I heard rumors that there are game devs that fucking hate them? I don't quite remember.
That's me. It's a career suicide to admit in certain places of the globe, though. IGDA is watching.
Ahhh, Extra Credits. I've been[/FONT] on EC's case for a long time, particulary that of the "Super Games Expert Extraordinaire James Portnow", who has never written a line of code or added an asset to the game. Partially absolute frauds like this piss me off, because i've been a dev for 10+ years starting from shitty QA posts and practically clawing my way up from there. I of course won't/can't prove this because of the shitty state that the industry suffers from (that i hardly need to go into here), it's just the motivation for my autistic screeching, it's not that important.
We can start from his
LinkedIn profile to expose him as a complete fraud, which i saw no one do on a cursory romp of the thread.
Just to go down from the top:
CEO
Rainmaker Games <- A company that has never produced anything, has no employees, and does not even appear in any company listing, a non-existent now, and possibly defunct company before, yet still he keeps clocking up hours, days, months and years of experience as a CEO, Consultant and Game Designer.
Writer
Extra Credits <- Seriously pretty much the only thing that isn't a complete lie here. He has blessed us with his unending wisdom for years.
Advisor
Snow Cannon Games <- This one's fucking bizarre. The whole "Snow Cannon Games" doesn't seem to produce any games, likely just a tiny, exploitative publisher that was likely a "gatekeeper" to Steam back when Steam regulated what was put in. Literally any game they publish could just as well be a dime-a-dozen Indie title. His linkedin profile refers him to as "Advisor" while the website of Snow Cannon Games has his smug face as "Interim Design Director".
CEO
Divde by Zero Games <- Lolno. This is so blatant it's not even funny. While it is hard to dig up any de facto details of this company's employyees (i've done it before, but then a HDD crash and not backing up lost my dirt on this), it's still accessible on wayback machine. I'll try to find it. As far as being a CEO, well.... http://forums.na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=33597
Chief Design Columnist
Next-Gen <- Immensely suspect. From the bowels of the internet i can pull up one forum post discussing his glorified blog post (read: column), but given that it's his first job directly after dropping out of Uni (if even that is a reliable claim...) is "Chief" of something, i at least suspect this given the amount of lies he spews on average.
Then at least i didn't notice anyone mention his "game development credentials". He was hired a good while back to do some teaching work for Digipen. He, as per his usual MO lied through his teeth to get in there. His first claims ever of actually working on a game on his life were made on the
glowing review page they gave for him, he claims to have worked as a Game Designer for Call of Duty, which he then mentioned "it wasn't very popular" so i, and a few others have just sat there, looking on Youtube at the wonderful, highly interesting credit scrolls. All of the first 4 games. One of which didn't even have a "James" on the credits, and none of which mention him even in the "thanks" section where in one of them a guy thanks his dog or something, so if he ever was a part of it, literally some guys' poet dog was more deserving of credit.
Then there was the... well, i couldn't keep a straight face reading this the first time: "For FarmVille, developer Zynga had hired Portnow to incorporate narrative elements into their game as a means of providing greater context for its click-based building and harvesting." Way back when Zynga wasn't all that big, i did actually try contacting them, but as it happens, i never got any sort of a reply, and as asscancery as Facebook games are, i tried to go poking around it to see if there was any sort of credits or other thing i could pull out of Farmville, and yet again, nowhere is his contribution listed.
The unfortunate factor: There are a lot of content that was critical of him that seems to... disappear of the internet. There were more than 3 quora articles, including
this one which referred to him by name and criticized him as an absolutely tactless and horrible "professor", 2 of which have since been removed, and that one which no longer directly references him. Back when i had these, archive.is was nonfunctional in Europe and screenshotting isn't a proof of anything, so i couldn't be arsed to jump through the hoops. I know the articles existed in this state, because i've even quoted the linked one verbatim in one of my comments elsewhere: "[James Portnow Was] Supposedly hired to teach game design course, but the end result can be summarized in his own words: "I have not come here to teach Game Design, you must learn it yourself".".
The second unfortunate factor: While it has been cursorily gone over in this thread, historical revisionism isn't his only failure. The youtube video where he goes over Sesame Credit (Ali Baba's NewEgg points, more or less) is about as painful to watch as your average Ancient Aliens episode. He actually comes across as if he believes Ali Baba owns China or something, and of course, after spewing bullshit for 10 minutes, he beautifully finishes with "Oh tell me if i'm wrong, i'm just not sure about this". As a result, there's quite a few news articles et.c. now parroting his views on the matter without any research or critical view.
I don't want to make this ramshackle post run on, i have material on him for fucking hours and hours, and can give point by point rebuttals on what's wrong with pretty much every video they've ever put out. Sorry for the (somewhat of a) thread necro, i'm mostly here because he popped up again for a reason or another and i decided to see if there's more material on this potentially destructive arsewipe, but there's unfortunately little.
PS. The typos can be attributed to blood alcohol level. Vacation's great.
Edit 2 years later. Since i didn't expect rito to be so retarded to throw away their boards, i never archived it.
Here's a wayback link
https://web.archive.org/web/2020031...gueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=33597
What is it with damage control people making the most vague possible statements? Yes, she claims you "bullied" her...by sexually harassing her. I'm sure the "diversity experts" and HR professionals can tell you what words mean next time you plan to make a statement.
