A Moogle  🏳️‍🌈 💻 🎮 🎶 🇸🇪

I myself wanted answers, thus I went about trying to find a studio executive to give me some straight talk. After a good hour or so, during which the executives where nowhere to be found, I found the VP, Guha. Karthik (his brother) and Guha were co-founders and always good folks.

"Guha," I said, "I'm freaking, man. Just tell me: Will I still have a job tomorrow?" With a sigh, he said, "Ryan, you know I can't tell you that. It could be considered insider trading. But if you are freaking out, take a long lunch with your roommates, but be back before 3."

At that point, I pretty much knew what was going on. I drove home, had a long lunch with my friends who'd been previously laid off, talked about our plans for Bat Country Entertainment, and then drove back in time for the news.

I ended up sending HR an e-mail pointing out that being on the autism spectrum, it was hard for me to process surprises, so if they would please come get me a few minutes before the studio meeting, that would be best. They did. Kathy led me to her office in silence.

When I saw the director of coders in her office, I knew the score. I was told that the "Hero" Business unit was shutting down, given a document to sign for some severance pay, told that 500 people across Activision were being laid off - including 50 at VV - and that was that.

Thus began one of the simultaneously best and worst years of my life - 2011. Where I taught myself Java, dabbled in some technically impressive Minecraft mods, released some games with Bat Country Entertainment on Xbox Live Indie Games. The rest is history.

Am I bitter that the series ended up going down in flames the way it did? No, not really. Anyone could have seen the writing on the wall that Activision were pushing the music/rhythm genre too far, too fast, in too exploitative a manner.

But that is, to paraphrase @zefrank, how capitalism do. It's all about making as much as possible as quickly as possible, and the realities of "Hey, we've sold music/rhythm games to everyone interested in music/rhythm games" be darned.