what she feels. Her identity has been stripped away by those who saw her only as an asset. However, once she gains her freedom, her real journey begins.

Terra’s arc is about awakening to her emotions, to her past, and to her capacity for love. Unlike other party members like Leo or Edgar, she never ascends to a formal role as leader, but as she travels with the Returners and learns from those around her, she becomes a quiet force of unity and care. Ultimately, her leadership isn’t driven by strategy or power, but born from empathy.

This change becomes clear in the World of Ruin, where Terra faces the decision to either rejoin the fight or withdraw into a peaceful existence caring for orphaned children. At first, she is uncertain because she has finally discovered a place where she feels complete. In the end, however, she chooses to return to the fight, driven by the desire to protect those who can’t protect themselves.

Her story parallels the myth of Demeter, the Greek goddess of harvest, who descends into grief after losing her daughter, Persephone, but eventually reclaims her role in nurturing the world. Like Demeter, Terra’s leadership stems from compassion. It also echoes Carl Rogers’ philosophy in humanistic psychology that growth and healing come from unconditional positive regard and self-acceptance. With that in mind, Terra becomes a leader not by asserting control but by offering understanding, and that, in turn, inspires others to follow her.

Bottom line: The strongest leaders are those who have encountered the toughest challenges and transform their struggles into limitless chances to show kindness to those around them. Terra shows us that empathy, self-awareness, and gentle strength can spread further than commands ever will.

Tifa Lockhart: The Quiet Anchor Every Team Needs

There’s a moment in Final Fantasy VII that says everything about Tifa Lockhart without a single word. Following Aerith's death, Cloud crumbles, and the rest of the team is shaken by the event. Yet it is Tifa, without a battle cry or a grand speech, who was capable of giving the comfort he so desperately needed by quietly sitting next to him, and resting her hand on his.

This is a brief but impactful moment that embodies what Tifa truly represents: a steady hand amid turmoil. In a cast full of explosive personalities — from Barret’s firebrand passion to Cloud’s brooding intensity — Tifa is the one who grounds the team. While others fight on the frontlines or confront their pasts in dramatic arcs, Tifa leads through care, emotional intelligence, and quiet resilience.

She runs the Seventh Heaven bar, but she’s more than a mere bartender. She’s the moral center of Avalanche. Since the very beginning of the game, she keeps the group from unraveling. She checks in on others, offers advice when it’s needed and space when it’s not. Her role isn’t flashy, and that’s exactly why it’s so easy to overlook both in the game and, frankly, in real life too. Tifa reminds us of the kind of leader that’s often missing in corporate org charts: the integrator. The person who may not chase the spotlight but makes sure the team works. The one who understands the emotional undercurrents of a group and helps keep the mission on track without ever needing a title.

Her leadership style echoes the idea of the servant leader, a concept popularized by Robert K. Greenleaf in the early 1970s. Servant leaders focus on the needs of others first, empowering people to develop and perform as highly as possible. They don’t impose direction, but enable it instead. Tifa does exactly that and, through it, she becomes indispensable. You could also compare her to the archetype of Hestia, the Greek goddess of the hearth. Hestia never goes to war, nor engages in the power plays of Olympus, however she’s the fire everyone returns to, the one who holds the home together when everything else falls apart.

There are a lot of other character traits that makes Tifa so fondly remembered by many players who got enamored by RPGs through FF VII, but it’s her quieter moments what really glue all those memorable qualities together and make her so beloved by fans.

Bottom line: Not all leaders shout from the front. Some sit beside you when you’re at your lowest and help you get back up. Tifa teaches us that emotional intelligence, consistency, and quiet presence can be just as powerful, if not more, than bold authority.

Vivi Ornitier: Courage in the Face of Uncertainty

From the moment we meet Vivi Ornitier in Final Fantasy IX, there’s this quiet vulnerability about him. A young black mage with a childlike voice and oversized hat, Vivi moves through the world with curiosity, fear, and a deep sense of not belonging. He simply wonders throughout the world of Gaia. And that’s what makes him unforgettable.

Vivi’s journey is a raw meditation on mortality, identity, and meaning. As he uncovers the truth behind his existence — that he was manufactured, that his lifespan is limited, that his kind is being used — he is thrust into existential dread that most of us spend years trying to avoid. And yet, he keeps moving. He shows up. He asks hard questions. He chooses to live, even without clear answers.

