It was just 'here is what these 14 UXR [User Experience Research] studies are saying, so we've got to do it this way."

I've never worked in games, but in consumer tech apps, any UXR study that's not done in active collaboration with the team is (almost but not entirely) useless. And that's assuming they're done in good faith - actual learning goals, non leading questions, full coverage of user segments. It's just so easy to use "14 UXR studies" to justify whatever you want to do by stripping out context or cherry picking studies.