Perhaps only one person will read this. I’m fine with that. It will bring me some resolution just to put this out there, somewhere. This happened too long ago to be consequential now, but I want it documented.

I realize that, in any circumstance, complaining about a teammate is petty. Disagreements during the development process are natural, and in the end, this is nothing more than a weekend project that doesn’t need hindsight. It is done for its own sake. The reason I choose to vocalize this is that it doesn’t seem right to me that such brazen acts were met with frivolity, and that without the retrospect, no one would learn anything from this. Out of respect, I am keeping the offending teammate anonymous.

As shown above (sans my last name, one of the few genuine mistakes at my expense), I was responsible for most of the audio in Borne. I’m the goofy-lookin’ guy on the right, with the keytar. I created four music tracks, about a dozen sound effects, and a monologue to be played during the game’s intro, which was eventually scrapped. Being familiar with XACT, I also did the programming that allowed audio to be played. Althon Johnson - “AJ” to us - created a very nice extra track, giving us enough music to round out the game, and he also helped out with the sound effects. Kudos to him.

So, I’ve got a somewhat cynical sense of humor, and I don’t blame him for accusing me of being genuinely negative. I’m not, but I joke around. It’s just kind of hypocritical given how things went. This guy insisted to everyone that I was “younger” in the Game Development program (he’s younger than me in reality) despite having more experience with C# and XNA. He made a huge point out of using that word, that I wasn’t technically as far along in the course as he was, and thus shouldn’t be any authority on the code despite having self-taught knowledge. Despite us all being familiar with C# and XNA, he insisted we use C++, a language we had less knowledge of, and would necessitate scrounging around for and learning new frameworks, including audio, which I was in charge of. This is because he “doesn’t like C#”. We almost got the project turned around mid-development because of it, but thankfully we didn’t put his nagging quirk above common sense. Still, the whole weekend was filled with this - a seriously debilitating lack of wisdom coaxed by the desire to run the whole project. He did his share of work, and it was good work, but his power complex really had implications toward the game, cutting loads of valuable time that could have been spent on content(which many of us bemoaned for having to nix so much of). He asked me what I would like to do on this project. Being a multiartist, I told him I’d be solely responsible for audio, but would like to help out in any field that needs an extra hand. He disregarded this, cutting me off to say “you’re audio”. Now, I don’t like someone arbitrarily deciding to relegate me, especially since I needed access to the code. This got me a little heated, and I told him “The second you exclude me from any other aspect of design, I’m giving you shitty audio”. I made my point as firmly as possible, I cooled down, and that was the end of it. Or so I thought.

For the first day or so, I made it as clear as I could that I already had XNA classes written for collision detection and object management. Classes that we could use. And for that time, despite being adamant, I was completely and purposefully ignored, wasting valuable time as we had to recreate these classes from scratch. At one point, everyone else needed access to the code, so he helped each and every one of them set up Git, eventually getting around to me(when I asked). I ran into an issue during installation, and his response was to instantly give up on trying to help me set up. For those two days, I made it clear that I really needed access to the code, but he outright ignored me the entire way(literally - he’d pretend no one was talking to him), refusing to give me access. Though he said he’d code in sound effects wherever necessary, that never happened, and all the sound effects were scrapped as a result.

And the whining. Good God, the whining. For as negative as he thought I was, every minute throughout the weekend was filled with complaints and musings on justifying nihilism.

Again, these issues on their own are petty. They only reveal an uglier motivation when compounded with what happened next.

For the kind of audio I made for this game, I credit myself with the name “Backslash”. Our teammate passed around a piece of paper, on which we’d write our names and what we do, so that we’d be credited. Fair enough. Because we were identified by duty on the sheet, I wrote “Backslash - Audio”. Without a word delivered to me about it, I noticed later that I was the only one on our game’s credits screen who wasn’t actually credited. When I approached him about it, his reasoning was “I didn’t see a name”. Now, he knew I did the audio. He knew Backslash was actually a name. He consciously excluded me from the game credits. I made it clear that’s who I was and what it referred to, and despite listening to him reiterating that statement several times, I let the time go by as I got back to work. I checked in much later. Despite the obvious “clarification” brought by the argument, he still refused to add my name to the credits. When the timer was near hitting zero, I asked him whether he’d gotten around to crediting me. His answer, verbatim, was “probably not”.

I should have been more insistent, but I suppose I was too caught up in my work. It wasn’t until I seriously pressed the issue that he decided to credit me in the game - incorrectly, but still at all. This isn’t just immature. It’s not just juvenile. It’s borderline criminal. In no serious organization in the world would you not be immediately fired and possibly even sued for this. Of course, I’m dramatizing. This is Global Game Jam, not EA. Still, it’s incomprehensibly malicious without precedent.

At the very end of the event, we had trouble getting what was left of my audio to play. I was going to make one last code change to fix the audio before the offending teammate would push the code to its final version, but as he insisted, “if you touch it, I will break all your fingers”. So I let him make the final push before making changes to the code that would allow my audio to be played. I insisted he add those changes to the final result, but according to him, “We went gold 15 minutes ago.” What this means is he decided that the version he pushed - without my changes - was the one he was going to use, even though he had plenty of opportunity to push the version I made. In fact, I could make the change on his computer in literally six seconds, but he refused to let me change it. In the end, all that was left of my work was the ability to play someone else’s track. Everything I did over the entire weekend was lost due to his incomprehensible decisions.

My work almost made it to no one’s ears. Luckily, during exhibition, a very kind teammate chose to set up the version of the game with my edits, allowing some of my audio to be heard. If he had not, I would have had nothing to show for my intense work. As of this post, the version of the game available for download does not feature my changes and thus none of my audio features in it. The music I made for Borne can be heard on my joint Soundcloud account: [ http://soundcloud.com/i-am-sear/borne-greece ] It’s not that great, admittedly (perhaps I followed up on that promise after all), but I’m glad it’s listenable in any form.

Lest you think I’m only telling half the story, I did nothing to interfere with this person’s work. I wouldn’t even have the chance, given how little access I had to it. Everyone I’ve told this story to (and I have recounted it an exhausting number of times) believes he designed to sabotage me from the beginning. Sure, maybe my occasionally grandiose behavior attracts trouble, but it does not justify the disregard for ethics. Both of us are self-appointed intellectuals in some way, but only one of us is a genuinely bad person.

One last thing: Enough with the physical threats. You’re not stronger than me, and you’re not smarter than me. I’m sorry, you’re just not. I found the threats bothersome only because they were embarrassing. It bugs me having to listen to someone so disconnected from reality for the sake of his own image.

And with that out of the way, I’m over it. Have a good one.