Final Fantasy XIV was a massive failure. The original version 1.0 was buggy, tedious and not very fun. People still had fun with it, it wasn't New World levels

Final Fantasy XIV was a massive failure. The original version 1.0 was buggy, tedious and not very fun. People still had fun with it, it wasn't New World levels of complete failure, but it did not live up to the brand. So they replaced the two directors, who had previously worked on FFXI, with one Naoki Yoshida. Naoki-san had perhaps the worst task he could ever have. He had to figure out a way to turn a burning trash heap of an MMO into something that could proudly carry the name Final Fantasy (and make real profit). He spent three months just on planning the design for a completely new MMO to replace the current one. Then went to upper management and told them to choose - they could have him just manage the current game, fix the bugs and issues, and make it a really polished, but still fundamentally flawed game, that would never have the kind of audience like WoW, one that would forever tarnish the brand; or, he could make a completely new MMO from scratch in one year, while also supporting the existing one. They chose the latter. Today FFXIV is the world's most popular MMO. The process of getting there has been documented in interviews and it is what Naoki-san says in this one [1], that I want to bring attention to. Paraphrasing, "we could only get there by aggressively cutting down features and micromanaging daily tasks for each employee, to the point that the tasks fit into a standard 8 hour work day, which generally has about 6 hours of actual work done, when you factor out meetings and breaks". This is a man tasked with fitting 5 years of work into 1, while also supporting the existing product, and he didn't immediately reach for overtime. He absolutely worked himself to death, but he didn't push the team beyond their limits. It helps that he was an MMO fan and had a full design document for the game he wanted to build, but it still shows that with good management you can deliver a product better than everyone else while not doing overtime. To be fair, 6 hours of actual work is still a bit more than I hit most days. Having to work at full capacity every day would still be straining, but nothing on the order of doing 12 hour days 6 days per week for months. [1] https://youtu.be/aoOI5R-6u8k https://youtu.be/aoOI5R-6u8k