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Indie Game Jam Show Collapses Due To Interference From "Pepsi Consultant"
Sockatume (732728) writes "Would you like to see a half-million-dollar TV show in which four teams of indie developers and Youtube personalities compete to create amazing videogames? Tough luck, because GAME_JAM from Maker Studios has spectacularly imploded. Although a lot could go wrong with this kind of show, the blame isn't being levelled at game developer egos or project mismanagement but the heroic efforts of one Matti Leshem, a branding consultant brought in for Pepsi. After imposing Mountain Dew branding rules that even banned coffee from the set, his efforts to build a gender divide amongst the teams culminated in the competitors downing their tools and the production collapsing. Accounts from Adriel Wallick, Zoe Quinn, and Robin Arnott are also available."
We geeks are the doers.
We make things.
We create new stuffs.
We come up with new and exciting ideas.
But we are *NOT* tools for anyone.
That "pepsi consultant" can go eat shit and die - if he or she thinks he/she can push geeks to do whatever he/she likes.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Typo. I mean production. I definitely do not mean that existence is all an elaborate ruse to distract you from the terrifying truth about reality.
Nope.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
The "consultant" thought he would make a name for himself by acting like Gordon Ramsay. Hilariously, he was right, just in the exact opposite of what he hoped for. Unlike the chef, he did nothing to earn any such position and tried to generate strife where there was none.
Part of the problem here is "downing their tools" which is an idiom that is not used in American english. While I was able to take a guess at what it meant it is confusing and awkward to those who are not familiar with the idiom.
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
Honestly, it sounds like it was a monumentally bad idea in the first place. Who thought anyone would even watch such a thing?
As others have commented: I'd be more interested in the end product of bringing these people together, not watching how they do it.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
The programmers didn't make a deal with Pepsi; Maker Studio, a subsidiary of Disney, made the deal with the programmers, and also later made a deal with Pepsi. The half-million dollars burned probably wasn't Pepsi's, but the studio's.
I suggest reading the article. Any of the four.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Sorry these nerds had to learn the hard way that pretty much everything on TV is fake.
I once tried to figure out what this "reality TV" thing was by watching one of those "tough job" shows. It was clear that the guys had a hard job but also much more clear that the TV people were trying to create drama and rifts where none or very little existed.
I might have kept watching if it was more about some of the really interesting challenges that the job entailed, but it turned out to be mostly about trying to get this guy to be mad at his boss, show how upset this other guy's wife was that his job required him to be gone for some lengths of time, etc.
But ... all that aside - these are indie developers and YouTube people who are trying to do something on broadcast TV with a Network get a half-million dollars in sponsorship from Pepsi? Dudes and dudettes - look into this Internet thing. If your idea doesn't suck, fund it on IndieGoGo and make it back with YouTube ads. Then again, maybe there's a reason they didn't go that route in the first place (they could fool Pepsi out of half a million but not ten thousand savvy investors).
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
http://www.tvrage.com/person/i...
"Even for Slashdot, that was a very obscure reference!" - Anonymous Coward
It opens with paragraphs of him saying how awesome he is. Funk dat.
Totally this.
Deadliest Catch was actually initially interesting because it focused on the real and technical aspects of doing a legitimately dangerous job. It didn't take long for it to devolve into the typical reality TV pattern of all drama all the time. By the time I stopped watching, the fact that they were on a boat wasn't even that relevant any more.
Is that even English? Seems more like some dystopian futurespeak loosely based on a form of English which has been coopted by media and communications majors.
Not only is it English, it is British English from English Britain, the original and still the best English since 1066.
Accept no substitutes.
**TODO** Steal someone elses sig.
These guys made a deal with Pepsi, the epitome of a soulless American corporation
However, Pepsi did burn Michael Jackson, literally, so give them a tiny bit of credit.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Except the one with the bright pink background. There's just no excuse for that.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Well, if the event was sponsored by Pepsi, yes. That's generally one of the conditions for sponsorship.
