The Power of Leading with Empathy in the Game Industry with Mitch Gitelman

April 16, 2024

The Power of Leading with Empathy in the Game Industry with Mitch Gitelman

Join us as we sit down with Mitch Gitelman, a 30-year veteran of the game industry and former CEO of Harebrained Schemes, known for hits like the Shadowrun Returns and Battletech. He also played key roles as a founding member and studio head for Microsoft Games, leading the Xbox Live Arcade business during its heyday.

In this episode, Mitch shares wisdom on navigating layoffs with compassion, fostering meaningful industry connections, offering tips on maintaining culture through acquisitions and starting a game company, and discussing his exciting plans for the future as he enters his "act three."

🎧 Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

The Birth of Harebrained Schemes
How Harebrained Schemes Pioneered Kickstarter Success with Shadowrun Returns
What Sets a Strong Company Culture Apart
Strategies for Preserving Corporate Culture Through Acquisitions
How to Conduct a Layoff with Compassion
Advice for Entrepreneurs Starting their Own Studio

Resources Mentioned in this episode:

Sponsor for this episode...

This episode is brought to you by Here’s Waldo Recruiting, a boutique recruitment firm specializing in the video game industry that prioritizes quality over quantity and values transparency, communication, and diversity. We partner with companies, creatives, and programmers to understand the why behind their needs and provide a white-glove experience that ensures a win-win outcome. The industry evolves. The market changes. But at Here’s Waldo Recruiting, our commitment to happy candidates and clients does not. We understand that searching for the best and brightest talent can be overwhelming, so let our customer-first staff of professionals do the leg work for you by heading over to hereswaldorecruiting.com.

Episode Transcript

Intro: Welcome to the Here's Waldo Podcast, where we sit down with top visionaries and creatives in the video game industry. Together, we'll unravel their journeys and learn more about the path they're forging ahead. Now, let's get started with the show.

Lizzie Mintus: Hi, I'm Lizzie Mintus, founder and CEO of Here's Waldo Recruiting, a boutique video game recruitment firm. This is the Here's Waldo Podcast. In every episode, we dive deep into conversations with creatives, founders, and executives about what it takes to be successful. You can expect to hear valuable lessons from their journey and get a glimpse into the future of the industry.

This episode is brought to you by Here's Waldo Recruiting, a boutique recruitment firm for the game industry. We value quality over quantity, transparency, communication, and diversity. We partner with companies, creatives, and programmers to understand the why behind their needs.

Today we have Mitch Gitelman with us. Mitch is a 30 year veteran of game development with a range of experiences, from indie to AAA, and from platform publisher to entrepreneur. He is the former CEO of Harebrained Schemes, which he co founded in 2011 with industry legend, Jordan Weissman. Harebrained Schemes are creators of the Shadowrun Trilogy, Battletech, and the Lamplighter's League, which was released in October of last year.

Mitch has led, produced, designed, and written high profile games in a dozen different genres, was a founding member and studio head for Microsoft Games, and led the Xbox Live Arcade business in its heyday. Let's get started. You missed that you were a standup comedian in your intro.

Mitch Gitelman: Yeah. When you get this age, I had many lifetimes. I was a standup comic. I was an improvisational actor. I was a, what do you call that, a management trainer traveling around the Midwest.

Lizzie Mintus: Past lives.

Mitch Gitelman: You have lives. You have lives. But I like this one and I'm glad that it's transitioning now. 30 year veteran, hearing that was a little spooky.

Lizzie Mintus: No, congratulations. You've done a lot. I want to start by talking about Harebrained Schemes. Can you tell me about just what made you start the company? How you came up with the idea of all the early days?

Mitch Gitelman: Yeah, I would love to. I love talking about Harebrained Schemes, especially how it was founded. So what happened was, I was consulting with Bungie on Destiny and talking to them about mobile strategies and stuff like that. Well, we call three screen strategies- the TV screen, the computer screen, and your mobile screen. And so I was consulting with them. And at the same time, my former partner, Jordan, was pitching them a concept for a mobile game.

Pete Parsons, the CEO, at the time he was COO of the company said, hey, wait a minute. I got two great tastes that taste great together. And so I said, Mitch, how about we pay you to produce the game and make sure Jordan delivers it, your old friends, that should be great.

And so, Hey, Jordan, why don't you get together with Mitch, who you've been trying to create a business for years. I got together with Jordan on a Friday. He told me the idea of the game. It was called Crimson Steam Pirates, at the time it was not called anything. But, he showed me a slide deck of three or four screens. This is the game. I said, oh, I know exactly how to make that, let's start Monday.

And, there was a little bet going on between Jordan and the CEO, Harold, about whether you could make a game of really high quality on mobile in 10 weeks. And so Jordan's like, are you up for the challenge. I'm up for any challenge. Let's go. And we just started and we just raced the wind with that one.

It was basically a 10 week game jam. We were really excited to just hang out and have fun. It was an absolute blast. And he would come in from lunch and I'd say, sorry, man. While you were out to lunch, I had to cut two features. He's like, that's cool. I just came up with a new one at lunch. So negative. And that was our relationship. And about five weeks into the 10, he just leaned over to me, and we were using a storage closet from Gas Power Games.

Lizzie Mintus: That's so funny. I didn't even know that, but I was just thinking, I bet it's a storage closet.

Mitch Gitelman: It was totally a storage closet that Chris Taylor, our friend, had loaned us the use of. We crammed people into the storage closet, and you could barely move. In order to get out to go to the bathroom, we had to sort of turn sideways and edge your way out. And as I mentioned, he passed him. He says, you want to stay together and just make a company.

Yeah. Okay.

And he goes, what do you want to call it?

I don't know. What do you want to call it? He says, I've got a URL for harebrained schemes. Like that's us. That's it. And that was it. And then I went to the bathroom. When I came back, I was incorporating.

Lizzie Mintus: It all happened.

Mitch Gitelman: That was it. That's how fast he and I used to roll. And that's how much thought we put into stuff, too.

