I agree. Dean's a great guy and had some amazing ideas, many of which are now being put into effect ingame, but I think he was more ambitious as an ideas man than he was effective a leader. In the long run, this was not a bad thing.

I know the type of leader well. I have an applicable anecdote.

Put simply, Second Life allowed players to create their own objects with 3D modelling programs, and code them. This included weapons. We could create anything we wanted.

I joined a military group in my time there; there were dozens of groups, each with their own armor, weapons, vehicles, and general research and development (R&D) on experimental tracking computers and espionage equipment. My group worked on some serious cutting edge tech, with some of the lowest lag-inducing weapons you could find in SL. Good, smart folks. Maybe I'm a little biased.

Anyway, I designed weapon meshes for R&D; my CO, Ethan, was a programmer. Much like Dean, he would come up with some extravagant ideas that looked amazing on paper and were technically feasible, but were sometimes overblown or would require immense work. He sometimes lacked the drive to follow the implementations to completion himself.

However, what he lacked in drive, he more than made up for in charisma. Even if he was unable to finish a project, he was fucking incredible at convincing other people to complete them.

I simply cannot count the number of times he simply suggested an idea, and suddenly, a dozen people would put their heads together to see it to completion. We designed light bombers, infantry weapons platforms for our marine corps, and several light-to-medium dropships, all as collaborative projects between different R&D divisions from different military branches that would have otherwise been at each other's throats over project control. He was very skilled at resolving disputes between developers, for directing them, and for making them all feel extremely and equally important, regardless of their actual contributions.

Ethan is still one of my closest friends, even though that group is long dead by several years. And from what I've seen, both from his conferences, speeches, and Reddit posts, Dean is extremely similar. He's done a great job throwing Bohemia feet first in the right direction. With oversight from the more deadline-oriented producer Brian Hicks, it makes perfect sense that things are really kicking up into full swing.

They have a great foundation of ideas to work from.