[TRENCHES] Thursday, July 24, 2014 - An Angel To Some
LegionPerseus VeilRegistered User, Moderator, Penny Arcade Staff, Vanilla Staff vanilla
An Angel To Some
http://trenchescomic.com/comic/post/an-angel-to-some
Read the Titles
AnonymousTwo years ago, I got a job at a small mobile development studio that’s focus was supposed to be “simple, innovative games”. While taking my tour of the studio, all I could think was, “Whoa, this place is incredible! It’s like every other studio I hear or read about with a never-ending flow of drinks and snacks, break rooms with huge TV’s, and even a gym for employees to get healthy in. There’s even a few masseuses on staff that will give you massages once a week. What isn’t there to love?”
Turns out it was the focus of the studio executives focus to keep the employees as happy as little hamsters in a cage so they wouldn’t question why they were ripping other popular games ideas. These games would then be priced cheaper and have a similar enough name that enough unsuspecting people would buy and download it before realizing it wasn’t the game they were originally looking for. This might not seem like a big deal, but cashing in on a well known games popularity can net millions of dollars just like that.
In one of my first assignments, I was given a budget of $10000, and told to create new iTunes accounts, one at a time, buy one of the studios just released games, and rate it five stars with some ambiguous glowing praise. While I morally despised this, I needed a job and desperately wanted to work in the industry. After a while, I started to get creative with the names I used (think Seymour Butts, but more dirty). It became a soul sucking job, but hey, I was in it for the perks.
There’s really no point to this story, other than to warn you to read the titles of what you’re buying carefully, as someone is always trying to profit from the popularity of someone else.
Posts
In two years it'll be fully sentient
I didn't feel comfortable doing it personally (it wasn't any part of my job description), but a larger part was that this app was associated with a larger company that had a very stringent policy on false representation.
Not giving any names, but this was a publicly-funded broadcasting corporation based in Britain (could be anyone), and after a fairly public editing gaffe had gotten them in trouble, the entire company got lectures on what was regarded as 'lying' to the public, and exactly how much on the safe side we were expected to play it (very).
3 months later, we released an app and everyone in my department was asked (told) to buy it and review it (including people like me who didn't have any devices that could run it). I turned a thirty minute meeting into a ninety minute one by objecting, pointing out what kind of response we'd get if anyone knew it had been done, and eventually getting pretty much the entire team on my side.
Two months later I was fired for my 'conduct'. (no-one was able to tell me how it had changed from the previous four years, which had apparently been fine)
I'm not too bitter about it through, as I saw it as a moral victory, and I got a better job afterwards. So yay Karma, I guess.
That someone is you. You're the one profiting from someone else's popularity.
Congrats!
You're way ahead of me. I have no idea what's going on in the last two panels, other than Gwen being disappointed.
Not to sound like an armchair general, but why not report this infraction further up the chain, to the "larger company"? You did good by holding up to the pressure from your management, but the "larger company" now might still have a working relationship with this less-than-scrupulous company you worked for.
I'm pretty sure the puzzle box contains her Emergency Stress Cigarette. The perspective is kinda skewed in the last panel, making it look like the box is huge, but in the third panel you can see it's roughly hand-sized.
No proof besides the word of someone who's been fired, and it's not like they actually did anything.
To be clear, this wasn't a company policy or anything (we weren't digital-focused, and this was our first app), and our supervisor seemed to have come up with the idea on his own. A good part of the discussion covered the fact that every time this was found to have happened, it hadn't ended well for the apps popularity.
I doubt they adopted it as a habit afterwards.
http://trenchescomic.com/tales/post/how-to-make-a-game-bug-free
If I was working at that company, I'd make it a habit to make a local backup of all my bug reports, then resubmit the deleted ones after one of these "purges."
It's animated; the animation is a little choppy, but if you keep watching it, you'll see that the puzzle box, when solved, produces a cigarette ;-)