Chapter Twenty-Four
“Did you see the email from Ian?” Kat barged into my office with wild eyes and a flaring nose. I hadn’t even had time to put my coffee down.
“Not yet. What did it say?”
“You need to read it.” She leaned over to see my screen.
“I just got in, Kat, and haven’t logged in. Why don’t you just tell me about the email.”
“Trust me, it’s better if you see it.” She continued to stare at my blank screen.
Jesus Christ. I logged in to the network and accessed my mail, under Kat’s intense surveillance. She skimmed my unread mail and pointed. “There. Click on that one.”
From Ian, subject line: “Congratulations Asher, for your feature article in WIRED’s Exclusive Game Issue!” I clicked on the link.
The article opened the way one of those interview pieces go with an actor or actress shown behind the scenes, catching him or her being “real” at home or at a café. “I met Asher, bright-eyed, midtwenties, at the low-key Jitterbug Coffee Shop on Lake Union. Ash, as his bros call him, wore a signature twentysomething striped shirt over an ironic T-shirt. I peered to get a closer look at the slogan. ‘PIES B4 GUYS,’ he pointed out, with a laugh. ‘A friend of mine had this shirt, and I had to get one too.’” The article went on to talk about how progressive Seventeen Studios was, and how epic the Girls of War game launch would be, with bigger, better explosions, and strong female fighters. Gaming analysts expected the title to shatter mobile game records and put Seventeen Studios on the map. “Finally,” the article pointed out, “we have an all-female first-person shooter game. Hello, twenty-first century!”
Asher, a supporter of women, with these basically nude women running around with automatic assault rifles? What a heaping load of BS. And that jerk stole my shirt idea.
Kat asked, “How far did you get before you felt the bile come up through your esophagus?”
“Not far at all. Three paragraphs. How’d he get featured in WIRED?”
Kat smirked. “I almost vomited at two. So, in women-bashing speak, you’re asking who he screwed to get this article written?” She snorted and shook her head. “From what I hear, his dad is very well connected.”
“With all the marketing resources and publicity being put behind Girls of War, he’ll definitely have an impressive release.” I slumped down in my chair. And my game? The artists had made Ultimate Apocalypse a visual showstopper and the writers we hired kept the story line tight and made the banter lighthearted and fun. Even with amazing graphics and a punchy story, we needed rampant word of mouth to make UA a success. And my indefinite social media ban didn’t help matters one bit.
I straightened in my chair. “Kat?”
“Yeah? You look like you thought of something.”
“I did.” I smiled and rubbed my hands together. “It’s time to feed the trolls!”
CANDACE’S OB-GYN PLACED her on maternity bed rest for the remainder of her pregnancy due to a potential placenta risk. Her too-active lifestyle made the doctor nervous. Bored and restless, she volunteered to help pull some strings to get my game featured on Seattle Metropolitan magazine’s homepage. The editor in chief was in Candace’s Lamaze class. I didn’t know how Candace managed to pitch my story during their breathing and birthing exercises, but she did it!
We had a few late-night publicity brainstorm sessions, and we agreed that going with a nontraditional route to publicize my game would serve us best. Rather than focusing our efforts on gaming/tech blogs and game magazines, we opted to target women’s interest and lifestyle publications. Seattle Metropolitan, Cosmo, Marie Claire, and Jezebel were the first to respond to our pitch. Women were my primary target, and if I’d gone with a “traditional” 18–34 male game publicity approach, my game would be DOA on launch day.
The Seattle Met article started off with a bold, surprising statement.
Chances are you’ve never heard of Melody Joo. And if you have, you’ve probably heard some terrible things about her from a small group of very vocal gaming hatemongers. She’d like to set the record straight.
Melody is a junior producer and creator of the title Ultimate Apocalypse, to be released this November, just in time for the holidays. She’s been under a gag order to not respond to any attacks or harassment targeting her competency as a producer and as a living human being, but she’s agreed to do a first-ever interview to address the vicious online attacks that she’s been barraged with the last few months.
