What you are looking at is corporate environments; the studios of the past (Ex: Westwood and Blizzard) had a small headcounts, and people were direct decision makers.
> StarCraft was originally envisioned as a game with modest goals that could fit into a one-year development cycle so that it could be released for Christmas, 1996
> Warcraft II had only six core programmers and two support programmers; that was too few for the larger scope of StarCraft,
No boardrooms of PMs, and Directors, and VPs, and execs, chiming in every decision, leading to fast turnarounds.
The story of Starcraft 1 is quite interesting as the devs copied the Warcraft 2 code and began changing it quickly[1](https://www.codeofhonor.com/blog/tough-times-on-the-road-to-...).
> StarCraft was originally envisioned as a game with modest goals that could fit into a one-year development cycle so that it could be released for Christmas, 1996 > Warcraft II had only six core programmers and two support programmers; that was too few for the larger scope of StarCraft,
No boardrooms of PMs, and Directors, and VPs, and execs, chiming in every decision, leading to fast turnarounds.