
How the Most Expensive Game Jam Crashed And Burned in a Single Day - jmduke
http://indiestatik.com/2014/03/31/most-expensive-game-jam/
======
naiyt
Some choice quotes:

> ...but Matti pushed the angle. And as the challenge went on we discovered
> that he had cornered Jon in a room to try and get him to speak poorly of
> Zoe, the only negative “story” they could muster out of all fifteen
> contestants.

> “Two of the other teams have women on them. Do you think they’re at a
> disadvantage?” Silence. It was like the wind was sucked out of the room
> behind the barrier, but the floor was so loud only the two all-male teams
> heard the question. Mark answered diplomatically that the teams actually had
> a huge advantage by having more viewpoints, though everyone was strong
> regardless because of their skill. Matti cut him off, pulled back the
> camera, and coughed, “Stop filming. We’re not getting a story here.”

It's a pretty long article, so here's a TL;DR:

Maker Studios is a very large YouTube network (the one that was just bought by
Disney for $500 million). They tried to create some sort of game jam, and
invited some teams of indie devs to participate. It devolved into being some
sort of awful corporate-backed reality show, and the devs were consistently
disrespected. The guy with the misogynistic quotes above was the main problem,
according to a lot of the people there. Trying to push contention, etc, for
the sake of the "reality" aspect of it.

That dude got sacked, and the devs all walked away. Apparently the whole thing
cost $400,000.

~~~
jsmthrowaway
The "guy" in question isn't just anybody, it's Matti Leshem. Leshem is
extremely well-connected in the Los Angeles production and marketing networks
(I know of him tangentially from my television work), and his company,
Protagonist, is Pepsi's _primary strategy consultancy_. I'm pretty sure
TBWA\Chiat\Day is still Pepsi's marketer of record, but Protagonist drives the
social push, broad strategy, and so on. They've worked with him over a decade
so Leshem is basically a Pepsi man and the Mountain Dew angle of GAME_JAM
makes a _lot_ more sense in that context.

Based on what I've heard of him, Leshem turned a career making soap operas
into one of those "high-energy brand power" sort of consultancies, the
marketing equation solved to its limit that disgusts everyone when they think
about "marketing." He and his wife represent a big Hollywood power couple --
she's high up at Warner Brothers and responsible for movies like _Se7en_ and
_Benjamin Button_ , he's responsible for cultural triumphs like "USA Rock
Paper Scissors League" (sponsored by Amp Energy, a PepsiCo brand, of course).

This article should explain a lot, from _Variety_ in 2003:
[http://variety.com/2003/scene/news/branded-tv-bubbling-up-
fr...](http://variety.com/2003/scene/news/branded-tv-bubbling-up-from-
leshem-1117893691/) \-- I have no doubt in my mind that Matti Leshem showed up
on set thinking "YouTube vehicle for Pepsi" and acted accordingly. Which
should tell you a lot about Pepsi, honestly.

~~~
mercurial
It's revealing that selling your body results in social ostracism but selling
your soul has the opposite effect.

~~~
fleitz
Selling your soul is bad business, you want to rent it out so at the Oscars
you can still rail against the man.

~~~
muhfuhkuh
... while taking a Samsung-sponsored selfie with the man.

~~~
fleitz
Exactly.

------
nl
This is one of the most uplifting and positive stories I've read via HN.

Whilst I understand that's probably not the most common take-away, I read it
as a story of how software development is slowly changing to a field where
sexism is no longer acceptable.

I think it is fantastic that the developers stood up to Matti, and refused to
give him the story he was looking for.

People will continue to argue all they like over if software development is a
meritocracy and/or if different genders have differing natural inclinations
towards the field.

All I know is that on _that_ day there were two female developers who had
gained enough respect from their peers that no one would fall into the trap of
"providing a story" for the show.

I think that does all the developers involved credit.

Edit: Adriel Wallick (one of the developers involved) has written a blog post
about it. I thought this bit was great:

 _I will not put my face and my “stamp of approval” on something where this is
even a question. No, we are not at an advantage because we have women on our
team and no, we are not at a disadvantage because we have women on our team.
We all have advantages and disadvantages because of our varying skills and
strengths. Having the audacity to be a woman does not hinder nor help any of
these things. Being a woman simply means that we are women._

[http://msminotaur.com/blog/?p=187](http://msminotaur.com/blog/?p=187)

~~~
rwallace
'I think it is fantastic that the developers stood up to Matti, and refused to
give him the story he was looking for.'

