Oh hell, if she's the mother of the modern gaming industry I'll be reading up on her. She's obviously worth knowing about.
I just think you're a tad extreme in your views and in the degree to which you let things get under your skin.
I don't aspire to be a feiminst female game developer. I just aspire to be a game developer without the feiminst female bit even being an issue. My heros have nothing to do with gaming to tell the truth, so I don't see how they are relevant to this discussion, but hey, if Roberta is yours then bully for you.
The name's milla - I just tagged chiQ on because that's my gaming handle.
I'm a feminist, but not of the 'women are sacred', 'sex shouldn't be used to sell', 'if a woman augments her body it must be the doing of a man', 'women need their hands held' kind. I'm more of an equalist. I respect women for their ability to say 'no', make firm judgement calls, and control their own lives. Simply put I don't actually agree with you.
Steed's crackwhore? I'm a firm appreciator of that art you seem so outraged by. Steed's work is along the same lines as my own, and I enjoy it.
I think you're of the more militant feminist ilk, where I'm more moderate. I think to assume that a woman bleaches, bulges, and brazens because her man told her to is fairly patronising, and very much a case of self-righteousness gone bad, as is the case with the more extreme feminists.
I'm pretty laid back, and I adore men. I have a lot of wonderful men in my life. Some of them are dreadful with women, and some are great, hell I even married one of them, but however they relate to chicks they're my loved ones and I'm not about to tell them it's wrong to like Hunter from Q3, or the chick in the black leather being used to promote U2. Not all women find sex scary, and a woman wanting a career in gaming is certainly not going to be put off by the levels of sex in the industry.
I care about women in the game industry. I care about how users see us. As I've said, it'd be better in this sense if Case became lower-profiled, or distinguished herself the right way, but her actions make her an irritant, not an 'arch enemy'.
Your venom towards Romero and Case is either totally disproportionate or caused my much more than strong equalist sensibility. Either way, that kind of heat will shorten your life. You should relax more and hate less IMNSHO.
BWAHA! Says the other troll:)
She's made maps obviously. It's one thing to start casting aspersions based on playboy shoots and choice in men, and quite another to blatantly ignore a fact.
I'm afraid I skipped the eighties and a big chunk of the nineties. I was using a Data General one with no HDD in 1981, then packed in gaming and PCs until the late nineties, when I was introduced to QW. There's a big gap. I've never heard of Roberta Williams. Apparently the people who use my work haven't either.
I don't look on Ms Case as a role model. I think I was coding BASIC and painting in oils when she was in kindergarten fingerpainting and unable to tie her own shoelaces. I don't need a role model. I just get sick of the way she's perceived reflecting on me and other female game artists/coders/designers.
The trouble is she's very high-profile, but not because she's proven herself extraordinary in her field. She may be a complete sweetheart, and could be a whizz level designer - I have no way of knowing since I don't know her myself and didn't like the Q2 feel of the Daikatana demo enough to look further - but that means dick to my users.
I'm a gamer and a game artist, and I specialise in skinning/modelling T&A, but my own inbuild T&A shouldn't be the concern of my users. The trouble is that because the T&A of one level designer are under such scrutiny it's become a factor, and I don't like that.
Sorry to Stevie if she's reading this, because nobody likes to be attacked whether personally or professionally, but the truth is she's set a precedent that is a barrier. I hope she either turns out some damned good work soon, or ramps back the cult of body so she can be taken seriously or cease to be the most well-known female developer out there.
It's not that she's a bad role model for women. It's that she's a bad example for gamers to see as the norm where female developers are concerned.
re. "Normally, no I wouldn't. But if you were bed-bouncing with my boss with a brand new set of implants (and we were working on the same project), I might!", glad to hear it.
In any case, whether she's a role model or not she has no place in the discussion of Ion Storm's closure, hence my first post. I'm sorry I posted now, because I seem to have started a whole new thread that's going in the opposite direction to what I'd like.
Oh yeah, she's an easy target. Any woman so blatantly sexual in gaming is always going to be either trashtalked by horney little gamer boys (inevitable), or despised for seeming to climb ladders while remaining horizontal (apparently incontrovertable truth - pffft!). The truth is though that she was mapping before she got into QA (at least I understood she was at the time), and I doubt she or any other individual Ion Storm team member outside of management played any role in the death of the company.
How much do most of her antagonists know about her? They see sex, and assume whoring. If I happened to be cute and succeeded in my ambitions would you assume I'm a slut?
As to her development of a Killcreek cult of body, that's not really relevant either. She did it for God knows what reasons, and it's earned her some very unpleasant attention, but it's nothing to do with the demise of Ion Storm.
