I’ve made some personal observations here:
http://www.rubbergenius.co.uk/2008/03/turning-point-fall-of-codemasters.html

Undoubtably, you almost always have somebody in a senior decision making capacity that has been promoted far beyoned their level of competence and whose ideas appear absurd/ludicrous compared to what the people on the ‘ground’ perceive to be the ‘right’ way forward.

That said, there are often other constraints affecting senior level decision making processes, that aren’t immediately clear at lower levels. This is where the art of communication comes in – a succesful top-down/bottom-up company relies on clear, consice communication channels – unfortunately, Codemasters employed the following scenario:

“Treat them like mushrooms”

(roughly translated, keep them in the dark and feed them full of S%&T…)

This is perhaps the biggest single point of failure for Codemasters, indeed this ‘issue’ no doubt lead to the creation of such atrocities as Club Football and other poor uses of very valuable IP – the latest Colin McRae seeing the absolute demise of a brilliant racing game (In my opinion) – I don’t want to hear an American co-driver shouting pace notes – if I wanted SEGA RALLY, I would have got SEGA RALLY, I wanted Colin McRae, but instead ended up with an alternate version of SEGA RALLY…

So in summary, unless people up and down the food chain are ‘ALLOWED’ to have ‘REASONABLE’ input into the DECISON MAKING PROCESS, we’ll keep seeing ‘issues’ like this occuring.

A secondary issue is RISK ADVERSIVENESS – everybody is now relying on ‘old IP’ to generate new revenue – like the Airwolf series being remade into a file, the resurgence of Night Rider etc etc… This is certainly proof that the ‘Finance’ bean counters are running the show – god bless them and their EXCEL spreadsheets, I mean, numbers don’t lie right….

Except in an IQ test :p

Just my 2p

I love how you hint that there was at least one individual there that was surplus in their usefulness, yet no-doubt drawing money from the place like some kind of clueless leech-spirited hominid.

I realise that it would be just too much to divulge who this would be!

What about in marketing?

Around the time when I was looking for my 2nd or 3rd job in the industry it was the fashion to tell recruiters “anywhere but Codemasters”. It’s a little sad a company can fall so low. I’m looking forward to the retrospectives!