Disclaimer!
I am a big Starcraft 1 and 2 fan. The criticism I’m about to levy against those two games and their characters is only for my own recreational purposes and hopefully yours. I am going to be analyzing management practices in the main protagonists, the gameplay and other things I consider worthy of note. So before you start commenting about how they’re just games and I’m being over analytical, keep in mind I’m doing this out of sheer selfish amusement.
Manager Exhibit A – ex. Marshall James “Jim” Raynor
James Raynor is the commander and leader of the Rebel Group “Raynor’s Raiders”, which is a faction that plays a pivotal role both in the first Starcraft and the second one. Obviously, James is the top dog in this organization and his style of management is what we could call very directive. Although he promotes freedom and is willing to hear what others have to say, he usually prefers that decisions come from him. For the most part, when his rebels are unhappy with the things he says or does, Raynor will not accept insubordination and will use some form of psychological manipulation to entice his freedom fighters to stay. An example is when Tychus attempts to sow discord in the Wings of Liberty campaign. Raynor knows there is growing distrust in his leadership, and the way he fixes this is two-fold:
- He intimidates and humiliates Tychus in front of the rest of the crew.
- He tells unhappy crewmen they’re free to leave.
It seems evident, based on the context (Jim chooses to guide freedom fighters to fight seemingly impossible odds, against their wishes), that Jim is not the kind of leader that takes kindly to being doubted. While he shows empathy toward loss others suffer in the campaign, he does not spit on morally ambiguous decision-making. Part of this may come from his bad-ass character design, but if we look at this from a management perspective, this bears telltales of evident sabotage.
As we know, Tychus is found to have betrayed Jim, despite Matt Horner, his closest associate, having clearly shown that he could not be trusted. When a high-level, trusted advisor is not taken seriously by the Boss, it shows that there’s little communication being transmitted downwind. So we can assert at this point that Raynor’s Raiders is very much a top-down organization and despite looking for freedom, the fighters very much depend on the whims of one impulsive man.
To wit, when Matt begins to doubt Tychus’ motivations, Raynor assertively puts him down, saying he’s known him longer than he has Matt. While this might be good enough on its own, Matt later brings up another matter: Tychus’ suit is welded into him and has a kill switch. He cannot get out of it, otherwise it will kill him. Evidently, the man is only alive because someone wants him to be. Despite this issue, Raynor does nothing more than say he’ll keep an eye on him.
Good or bad?
Raynor is a military leader first and political leader second. At least, that’s what his actions lead me to believe. That means that he has no real idea how to behave to give his movement public support. Matt Horner has to guide him and that’s why having such a priceless advisor nearby should be cause for much more respect from Raynor. Yet, Raynor disregards Horner’s advice on numerous occasions, and as far as storytelling goes, this is fine. The leader isn’t supposed to always make the best decisions but he owns up to it. The Commander does appear to do that at least. When the player makes the decision to destroy a colony, Jim does not appear to blame others and fully takes responsibility for his actions.
The bad parts of Jim’s behavior as a leader / manager are regarding the lack of communication (it would seem) on a top-down basis. Little advisory is given to his troops before they’re launched into the fray, which gives the logical reaction that his troops don’t always agree with what he does. Yet, Jim, while tolerating this disagreement, will maintain his authority and seldom changes his mind unless he is forced to. It would appear to me that if he were in charge of a business, James would bankrupt rather quickly due to lacking risk management: He allows very dangerous individuals to jeopardize his organization, foregoing proper background checks or even security measures. An example of this is when he has Tosh on board his ship and lets him wander around. He has no means to counteract a Specter and if Tosh is turned upon by the player, he shows that he could have found a way to get to Jim easily.
Often times, when Matt questions such decisions, Jim simply shuts him down, which does not look good on your top advisor. Therefore, James Raynor is a good boss for short-term projects, but I would not consider him for any long-lasting change in your organization, as he is unwilling to consider opinions that counter his for long, unless he is forced to contemplate them. Which in business, could be just before bankruptcy, which doesn’t look good at all.