When we began the interview she asked, “Would it be okay to do this in a Q&A or FAQ format?” and we thought she was kidding, but she wasn’t. We asked her a bunch of questions (some of them really personal) and she provided straightforward, genuine answers. We had so much fun that we didn’t extend this interview much more beyond the FAQs. Without further delay, here is Melody Joo, Gamer Girl extraordinaire:
Melody, let’s just get straight to it. You’ve been accused online of being many terrible things, one of them being a ho. Are you a ho? No. I’ve had three serious boyfriends in my whole life, and I kissed two guys in high school. No hookups. And sorry, no girl-on-girl action.
Are you a slut? See above.
Are you a whore? Not the sex-worker kind, but the attention-seeking kind? I don’t like attention and barely use social media. When people sing “Happy Birthday” to me on my birthday I want to run away. But then I wouldn’t get cake.
Are you a dyke? See #1.
Are you a cunt or bitch? I am a tad bit snarky, sardonic, silly, and immature. That’s about as extreme as I get.
Did you fuck your way up the ladder? Hahaha. No. I am very much a bottom-rung plebeian. And please see #1 again.
Are you stupid? I was a National Merit semifinalist in high school, an eighth-grade regional algebra competition finalist, and I was placed in advanced calculus in college thanks to my AP score. I really suck at geometry and chemistry though. If you want to call me stupid at geometry and chemistry, that’s fine. I’d totally agree with you there.
RockJock33, one of your haters, asked, “Shouldn’t you go kill yourself?” What do you think about that? I get squeamish when I see blood, so no thanks to the death suggestion. Plus, I like my life.
Are you a social justice warrior/feminazi? I prefer to think of myself as an “Equality Evangelist.”
You’re fat and disgusting, right? I went to the doctor this morning and had to pay a $35 co-pay to help me answer this question. My BMI is 23. According to my physician, my BMI is average for my weight and height. I am disgusting when eating nachos because I always ask for extra cheese and it drips everywhere. I’m a disgusting nacho slob.
Then you’re ugly, right? I ran my picture through the Hot or Not app. I scored a 71% hot. While I’m not a bombshell, actual data exists that suggests I am not ugly.
Let’s talk race. Are you a straight-A genius, a kung-fu master, a bad driver, a dragon lady, and good with computers? Oh, and do you speak Chinese? No.
Are you a chink, gook, or jap? Slurs are stupid. It would be like me calling white people “honkies” and “crackers.” That sounds stupid, right? People don’t use those terms anymore, for good reason. And my ethnicity is Korean, not Chinese or Japanese, for the record, so at least consider using correct racial references when referring to my heritage. But note I’m American, just like many of your readers. I was born here, and I’ve paid one-third of my hard-earned wages since I was sixteen years old to the US government.
Would you like to be ravaged by a stranger wielding a Wiffle-ball-bat-size dick? No, thank you. I’m very selective of whom I ravage and am ravaged by. See answer to question #1. Also, I do not believe anyone’s dick is two and a half feet long. I’d want picture proof with a yardstick of that.
Boobs! Boobs! What’s your bra size? 34B. I’m a size M in Adidas sports bras. You can buy a three-pack at Costco for $14.99.
A question, one from us, not from those jerks who’ve been harassing you. What was the inspiration behind Ultimate Apocalypse? This game’s purpose is pure entertainment. It started off as a parody idea of all the over-the-top male power fantasy, shoot-’em-up games that have female secondary characters just to objectify and sexualize them. The Ultimate Apocalypse follows three male strippers who emerge from a run-down strip club without their memories, unharmed after an apocalyptic world war. At the same time, Doomsday government scientists unleash creatures on the earth, because they think it’s their calling: aliens, zombies, vampires, you name it. And these strippers need to fight them to survive. They meet badass warriors along their journey, the majority of whom are female. To win the game, the men need to join forces with the women, otherwise they won’t survive, because the women have complementary skills that they need.
Who’s your favorite character? Hands down, it’s Sophia. We gave her a normal, relatable name. She’s sporty and can throw knives and axes. This kick-ass character is my favorite because we made her just like my real-life gaming heroine, Kat. But in real life, Kat is pretty clumsy, and if she tried to throw a knife it would boomerang and stab her jugular vein. Sophia is basically Kat 2.0.