Polaris/Maker Studio's GAME_JAM controversy

[Charli]

Wait, I'm confused. I haven't finished reading the article (Because goddamn, that's a whopper) but what beef does Zoe Quinn have with JonTron? What?

Both Zoe and JohTron were at the event. Its two teams, gamers vs devs. JonTron was on the gamer team, Zoe was on the Dev team. Basically a corporate douchebag tries to provoke conflict between them for "drama". You should probably read the article, it does explain it.

Yeah, but why would they, specifically, have a beef with each other? The article made it out to seem like they have some past history with each other - the writer even said he knew it'd be a bad match as soon as he saw it, and they tried to get Jon to badmouth Zoe, which they didn't do with the other female team leader.

I've read the article entirely now, and I know what the basic set up of the show was, but it talks about Jon and Zoe like they had previously met and already disliked each other, but didn't go into how or why.

From all I could gather...clash of personality. It just happens sometimes with no prior cause. You'll just go to a place where there is alot going on and the people with big personalities will either get along and cause a supernova of good time or they'll rub each other the wrong way on some inexplicable level and cause unheard of tension.

Luckily I'm not a big personality myself but my friends usually are, and seeing them clash is frightening. Seeing them get along though is the best feeling in the world.

Though it seems Jon and Zoe sort of just wanted to be grown up about it and just do their jobs but were being mishandled by immature twats holding sticks that kept pushing their buttons. Deplorable behaviour from the production and promotional side of things.

 

[Saetha]

Snip

From all I could gather...clash of personality. It just happens sometimes with no prior cause. You'll just go to a place where there is alot going on and the people with big personalities will either get along and cause a supernova of good time or they'll rub each other the wrong way on some inexplicable level and cause unheard of tension.

Luckily I'm not a big personality myself but my friends usually are, and seeing them clash is frightening. Seeing them get along though is the best feeling in the world.

Though it seems Jon and Zoe sort of just wanted to be grown up about it and just do their jobs but were being mishandled by immature twats holding sticks that kept pushing their buttons. Deplorable behaviour from the production and promotional side of things.

Huh. I assumed there was some past calamity there, considering how Metti tried to needle Jon into trash talking. Kinda weird that he'd try that if their biggest gripe with each other was mere personality differences. Well, good on them (Jon and Zoe, not Metti) for handling it well. Good on nearly everyone involved, really, for handling it like they did and sticking up to that guy. I'm not entirely comfortable with how Polaris got screwed over here, despite being mostly innocent, but that is a truly awful situation to be in. No one should have to put up with that.

 

[Eve Charm]

Zoe and John were on the same team and having a clash about the direction of the game they and two others were making. Creative disagreement that some suit wanted to turn into drama cause drama sells.

Well least he got a whole lot of drama, nothing to sell out of it tho.

It sucks all this money and time lost from indie devs and youtubers but WTF do you expect when you bring people out for a game jam and then turn it into a god damn reality show, and not a reality show about what they are there for that matter.

Sorry Polaris deserves it, They stopped looking at the people and started looking or at money instead, or at least the people that say they could make money for it. Can't expect people whose's lives and jobs go off their integrity to sell out for a dumb thing cause once they do there is no going back.

 

[flying_whimsy]

My best friend is an indie developer: I'll have to buzz him later and get his feedback on this.

That was one hell of a read (and all of the other accounts as well). I'm not usually one to point a finger and say "that's what's wrong with mainstream gaming," but I feel like this whole thing sort of exemplifies a lot of the issues in the industry. Too much money, a loss of focus on what's important (fun), compromises and lack of oversight, and people that have the wrong ideas (usually misogynist and stupid) about the industry and the audience.

There's a lot of talk about it all being one guy's fault (and while that's largely true, I do agree with holding the people that hired him accountable), but it's like he was a living embodiment of the toxicity that plagues the community. If the guy had gotten wind about someone being gay, he would have tried to isolate and bully them, too.

Those indie devs, on the other hand, are a good reminder of all the good things we love about gaming. We all have to be vigilant about people like Matti Leshem, because there will always be people like Matti Leshem.

 

[Inazuma1]

If I had attended this I would have murdered Matti right after he got fired and enjoyed every second of it. People like him should have a random bone in their body broken every time they open their cock-sockets.

 

[teebeeohh]

Huh. I assumed there was some past calamity there, considering how Metti tried to needle Jon into trash talking. Kinda weird that he'd try that if their biggest gripe with each other was mere personality differences. Well, good on them (Jon and Zoe, not Metti) for handling it well. Good on nearly everyone involved, really, for handling it like they did and sticking up to that guy. I'm not entirely comfortable with how Polaris got screwed over here, despite being mostly innocent, but that is a truly awful situation to be in. No one should have to put up with that.

they were on the same team and had very different ideas what the game they were working on should be like. The author of the article knows them both personally and thus knew there would be a point of conflict with them on the same team.

