In this GDC 2023 talk, Defiant Development founder Morgan Jaffit explores the rise and fall of their award-winning Australian studio, and the emotional toll of its 2019 closure. This talk looks in detail at the ways a company structure and culture are built, and how this can set game developers up for success or failure. Morgan considers and outlines some of the ways the Defiant culture helped and how it ultimately hindered its ultimate success. It's an exploration of how to weather successes and failures: What is the emotional toll of failure, and what are the opportunities offered when things fall out from underneath you? GDC returns to San Francisco this March 18-22, 2024! For more information, be sure to visit our website and follow the #GDC2024 hashtag on social media. Subscribe to the GDC newsletter and get regular updates via Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or RSS. Join the GDC mailing list: http://www.gdconf.com/subscribe Follow GDC on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Official_GDC GDC talks cover a range of developmental topics including game design, programming, audio, visual arts, business management, production, online games, and much more. We post a fresh GDC video every day. Subscribe to the channel to stay on top of regular updates, and check out GDC Vault for thousands of more in-depth talks from our archives.