About
Colin MacKie
Thirty years making games. Now focused on one problem: helping the people who fund games see the truth about them early, while it’s still cheap to act on.
Insomniac · LucasArts · Double Fine · Activision · Lucasfilm · Xbox · Krafton40+ shipped titles · Three Game of the Year awards · Emmy nomination
The review that changed my career looked like an emergency: an ambitious project, goals that didn’t add up, and a demo that proved nothing. A closer look found a leadership team that had already seen the gap, owned it, and was making hard changes to fix it. Without that look, I’d have recommended walking away from a team worth backing. Read the case study
That was the turning point. Most games that fail don’t fail for lack of talent or ambition. They fail because the people funding them learn the truth too late, and the people making them couldn’t say it sooner.
Three seats at the table
Most people who evaluate games have sat in one seat. I’ve sat in three, and each one changes what you can see.
The partner. I lead the Games and Entertainment division at Inworld AI, working under milestone contracts with partners including Xbox, Netflix, Meta, Sony, Nvidia, Disney, Hasbro and Pokémon. Our teams embed with partner productions: attending standups, reviewing builds, shipping alongside them. At peak, ten concurrent productions across six countries. Along the way I built the studio assessment method the division uses to evaluate partner teams.
I sit on both sides of milestone reviews. I know what studios show publishers, and what they can’t yet say.
The vendor. I co-founded and ran Lila, a production services studio: winning clients, scoping work, delivering it and managing cash.
Service-side operators learn to read a client’s real intentions early. That reading works in both directions.
The maker. From 1997 to 2021 I shipped games inside publisher structures: lead designer at Insomniac, lead designer on three Call of Duty titles, design director on Vader Immortal, where the IP owner, the funder and the franchise steward each held a veto and all three episodes still shipped on time and on budget, and design director on The Callisto Protocol inside Krafton’s international publishing operation.
Teams that ship have clear priorities, real decision rights and the discipline to cut. Multi-party productions fail at the seams between organizations.
Every seat at the table sees part of the truth. The job is to see all of it, and say it plainly.
Why teams are candid with me
When a publisher reviews a studio, it usually sees the polished version: confident timelines, resolved conflicts, everything on track. That isn’t dishonesty. It’s what anyone does when the money is in the room.
I come in as a fellow developer who has shipped through the same problems. I sit in standups, review the build and the pipeline, and talk with leadership and the team. Findings go to the team before they go to leadership, and nothing is a surprise.
What I believe
The best teams aren’t necessarily the loudest or the most ambitious. They’re the ones with clarity, alignment and momentum. When I assess a team, I’m not looking for perfection. I’m looking for the structural foundations that let good people do good work consistently.
- Honesty early is kinder than honesty late.
- A review advises. The people who own the decision keep it.
- The team hears the findings first.
- Pedigree doesn’t predict performance. Structure and discipline do.
- Making games for a living is one of the best jobs there is. Seeing clearly is how you protect it, and how great teams get the room to make something wonderful.
Executive Brief
The Blind Spot in the Greenlight
Why every publisher needs a standing, independent studio and title review function, and how to build one. Every review answers two separate questions: can this team deliver, and is this game worth delivering?
The full framework is published on the Studio Assessment and Title Review pages.
I’m interested in helping publishers, studios and investors build this capability, and in being part of it. If you’re building this function, or wondering whether you should, I’d welcome the conversation. colin@cmackie.com