Worked on this girl for 9 months. Now this new music video comes out and she’s immensely popular, arguably one of the most popular characters in the LoL universe.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m really glad she’s a huge hit, it’s super exciting to see so many people love the character design and the gameplay, and know that I contributed directly and significantly to the behind-the-scenes engineering that makes it all work. It’s validating.
But it’s also so fucking melancholy to know I did so much work and put in so much time for such a shitty company, run by shitty people, and the reward I got for it was unemployment.
I threw a lot into this character. I cried at work. I started getting panic attacks, which I’ve never gotten before. I developed persistent heart palpitations from the daily overwhelming stress and had to go to the hospital (this is true, seriously.) I basically dropped all my friends outside of work. My manager (and his manager!) lied to me constantly to keep me working. They said I was doing a great job but to keep it up. Don’t worry, it’s going to turn out great, and it’ll all be worth it in the end – recognition, a raise, probably a promotion in short order. They promised me the world. When she was finally finished, I didn’t even get to go to the release party, they just walked me out.
I remember a quote from my last day, it sticks out in my mind: “I know you realize this is really hard for me,” my manager said. Yes, in the end, when he awkwardly informed me I didn’t have my dream job anymore – or any job at all – and then stared back at my shell-shocked face, my thousand-yard stare, the only thing he felt was sorry for himself.
She launched with no major bugs and was considered a technical success. Doesn’t matter. Get the fuck out.
I don’t know how I feel. A weird sensation of pride and intense bitterness. I did a good job; at least, I think I did. Unfortunately, internal validation is the only kind I’m going to get.
Everyone reposting KDA should see this. Riot has successfully distracted everyone into forgetting their culture of sexism,exploitation, and toxicity mere months after it was all revealed.
Look, I get it. Akali is EXTREMELY my type. It’s obvious how much love and care was put into her development. But it makes me furious to see all the free advertising that Riot is getting from people who I thought would know better.
And now? One of the people who is arguably responsible for all that free advertising? Who’s work is undoubtedly making Riot hundreds of thousands of dollars a day? Who was overworked to the point of near breaking? They get nothing. WORSE than the scant bit of credit that most devs can get in a big company like Riot. They got let go.
Fuck Riot Games.
One thing that I thought really sucked a lot is that the production company who made the KDA video isn’t even credited. They credit a lot of other people on their videos, usually, but the actual animators of the video are hidden; almost a lie by omission. At best it’s a honest mistake, at worst it’s sneakily trying to pass off the video as something made in-house when it’s not. 😦
It’s sad that toxic game culture is so prevalent cuz like. As someone who has ended up in random matches with kids before, I can attest to how fucking easy it is to reverse and un-teach shitty attitudes in kids.
Example: I downloaded Friday the 13th because it’s free on psn. I dunno how to play, so I just enter quick play and I’m matched with 3-4 kids on mic. Immediately on mic they’re shitty and disparaging to each other. They laugh at each others deaths, they actively work against team mates and self sabotage, they call each other “fags”, etc. From the sounds of the voices they cannot be older than 13-14.
I put on my mic and just decide I ain’t havin it. I am nice. I thank them for barricading doors or leaving me items. When they break free from Jason’s grasp I say “good job!” or I try to help them. One kid survived for most of the match by himself. When he dies, I tell him he did a fantastic job.
The mood shift is practically INSTANT. These kids almost immediately stop being dick heads. They start encouraging each other and being kind. After the match all of them try to friend request me. Which should tell you a couple of things:
A) kids want to be kind, and they want to have a nice time playing games. But encounters with adults like me or so rare that they’ve trained themselves to instantly put on a toxic, shitty, defensive veneer when encountering any new person online. It’s literally just THAT EASY to not groom a horrible gaming community, it’s just that NO ONE does it.
B) the speed of which they all tried to friend me was cute, but paints for me such a sad picture? Like these kids are SO desperate to find people to play with who aren’t crappy jerks. They played with me for 10 minutes TOPS and all instantly tried to reach out to me.
tl;dr: The kids are alright. Adults are shit heads.
Having concrete anticipations also gives you a solid reference point against which you can check your mental health status.
The way I knew I had slipped from morbid ideation to suicide risk was when I realized that the release date of kingdom hearts 3 wasn’t enough to make me leave a bottle of hydrocodone alone. The moment of recognition that something I had been dreaming of for 14 years wasn’t enough motivation to make it through the night was how I knew I needed an intervention.
Video games just happen to have concerts dates and strong reactions from people. They’re an excellent and accessible tool.
This is… not wrong.
The only thing that kept me alive through high school was Star Ocean Till the End of Time and how I wanted to complete it. This works.
Recently, a friend sent me this image. It had been passed on by her boyfriend; it had reminded him of me. One might expect that connection to fill me with satisfaction, that I, a game designer and writer, am instantly associated with forward thinking and feminist ideals. Instead, I felt humiliated.
This is a great article that does a good job of explaining exactly why arguments excusing ”sexy armor” are invalid and altogether ridiculous.
This awesome article not only thoroughly explains why there’s no way to logically justify sexualization of female characters in video games, but also highlights the struggles that women in the industry go through:
The thing is, in this industry, you don’t want to be “that girl.” The world has communicated very thoroughly, with Anita Sarkeesian’s death threats, with so many comments on Kotaku, and with comments in the hallways of the workplace and the podiums of conventions, that being “that girl” is bad. Real bad. Potentially end of career bad.
But it’s not just dangerous for potential ramifications on career trajectory. There’s also a social component of how “that girl” is insufferable, annoying, and should be punishable by shaming.
