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Message: <blockquote data-quote="TheAlkaizer" data-source="post: 9455057" data-attributes="member: 7024893">I'd agree with this.The war between creatives and managers/marketing has always been strange to me, as I found myself on both sides of the fence and understand them quite well.The idea that if you leave creatives alone and let them do the products that they want to do will inevitably lead to a good product and success is moot. It does happen. And when it happens many creatives point it out as a proof. But more often than not, it leads to a bad product, a product that's not within budget or no product at all. And then revenues go down, people lose their job and we point the finger at managers.My experience is mostly with the video game industry. The number of games being released increases drastically every year. Just on Steam, a few years ago we passed the 7000 games in a year threshold (if I remember right). A vast majority of that are indies or small teams that make passion products, with no thoughts in marketing and just release the product when they feel like it's done, or when they can't afford to keep going. You've never heard of most of these games.Now, I'm not saying that creatives need to be put in a stranglehold. But experienced and competent creatives learn to work with and embrace certain constraints: budget, target audience, resources available, etc. And it's a manager job to make sure that these constraints are clear, and to let the creatives focus on the product by removing road blocks or bringing an outsider point of view.When companies get as big as Hasbro and WotC, the numbers after the commas start equating jobs. If your creatives make a great product that's not properly aligned with the marketing, or misses a deadline and a release window and that sales are down 10%. It doesn't seem like much, but in most companies, a decrease of 10% in revenue means jobs cut.I work in a company that has between 5 and 10 million dollars in operating costs. I worked on the creative side before, and I manage the operations now. Keeping the production (creative), finances and marketing aligned on one goal is a very hard task to do at this scope. I cannot imagine at a bigger scope.</blockquote>

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