One of the issues that has made it difficult to discuss labor in games generally is a lack of any role standardization. This has calmed down somewhat as more an

One of the issues that has made it difficult to discuss labor in games generally is a lack of any role standardization. This has calmed down somewhat as more and more games turn towards standardized content creation systems, but the whole endeavor historically has been completely upended on four year cycles, with games made by solo teenagers usurped by those made by teams, and then by teams with marketing and sales backing, and then by teams with increasingly higher specialization, with new waves of hardware at each turn. The people in these high profile roles that gather as "founding core members" often found themselves in the position of right-place-right-time and afterwards just tried to keep up with the changes, and so, to some extent, they end up branded as creative and business talents, when the thing being tested most often in their career was their ability to sufficiently manage and delegate to get the project over the finish line. So every time I see a story of a AAA vet starting something new I think to myself "prepare for some hard knocks", cause they are now being retested on their scrappy start-up abilities, but often get burdened by the expectations of an established studio, and entrenched in a particular approach. They can raise a lot but very often it means they fail big, too.