I agree completely. Nobody should put up with that sort of bullshit, and I'm
glad the developers didn't.

However, a comment from the linked account:

'But the people responsible for hiring those who ultimately destroyed it –
they all contributed to a toxic environment, and they should be held
accountable for that.'

I must disagree with this. There is no such thing as precognition. How someone
comes across in an interview is a weak predictor of how he performs on the
job. With the best will in the world, sometimes an employer will make a
mistake and hire the wrong person.

And this mistake is already punished by law and custom more harshly than it
should be. The result is that employers are incentivized to err strongly on
the side of caution, to never give a candidate the benefit of any doubt, no
matter how ill-founded.

And this hurts everyone. It hurts good people who can't get a job because
there's no absolute proof they'd be good hires. It hurts good people being
abused by sociopathic bosses because they're afraid they wouldn't be able to
get another job if they were fired. It hurts good people being paid below
their worth because wages are bid down by the desperate. One way or another,
it hurts you, and it hurts people you care about.

The blame for the fiasco needs to be placed where it belongs: on Matti, _not_
on the people who hired him without perfect foreknowledge of his future
actions.

~~~
watwut
From the article: "He was also a huge liability ... pre-production meetings
quickly turned towards one recurring fear: that someone external would say
something offensive, trip an emotional switch, turn the environment toxic –
and the devs would walk ... Matti and the members of the second team were a
time bomb, but for some reason, no one did anything about it."

This is not about someone unknown suddenly acting offensive. The guy was known
and nobody tried to tone him down.

I agree with you that generally we must allow companies to make hiring
mistakes. I also thing that it is better for everybody if even biggest jerks
can get job and earn living (instead of being unemployed on help). But known
jerks should not be kept at positions where they can screw others big time.

~~~
rwallace
'But known jerks should not be kept at positions where they can screw others
big time.'

I agree, they shouldn't. The impression I get from the article is that once it
was brought to the attention of Matti's employers that he was screwing up in a
big way, he was quickly given the boot, though I'm open to correction if this
turns out not to be the case.

~~~
watwut
My impression was that they acted only after everything was screwed beyond
repair. E.g., after "pretty face" question was asked to everybody with Adria
offended and Zoe angry enough to swearingly walk away. He was pushing buttons
trying to manufacture drama before that.

That being said, I read down that he is a big animal, important for Pepsi and
influential in shows making cycles. So, show produces might have been between
rock and hard place.

On the other hand, it is hard to excuse Pepsi, they seem to be happy with him.
It even looks like they are "on his side" in follow up and complained about
above article or something.

------
swanson
If anyone is curious how to do this kind of hyper-niche techie reality show
the right way, please do check out Penny Arcade's Strip Search:
[http://www.penny-arcade.com/strip-search](http://www.penny-arcade.com/strip-
search)

The premise is to get a bunch of comic strip artists together and compete to
win a working space at Penny Arcade's office in Seattle and some cash (the
idea being this would be used to launch their own comic strip).

Some things that really worked well:

* There was almost zero bullshit reality TV manufactured drama

* Everyone treated each other with respect and I think every artist gained something from being on the show (new fans, support for Kickstarter projects, etc)

* Focused on the work being produced, including plenty of links to scans of all the artwork on the show website

* Episodes released on YouTube (could use existing apps, infrastructure)

* Two episodes (15-25min) released each week (short enough to consume, frequent enough to keep you hooked)

* Enough production value for it to not be a distraction; obviously this isn't a major network TV show, but it wasn't some person's first production using iMovie

* The show didn't take itself too seriously. Watch the "elimination ceremonies" to see what I mean.

Definitely worth a watch, and worth learning from :)

~~~
rlongstaff
> * There was almost zero bullshit reality TV manufactured drama

The bit in the article that astounded me was where he talked about sections of
the contract everyone was expected to sign: "Another clause allowed for
willful misrepresentation for the sake of drama..."

~~~
kingkawn
What we call bullshit is another way of saying, "in case you are supremely
boring we reserve the right to make it seem like observing your day-to-day
life is at the least enjoyable as a train-wreck." Maybe we are bullshitting by
not living so well thats its more enjoyable than watching others live poorly.

~~~
brianpgordon
Boring is safe. I wouldn't call being boring "living poorly."

~~~
jimmaswell
According to Hacker News if you live a safe and "boring" life you're the worst
kind of person out there

------
comrh
Pretty terrible situation. As an aside, the link about what happened to Zoe
Quinn when she submitted her game, Depression Quest, to Steam Greenlight, is
something I had not heard before. I was _blown away_ by her deceptively simple
RPG and to hear about that backlash is rage inducing.

