My take on spectacular crash and burn

Loose lips sink ships!

First off, some links to cover the subject about the Game show sunk by one question...

• Colin Campbell's Polygon article on "Game Jam" collapse,
• Jared Rosen's report on how the most expensive Game Jam in history crashed and burned in a day and a question,
• Robin Arnott's take on Game Jam and the power of integrity,
• Adriel Wallick talks about accountability,
• And finally, Zoe Quinn's reflections about Being on and walking off a game show.

In short, a group of people got together to produce a TV show about producing games. Unfortunately for that group, entertainment value decided to stick its ugly oar in. Sexism had a big part to play. Corporate sponsorship muddied the message. Poor decisions "for the ratings" sunk this project before it was even completed. It was sunk not by one man—Matti Leshem—and that dreaded question, but by a culture of "what Joe Public will lap up the most". And yet there were good things that resulted. A guy lost his job, and hopefully gained some respect of women in the process. Several others stood up collectively for their beliefs and put the project in the bin, where it belongs with last week's smelly fish heads and busted pantyhose. An agreement was tentatively made to do the job the right way—to show developers not as competitive sexists, but as a collective supportive group who can tell the difference between entertainment and the right thing.

For those of you who have read the horror story already, I can't offer much new. For those of you who haven't yet read about it, go. Do so. Read the points of all the participants in what ended up being a complete and royal clusterbomb of stupidity. And hope that it never happens again for any reason. This will have been said many times over the past two days since the articles originally aired, but I'll repeat it. Don't let people's bad views colour your view of the world, and don't ever lack respect for anyone. I suspect I'll never drink Mountain Dew if this is the extent they're prepared to go to just to get people to notice them.