Lizzie Mintus: No, it's good. I feel like you could agonize, especially over company name forever. Let me tell you that you can agonize over your company name forever.

Mitch Gitelman: I believe you. I like Here's Waldo.

Lizzie Mintus: Thank you. It's great to know.

Mitch Gitelman: By the way, one of my very first video games I ever made was a Where's Waldo game. I used to do children's games.

Lizzie Mintus: I saw that. In one of my lives. In one of your past lives. Yes. Well, thank you. I hope it's translatable across. Different people in the world generally understand it. A couple of people have asked me, who's Waldo?

Mitch Gitelman: Having made a Where's Waldo game, I know that it was translated into multiple languages, so.

Lizzie Mintus: Yeah, but I think they call Waldo something else, right?

Mitch Gitelman: They do, but it's been, like, 30 years and I don't remember.

Lizzie Mintus: Yeah, something like that. Maybe Wallace.

Mitch Gitelman: Anyway, that's how Harebrained Schemes started. And then while we were in the closet, they're making mobile games, I came up with the idea of going to Kickstarter to kickstart Shadowrun Returns.

Lizzie Mintus: Yeah, talk about that. So I read that you shipped the first 1 million plus Kickstarter back to video games. How did you come up with Kickstarter? Were you just seeing success on Kickstarter? It was that Kickstarter was in its heyday too in 2013, right?

Mitch Gitelman: It was on the upswing. There had only been one or two video game kickstarters. When I came up with the idea, there were none.

Lizzie Mintus: Oh.

Mitch Gitelman: Yeah. So what happened was, we were in the closet and I'm sitting right next to our lead engineer and he was scrolling Kickstarter. You're so close. You just lean over and look at what's that. And he was like, Oh, this is this really cool site that I go on all the time. I backed these projects.

And I said, do they have any video game projects? And he looks at me as I was trying to sauce, he's like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Thanks for the idea. And then, that same week, our publisher for one of the video games said, Hey, wouldn't it be cool if you guys did a Shadowrun game? I'm like, Oh, that's interesting. I'll think about that. And then that same week, Kotaku came out with a list of its top 10 games. They'd love to see the return and Shadowrun was on it. I'm like, all right, we're making Shadowrun on Kickstarter. And that was it. It was all just like, oh, light bulb went on over my head. I got together with my partners and talked about it. They were like, I don't know if this is the right thing. And then Tim came up with his 3 million plus Kickstarter for, was it Broken Chalice? And I think that's what he called it at the time. And they're like, Oh, I see that is viable, isn't it?

And so we were off to the races. We were very, very early, but we were one of the first to break a million dollars. And just watching the numbers go up was just overwhelming because we had asked for 400,000 and we were hoping we might get it within the 20 days for a Kickstarter and then we hit it in 28 hours. Uh oh. Then people are asking us for stretch goals. We're like, hmm, yeah, we should probably have thought of that when we started this. Welcome to Harebrained Schemes. And so we were bouncing from there.

Lizzie Mintus: What do you think made your Kickstarter such a success? What did you put up that made people want to give you money so much?

Mitch Gitelman: Both jack and shit. That's a technical term, by the way. The Kickstarter page was our concept doc. We had blank hard drives. We had nothing. What we had was Jordan Weisman, the creator of Shadowrun. And that's enough. We have the guy.

Lizzie Mintus: Yeah.

Mitch Gitelman: That's all there is to it. And then I really worked hard with the rest of the team to really develop a rapport with the community. I think that was one of the things. They started to trust us very quickly, because the community would go, Hey, wouldn't it be cool if you added this to the game. And I go, I'm not doing that. As a matter of fact at one point we said, Hey, wouldn't it be cool to add multiplayer to the game. And the Kickstarter, we started to get all the money. We realized we can't do this. We can barely make this.

Lizzie Mintus: Yeah. On that budget, I was going to say, you need to get a lot more on Kickstarter.

Mitch Gitelman: It was one of those, Hey, wouldn't it be cool if... we went, wait a minute. Almost immediately we did a little video saying, Hey, we got excited. And we said, we were going to do this. We're not doing that. And actually the trust in us went up. Right. We owned it. We told the truth. The company was founded on the idea of being genuine and telling the truth anyway. So the audience started to really go with us because in what was it, 2012, but let's just call it in the 2000s, trust and being genuine is the new punk rock, right? People are just used to being sold to and being marketed to and being influenced by. Wouldn't it be nice to meet somebody who just does what they say they're going to do?

Lizzie Mintus: Hey, that's my business too. It's not rocket science, but most people don't do it. They're like, wow, this is a really different experience.

Mitch Gitelman: And being direct. You and I have talked about this in the past. Being direct is just this weirdness with people and they don't know how to handle it sometimes.

Lizzie Mintus: Especially when you're in Seattle. They're like, what's that?

Mitch Gitelman: Well, I'm from Chicago and I was raised a certain way. Hey, I'm parking here. You know, that's just all there is to it. I'll tell you though, it's probably the secret of my whole life is really being honest, direct and timely with your communication. Not waiting for shit to build up and fester and become a problem.

What if we just talk directly to each other all the time? And that's my management philosophy. And that was the philosophy that I tried to instill in every single person in Harebrained Schemes, which is why it was a nice place to work. Yeah. Just trust the person next to you.

Lizzie Mintus: So I didn't tell you this when I met you, but I deeply tried to hire people from Harebrained Schemes, but nobody wanted to leave. And it was so frustrating. But I think that says a lot to your culture. I mean, most people talk to you at least, but it was just like a wall I couldn't break through.

So tell me more about how you built this company. What values, practices, repeatable things that listeners could take away and say, yeah, I want to do that or I want my company to do that.

Mitch Gitelman: Repeatable things is sort of my jam because the way that I do it just by instinct, is to have these little catchphrases, which I call bumper stickers, bumper sticker management. If you can remember this catchphrase, well, then you can self manage. It's like, oh, this is important at this company, not on a poster on the wall or anything, but just because we sort of live it and occasionally just say it to each other.