The reason I criticised the inclusion of her in this discussion was more because I resent that her perceived ethic (no matter how inaccurate it may be) seems to carry over to other women in the eyes of the gaming public. I've had to work really hard to earn respect and avoid the sexual posturing of the testosterone-soaked gaming mass, despite the fact that I game, talk about gaming, and don't flirt with my opponents. It's bullshit, and this trotting out of the "Killcreek slept her way into the industry" line is not helping at all. Whether you think it's true or not it's counterproductive to regurgitate the KC legends. They've all been heard before, and have never been anything but an outpouring of malice. I just want that whole image of womenin gaming as unprofessional to go away.
I don't think I'm replying to anything/anyone in particular so welcome to my own personal rant.
For a start I think the whole "Stevie as Romero's whore" thing has been done to death. The fact that she's continuously held up as some kind of template for those of us without external genitals wanting to get into the industry is fecked enough, without her being dropped into discussions like this. She is one of a group of people who formed a team at Ion Storm. There are a lot of people who worked there and they have lost out badly because of the company's demise. She was not a cause of the collapse, and she has no bearing on the outcome as it pertains to Romero or anyone else involved.
Let her alone, and don't propagate the myth that women spread their legs to get into the industry. I myself am deadly serious about turning my art into a career in gaming and I don't want to be perceived as a 'cult of body', whether potentially, because I'm a woman with ambitions on that direction, or in fact, because I don't intent to screw my way into gaming. I game, I skin, I model, and I want to be paid to do the latter two. Those of you who see chicks in gaming as some kind of PR exercise or pet can get knotted. The whole Engrish/metaJapanese thing isn't really contructive either...
As to the relevant stuff, I think Carmack's read on this is strong. Aside from the fact that he knows the particulars and the parties involved, teams are the foundations for all development projects. It doesn't matter how talented a crew is if they aren't coherent as a group, and that coherence takes solid leadership, and robust lines of communication. Once you lose those no amount of talent will make things work.
And that's just leadership within each team. Ion Storm had more than one team, and the DE team obviously did something very right, but that means nothing if the blanket management of all the teams isn't working well. A company doesn't succeed because they have one team working smoothly, and a game house isn't just development in a box. Sound administrative management, good financial direction, and realistic business models play in as well.
I'm no expert but it seems to me that Ion Storm was a house of cards, built with some quality cards, but by a shakey hand in a high wind.
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As I said, I intend to. It seems she's someone I really should know about :)
Oh hell, if she's the mother of the modern gaming industry I'll be reading up on her. She's obviously worth knowing about.
I just think you're a tad extreme in your views and in the degree to which you let things get under your skin.
I don't aspire to be a feiminst female game developer. I just aspire to be a game developer without the feiminst female bit even being an issue. My heros have nothing to do with gaming to tell the truth, so I don't see how they are relevant to this discussion, but hey, if Roberta is yours then bully for you.
And don't call me sweety please.
The name's milla - I just tagged chiQ on because that's my gaming handle.
I'm a feminist, but not of the 'women are sacred', 'sex shouldn't be used to sell', 'if a woman augments her body it must be the doing of a man', 'women need their hands held' kind. I'm more of an equalist. I respect women for their ability to say 'no', make firm judgement calls, and control their own lives. Simply put I don't actually agree with you.
Steed's crackwhore? I'm a firm appreciator of that art you seem so outraged by. Steed's work is along the same lines as my own, and I enjoy it.
I think you're of the more militant feminist ilk, where I'm more moderate. I think to assume that a woman bleaches, bulges, and brazens because her man told her to is fairly patronising, and very much a case of self-righteousness gone bad, as is the case with the more extreme feminists.
I'm pretty laid back, and I adore men. I have a lot of wonderful men in my life. Some of them are dreadful with women, and some are great, hell I even married one of them, but however they relate to chicks they're my loved ones and I'm not about to tell them it's wrong to like Hunter from Q3, or the chick in the black leather being used to promote U2. Not all women find sex scary, and a woman wanting a career in gaming is certainly not going to be put off by the levels of sex in the industry.
I care about women in the game industry. I care about how users see us. As I've said, it'd be better in this sense if Case became lower-profiled, or distinguished herself the right way, but her actions make her an irritant, not an 'arch enemy'.
Your venom towards Romero and Case is either totally disproportionate or caused my much more than strong equalist sensibility. Either way, that kind of heat will shorten your life. You should relax more and hate less IMNSHO.
BWAHA! Says the other troll :)
She's made maps obviously. It's one thing to start casting aspersions based on playboy shoots and choice in men, and quite another to blatantly ignore a fact.
I'm afraid I skipped the eighties and a big chunk of the nineties. I was using a Data General one with no HDD in 1981, then packed in gaming and PCs until the late nineties, when I was introduced to QW. There's a big gap. I've never heard of Roberta Williams. Apparently the people who use my work haven't either.