There's a big difference between putting up Pepsi logos and branding (which everyone involved said they were fine with) and forbidding anyone to use any drink that isn't a Pepsi product, including water and coffee. No one could reasonably have expected the latter going in.
Nor does corporate sponsorship imply that a "branding consultant" should engage in aggressively sexist behavior that would get someone fired if they did it in any normal white-collar office.
I've been a professional game programmer for quite a while. Yes, female programmers are rare. I've worked with only three or four in the last fifteen years or so if I recall correctly. They're mostly to be found in the art, design, QA, and production/management departments. To be honest, this always made me a little sad, because one of the big strengths of working on teams comes from having different skill sets of course, but also different opinions and viewpoints. As with anyone else, their actual skills varied quite a bit from person to person. But I really don't think it comes down to sexism or anything that people should freak out about - it's just not a job that appeals, for whatever reason, to a large number of women.
I've never even heard anyone at work malign someone on the job because they were female. Granted, I'm not exactly in the position to hear that sort of thing, but most developers I know don't have that sort of mind set to begin with. They're there because they love making games, and don't really care about whether someone is male or female. It never really made much of a difference to me, at least.
I'm proud of the devs for not taking the bait and declining to participate in this idiotic "Pepsi Consultant's" little drama show. What a fucking moron.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
But we are *NOT* tools for anyone.
Obviously, you've never been to Silicon Valley. That place is chock full of tools.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Reality stars are people desperate for fame and "a shot" in hollywood. They get pushed around for bogus dreams of a future that they won't have.
Indie game devs are people with useful skills and degrees who could be making twice what they are right now, but chase the dream of making what they want, and doing what they enjoy. Rolling over for some corporate shill you can do at JP Morgan chase for a lot more money, and a lot less hassle.
I think it's also a combination of people playing it up for the cameras, and the fact that they are condensing weeks (in some cases more) into 44 minutes (in some cases less). I generally consider myself pretty easy going, but if a film crew followed me around for 2 months, they could probably edit out a 44 minute video that would portray me however they wanted.
I hope your dignity and self-respect keep your warm during your long wait at the bus stop.
Why? Does he live in downtown SF and work for google or something?
SJW n. One who posts facts.
You can't be that dense. This is a media production. You don't get to sign up to play Hamlet, and then demand to be able to drink Pepsi while the cameras are rolling. That's the line between being a programmer and being an actor. These guys signed up to be actors, but they don't want to follow the rules.
But that's the problem: they didn't sign up to be actors. They were under the impression that this was going to be an actual contest of skill, and it was changed into a "reality show" without their knowledge or consent. This problem first came up when the contracts were signed – a lot of the standard "reality show" boilerplate had to be removed because the devs refused to go along with it. That should have been a heads-up to the studio, but it wasn't.
Rule #1: Always read the contract carefully.
If you read the articles, you'll see that not only did they read the contracts, they re-negotiated several provisions that were clearly unacceptable.
Here's what really happened - these whiny little dorks thought that Pepsi would just throw a few sacks of money at their project and stay out of their way while they looked cool on TV.
Ah, the clever, wise to the ways of the world slashdotter coming along and telling us all how things really are, because he knows so much about reality.
corporations want value for their investment
Well, that worked out well.
Of course Pepsi is going to send in someone to make sure they're getting something out of it.
So why instead did they send a guy who singlehandedly sunk it, guaranteeing loss of their investment then?
So, Mr world wise slashdotter who has so much cynicism and knows the way of the world so very well, how was it a good idea for Pepsi to pour this money down the drain?
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Yeah, I work at a company, and make software. I get paid real US dollars. For the software I make. I don't sell my soul, giving them free advertisement for their crap just because that's where I get my salary. They get my productivity. They don't need my honesty.
Remember when there were shows about actual reality? They called them documentaries.
So far, no luck though ...