So honest, direct, timely communication is one of the number one things that I espouse and it's one of those things that's so rare, unfortunately. There's a big difference between being nice to somebody and being kind to them, right? It's huge. I remember a manager that I worked with once was fed up with a couple of their employees. I think we had to start managing them out. And we started talking about the feedback that the employees were getting, and it turns out the manager was being nice to them and not giving them honest, direct feedback. So of course they couldn't perform to the level they were expected then, right?

They weren't being kind. They were being too nice. And by being honest and direct with them, the trust between the manager, and the individual contributors went through the roof.

Oh, now we're collaborating because we're actually talking to each other, not at each other. It's one of the first things I ever learned in management was to talk to people, not at them, which is kind of tough with a computer screen now. I feel like I'm talking at a screen.

Lizzie Mintus: You are. Yeah. And when I, my first job I worked at Nordstrom, which I built so much character. I sold to men who are always there because there's a pressing need that they found, like my wedding is tomorrow. Or generally their significant other has dragged them there, or maybe they saw a guy on an airplane and they need a shirt just like him.

But I would always tell people, hey, that doesn't look good on you. Why don't you not buy that? Which is kind of the same thing, right? And then they're like, oh, okay. Thank you for that feedback because they're so used to being sold to. They're like, oh, well, what would look good? And then you just have a whole different conversation.

Mitch Gitelman: Yeah. And it's a collaborative one and people are happy long term.

Lizzie Mintus: Yeah, that's really important. Okay. So you have your bumper sticker. What other bumper stickers do you have?

Mitch Gitelman: One of the guiding principles for the leadership team at Harebrained Schemes, who are still doing it every day, I'm so proud of them. There are paradox planning and what they're doing with it. It fills me with pride to watch how they're going about doing things. But anyway, one of the guiding principles there is improvise, adapt, overcome.

I'm sure you've heard that before. Not suggesting it's new, but I've lived that. That is to me, the life of an entrepreneur early, early days, right? Oh, well now what do I do?

Lizzie Mintus: All the time.

Mitch Gitelman: It's like that Bruce Lee thing. You'd be like water. You just flow around the rock, you flow over, you have no choice. And I've said to people, many times it's amazing what people can do when they have no choice. One of the things we've always said is that we sort of paint ourselves into a corner and then punch our way out. And for me, that was joy. That can be hard on other people around you, right? Who are looking for a nice stable life. But in the beginning, that rough and tumble, startup bootstrap, because we were using our own laptops.

I was taking no salary, bootstrapped until Kickstarter where we could finally pay ourselves a little salary. You just do it. Yeah. I have no choice.

Lizzie Mintus: Yeah. So you had a million dollars from Kickstarter or more than a million dollars, 1.9.

Mitch Gitelman: Plus, but all that crap that we promised them we would send them, if they backed us,

Lizzie Mintus: minus, yeah.

Mitch Gitelman: It was not that great.

Lizzie Mintus: Yeah, and how fast did you come out with your game? Now, thinking about raising 1. 9 with a small team to build a game, it's a kind of short window, right?

Mitch Gitelman: Yeah. Door to door from the time the Kickstarter closed to the time the game shipped was one year.

Lizzie Mintus: Okay. Wow.

Mitch Gitelman: And how do you get the game and an editor so that people could make their own user generated content all in a year? Because Harebrained Schemes had two speeds, fast and faster.

Lizzie Mintus: Options.

Mitch Gitelman: Yeah. Do you want to work till nine today or midnight today? Now that's sort of a crunch culture that people obviously can't sustain and it's bad for people, but for an entrepreneur in the beginning, when you're trying to make things happen, if people are on board with you and they understand what you're about. We never lied to people and said, we're going to crunch our asses up and we're going to do this and we're going to make our own future.

Okay, let's make our own future. That's the deal. You get out of it when you put into it. And then eventually we stabilized for four years until we had to again, because you have to at some point. And it's almost always mismanagement.

In this case, it was usually mine or somebody. It doesn't matter. The question is, do you own that? I know we're going into another topic completely, but you have to own that stuff. Oh yeah, I screwed that up. All right. Well, here's how we're going to have to get out of it, and you lead from the front.

Lizzie Mintus: I think that's really powerful as a leader to say, Hey, I made this mistake.

Mitch Gitelman: Honest and direct.

Lizzie Mintus: Bumper sticker. Okay. So Harebrained Schemes was acquired by Paradox in 2019 and we'll spin out or rather spun out. It's 2024, I keep forgetting. Can you talk about the spin in and the spin out?

Mitch Gitelman: Sure. The spin in looked like this. Paradox was the publisher for Battletech. And we developed a really positive relationship with our publishing team. A few of the execs that we had met, we hadn't met many because we're making a game. But we established a good relationship and we realized that at the sort of size we were, which was call it 55 at the time.

We felt it was a little unsustainable to go forward. Things were changing. Just to give you an idea, when Shadowrun Returns came out on Steam, something in the neighborhood of 7, 600 other games came out on Steam that year. When we shipped Battletech, 14, 000 games came out that year, right?

The business had changed and had to adapt to that. We needed sales, we needed marketing, and we needed help with business strategy too. So we wanted some outside viewpoints on it. And so we realized we needed more money. We went and we shopped around for equity investment, and we had two deals on the table with major companies that you've heard of.

And then with Paradox who approached us and said, you know, we're expanding. They'd just gotten a big influx of cash because they had IPO'd. And they were expanding their strategy and they felt that we could be a part of it. So now we had three offers on the table. Two for just money, where we would hire marketing people and stuff like that and build that own internal thing. That was a bit of work that we were looking at. Okay, we can do this and we'll go it alone. Or we can go with these people that have an established fan base, salespeople, they've got ends with all of the platforms, etc. It felt like a smarter decision to go with them. And so that's how that happened. And everybody was really happy.

That seemed like a good way to go. There was a new C suite at Paradox. So there was a whole bunch of fresh new thinking in there that was attempting to expand the business in different directions, adjacent markets to the one they had. And so we were part of that. That's the spin in at a high level and at the beginning.