~~~
mercurial
Unfortunately, you really have a number of extremely vocal, misogynist trolls
out there. A particularly disgusting sub-species of the Internet bully,
bravely threatening rape and death from behind their keyboard. Ugh. Here is to
hoping at least some of them get help and grow out of it.

~~~
voltagex_
Look at the comments on [http://indiestatik.com/2013/12/13/female-game-
developers/](http://indiestatik.com/2013/12/13/female-game-developers/) and
despair.

~~~
k__
well, /v/ is shithole, even for 4chan conditions.

~~~
DanBC
Those screen shots are not from 4Chan, but from some other chan using similar
software.

~~~
k__
but with /v/ users? :(

------
NoPiece
I found these two articles on the subject alittle easier to follow:

[http://msminotaur.com/blog/?p=187](http://msminotaur.com/blog/?p=187)

[http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/ZoeQuinn/20140331/214325/Unre...](http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/ZoeQuinn/20140331/214325/Unreality_My_Takeaways_After_Being_On_and_Subsequently_Walking_Off_a_Reality_Show_About_Game_Jams.php)

------
kevingadd
Post-script: the author of this article was just canned by his employers
because they don't come out of it smelling like roses.

[https://twitter.com/notquitefrodo/status/450742394606981120](https://twitter.com/notquitefrodo/status/450742394606981120)

[https://twitter.com/NickCapozzoli/status/450743775783297024](https://twitter.com/NickCapozzoli/status/450743775783297024)

~~~
werid
Now he's unfired, apparently. Perhaps they sensed a shitstorm.

[https://twitter.com/notquitefrodo/status/450750588326658048](https://twitter.com/notquitefrodo/status/450750588326658048)

------
Fomite
"Adriel built shit that flies around in space. It’s probably flying around in
space right now."

A great end to a great paragraph about the effect of summing up hard working
professionals based on gender traits.

~~~
wheaties
I worked with her on that project to put a satellite into space. She did a
damnable fine job on the lightning algorithm. I managed to write an over
engineered piece of junk. Funny part is, her "simple" code was far better than
my "complex" code no less in part because she actually was writing in the
idiom of the language while I was fighting it.

~~~
wglb
There is a fascinating story there. Can you say more?

~~~
wheaties
Sure,

If you're writing Python, write Python not Haskell. C#, don't try to do
Erlang. Basically, write to the language you're working in and not to
something you're not.

Also, if you think a deep domain based algorithm is wrong, making it so that
you can remove pieces of it piecemeal is the wrong choice. Point out the flaw,
bring it to the people in charge and let them handle it.

~~~
wglb
Super.

I know someone in security who writes ruby that looks like C.

I was also curious about the space part of the project.

------
jamespitts
I've worked in LA on various tech projects in the entertainment industry...
and this case has a familiar ring to it.

Be wary of allowing people and general culture from the Industry in on your
gig. Especially if cameras are rolling. Really sit down and think about what
is being traded -- possibly your time and integrity for a brief laugh.

Of course another way to look at it is: one individual who caused trouble here
for taking it too far and not being sensitive to the situation. Whatever the
industry, we've all run across people like Matti :)

------
PhasmaFelis
It sounds like both this Matti Leshem person and the legal team that drew up
the awful contracts (which Rosen softpedals a bit, as "standard practice" and
unlikely to "actually [be] pursued," as if those excuse anything) thought they
were working with stereotypical reality-show contestants, i.e. people so
desperate for fame that they'd put up with any kind of horrible shit for a
shot at the limelight. It must have been a bit of a shock to discover that
their "stars" weren't interested in playing the Hollywood game.

~~~
elpool2
I got the same impression. I am sure that pushing people's buttons and trying
to start fights between people is standard procedure on most reality TV shows.
But it's a bit different when the contestants are professionals who are there
mostly just to share their craft, and don't care at all about being a star or
winning the prize.

------
KVFinn
Can they do anything with the footage they have?

Maybe they accidentally created a great documentary about contestants who
revolted from a reality show. Shoot some followup interviews and make
something great from this wreck.

That's the real narrative and it's more interesting than the drama they were
attempting to artificially create anyway.

~~~
_Robbie
They only filmed for one day. Also, it sounds like the developers did not want
anything do to with the production company afterwards based on how they
rejected all potential fixes.