OT: this seems to me like the whole kickstarter stretch goal things, where people want to make A but get a lot more money than they hoped for and start to bloat their project with stuff that doesn't even fit. from what i read about they (meaning the higher up at maker) basically got more and more money for the production and started turning it into reality tv because they thought some old man in a suit looked at number on a spreadsheet and thought it would sell to the target demographic. Which is us btw, they thought reality tv bullshit would specifically sell to us.

but apparently zoe quinn wants to do a game jam in the spirit of what this originally supposed to be, with a lot of people saying they would support that so that's nice i guess.


oh and thank you Escapist for once again not being the fucktards of reddit who were all bitching about how the article is too long and uses the big words.

 

[Smooth Operator]

Live and learn I say, if walking straight into a bear cave seems like a good idea the first time then you will learn from personal experience why it very much isn't.

And I have zero sympathy for the organizers on this, they knew what they were setting up, they knew how the whole thing turned and just kept it going quietly so everyone who signed on would be ambushed by this Big Dew Brother bullshit.
Yes you had the one guy really ramming in that reality TV sales pitch but that is the shit you organized, that is what you had people sign on for fully knowing it's completely opposite of what devs were lead to believe was going down, don't play innocent here because you were there literally selling this show out.

Corporations can be involved in whatever they pay for, but that doesn't mean people need to blindly follow, quite the opposite actually, more corporations are hanging on a project the greater your guard should be.
This also wasn't a case of "old media has no respect for gaming", no this is just straight up formulaic media exploitation, old media has viewer manipulation for maximized profits down to a science so if you want to work with them this is the shit that will go down.

 

[Smeatza]

Did anybody there have any television or reality television experience at all?
Surely if any of them had any television experience at all they could have seen this coming a mile off.

I'm not wrong am I? Pretty much every television production with sponsors and corporate interest goes down like this, doesn't it?
Penn of Penn and Teller talks about it on a Big Think video.

 

[Eve Charm]

Sorry Polaris deserves it, They stopped looking at the people and started looking or at money instead, or at least the people that say they could make money for it. Can't expect people whose's lives and jobs go off their integrity to sell out for a dumb thing cause once they do there is no going back.

Literally every source has said that it wasn't really Polaris, or Maker Studios, fault the whole thing fell apart. It was the outside companies that screwed the whole thing up, Polaris and Maker just suffered from a lack of foresight.

Really, How does any outside company get into your production? You let them in. Reading the whole article and accounts an additional production team was bought in to help, contracts and the rest were probably changed along with before the cast arrived but most notably said by the main guys, "We've could of stopped this, but we didn't"

Maker and Polaris might not have directly done it, but when something bad happens on a set that was something set up for these guys they are accountable for it. The accountability of them is why people are in the right to blame them, but I guess their bank accounts sting enough already.

 

[archabaddon]

Read about this today on The Mary Sue ( http://www.themarysue.com/game-jam-sexism/ ). Just really glad that the "contestants" teamed up against the producers of this show and called them out on tropes, sexism, and not even having a full understanding of what developers do.

Plus, f*** Mountain Dew, seriously. They push their wares to kids, and rot your teeth in the process. I used to drink that crap religiously and have the dental x-rays to prove it.

 

[Olas]

Frankly, a part of me is glad this all went to hell. I mean, sure, it's always sad when lots of time and money is wasted, but this just sounded like the worst thing, a complete insult to indie game developers. A part of me would actually be really interested in seeing a game being made from the ground up. I imagine, at least as a gamer with a minor background in programming, that I would find the process interesting by itself and wouldn't need any forced "drama" to keep me engaged. But of course when appealing to the masses you always need to aim low.

 

[The Woodsman]

Wow, what a trainwreck. You can bet your butt a whole lot of people got fired for this debacle, and not just Matti Leshem. This entire event cost Maker $450,000. Not only is that a lot of lost money, but it makes them look like utter amateur idiots to their new bosses at Disney. Heads probably have (and will) roll for this, most likely those belonging to the upper management in Polaris and Maker who let Leshem and his goons have such a run of the set in the first place.

Frankly, Maker and Polaris deserve as much flack as Matti Leshem does. Even though they may not have instigated the disaster that took place, they were in charge of it and they allowed the second production team to do what they wanted. It's all about accountability. When I was in the military, shit rolls uphill. If you are a leader and one of your subordinates royally screws up, it's on your head too. It's your responsibility to keep your underlings in line, and it's obvious that those in charge failed to keep Matti and his goons in line.

 

[Ironshroom]

I've read the article entirely now, and I know what the basic set up of the show was, but it talks about Jon and Zoe like they had previously met and already disliked each other, but didn't go into how or why.

Well, both are very opinionated people. Anyone who watches any of Jons stuff knows he is very heavily opinionated (that's what makes him interesting to watch!)

As someone who pays a lot of attention to Zoe's work too, she seems similar. People with similar personalities like that tend to butt heads a fair bit.

 

[Voulan]

I had a read of all those articles, and I'm divided in being both disgusted at the industry and really proud of our indie developers and gaming personalities. Hopefully this will prove a very important lesson about turning the gaming industry into a dudebro fest with too much commericialism. It started way back with that show about journalism with the Doritos and Mountain Dew. You'd think they'd have learnt by now.

Well, they have now. That's a lot of money wasted.

 

[Magix]

Well, although this Matti guy is the guy that actually fucked everything up, the fact that he was able to do it speaks something about the lack of competence in the entire production team. Something like this shouldn't have been allowed to happen.