I don't look on Ms Case as a role model. I think I was coding BASIC and painting in oils when she was in kindergarten fingerpainting and unable to tie her own shoelaces. I don't need a role model. I just get sick of the way she's perceived reflecting on me and other female game artists/coders/designers.
The trouble is she's very high-profile, but not because she's proven herself extraordinary in her field. She may be a complete sweetheart, and could be a whizz level designer - I have no way of knowing since I don't know her myself and didn't like the Q2 feel of the Daikatana demo enough to look further - but that means dick to my users.
I'm a gamer and a game artist, and I specialise in skinning/modelling T&A, but my own inbuild T&A shouldn't be the concern of my users. The trouble is that because the T&A of one level designer are under such scrutiny it's become a factor, and I don't like that.
Sorry to Stevie if she's reading this, because nobody likes to be attacked whether personally or professionally, but the truth is she's set a precedent that is a barrier. I hope she either turns out some damned good work soon, or ramps back the cult of body so she can be taken seriously or cease to be the most well-known female developer out there.
It's not that she's a bad role model for women. It's that she's a bad example for gamers to see as the norm where female developers are concerned.
re. "Normally, no I wouldn't. But if you were bed-bouncing with my boss with a brand new set of implants (and we were working on the same project), I might!", glad to hear it.
In any case, whether she's a role model or not she has no place in the discussion of Ion Storm's closure, hence my first post. I'm sorry I posted now, because I seem to have started a whole new thread that's going in the opposite direction to what I'd like.
Oh yeah, she's an easy target. Any woman so blatantly sexual in gaming is always going to be either trashtalked by horney little gamer boys (inevitable), or despised for seeming to climb ladders while remaining horizontal (apparently incontrovertable truth - pffft!). The truth is though that she was mapping before she got into QA (at least I understood she was at the time), and I doubt she or any other individual Ion Storm team member outside of management played any role in the death of the company. How much do most of her antagonists know about her? They see sex, and assume whoring. If I happened to be cute and succeeded in my ambitions would you assume I'm a slut? As to her development of a Killcreek cult of body, that's not really relevant either. She did it for God knows what reasons, and it's earned her some very unpleasant attention, but it's nothing to do with the demise of Ion Storm. The reason I criticised the inclusion of her in this discussion was more because I resent that her perceived ethic (no matter how inaccurate it may be) seems to carry over to other women in the eyes of the gaming public. I've had to work really hard to earn respect and avoid the sexual posturing of the testosterone-soaked gaming mass, despite the fact that I game, talk about gaming, and don't flirt with my opponents. It's bullshit, and this trotting out of the "Killcreek slept her way into the industry" line is not helping at all. Whether you think it's true or not it's counterproductive to regurgitate the KC legends. They've all been heard before, and have never been anything but an outpouring of malice. I just want that whole image of womenin gaming as unprofessional to go away.
I don't think I'm replying to anything/anyone in particular so welcome to my own personal rant.
For a start I think the whole "Stevie as Romero's whore" thing has been done to death. The fact that she's continuously held up as some kind of template for those of us without external genitals wanting to get into the industry is fecked enough, without her being dropped into discussions like this. She is one of a group of people who formed a team at Ion Storm. There are a lot of people who worked there and they have lost out badly because of the company's demise. She was not a cause of the collapse, and she has no bearing on the outcome as it pertains to Romero or anyone else involved.
Let her alone, and don't propagate the myth that women spread their legs to get into the industry. I myself am deadly serious about turning my art into a career in gaming and I don't want to be perceived as a 'cult of body', whether potentially, because I'm a woman with ambitions on that direction, or in fact, because I don't intent to screw my way into gaming. I game, I skin, I model, and I want to be paid to do the latter two. Those of you who see chicks in gaming as some kind of PR exercise or pet can get knotted. The whole Engrish/metaJapanese thing isn't really contructive either...
As to the relevant stuff, I think Carmack's read on this is strong. Aside from the fact that he knows the particulars and the parties involved, teams are the foundations for all development projects. It doesn't matter how talented a crew is if they aren't coherent as a group, and that coherence takes solid leadership, and robust lines of communication. Once you lose those no amount of talent will make things work.
And that's just leadership within each team. Ion Storm had more than one team, and the DE team obviously did something very right, but that means nothing if the blanket management of all the teams isn't working well. A company doesn't succeed because they have one team working smoothly, and a game house isn't just development in a box. Sound administrative management, good financial direction, and realistic business models play in as well.
I'm no expert but it seems to me that Ion Storm was a house of cards, built with some quality cards, but by a shakey hand in a high wind.