Exhibit B – Emperor Arcturus Mengsk
Arcturus Mengsk starts off in the story as the leader of the Sons of Korhal, a rebel group not dissimilar to that of Jim’s Raynor’s Raiders. He exists as a counter-acting force to the Confederacy and appears to be a cunning tactician according to the Starcraft lore. At the beginning of his story, Mengsk appears to be benevolent and seeking freedom for all but primarily from the confederacy. Soon enough, his political ambitions are revealed and from leader of an organized revolutionary group, he becomes the horrible and calculating strategist we know today as Emperor Mengsk. Singularly responsible for the death of Kerrigan and the unleashing of Infested Kerrigan on the universe, Mengsk has shown some dubious decision-making skills coupled with curious leadership behavior.
His style of management is immediately apparent as “charismatic domination”. He uses charm and manipulation to get his way, pretending to be benevolent while scheming dastardly plans underhand. The sort of person who pats you on the back while stabbing you from the front. In the series, characters often make fun of him when he reveals his true nature as being a dictator. Kerrigan first by forcing him to play into her hand, threatening him to stay the ruler of a tiny cell. Secondly by allowing him to reign over a pile of rubble that is Korhal, after she’s completely destroyed it and Mengsk’s forces.
In that moment, Kerrigan reveals the greed and egoism of Mengk as being his hubris. While he seems (through means unknown) capable of rallying sizeable amounts of resources to fight his wars, he often bets it all on very difficult longshots that he is admittedly sure to lose. First, in Starcraft 1 when he assumes Kerrigan will keep her end of the bargain, after all he’s put her through and then in Starcraft 2 by keeping an alien artifact he barely understands, with the hopes that it will keep Kerrigan at bay. This ultimately leads to his explosive demise.
Similarities between Jim and Mengsk, where they end.
Although Jim is the evident protagonist in both Terran campaigns in SC1 and SC2, his style of management is not too dissimilar from Mengsk. Raynor is less cunning and treacherous than Mengsk. He does employ a similar kind of charismatic dominance as Mengsk: Controlling the narrative through nothing more than shows of authority. While Arcturus has the press on his side at the beginning of Starcraft 2, he soon loses it due to repeated assaults from Raynor’s Raiders on his image. On that end, while the Emperor does have considerable means to achieve his goals, his rule appears to be extremely fragile and wrought with corruption. Soldiers from the Dominion, his imperial faction, do not seem to care to cross moral lines drawn by the game. In the first mission of Wings of Liberty, Dominion soldiers are seen gunning down unarmed civilians. Throughout the Mar Sara colony, there are holographic effigies of the Emperor, pushing propaganda in a very militaristic and authoritarian tone.
Wanting to be everywhere at once to control the message, control his resources, control how others in his faction behave is a telltale sign of a micromanager. Arcturus seems to be aware of most of what is happening in his empire, seldom being surprised by changes in tactics from his opponents. The problem with micromanagement is minimal self-confidence and as such, nobody in Mengsk’s empire seems to have as much influence as the emperor himself. General Horace Warfield seems to be a small exception, but rarely do the news, for example, speak of Mengsk’s family. We know he has a son, but other than being in his father’s shadow, and betraying him at that, his role in the empire is not immediately clear.
It would be safe thus to describe Mengsk’s organisation as a mish-mash of authoritarian management practices, where only the executive branch of the company knows what’s really going on or what the overall strategy is. Power is heavily centralized into the hands of a few people and for the most part, the militaristic nature of the empire is what keeps it in an illusion of stability despite Raynor and the Zerg being a constant looming menace.
Where Jim’s authority is more organic, I.E. he can be doubted and criticized on his decisions without consequence, so long as the behavior of the one criticizing him doesn’t turn to violence, Mengsk’s attitude toward dissent is quite clearly immediate and extreme sanctions. These range from probably torture, imprisonment, exile and death, as any good dictator should behave in order to maintain their iron grip on the power they wield.
The existence of a leisure area in the Hyperion does suggest that Jim likes to keep morale up for his troops and he lets anyone willing to help him board his ship, showing an openness to both the competition and allies. This is why it’s crystal clear who the game intends us to be rooting for, as Mengsk is himself a caricature of demagoguery and banana republics, with his over-inflated ego and lack of empathy for those under his rule.
I don’t think I have to further illustrate whether Mengsk’s management style is good or bad? It’s quite definitely the worst kind of management, because it causes employee sabotage (which happens regularly) and low engagement in your employees. If there was an ideal textbook example on how not to manage a company, Mengsk would be the perfect candidate.