Well, some devs went to a game jam. The production company tried to turn it into a dodgy reality TV show, which annoyed everyone. And it was all being run by this guy who I think is best described by a quote from "in the thick of it": Christ alive what a cunt!!!
The combination of him and the generaly crappyness of it resulted in a mass walkout from the devs and the event tanked, burning all the money spent on it.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
If you can't stand this shit maybe you should never have agreed to it at all.
Are you referring to the bit where they negotiated the contract and in fact didn't agree to it all? Or the bit where they didn't agree to it all and walked out?
Or are you proposing that there is simply be no middle ground to selling your soul to Mephistopholese and simply not being in a video on youtube?
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Reality check - Pepsi didn't waste money on this.
Apart from all the sponsorship. That wasn't free, you know.
The entire project got scrapped before cameras were rolling
Which only proves you didn't RTFA.
and now every other corporation knows to stay clear of these whiners because they are hard to work with.
So? They're indie game developers. I don't think they care that no other giant megacorp is going to want to film them.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
To be honest, this always made me a little sad, because one of the big strengths of working on teams comes from having different skill sets of course, but also different opinions and viewpoints.
While better than saying, "We don't want women," I think it is odd to see this idea that women should be wanted for a different viewpoint, as opposed to just wanting people in general with different viewpoints. Opinions and viewpoints seem to be largely influenced by upbringing and life experiences. While there are still plenty of women around who were raised differently as girls than a typical boy was, and there are many women around with different experiences than that. There is still plenty of crap that women put up with when older, but experiences vary there too.
The result is that many of the same things that resulted in men ending up in a male dominated field can often be the same reasons some women get into the field, and there is little to no difference between them as a result, beyond the typical person to person difference. I've known several women who went into engineering, probably in part because they had parents that felt raised them with the attitude, "I don't care if you are a son or daughter, but you should learn how to use basic tools, and if you take an interest, we can work on projects together." As adults, they are not defined as a female engineer, but just as an engineer.
Why would anyone drink Pepsi or Mountain Dew? Drinking cat piss or dog semen would be a better way to spend your time.
Well, maybe dog semen, but cat semen? That stuff is nearly undrinkable, much worse than Pepsi or Mountain Dew.
This is different. I saw the word 'pepsi' and 'brand management' and knew the pepsi guy was the one who would mess it up.
Let me regale you of a tale from my younger days. We were having a meeting with the BIG customer Pepsi.
The lead dev was busy in the basement coding away. He was called and summoned up to the meeting as the BIG customer wanted to ask some questions. He grabs his drink off his desk and walks in. Answers their questions. They are happy, everyone is happy. Until the second meeting.
'We have decided to fund the project but you can not have that one developer anywhere near the project'.
The PM leans back in his chair and says 'Why is that?'
'he brought a coke can into this meeting'
''We can do what you ask but the project will never be completed'
'WHAT *WE* are paying for it'
'you just fired the lead developer of the project and the only one who knows how to do what you want'.
I have heard numerous stories like this one about Pepsi. I may like their drinks, but their management is cray cray. Everything is about the brand and not the customer.
That is whey people in the industry refer to them as "frankenshows" assembling a monster out of spare parts.
After being incredibly turned off by "reality" shows that contain no reality at all ("Dangerous Flights" is the most egregious example I've seen lately), I was totally absorbed by Penny Arcade's low-budget reality show offering of Strip Search last year. (The site is slightly misorganized, but you can find stuff if you try).
The show was a dozen web comic artists in competition. The premise of a single artist being funded and supported by Penny Arcade for a year was motivational, and the simple act of appearing in an episode granted even the entrants ousted first an audience for their work. While it was clear the producers provided for the possibility of backstabbing and conflict, they didn't go out of their way to insert any, and in the end the show was all the better for it. I'd actually put PA's Strip Search above 90% of professional, high-budget, high-production-values TV series.
