I think that letter should be looked at with a more critical eye, even if it is legit. The overall tone of the letter is that the writer knows better than his superiors. But does he really? His claim is that he's an experienced fellow who has been involved in games that were shipped, so he knows how things should be done.
I'm not sure which games those were, but for about 95% of games shipped, probably most of us would find a LOT of faults because of the business model artists are forced to work under. So that's an issue that we might argue with the original writer. Maybe the old way of doing things isn't so good?
So, to take a few of the examples he gives head on -- he complains that artists can't take ownership of any of the assets. Are we certain that this is a bad thing? I'm pretty stoked by the overall quality of the SC artistic pallet, so if that's the way to get there... see what I'm saying?
Also, he complains that Chris' critiques don't make sense to him. But regarding the above -- the end product looks pretty good, and looks better as time passes. I realize this is a subjective judgment, but I'll bet I'm not in the minority in feeling as if the artistic direction of the project is pretty solid.
He also complains about how long things take and how CR put someone in charge who didn't know how to do things, etc. But the basis for that entire argument is his experience of doing things the old way. Probably not everything CIG does is going to be 100% gold from the beginning. The fact that they are actively changing how things are done is a point that should be considered. He didn't like the results of that decision, but are we certain that he's basing his critiques from the correct position?
I don't know much about character modeling. In fact, now that I've written the words "character modeling" I've pretty much exhausted my knowledge. But maybe the old way of doing things could be improved upon? One of his main complaints is that it took so long to get characters done and approved -- but if CIG is really trying to make character model generation match their ship model pipeline, there's work to be done in figuring out how to do this, and that's necessarily going to slow things down. Was that the right decision? I have no idea myself, and possibly it was a mistake. But I actually kind of feel good that they were willing to look to streamline things and build infrastructure for the future.
Many artists have big egos. And they always think that they are right. It goes with the territory. So some of what he writes should be taken with a grain of salt. The part that I would be most concerned about is the work-place atmosphere. If it really is as CYA and fearful as he suggests, that's a problem and CR and CIG would do well to look at rectifying it. But if that's mostly because artists are butting heads, or desiring to do things the old way and not wanting to change -- well, I don't see how that can be avoided. CIG is attempting to change how games are made, and I think there's a very good chance their efforts will succeed, and then be copied by other companies, which would be good for those of us who enjoy games. But it might be hard for some industry veterans to swallow while it's all getting sorted out.