This is where Vivi becomes a powerful metaphor for accidental leadership. He doesn’t start with a vision or a plan, but with uncertainty. Yet, in his sincerity and honesty, others find strength. He becomes a kind of moral compass, especially for Zidane, and his simple reflections (like “How do you prove you exist…?”) carry more weight than any war speech.

In real life, this mirrors the experience of many young professionals, newly promoted managers, or anyone navigating leadership in a crisis. You might feel unprepared. You might feel like you don’t belong. But except in rare cases, you're never ready for leadership. All you have to do is be present and, despite feeling vulnerable, you should still take the next step forward.

Philosophically, Vivi’s arc parallels Søren Kierkegaard’s notion of authentic existence, the courage to face despair, acknowledge the absurd, and still choose to act. Vivi chooses hope not because he’s sure of it, but because he knows the alternative is silence. His leadership trait is the quiet defiance of someone who refuses to let fear dictate his path.

There’s also a Buddhist undercurrent to his story: the acceptance of impermanence, the idea that meaning is not something we find, but something we make, moment by moment, relationship by relationship. Certainly, those are heavy themes, but that’s what makes Vivi such a compelling character to begin with.

Bottom line: You don’t need to have all the answers at all times. There will be moments that the greatest act of leadership is walking into the unknown with open eyes, a steady heart, and the humility to ask questions. Vivi shows us that vulnerability can be strength, and courage is not the absence of fear, but the choice to face it despite of it.

What These Characters Teach Us About Leadership in Real Life

We can summarize in three words: courage, empathy, and resilience. These aren’t just traits of video game heroes, but critical skills for navigating real-world challenges, especially when you don’t have a leadership title or a formal position of power. These characters show us that some of the most influential leaders are the ones who never set out to lead, and that’s exactly what makes them so effective.

Here are the practical takeaways we can bring into our own careers and lives.

1. You don’t need authority to make an impact.

Terra begins as a weapon, Tifa as a supporter, Vivi as a question mark. None of them start in charge, but each earns trust and influence through emotional presence, moral clarity, and quiet conviction. That being said, you need to be proactive to generate a significant impact in the world. Don’t wait to a leadership position be handed to you. Instead, choose to grow into a leader by showing up when it matters.

2. Empathy is a superpower.

Tifa doesn’t lead with ego or volume. She listens and, as result, she grounds the team. In a world filled with loud opinions, people follow those who create space for others to be seen. Sometimes, the best way to lead is simply to be the one person who actually understands or at least make an effort to it.

3. Questions are just as powerful as answers.

Vivi doesn’t pretend to be brave. He just keeps going. He teaches us that it’s okay to not know — to ask, to doubt, to feel afraid — and still take action. Uncertainty is not a weakness. It’s the birthplace of reflection and growth. So don’t be afraid to be open for questions.

4. You’re stronger than you think.

I know, this one sounds like self-help crap, but hear me out. Terra’s arc reminds us that even when we feel broken, used, or unsure of our identity, we still have the power to protect others and that, in turn, heals us. Leading with vulnerability shouldn’t be interpreted as weakness, but as a pathway to find strength. There will be times you’ll need to be strong for others, and those will be the moments you’ll find internal resources that you didn’t know they existed.

5. Small actions build deep trust.

None of these characters deliver grand speeches (well… maybe except for Vivi and those poignant questions). Their leadership is revealed in small moments: a gesture, a choice, a quiet stand. In the real world, trust is built the same way, one decision at a time. Be conscious of those and you’ll be an anchor for any group in no time.

That’s it for Part II of our Final Fantasy leadership series. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it!

Next time, we’ll explore a theme that’s incredibly common in RPGs (and life): the reluctant leader. The person who never asked for the role, but steps up when no one else can. Final Fantasy is full of characters who fit this mold, but I’ve chosen three that I believe represent this archetype at its very best.

While the next part is still in the works, I’d love to hear from you. Which Final Fantasy character taught you something about leadership, purpose, or resilience? Drop your thoughts in the comments, I’m still on the lookout for community picks to feature in future entries!

Until then, let’s keep leveling up, one boss level at a time.

Support me by buying me a coffee