Now the question is how do you acquire a company?

Lizzie Mintus: Yes.

Mitch Gitelman: That's the fun part. How do you acquire a company? I've been acquired twice. Both times could have gone better. And the major reason both times the companies I was at were the first or second company to be acquired, and they were cutting their teeth on us. If you're the ones being teeth cut upon, it hurts. It's hard because people don't know how to do it. And the other company was Microsoft. So that's a major company. They still didn't have a good plan for how to do it. And no disrespect, at the time I was really pissed off. I was young.

Lizzie Mintus: When you were a hothead, right?

Mitch Gitelman: My family would tell you that hasn't changed that much, but yeah, I spent a little time being pissy. So I learned there's some more proactive ways of doing these things and understanding the organizational structure you're moving into, setting expectations early, how's the management chain work? How's communication work here and doing all of that proactively? Before the acquisition, if we do this, what will it look like? Let's agree on these boundaries. Let's figure this out. Each place said they wanted to maintain corporate culture. Sure. Heavily impacted it through no fault of their own. Fault is not the right word. The heck with fault. It's not a matter of that.

It's accidental. There was no ill will at all. Just the opposite. Lovely people in each place. Just lovely, professional, very smart people that had never done this. And there's a level of empathy so missing from strategy conversations, moving into tactical conversations.

Like, okay, we know what we want to do. We agree on that. Now, how are we going to actually execute on that and think through, frankly, the humanity of it. Like empathy, when we say that to people, how will they behave, how will they think, how will it affect them. What's the blowback, the unintended consequences by this decision or that decision. They can be pretty profound, and they can affect a culture for years. And that's what happened to us.

Lizzie Mintus: Would you say it was kind of a culture mismatch in the end?

Mitch Gitelman: I guess with Paradox specifically, or because with Microsoft, it sure as shit was.

Lizzie Mintus: Yeah. I hear that's really a big issue and that maybe they want to blue badge you. I had Ed Fries on my first podcast and he had this story about acquiring a company. Okay, you're at Microsoft now you're in these offices and isn't it great. There's a view. And they're like, no, we don't want this. We don't want this at all. This is not our culture.

Mitch Gitelman: Yeah. That was FASA. interactive, which became FASTA Studio and followed by Bungie the year later.

Lizzie Mintus: Yes. I think the example was Bungie.

Mitch Gitelman: Yeah. I bet it was.

Lizzie Mintus: Yeah, because you have a different way of doing things and it works. So, okay, if you're rich, if you're a company and you think you might get acquired, you've taken capital, what kinds of things should you think about when you are figuring out who to go with? Or once you sign the deal and you're in the integration phase?

Mitch Gitelman: I think with the who to go with, it's really a matter of understanding their corporate strategy and why it is they want to acquire you in the first place. Why will this be mutually beneficial? But understanding the truth of why they want you, I think, is very important so that you can either adapt to that or say, oh, wait a minute. Actually, now that we think through the long term, maybe not. So I think that's part of it.

Part of it also is expectations management. How often we talk, and what changes are expected. And what kind of hoops will eventually jump through it. Again, culturally is like, Hey, this directness that we've talked about, how's that work for you?

And the truth is for me in this particular case, my empathy was lacking, which is unfortunate and kind of sad for me because I'm so into it. I was very American.

Lizzie Mintus: American, did you say?

Mitch Gitelman: Yeah, very American. Somebody would say. I don't know if that's the right thing to do, but I was like, okay, maybe you could have said that so I could hear it. That's the trick. Is it nicer or better? It's speaking. So somebody else can actually hear you and listen to you and you're having a real conversation. And so early on, I wasn't great at that. Actually, no, through the whole process. I wasn't that great at that.

I didn't take the time to understand Swedish culture enough as an example. There's no blame. I'm not doing it. It's just my own sort of experience and what I learned. But anyway, high level for other businesses, I think really getting a sense of stakes, how much runway you have realistically, et cetera. It's very important. Games are rough to predict. That's the whole production discipline. A lot of people mistake it in a lot of ways.

As a former producer, I think production, a lot of it is just being, making the game as predictable as possible. People understand what you're making. And the same thing holds true with relationships with your publishing partners or your parent company. Being able to do that, be able to be clear so people understand what's going on. It's not a primary skill. Communication is really not something people work hard enough on. Soft skills have become the new hard skills.

Lizzie Mintus: Yeah, it's true.

Mitch Gitelman: Which is weird.

Lizzie Mintus: In most areas, although in some specific maybe engineering niches, you might not have as much skills there as much as you do.

Mitch Gitelman: Well, actually, that's the interesting thing about it. One of the most beautiful things for me about game development is all the different types of people you work with throughout the day. And that's the luckiest part of my career is I would work with engineers and artists and writers and designers and QA and producers and, audio and composers. And you have to code switch nonstop, right? And then get these different people to be able to work together and collaborate. What joy that is.

I don't think of it as a negative at all. Some people talk about. engineers is having trouble communicating at times. Yeah, I've had that experience with people. I also know that once you learn how to communicate with that individual,

Lizzie Mintus: yes,

Mitch Gitelman: guys part.

Lizzie Mintus: Yeah, it's amazing. Just like anything, you're just like, what is this person interested in? What do they really like? And how can you talk to them about that and figure out their community.

Mitch Gitelman: What really matters to them.

Lizzie Mintus: Yeah, it's a fun puzzle. That's my favorite.

Mitch Gitelman: And how they want to be managed, how they want to be spoken to. It's nothing but joy, that part of the job. It's nothing but joy.

Lizzie Mintus: You're the perfect person for it. Tell me about conducting a layoff in a humane way, because that is something so many companies have faced lately, or are going to face. And probably something most entrepreneurs will face.

Mitch Gitelman: Yeah, it's unfortunate and true. And I've presided over, well, too many. One is too many. But I've presided over several, and I've learned a couple of super valuable lessons. And it goes right back to that original statement, empathy, right? It's critical, because you have the ability to have a major impact on someone's life.