~~~
chilldream
They may not even have permission to air what they already have; some of the
developers hadn't even signed the contract yet.

------
wmt
Here's a story from just a few days ago telling how PepsiCo and Matti Leshem
are announcing they’ll continue collaborating as they celebrate a 10-year
anniversary. [http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/pepsi-
stuck-...](http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/pepsi-stuck-third-
slot-149779)

Angelique Krembs, VP of marketing at PepsiCo, also talks about Matti: “It
makes us work at a higher level because we have that history. I cannot imagine
not having Mattie[sic] to help solve our big problems or bounce things off
of.”

Matti was most definitely not fired, and will be leading PepsiCos marketing
and branding efforts. When you see Mountain Dew or Pepsi, just always remember
that you can support Matti by buying a can!

~~~
Zikes
That's May 27, 2013, not March 27, 2014. The article is almost a year old.

------
disillusioned
Wow is that some tortured writing. This paragraph needs serious help:

> To say there is an uncomfortable air of fear in security is one (perhaps
> overblown) thing. To see the largest and only production of its kind, with
> hundreds of thousands of dollars on the line and an entire secondary
> production company locked in silent rapture under lit signage for Mountain
> Dew, the entire project gloriously rupturing like the belly of the Bismark –
> that is another. To be ushered by muted fear and nervous glances, to stand
> in desolate directors rooms filled with black screens and empty chairs.
> Darkened judging stands. Color-coded team challenge floors, soon to be
> dismantled, but left intact in the hopes that some shimmering archangel
> would descend and reinvigorate the eleven indie developers currently
> revolting against Maker Studios inside their rented Winnebagos.

~~~
jamesjguthrie
I gave up after this point and came here for the TL;DR.

~~~
rwallace
You should just skip over the first few paragraphs and keep reading; the
writing improves pretty quickly.

------
nness
Fascinating read, but it feels like a good third of the article was the author
self-importantly talking about himself. You could fairly skip to the first
heading, "The Set-Up", and not lose a single bit if insight.

~~~
nols
I think he was just too close, he was making a lot of assumptions about how
much the average reader knew about indie game development and his role in it.
It just might be pretty standard for Indie Statik though, I´ve never read or
heard of it before.

~~~
arrrg
Yeah, as someone with just a casual interest in indie games (I had heard of
the names of three of the developers before read a lot of and about two of
them) and that whole YouTube thing (I know two or so of the mentioned YouTube
people) this story was pretty easy to follow. For someone outside of that it
must be much, much harder to follow.

It could certainly be improved for a more general audience but I’m not even
sure whether the author thought this story would blow up like it did.

(And yeah, the article does start slow, but I think that’s mostly driven by
the author’s desire to really clarify and explain his complicated relationship
to the organisers.)

------
dbrower
Jeez, it would be nice if someone, somewhere, would define GAME_JAM for those
of us out of that bubble.

~~~
wtbob
Looks like a bunch of folks with un-natural hair colours trying to write games
while being yelled at or something.

~~~
RankingMember
hahaha

------
darksim905
Why not just go to the source of someone that was there?
[http://msminotaur.com/blog/?p=187](http://msminotaur.com/blog/?p=187)

The sad part is, someone suggested to a few people on Reddit that people look
into Game Jams if one is serious about coding games, stuff like that. Makes me
much more skeptical to do that now.

~~~
JabavuAdams
This does not sound like a typical game jam. You should definitely jam. It's a
great way to carve out some time for a project, and also a great way to meet
people who you might end up working with.

Check out the original indie game jam:
[http://www.indiegamejam.com/igj0/](http://www.indiegamejam.com/igj0/)

------
stcredzero
_the entire project gloriously rupturing like the belly of the Bismark_

By the time the last British torpedo hit the Bismarck, the ship was listing so
far over, some observers thought the torpedo hit the port side
_superstructure_ \-- in other words, the top of the warship. There is some
debate over whether the Bismarck was sunk by torpedoes at all, or if it was
sunk by scuttling charges installed by the crew.

------
joeevans
The article would lead one to conclude the people behind the show will clean
up their act and come back with a more sensitive approach.

An alternative possibility is that they will simply keep the format, but find
another less discerning group of developers.

I think the latter possibility is the more likely one, and all developers
would suffer as a result of the ensuing portrayal.

------
servowire
So much drama.

------
araftery
The purple writing is really distracting.

------
okonomiyaki3000
What language is this written in? I can't understand what it's about. Games or
something?

