Former Total War dev accuses Creative Assembly of "mismanagement" and says strategy series AI is "limited by design"

rockpapershotgun.com:

A former developer at Total War studio Creative Assembly has written a lengthy personal account of his time at the studio, in which he details development troubles on strategy game Total War: Rome 2 and Total War: Attila, and alleges that these issues were exacerbated by an inflexible and counterproductive leadership structure and “chronic mismanagement,” sometimes resulting in what he calls a “toxic work environment.”

Julian McKinlay, who between 2009 and 2014 worked on Total War games ranging from Napoleon to Attila, also detailed his experience being blamed by a section of the community for Rome 2’s bug-ridden launch after appearing in a promotional video. McKinlay was blamed for misrepensenting information about the game. He makes clear he wasn't coerced into giving the interview, but answered questions based on what he understood about the then current state of Rome 2.

McKinlay also goes into detail on the issues he faced as a programmer, largely centred around AI, and claims that upper management either misunderstood or routinely ignored issues raised by programmers. He also alleges that leadership put the addition of marketable new features - and marketing itself - at a higher priority than giving the programmers the support and resources they needed.

He also alleges that the design and programming teams were at odds as regards certain features, and that upper management frequently sided with designers. “The way it looked from my point of view was that production leadership let designers do whatever they wanted, and it’s one of the main reasons that Rome II went so badly wrong,” writes McKinlay. “Designers instructed us not to improve [the AI] in certain ways, because they believed that players enjoyed being able to dominate the AI and that we shouldn’t deprive them of that.”

“The Total War team was very hierarchical for its size,” McKinlay writes, “and key design and management decisions were made by a small handful of individuals at the top without any real