Look, the layoff is going to happen. There's business reasons why it's happening. And so the way you conduct yourself and the way you treat people determines whether they walk away with their self esteem intact, and how could you not care about that? I don't get it. It affects your business in the future, how they talk about you. Whether you'll ever be able to attract quality people to your company again. Right. And whether maybe you can get them back when business is right.

So I find it incredibly important to execute a layoff, if you're going to do it as end to end planned as you possibly can. You do not half ass the layoff, right? It's not like, Oh shit, we got to do a layoff. Well, best thing to do is to tear off the bandaid, which is true, except they just brush into it and then they cut everybody's network access and send them an email

Lizzie Mintus: midday.

Mitch Gitelman: Yeah. Midday, usually when they're at lunch. So one of the first things that I've always done is attempted to do the layoff when I knew every single person would be in the studio and available for a face to face conversation, or at least in this case, now a Zoom conversation where we could all look each other in the eye and talk about it, explain the reasons, and later on do a Q& A. I'll get to that in a second. So trying to get it so everybody was available.

Unfortunately, with the last layoff that we did at Harebrained Schemes, we found a day where it's like, Oh my God, we got it. Everybody's going to be here and we can really do this right. And then there was an unfortunate delay just due to some logistics, legal, that kind of thing. And we had to put it off by a couple of days.

And so unfortunately a few people are out of the office and had to read by email. But the way that we chose to do it, I chose to do it was I texted all of them personally and said, I'm sorry to interrupt what you're doing, but please check your mail. And if you need to talk, I'm available, right? That kind of thing. So that was important. Again, doing it early in the morning so people aren't spending the whole day and wondering why did they do that? I just put in time working on something stupid. That just doesn't make sense. I wasted my life. So doing it early, scheduling it so that people understand what's going on the last time we scheduled the one.

The name of the the appointment was bad news. And send it out about an hour before the meeting. So everybody walked in knowing we're not going to walk in and joke around like we usually do and Hey, good times. Okay, I got something for you. And unfortunately it was, the worst kind of news. But then walking through your messaging also. And I hate the word messaging, but it's what it is. It's like making sure that you have in a bullet pointed way, all the steps that led to this layoff and why it's occurring. Right. And hopefully if you've done your job, right, they have seen something like this coming for a while and it's bad and it's sad, but it's not a shock if you can get it. So that's the other thing. There's plenty more other things.

But yeah, walking through the logic and how it affects them telling people the truth about how you feel about this. That's important. Bringing the humanity to it, not belaboring it also. Here's the information. This is going on everybody. It's affected. There's we're sending you a link right now to the next meeting where we will explain the logistics of how this works. We close it out, went to the next meeting. In the next meeting, here's all the logistics on exactly how this is going to work. All the dates, all the time, and then follow up in email immediately, with everything I just told you. But God forbid you could actually comprehend it .

Right now it's like I've lost my job and I've lost my culture. I've lost my community. Everybody's in a state of shock, including the people doing the layoff. Let's be clear about that, too. It's rough on everybody, even, for lack of a better word, the guilty parties. Everybody's human in this, right?

So do that, and then, let the dust settle. Let the dust settle. People are gonna go to lunch, people are gonna talk, people are gonna be slapping back and forth, but then, available all day for questions, right? But, at 3 o'clock this afternoon, we're gonna have a Q& A for the affected people for the people who are being retained. There was Q& A for the people when they were affected. But for everybody else, after they've had a chance to digest what's going on and talked to their friends and get sort of their questions or feelings, then let them bring their questions to just an open meeting.

The AMA, let's go. Just lay it out again so that everything's out in the open and all that communications happen. Then we left their network access open for the rest of the week and we left their email access on for the rest of the week. Other people may not think that's smart, but when you have a culture of trust, respect, and collaboration, you're going to prove whether you really have that culture of trust, respect, and collaboration after you've done a layoff. That's the proof.

Lizzie Mintus: Yes, unless you're meta and you have 12, 000 people. Statistically someone's going to go off the rails and do something.

Mitch Gitelman: Yeah. And I make no allusions to that of that. When you have a place, a little like ours, it's 70 people. And I've literally interviewed every single one of them except for the founders, which by that point we're two people left, right? You know who you have. You know what I mean? Personal relationship with every single person in the studio by being in their interview loop, right. And making the hiring decision. Okay. We're here. So yes, not that altruistic. So there we go. I think that's about it.

Just let them network access so that they could. Work on their portfolios and make sure they have everything. And they don't have to go hat in hand to you again, going, Hey, can I get this. Worked out for us and it's worked out for us that way. Unfortunately, I think Harebrained Schemes over the course of 12 years did three layoffs. I believe that's what I've learned.

Lizzie Mintus: I like that you let people have their portfolio and not have to ask. But I think for anyone listening, I read so much hate about the way that a large scale layoff is conducted on LinkedIn and a lot of things on LinkedIn befuddle me as a business owner because there, there really is from a legal standpoint at a large company, no other option but to read a script and remove network access, as shitty as it may be. From a liability legal standpoint at a large company, it's just not feasible, but thank you so much for sharing what you can do.

Mitch Gitelman: I did a layoff at Microsoft also, and I did cut off network access.

Lizzie Mintus: Yeah, you're reading a script and it sucks, but you can still have a personal reach out. Like you said, when the dust settles, when it's been digested, like, How can I help you in general, right? Can I connect you to somebody? Can I can review your resume? What can I do? I think that goes a long way. And you can still do that in a larger place. Show the care.

Mitch Gitelman: Yeah, it's just another opportunity to be the sort of person you always wanted to be. That's what you get. It's just these challenges all the time. There's an opportunity for the person I want to be. What am I going to do now?

Lizzie Mintus: Yeah. Do the challenge, I guess you do see that and people do pay attention, like you said. How was this conducted? How do people treat their employees in good times? Bad times. And probably what you do in the layoff matters more than stupid, whatever.

