A week after release, MindsEye finally earned its abysmal review scores, with reviewers and fans citing poor graphical performance, inconsistent AI, and general poor quality. Now it seems we have some insight on how things ended up this way.
As shared on the GamingLeaksAndRumours subreddit by user Ayamebestgrill, a Glassdoor review dated May 30, 20205, makes some indicting accusations about MindsEye developer Build A Rocket Boy and its studio head, Leslie Benzies.
The main accusation from this Glassdoor reviewer (who labels themselves as a team leader in the company) is that development cost at least half a million dollars. If true, that would be higher than the highest rumored cost of making Concord. But before one dismisses this accusation of being exaggerated, let’s review what they said in context:
Half a billion dollars invested into this mess? No wonder our biggest backer all but pulled out when they finally saw what was actually getting produced. Been scrambling around for cash ever since, acquired the studio of one of the board to try to save them but also get a quick buck from their game – except that turned out to also be nowhere near ready and now we’re about to drag them down with us.
These are not idle claims and it is possible to double check if this user review is on the level or not. Who was Build A Rocket Boy’s original financial backer that spent half a billion on the game? What studio did Leslie Benzies or Build A Rocket Boy acquire to get a quick buck from their game? To be clear, I/O Interactive signed on to be the publisher of MindsEye, taking charge of its marketing and distribution. It doesn’t sound like they are the studio alluded to in this Glassdoor review.
The rest of the Glassdoor review is disappointing, if not surprising. They accuse Leslie Benzies of hiring family and friends into Build A Rocket Boy, and of a lack of internal accountability. Once again, to quote this review:
You shut down all negative feedback, ignored pleas for public playtesting, insisting only people you trusted could give honest reviews but what you got was an echo chamber of yes-people too afraid to tell you your baby is ugly because every other person who even hinted towards that was quickly and quietly disposed of.
So, if you may remember, last month word spread that Mark Gerhard, who is co-CEO of Build A Rocket Boy, alleged that MindsEye was a victim of a ‘concerted effort’ to attack the studio, presumably accusing Rockstar Games. It’s possible that people at Build A Rocket Boy really believed they were being attacked by Rockstar, if Benzies had gotten conspiratorial about his former employer. And if management was claiming this review was supposed to be part of the attack against the studio, it’s hard to deny now that the game’s released in the state it is that it was very much on the money on the situation.
Leslie Benzies was originally head of Rockstar North, and led development on Grand Theft Auto 3 to 5. He left Rockstar and sued them and Take-Two Interaction for $ 150 million in 2016. That case was settled in 2019, but that suit laid out a falling out between Benzies and the studio’s founders, Sam and Dan Houser.
This story certainly seems to come together. If this Glassdoor account is honest, possible exaggeration aside, it paints a picture of Benzies being filled with anger and hubris following his acrimonious exit from Rockstar. He seemed to want to prove a point with MindsEye, but also didn’t see his own shortcomings as a producer and company owner.
To quote this Glassdoor review, “The legend of The Benz is dead.” We’ll wait and see if other accounts go on to corroborate these claims, but it already creates a picture of this game and studio that sounds credible, and plainly explains everything about Build a Rocket Boy and MindsEye.
We have shared the full text of the Glassdoor review below.
Pros
- Lovely people at the ground level
- Pay is decent if you’re not QA or Tech Design
Cons
- This place is a disaster and all the problems are about to finally come to their inevitable conclusion
Leslie said in a recent interview “the key to a successful game is to trust your amazing teams” (paraphrasing) and nothing could be further from the truth of how he’s run this studio. The revolving door of execs, leadership, producers and anyone who might dare criticise the game is just one example. Another is how the people with top level roles at the studio have little experience but also happen to be either literal family or close friends of his family, which has resulted in tired, boring mission structure and an almost non-existent marketing campaign that has probably tanked our launch more than even the lacklustre game could have if we’d just put it out.
Another example is how instead of focusing on reviving the marketing in a final ditch effort, the execs have people running around trying to find non-existent negative spam bots on our socials or accusing the people they themselves invited to their own preview event (which was a colossal disaster!) of being paid by our apparent rivals, as if anyone would need to do anything to make this all look even worse! Not to mention that I had to repost a review here because after all the bad publicity, the public started noticing our bad reviews here, so the CEO had someone go through and flag every possible infraction and got my last one taken down!
The development cycle here has been a complete nightmare, with micromanagement fleeting across whatever happens to catch Leslies’ eye at that moment. Daily playtests where he gets all hands on deck to control minutiae of asset placement and get the art looking just right, while the level design and mechanics play like something out of the PS3 era (at best). Is 60FPS going to be enough for the gamer crowd you so covet? Well, they’ll need top end rigs even to be hitting 50, so good luck with that!
You shut down all negative feedback, ignored pleas for public playtesting, insisting only people you trusted could give honest reviews but what you got was an echo chamber of yes-people too afraid to tell you your baby is ugly because every other person who even hinted towards that was quickly and quietly disposed of.
Half a billion dollars invested into this mess? No wonder our biggest backer all but pulled out when they finally saw what was actually getting produced. Been scrambling around for cash ever since, acquired the studio of one of the board to try to save them but also get a quick buck from their game – except that turned out to also be nowhere near ready and now we’re about to drag them down with us.
Should we delay this game? Absolutely. Do we have the cash to keep going much longer if we don’t get a whole bunch of sales? No. Will we get the sales needed to keep all 400 people employed? We will see how long for.
Advice to Management
The legend of The Benz is dead – you can not keep stringing employees and investors along on the idea that the name Leslie Benzies on the game will somehow sell millions of copies. You missed that boat by a good 5 to 10 years! Maybe if you actually trusted your employees like you said you do, you’d have produced something good long ago. Although I get that the people you originally trusted to do this 5 plus years ago didn’t work out so great – maybe employing all your friends and family wasn’t the smartest starting point?
Too late for any of that now though – the only thing that remains to be said is that if you have any care at all for your image and reputation, you better have real good redundancy packages lined up for us all in a few weeks’ time!
