GDC 2025 Session Viewer

After 15 years of running and scaling our independent studio, Leaugue of Geeks is distilling our hard-earned leadership wisdom into concise, immediately actionable takeaways - and giving them all to you!

In this session, Trent will reveal essential strategies for fostering high-trust environments, answer impossible questions around hiring and firing, teach my one-size-fits-all hack for leveling up your leaders, and share the feedback framework that empowered unimaginable outcomes at LoG. You’ll learn how to design meaningful benefits, build steadfast culture and community, implement a profit-sharing model that truly motivates, and even walk away with nitty-gritty governance hacks guaranteed to reduce friction and boost autonomy.

Every lesson is backed by stories of what worked, what didn’t, and why. This isn’t just a post-mortem — it’s a survival guide for leaders striving to build and scale studios that are efficient, productive, and genuinely loved by their teams. You’ll walk away with practical, immediately applicable insights that will help you avoid the mistakes we made while adopting the strategies that drove our success, even as we faced the hardest challenges of our journey.

Takeaway

Studio and creative leaders will leave with the most valuable leadership practices that contributed to League of Geeks' renowned (and productive!) studio culture. Everything from how to hire and fire, the key to creative feedback, empowering your leads to lead, and talent development pipelines, packaged up for you to apply immediately.

Intended Audience

This talk is explicitly designed for those building, scaling or leading studios and teams! Studio, production and creative leads especially, but anyone looking to empower their team with tried and true leadership practices, or build productive, rewarding and self-determining team cultures will walk away with new insights and practical applications in-hand.