Mitch Gitelman: The game companies are porous, right? People come and go. And what you hope to do is get this core of people that stay. And then there are these people that sort of are porous around and that's what we had. And I'm proud of that. I think of running the studio as tending a garden. Occasionally you have to leave. People have to leave involuntarily, but it's all about growth and fertilization, and tending and care, right? And where I'm going with this is, when somebody leaves your studio voluntarily or involuntarily, they're like a spore that goes to another garden.

What are they gonna bring with them? Are they gonna bring good habits? Are they gonna bring positive energy? Or are they gonna bring bitterness with them? The story's about what an asshole you are. There's a better way of living. You know what I mean? So that's really the way I've conducted my entire professional life.

Lizzie Mintus: Yeah. But there's in games, there's so many raised beds, but they're all next to each other. The flowers are so often from bed to bed.

Mitch Gitelman: I don't know. I think it could be a positive. There are a lot of game developers out there. I try and get out and talk to people. That's one of the best things about meetups is just learning about people and finding where their influences are coming from.

One of the nicest things that can possibly happen is when people said, yeah, I've heard about how you run your company and we're running it that way too. What could be more gratifying? Well, I suppose millions and millions of dollars for somebody, but

Lizzie Mintus: Not really though. I don't, in the end, that's actually not more gratifying.

Mitch Gitelman: Not in the end. That's exactly the way I think. In the end, when you look back, what are you going to look back on it? For me, my integrity is one of the number one things.

Lizzie Mintus: Yeah. Great times and bad. I want to talk more about Battletech. I watched a video in preparation for the interview on what Battletech means to you.

Mitch Gitelman: Oh, that one. Yeah. What about it?

Lizzie Mintus: I want to talk more about Battletech. Like it was nominated for Sim strategy.

Mitch Gitelman: Yeah, the game awards. Yeah. And walking the red carpet was okay.

Lizzie Mintus: That's something you'll look back on. I always think it's interesting. Break down what were the highs and lows in making the game? What were the near death experiences you had? When did you know that it was going to be a success? I think that's so interesting, too. Is there a certain moment in time where you're like, yes, we have it before it ships? Or you don't really know and it's a surprise.

Mitch Gitelman: Wonderful questions. I love everything you just said. I'll try. So we'll meander together. The highs and lows. First of all, that was, I think, our fourth Kickstarter we did. It was the best run of Kickstarter we've done, obviously. Because the first three Kickstarters, I was just running those Kickstarters and I was doing it the way I always do. Just sort of like listening to the community and reacting to the community and stuff like that. I had a plan each time, but it was a little fast and loose. Well, it was very fast and loose with the first one. The second one, I was fast and loose. The third one for Shadowrun Hong Kong, was a solidly run disciplined Kickstarter. And that we really hit our stride with the Battletech Kickstarter.

Actually, thanks to the game director, Mike McCain, who was a very calming force for somebody like me. It was very well run, and we worked very hard on making it an international Kickstarter, because there are Battletech fans around the world. I wanted to make sure they knew about the Kickstarter and they felt involved in, especially in Germany. I put a lot of effort into our German fans. We did a live stream Q and A's and we did two of them in the same day. One for an American audience and one for a European audience to make sure that we were meeting them at the time of day that they were interested in.

So it was very well run. It was a very positive one. Battletech fans, The Shadow of the Fans, incredibly supportive and just lovely. I owe them everything and it's really a big deal. So the high point for sure was just the Kickstarter and just feeling the love and support.

The idea of making a game knowing there are people out there that want it, yeah. Can't overstate how cool that is. Because as an example with the Lamp Lighters League that we made, the business strategy there with Paradox was like normal, you keep it completely quiet until you're ready to come out and then boom, et cetera. And so for years, we're making it without anybody knowing what we're making and stuff. The joy of working for your audience is missing. So that Kickstarter thing, people that do early access, I just adore. Cause they're actually interacting with their community and being part of the community. I dig it. Anyway, that's a high point for me without question.

Part of that high point also leads right into when did we know that we had something? And because one of our big milestones was a beta, a closed beta just for backers. It was a multiplayer beta just to show the core game systems, not the metagame or anything, just mech on mech combat. And we were sweating that, we were sweating because we were going to put it in the hands of hardcore Battletech people in our audience, the people that paid us to get there, knowing also we needed to expand beyond that core audience, but we needed them. If you don't have them, you're all dead in the water.

About three weeks, maybe before that beta came out, we realized, Hey, this isn't good enough. It's not good enough. And, our game director, Mike, got the designers and me in a room. We're like, all right, let's write down the problem statements.

What problems do we have with this game ourselves? And we wrote the problem statements. We narrowed it down to the top three to five and said, okay, what's our action plan to do that? Go, go, go. Cause that's how we were fast and faster. And we did a heavy revision of that multiplayer beta before we brought it out. And then when we brought our pre alpha to Gen Con, where we could show it on the floor with 60, 000 people and have them come up and put their hands on it. It's one of the greatest moments of my entire career because all these people lining up to play the game, like 16 at a time, not multiplayer, just play this beta and seeing the looks on their face. Oh, we got it. Like they're walking away, giggling. It was such a win.

To be in that space, talking directly to your audience, shaking hands, and the hearing the quiver in their voice, when they tell you how bad ass it was. I would pay them for that. So that was the high point. If you remind me the rest of your question, I'd be happy to answer it, but I get excited about stuff.

I asked about maybe any near.

Mitch Gitelman: Oh, yeah. Low points.

Lizzie Mintus: Yeah. Low low points. Yeah, but I mean, you kind of alluded that you redid everything right before.

Mitch Gitelman: That was one. Some great stuff came out of that, really good design work, that I wish I had a part on, but I was just watching and they did great. And then, we had never run a project that large before. We had never gotten up to 50 55, right? At one point, game director asked me, I was helping with narrative and with the single player campaign. And he asked me if I could help out with the metagame. Metagame was behind. And so what we were doing was, we added staff and we were just going as fast as you possibly can get it on screen, minimum viable. Everything I'm sure every one of your guests has already told you. It was like, we got to get this by the time we break at the end of this year, we need this in place and it's just now.

