Your videogame developer association is at a crossroads. The senior board staff are leaving left, right and centre and member apathy is at an all-time high. You’re looking for something, anything, to drum up passion once more in 13,000+ strong community where the vast majority of members are signed up automatically by employers often without their knowledge, or only to recieve industry-related discounts. What you need is a controversy – one so great that it will get folks who had never even considered themselves members calling to arms, becoming the hottest gossip in studios around the globe as the soap-opera plays out in real-time…
In step Dr. Timothy Langdell, a masterstoke of invention in a creative industry run on heroes and villains. This surely fictitious character was supposedly a board member on an association to advocate the rights of game developers internationally, yet was continuously embroiled in litigation with the most defenseless small game-related companies unfortunate enough to approach his trademarked “EDGE” brand. This was a developer/publisher with a claim to over 700 games backing up that brand, yet had not released a game since the early 1980s, leaving confusion in the marketplace (and therefore a legal leg to stand on) impossible. Such a stickler for legality, Doc Dastardly had been exposed time and time again using others work for his own financial and status gain, ranging from game, comic and television works in no way connected to him, to stooping so low as to pass off a 15 year old girl’s artwork as coverart for his incoming “products”.
It was this last practice that drew the ire of most IGDA members already frustrated with his ongoing suit against a celebrated iPhone game developer, signing Cease and Desists as IGDA Board Member, further damaging the reputation of the organisation. To which end, over 2000 members including myself signed a petition to oust him, or at least call a meeting to do so. A meeting was called, (to decide how to call a meeting), after which the meeting was set. In some semblance of decency, Little Langdell resigned a week later, but not without kicking and screaming on the IGDA forums and comically failing in updating his online store to support his case.
So there it was – a villain vanquished – the members feel empowered and are now looking to the next challenge in resurrecting the IGDA’s status – the character served his purpose. But the story continues. Langdell, it appears, is not so fictitious after all, and lives on beyond the board. You can follow his continuing comically incompetent capers here…
[Unlike the subject, sprite image used with permission of the artist]
