Someone in a Reddit thread pointed how Valve's structure reduces the fragility of a product by not basing it on one vision and that their games are based on a pretty pure collaborative effort. A writer becomes inherently less influential on the final product, but their individual contribution is more passionate and worked. One could argue for hours about the approach, but I think the results speak for themselves.
I think abstraction is key. There's gotta be a happy medium between absolute control or almost a sense of worship and not allowing a singular person to guide the ship.
A BDFL is great if the dictator is competent. A committee is also great if the committee is competent (overall).
Most people don't have what it takes to be a BDFL. But a few do. And for those people, the answer is to take good notes and get the hell out of their way.
Basically he claims that even though there's a flat corporate structure within Valve, in practice an implicit management structure arose in which those with the most political clout controlled others without it. Plus they used stack ranking at the time.
The implicit hidden hierarchies - based partly on charisma and friendship - increased the effort to do anything, and especially the mental stress of having to keep the double-think alive.
I think for less socially adept people these companies are a nightmare. The entire direction of the company was decided by a cliquie implicit power holders with no accountability, as these could always play on the "flat structure and we all share responsibility and accountability"
The current best example of this small team methodology is Stardew Valley.
But 1 < 20.
With recent advancements in design and tooling, this could be a possibility again.
You're ideas are less likely to be vetoed, but good like finding a champion other than yourself.
But I think that it's probably exaggerated - there are always hierarchies, but in this case no attempt has been made to define or force the structure.
I think that the bigger issue is this: Valve is a platform and distribution company, not a games company.
As the platform became the primary product, broad artistic creativity took a backseat.
I don't see it coming back, which is a pity - The Orange Box was exquisite.
Seems like a remarkably valuable piece of IP to not regularly exploit.
I would like a new Left 4 Dead though...