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