left Shazam! just days before a Korean Canadian family in Calgary sued the company on the grounds that the game was so addictive that their sleep-deprived son ended up with urinary tract disability because he frequently held his pee for eighteen hours a day. The parents filed a lawsuit against Shazam! for millions of dollars. Some industry conspiracy theorists believed that Ian had hidden subliminal messages in the game to intensify gaming addiction, but no one could prove it. When asked if any of the allegations were true in a recent interview by a famous gaming journalist, Ian replied, “What can I say? Gamers can’t get enough of my genius.” Assuming everything I read online about this lawsuit was accurate, Ian seemed like a total asshole.
I couldn’t say too much about Ian’s lucky career success because getting my production assistant job had been a stroke of luck, which never usually happened for me. The board wanted more “entrepreneurial-minded” women at Seventeen Studios, and I fit the profile.
The company offered decent pay, and trying out a new career path in video games was on my professional bucket list. And to be honest, my ten-year high school reunion would be here before I knew it and I wanted to impress everyone. For the first time in my entire life, I was in the right place at the right time, and I carpe diem’ed that shit.
“Damn it!” Ian slammed the dry-erase marker on the conference table. “We need a new name for our studio. I don’t like ‘Seventeen Studios.’ It’s so . . . pedestrian. Let’s start throwing some ideas out there.” Ian repeatedly capped and uncapped the whiteboard marker in his hand. Click. Snap. Click. Snap.
“I thought this was a product brainstorm, not a studio-naming exercise,” said a female voice from the other side of the room. It was Kat Campbell, one of the senior designers at the company. I silently sided with her on this one. The name of the meeting in our calendar was “NEW PRODUCT BRAINSTORM” in shouty all-caps.
Ian said to Kat, “This meeting is whatever I decide it should be. Any other questions?”
Nope, no other questions. This meeting was now a studio-name brainstorm.
And thirty minutes later, all the ideas we had collectively come up with were up on the whiteboard, and they were terrible.
A lanky, freckly guy said, “How about ‘Hemlock Studios’? It’s funny because of its toxicity.”
Ian’s head shook with disappointment.
Another freckle-covered bearded dude wearing a tattered Pokémon shirt asked, “How about ‘Catastrophic,’ with two Ks instead of Cs?”
Ian made a finger-down-throat vomiting gesture. “How about ‘Epicenter Games’?”
As he gushed about how brilliant the name was, I googled it. “Um, it looks like there’s a gaming studio in the Bay Area that already has that name,” I squeaked.
“Okay, so who cares if that name is taken?” Ian’s stare-glare made my arm hairs quiver in fear.
Kat chimed in. “I’m sure their lawyers would. It’s probably trademarked.”
Ian’s icy glare shifted to Kat. “What if we made ours different, instead of ‘Epicenter’ we called ours ‘EpicEnter’? That wordplay takes our company’s meaning to a whole other mind-blowing new level.” He made a head-exploding gesture with his hands.
Changing the syllable emphasis didn’t matter. We would have the same name as another US gaming company, and that violated trademark law.
Ian asked me, “Hey, noob, why are you frowning?”
I stammered, “Th-th-there could be a trademark infringement issue, and—”
He cut me off before I finished talking. “Here’s the problem with people like you . . .” he began. Excuse me, people like you?
“Looking up legal jurisdiction during a brainstorm is stifling and narrow-minded,” he argued. “You’re artificially constraining my creativity and vision! We can’t elevate this company to a higher level if every genius idea gets shut down. Honestly, I should fire you for this negative attitude of yours, but I can’t, because you’re one of the few GIRLS here other than HER.” He pointed at Kat and then went back to glaring at me.
I assumed my days in the cutthroat advertising industry had prepped me for a male-dominated work environment. This place? It might even be worse.
Ian barked at us, “Does anyone else like the name ‘EpicEnter’?”
When no one answered, Ian threw his marker down. “I can’t believe this. Never mind! This meeting is adjourned.” He flung the door open with such force that the door handle dented the lime-green wall. I had just witnessed my first forty-five-year-old man tantrum.
Ian MacKenzie, our company’s visionary, our fearless leader, had just stormed out like a