And, and so I would walk over to everybody's desk. We didn't do standups much. I walked over to everybody's desk and rearranged their task lists every day with them in front of them. Do this, then do this. If this thing happens, and just that kind of just hands on line producers stuff with face to face communication, which I miss.

Lizzie Mintus: Yeah. You told me that.

Mitch Gitelman: I can't help it.

Lizzie Mintus: When we had our social drink.

Mitch Gitelman: Games, allow me to wax poetic for one moment.

Lizzie Mintus: Please.

Mitch Gitelman: Games are ridiculously hard to make. And I think everybody's been pretty. What, what people don't see is that over the course of the last 30 years, they feel like they've gotten exponentially harder to make every year.

It's a new technology you're chasing or the changes in digital. It's like, okay, now everybody can make a game. There's 12, 000 games coming out, 14, 000 games coming out, et cetera. It just gets harder. Oh, here's a pandemic. It's harder and harder. The thing that's always kept me going is the team. It's interacting with the team, collaborating with the team, because, knowing how hard this is, people make the games because they love making games, right? So every single game made, that may be an overstatement, is an act of love for some.

Lizzie Mintus: For the vast majority.

Mitch Gitelman: It's an act of love. Who doesn't want to be a part of that? That's what kept me going. Solving a problem, feeling the relief from the rest of the room when the problem is solved. It's very hard for me to feel that relief, feel that love, feel that collaboration on a video screen. It just is. And I know the value of working from home. I feel the value of working from home. My dog feels the value of me working from home. Something was greatly lost for me and some of that love and some of that joy was lost without that direct human connection, knowing well, the absolute value of working from home, especially for people who aren't like me. Right. That's so important. The world has been skewed towards people like me forever. And now finally, it's more egalitarian. People can be more comfortable, so there's gotta be a hybrid way of doing this. And that's what we attempted to do at Harebrained was a hybrid approach and that had to go through more iteration before we got it right.

You know, I think we could have got that.

Lizzie Mintus: Yeah. So I did a survey on my LinkedIn network, which is large and mostly senior people see it. Yeah. 3 percent of 700. I mean, what is this data point? It's just a single point. And it's not what all the averages are, but 3 percent of people said they wanted to be an office full time.

Mitch Gitelman: Were those people that you talked to management or employees or a combo?

Lizzie Mintus: I could look into it. It would be high level people in games, seniors, snack. But that's also, it is different, right? The more junior people want to be in office and it's a different setup. But a lot of people said they wanted to be hybrid, but then the question is like, well, what does that actually mean?

So what was the ideal hybrid model that you landed on or ended on?

Mitch Gitelman: Not ideal, but two days a week, Tuesdays and Thursdays. We did a survey. Two or three days a week? They're like, two. When you do a survey, that's a real problem, because the survey will say things that executives don't want it to say. Especially if you publish the results of your survey, it's very impossible. 83 percent want this, and the executives say we're not doing that. But 83 percent of the people said that. But we were committed. I needed to hear it in an anonymous, data driven way.

Lizzie Mintus: Yeah. And people feel, I mean, there are more valued, right? You're asking them what they want instead of just telling them that you're going to move.

Mitch Gitelman: Well, look, we can't pay what Bungie pays. We couldn't pay what Microsoft. The competitive edge for a small company is humanity.

Lizzie Mintus: Humanity, flexibility, impact. Treating your people while I talked to so many startups about this. Yes, you're requiring all these things. Your pay is lower, right? So what can you flex on? What can you do that a big company can't do? Yeah. Care. That's for you. That's easy.

Mitch Gitelman: Empathy and caring is the new punk rock, which is just stupid. But so anyway, where were we?

Lizzie Mintus: Okay, yeah, two days a week.

Mitch Gitelman: Oh, yeah, two days a week. Then I said, which two days? And they said, Tuesday, Thursday, all right, Tuesday and Thursday. Okay. Required still. That's what we did.

Lizzie Mintus: At least everybody's there at the same time and collaborating. What people complain about is having to go on mandated days only to be on zoom with other people that are in a different location.

Mitch Gitelman: That is really frustrating. Yes.

Lizzie Mintus: If I were an employee, which I was an effective employee, but I didn't really follow the rules, you know? Um, I definitely wouldn't have done that.

Mitch Gitelman: Yeah, no, I get it. I get it.

Lizzie Mintus: I wouldn't have done the zoom thing.

Mitch Gitelman: If people need it, it's there. So out of 70 people, at peak, we were like 30 came in.

Lizzie Mintus: Yeah, but at least they have the option and the flexibility.

Mitch Gitelman: You didn't have to crowd in to a conference room with people on Zoom sometimes. Yeah. The panel doesn't do that well.

Lizzie Mintus: Yeah, it's hard. There are a lot of additional

Mitch Gitelman: It's not the same.

Lizzie Mintus: What's your act three? Everybody wants to know.

Mitch Gitelman: Yeah. Right now, I don't know exactly. Act three for me is exploring and figuring things out and seeing all of the skills that create a video game are transferable, right? The number one reason why video game development is so addictive, cause it's stupidly hard, we've just established that. Why do that for 30 years, especially as an entrepreneur. But it's that joy of creation and it's the unique problem solving opportunities. There's nothing but interesting problems all day, every day.

For somebody like me, it's human resource problems. It's logistical problems. It's production problems. It's design problems. It's narrative problems. It's interpersonal. It's management problems, and somebody say that's overwhelming with the problems. Yeah, not for me. It wasn't. I just ate it up, right? Because my brain was flicking nonstop and the faster the flywheel went, the flash, the faster the flywheel, I was smarter, the more problems that I had, which costs you also to redline your tachometer too, to the point where it's like, you're flying fast, but that also was joy.

Lizzie Mintus: Yeah. My friend who has the company told me every founder has a little ADD. And I was like, Hmm, right.

Mitch Gitelman: I'm undiagnosed, but I get it.