My point being, it's totally possible to structure an interesting show where game dev competition is friendly and rewarding for all, and producers with zero-sum on the brain don't exist. It just hasn't been made yet, apparently.
While better than saying, "We don't want women," I think it is odd to see this idea that women should be wanted for a different viewpoint, as opposed to just wanting people in general with different viewpoints. Opinions and viewpoints seem to be largely influenced by upbringing and life experiences. While there are still plenty of women around who were raised differently as girls than a typical boy was, and there are many women around with different experiences than that. There is still plenty of crap that women put up with when older, but experiences vary there too.
The article, if you read it, was largely about an artificial attempt to inject sexism and conflict into the show where none at all existed. Thus, I'm commenting on women's roles as game developers as I've seen it from inside the game industry as a programmer.
I simply feel that women tend to bring a unique viewpoint to the table. I would never pretend to be able to represent the viewpoint of a black man or a gay man. Nor would I be able to represent the viewpoint of a women, because those factors tend to fundamentally alter one's life experience, giving people unique perspectives. Don't read into it any more than that.
Anyhow, the entire point of my post was that, in my experience, most game developers *don't* actually give this much thought in a professional environment. We're too busy trying to make fun games that we (and hopefully others) will enjoy. I'm also not claiming sexism hasn't been a problem either - just that I've never seen it personally. All I have is a perspective of one person's life, so take that for what it is.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
æfter ic encan ealmæst hit eald Angelcynn beon betera
Amateurs...
There are pervasive differences in the experience of living in the US based entirely off gender (and others based on, say, race), so having someone female on a team will give you insights into things that an all-male team is extremely unlikely to be aware of. And vice versa, although that's much rarer.
That people aren't aware of this is, to some extent, part of the problem.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
"downing their tools" which is an idiom that is not used in American english.
I'm American and I didn't have to think about that, I knew what it meant instantly... I don't remember learning it from British sources.
"Put down your tools" is pretty clear and since English is full of moments where you make up words like "downing", I don't think many people would be confused.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Rule #1 of Slashdot: NEVER read the fucking article.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
They're all fake to some extent.
My favorites:
- Storage Wars. The producers were in the habbit of pre-stocking lockers up for auction with rare, valuable or unusual items to ensure some good television. One team objected to this, and made their objections clear to the producers. The producers responded by no longer pre-stocking lockers for that team, but continuing to give the others with just as much loot as before. The team sued.
- Scrapheap Challenge and the US counterpart Junkyard Wars. Though the rules state that competition ceases at sundown, towards the end of the builds it's not hard to see that the sun has long set, and bright floodlights can only go so far to mask it - and, in all the series runs, not once has a team failed to produce a machine that can at least run. It's not hard to tell what is going on: A machine that can't move is bad television, so the organisers don't declare time up until both teams are ready with a machine that can provide an entertaining contest.
- Duck Dynasty. After the 'incident' a few people did some digging on this, and found photos of the family from before the show - when they were all well-dressed, and clean-shaven. By all accounts well-spoken people, with college education. Their redneck persona is entirely fictitious, an act put on for the show - beards, accents and all.
- A visitor to the pawn shop of Pawn Stars wrote a very interesting account. You can buy a lot of show merchandise there - but it's no longer a functioning pawn shop, and the owners are rarely present. They make an appearance only when it's time to kick out the fans and film a producer-supplied purchaser to play their part.
Let me suggest an alternative. The consultant was very smart. He knew that without strife and discord, there would be no show. Nothing that people would watch. Reality programs need drama.
So, he worked to create strife. He forced the participants to drink Mountain Dew (so, more caffeine than they were used to) in order to get them hyped up. He made deliberately provocative statements. He did everything possible to get the participants out of their comfort zone and arguing with each other, deliberately, in order to make a show that would sell.
Arguably, although his plan failed, the show might have also failed without his influence, simply because of a lack of drama.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
The main difference is the approach the producers take in the US vs. the UK shows. The US ones are all about highlighting him being confrontational.