Many female game designers, anonymously and publicly alike, confess how they have to deal with sexist standards of the industry, just so they can keep their jobs. It’s a legit problem that men, especially the ones chanting “sex sells!” or “it’s intended for male gamers!”, are either blissfully unaware of or willfully ignorant (my bets are on the latter option, though).
Please guys, read the whole thing.
~Ozzie
People are often quick to dismiss arguments against the conventional wisdom that “sex sells” as “politically correct” idealism. But one of the most compelling argument against the slogan comes from the other side of the political spectrum.
David Ogilvy was one of, if not The great iconic Ad Men of the 1960’s. Unsurprisingly he was deeply invested in the idea of gender roles and claimed “I am less offended by obscenity than by tasteless typography, banal photographs, clumsy copy, and cheap jingles”. He also (literally) wrote the book on how to create effective advertising and measure the effectiveness of your advertising.
He was, amazingly, admantly against introducing sex to sell any product that wasn’t inherently sexual in itself for one simple reason:
All his research and experience in advertising told him it would not work.
What did Ogilvy very sincerely believed was the first step in creating effective advertising an massive sales? To create a high quality product.
That way all that was required was to sincerely show the customers why it was a great product and the rest would take care of itself.
So when developers distort their products (comics, books, movies, video games, etc) by cramming sexualised imagery into them with the mentality of “sex sells” so “more sex will sell even more” they are actually sabotaging their product’s reception, reputation, sales and it’s marketing campaigns.
At least according to an old white man from the 1960s who always assumed women should be house wives… and also happened to be one of the greatest thinkers in advertising.
Bringing it back particularly because it mentions how it is a professional suicide
for women in the industry to call out sexism in game design and narrative. And, in light Jessica Price’s of ArenaNet firing, we learned how even talking back to a male gamer community member can lead to the same.
Sadly, we still operate firmly in the reality where “sex” (or rather: erosion of female self-esteem) is considered a marketing booster and women speaking out for themselves in any way get shoved aside, so we don’t have to have the uncomfortable conversation that maybe they have a point.
~Ozzie
Couldn’t help but make this joke out of the accompanying image from the Jessica Price article linked above.
Don’t know if the writer did it on purpose or not, but thanks!
The Entertainment Software Association, which represents the video game industry, said it told the president that “numerous scientific studies” show there is “no connection between video games and violence.” In fact, Markey said his work shows when a new violent game is released, crime actually drops.
when a new violent game is released, crime actually drops.
CRIME ACTUALLY DROPS.
its almost as if giving people harmless outlets for their aggression allows people who use that outlet to vent safely as part of their coping process, imagine that. perhaps we should be encouraging people who need to vent that they should actually go vent instead of telling them that safe venting is socially unacceptable
this is similar to when people were blaming edgy music- listening to depressing songs will not cause depression nor cause someone to kill themselves, but listening to them while writing bad poetry and wearing stylish yet regrettable outfits may allow someone to work through an emotional time in their life better then listening to equally embarrassing in hindsight pop music
its entirely possible ‘Doom’ prevented someone with anger issues from killing someone, its entirely possible ‘suicide solution’ by ozzy has prevented suicides
let people have safe outlets for their emotions
Yo my psychiatrist encourages me to play video games when I’m dealing with PTSD related rage episodes. She’s told me that it’s one of the safest ways to decompress and sort my shit out. And you know what? She’s right. By the end of an hour or so I’m chill again and can get on with my day. The alternative is doing real physical harm to myself via punching a wall or slamming my head into something. Video games negate that urge.
Video games. Play them for story, fun, and stress relief.
i dont understand half of the words here but god if this isn’t the funniest thing i’ve ever read
im pretty sure red and blue weren’t programmed but just sort of… mutated into cartridges
Red and blue are why QA teams were invented
for fuck’s sake they weren’t badly programmed. They were bleeding edge. It’s so easy to forget that but Red and Blue were literally pushing the limits of what they could fit on the cartridge.
They used every trick in the book. In that way, the programming behind them is GENIUS. It’s frankly a lost art, in this era where hardware is insanely cheap and scalable, when you can just keep throwing more resources at the problem. But Red & Blue were when programmers had to get creative. Not currently using a piece of memory? Repurpose it, we can’t just leave it lying around. Only have a couple registers? Juggle them, keep careful track so we can restore them when we needed. Does this data need to be single purpose, or can we also use it for, say, a seed value?
And all this WORKED. I guarantee you 99% of children playing this never saw a bug in casual play. MODERN games are buggier by a landslide. Remember when X&Y came out and there was an ENTIRE CITY you couldn’t save in because it’d DELETE YOUR SAVE? Imagine that happening in the days of Red&Blue. It couldn’t have. I can turn on my red cartridge TODAY and have it work. And the bugs that did exist, those edge cases they missed? They produce this behavior because the game REFUSES TO CRASH. Sure, you can make it crash if you try hard enough, but goddamn it’s resilient. It just plugs away with garbage data in memory for as long as possible.
Y’all looking down from your 64-bit quad-core smartphones with 128GB SD cards like Red & Blue were programmed by amateurs. What, you also going to bitch that the Wright Brothers didn’t make a jet engine? These are artifacts from pioneers who wrote the goddamn book that others would use as gospel.
Sincerely, a pissed off goddamn programmer.
The Game Boy has 8 kilobytes of RAM. Most of the icons on this site could not fit into the working memory of a Game Boy intact.
today a regular customer came into my store and told me she’d ‘finished candy crush’ and tbh i didnt think that was possible. i thought it just generated levels forever, but apparently it has 4000 odd levels and it took her 4 years to complete. she even emailed them asking when there would be more levels and they told her she could play their other games or replay the existing levels jklsdkflsdf
i'll apple your turnover 