So anyway, that was a joy. Just that problem solving skill, just communication, verbal and written communication, where people are actually communicating, and where you're sharing aligned goals and creating goals that are aligned and creating action, all that kind of stuff. Everything you do in games can transfer.

Now transfer to what? What's worth the limited time I have on Earth? Cause it's limited. It's very limited. I feel how fast this went. It's like, what do you mean I've been doing this for 30 years and I'm retiring or whatever. My kids are like, yeah, you're not retiring. One of the very first things that happened to me is, one of my friends wrote to one of my other friends and said, what's the over under on Mitch's retirement? How long is he going to stay retired? Yeah. The answer is yeah, whatever.

Act three isn't about retirement. It's about, how are you going to get the rest of the joy out of your life, how to develop meaning, et cetera. So I'm wandering the earth, like I came from Kung Fu. I'm just going from place to place, meeting people. I have as many as seven meetings a week right now. Just talking to people, trying to help them, and finding ways to help them. That's all. I'm not looking for anything for myself. I'm looking to do good for a while. And while I'm doing good, I'll find someone or some group that cares about what they're doing the way I care. And when I find that heart, then I'll figure out what the next thing is. And so I'm just looking for people.

Right now, for example, I'm looking to help a group of veterans that I've fallen in contact with that are trying to reduce the suicide rate. For veterans in America. It's 22 a day. That is way too many. And so how can we use VR to help treat that, et cetera. I can help with that. Do I know VR? No, I can't learn that. So that's an example.

There's another company that I was talking to and they were talking about how they were developing people and the problems they were having and how they wanted to grow. I'm like, I can help with that. And so for no money, the reason is cause I can't do that.

Lizzie Mintus: Yeah, for sure.

Mitch Gitelman: Eventually I'll figure that out. I'm old enough that, I could take my time a little bit.

Lizzie Mintus: Yeah, but you're funny. You're an entrepreneur because a lot of people will be in Barbados kicking back, but here you are having seven meetings per week.

Mitch Gitelman: Yeah, well, I've got my 35th wedding anniversary is coming up. We're planning a trip. We'll take some time for ourselves.

Lizzie Mintus: Yeah, balance. I have one last question for any listeners who are thinking about starting their own game company. Yeah? What advice would you give?

Mitch Gitelman: Gitlin rule number three is use your resources. Get out there and talk to people who have done it and learn what they've done right and what they wish they could have done differently. I'd say that's probably the very first thing. Get out there and talk to people. Network with people. Not trying to get anything out of them, etc. Always about volunteering. Volunteering what you can offer and then asking those smart questions. What do you wish you had done differently? It's a great question for me.

Finding your resources. Tim Cullen's with Seattle Indies. Great source. I go through their discord all the time, just looking at everything they're doing and how people are supporting each other.

Get out there. There's a community out there, people who can support you. So, you know, I'm sure there's things to say about legalities and what kind of warranties you can do on your contracts. And I'm sure somebody can talk about that. That's just not me.

Finding the people that you want to work with is the most important thing I can think of. After all these years, people from small to large companies, whenever I talk to them, they all say the same thing. I want to work on cool shit with cool people. That's all that matters. Yeah. Okay. Finding those cool people. is critical and learning how to do it and what questions to ask.

Interviewing skills, so critical. But don't just get in bed with somebody because they're good at their jobs and they're assholes. Yeah. Then your life is dealing with assholes. That'll be in my book.

Lizzie Mintus: I can't wait for it to come out. Find good people, give back and talk to as many people as you can.

Mitch Gitelman: And be kind.

Lizzie Mintus: And be kind. Yeah. And be authentic.

Mitch Gitelman: But that just sounds like just bullshit, non business.

Lizzie Mintus: No, I think there's rules of life and business that all translate. And those are some.

Mitch Gitelman: I hope other people feel the same way you do. Thanks.

Lizzie Mintus: You're welcome. I talk to all kinds of people all the time. What did you do?

Mitch Gitelman: My best friends. So bizarre. Yeah. It was so wild. They told me later. It's like, Oh, I just talked to Lizzie. You did? I'm talking to Lizzie. That's awesome.

Lizzie Mintus: I love talking to people.

Mitch Gitelman: Got nice taste in people from my perspective.

Lizzie Mintus: Aw, thank you. Yeah, I like to talk to Jordan Weisman a lot. I told you, I was like, huh, right away, his humor is just like Mitch's.

And I was curious if that was just, you had just had this humor on your own, or you just spent so much time with each other that you kind of unified.

Mitch Gitelman: Both and neither. We're kindred spirits. Yeah. Immediately attracted to each other. It's just, I could see that. It's like a vaudeville act.

I don't know, Abbott and Costello or something like that. It just worked from the very beginning. It's just natural. Very cool. Great.

Lizzie Mintus: That's how to find someone, yeah, and you were with them.

Mitch Gitelman: Yeah, he taught me how to be a partner.

Lizzie Mintus: That's awesome.

Mitch Gitelman: Thanks for mentioning his name. It's nice to be able to say something so nice about somebody who's accomplished so much actually being a good person. That's nice.

Lizzie Mintus: Oh, nice and rare and so wonderful. The whole package. Those are the people that you want to be with. Someone who doesn't tell you right off the bat, what they've done, you kind of have to find out. And you're like, Oh. That's always the best for me.

Mitch Gitelman: Yeah, I get it. Good talking to you. I hope to see you again soon.

Lizzie Mintus: Yeah, we've been talking to Mitch Gitelman, who co-founded Harebrained Schemes, and is now exploring his third act. Mitch, where can people go to contact you or talk to you?

Mitch Gitelman: I'm on LinkedIn. I check LinkedIn all the time. Go ahead, reach me there. I think that's the best way. G I T E L M A N.

Lizzie Mintus: Thank you.

Mitch Gitelman: Badass. All right. Talk to you, Lizzie. Thanks.

Outro: Thanks so much for listening to the show this week. To catch all the latest from Here's Waldo, you can follow us on LinkedIn. Be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes. We'll see you next time.

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