Something doesn’t add up…
Something puzzles me, though… How has he been in power for so long if his management practices are so terrible? The press obfuscates the terrible stuff that happens throughout his empire, but that’s just the thing… Mengsk is waging war on multiple fronts AND seemingly is capable of holding his own against dissent in his own ranks? That is to say, without Raynor, there wouldn’t be a major uprising in the population? I disagree there. In fact, part of me thinks that the Terran campaign is really just a feud between two men and their armies, with the civilian population caught in-between.
Raynor isn’t there to install some kind of new world order: He just wants to kill Mengsk. So what happens with his group afterwards?
Mengsk’s goal has already been achieved by the time the events of Starcraft 2 occur. He is an Emperor and he has greatly increased his influence across the Koprulu sector, but I can’t help but feel like it’d take just one tiny bit of a shift in the organization for him to be made irrelevant and then Julius Caesar’d. His hold onto the population is already tenuous by the time Jim’s Raider’s get there and start causing a ruckus.
What is for certain is that Mengsk has accumulated considerable means to maintain this illusion of control over the population, with the Press being another veil to pull over the people’s eyes. Yet, for some strange reason, the Emperor makes the unusual decision to leave the freedom of the press relatively intact. One of the reporters eventually catches the incriminating evidence that Raynor’s Raiders divulge through the mission where Tychus gets ahold of a destructive secret weapon of the Dominion. She even manages several times to quite clearly report things that go against the Empire’s dialectic, such as Raynor’s Raiders not being terrible people but actually looking to help make people’s lives better.
In normal circumstances, a man like Mengsk should quite definitely see the dangers that the Press poses to his rule, as he has seen almost every other subterfuge being committed within his own ranks. Yet, when the Press starts to “turn on him”, he acts like it’s inconceivable that they would report bad things on him. They’re his Press! He could easily stifle any news corporations as he saw fit, and claim it to be for the benefit of the Empire, as he always does. Yet, all he does when he becomes assailed with questions involving his use of Zerg to kill Confederates is run away, looking even worse for wear.
It seems like anything remotely similar could and should have happened a thousand times over, seeing as how easily he can be made to look bad by his own newspapers. In the first Starcraft, when he takes hold of power, he has total control over the narrative. Yet, while he attempts to use the Press to dissuade people from following Raynor’s Raiders into open rebellion, he doesn’t think one moment that Raynor might use the very Press against him? It’s something Raynor himself seems to be able to foresee. At that, when the post-Tychus-Kills-Everyone operation is over, the cutscene where we see hundreds of journalists asking and shouting questions at Arcturus poses another problem…
If Mengsk is such an oppressor in his regime, how is he allowing this many dissenting voices to exist? He doesn’t strike me as the benevolent Emperor nor has he ever needed to be. Is this a misunderstanding of journalism on Starcraft 2’s part or just a very strange and jarring dead angle in Mengsk’s peripheral vision?
In conclusion
Revisiting Starcraft 2’s campaigns from a management perspective has allowed me to be skeptical of certain things that are considered hallmarks of a “morally good” character and appreciate the flaws that are inherent in Jim and Mengsk. Where Jim is a bad-ass freedom fighter, with a tendency to forget the big picture, Mengsk is a cold-hearted and calculating tactician which have both netted him a well-earned reputation as far as strategy is concerned, but also infamy due to his strategic decisions. There’s something really odd about how Mengsk is supposed to have maintained power all this time yet he seems absolutely incompetent with wielding the power of the Press, while he’s been capable of waging simultaneous war against Raynor, the Zerg and even the Protoss while remaining seated and NOT getting assassinated!
Similarly, Raynor’s management leaves little to be desired and aside from looking really cool and having a chip on his shoulder, he’s really not that good at managing conflict or his troops. He has to rely on all the people around him to even stay in power. Which on its own is not a bad thing, but you’d think someone with such responsibility would be more careful about the image he projects. I think these flaws only help solidify him better as a protagonist. He doesn’t have to be the perfect leader or the perfect manager. His troops love him because of these flaws, and they’re as a result not subordinates to him necessarily, but equals in his fight for vengeance and liberation.
Wisdom and Society 