One of the best shows of his I've seen was the kid version of MasterChef. His personality really shone through, by being very supportive of the kids while also focusing his critique on their dishes, rather than them. Well worth a watch IMO.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
"Let me suggest an alternative. The consultant was very smart. He knew that without strife and discord, there would be no show. Nothing that people would watch. Reality programs need drama. "
Let me offer an opposing view, you didn't read the article and have no idea what you are talking about.
Since the actual show wasn't a reality show, it was something more akin to "http://www.amctv.com/shows/the-pitch" or home makovers where the homeowner comes back to see their renovation and the show follows the technical aspect of the renovations, there was no need for "manufactured" drama.
In fact, making an indie game from scratch, involving all the technical aspects from both veterans and novices (the programmers and youtubers respectively), and having to do this on an imposed deadline would create all the "real" drama needed to make the show interesting. Not to mention the inside look at what most people never get to see, creatives making entertainment out of nothing.
what this douchebag did was take a creative environment, strip all of the creativity out of it and then throw in heaps of sexism, forced strife, corporate policy and "reality" fakey crap (like forcing a game programmer to re-enter a "scene" 5 times to get the "shot").
the biggest stupidity was that he was just some corporate douche who used the sponsorship ties the program had to force changes he thought would make the program better, he wasn't even someone there to make those decisions, only by throwing his corporate money weight around was he able to get the ones who were in charge of that stuff to concede to his input.
at the end of the article everyone pretty much agreed if this douche had never been there, there would have been no issue...
TL:DR the adults would have gotten along fine without this mental 3yr old.
He picked the wrong year to ask his questions in the manner in which he did...also the wrong people. Zoe Quinn has been harassed to the point of blatant abuse by a particularly nasty part of the gamer community...death threats, forum-organized raids, and sexually harassing phone calls to her cell among other things. How she presents herself to the indie community as a woman and a developer is a very big deal at the moment. The indie teams are protective of each other and extremely protective of their individual images among their fans and supporters....this is a very big deal.
Also the show wasn't originally conceived of as the craptastic mess Matti turned it into once they got started. So okay, this wasn't quite as bad as Matti walking up to a female rape victim and asking her on camera if she thinks "women are asking for it..." but I'm pretty sure from some of the dev's standpoints, it wasn't too far from that either.
Basically he went on a game show
From the fucking article:
That natal idea, and one of the themes central to all eleven developers agreeing to travel to Los Angeles for the shoot, was the production and filming of a game jam for a televised audience (or at least a YouTube audience) with the intent to document the ups and downs of actually developing a game
The developers agreed to produce a documentary, it was the sponsors that tried to turn it into a reality show. The only drama they were expecting was game crashes and bug fixes, ordinary issues that occur when developing a game.
Also FTFA:
At some point which remains unclear, the show wholly dipped into a scripted reality slant and became less about making a game, and more about creating drama for sake of the audience, less than one day out of the four blocked off for shooting available to sit down and jam. The rest of the program, as it turned out, was filled with arts and crafts, physical challenges and competitive gaming â" once again, totally unrelated to game development. But that wasnâ(TM)t communicated to anyone, and through Polarisâ(TM) local contacts, the developers were signed up and flown out to Culver City, where they awaited their first hurdle in Makerâ(TM)s legal department.
So not only did the developers initially agree to the documentary format, but when the format was changed no one thought to ask the developers if they were ok with this? I am guessing that if they had known beforehand they would not have come. When they did find out they rejected the initial contract and had reservations about the show. This snowballed because of Matti Leshem's attempts to impose branding restrictions and incite drama where there was none, causing the developers to form ranks and reject the show entirely. They decided they didn't have to stand the shit and instead threw it back in the producers faces. and I really can't blame them. Next time the companies want to make a reality show, tell the actors first.
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the (supposed) good of its victims may be the most oppressive