Laura Kate Dale

Jane Aerith Magnet

Supremacy Software is the world’s largest video-game developer and publisher. If you’ve played games, you’ve played one of theirs at some point. They’re the shining light, a dream job for many aspiring game developers. Who Hunts the Whale? tells the story of a newly hired PA taking a seat in the executive boardroom. An out-of-towner who risked it all to come to the big city and live her dream of working for a company she’s idolised for years. But she soon discovers the cynical side of things. Stolen ideas, long hours, managerial impropriety – will she risk her ideal career and take a stand for those who dare not speak, or keep quiet in the face of a powerful, litigious corporation? Written by industry insider Laura Kate Dale and (small ‘g’) gamer Jane Aerith Magnet, Who Hunts the Whale? takes a witty, satirical look at the human cost of a rapacious market that must constantly be fed new content.

A satirical novel set in the exploitative world of big-budget game development

Who Hunts the Whale

Laura Dobie

All around me are journalists and other PAs hard at work for their own executives. There's an odd stillness here. No one wishes to disturb anyone; just focusing on their own thing. Its like some stark future library where all the books are digital and the promised neon lights revealed to have been a lie sold to us by Hollywood to make us think dystopias would have the decency to look cool.

Dance Dance Keep on Dancing - Don't You Ever Stop Dancing 20XX edition features a style meter, where you create your own unique motion-controlled dance move to perform during quiet moments and increase your Stylin'-0-Meter rating.

 'Don't gamers hate moving?' queried Chad. ‘Sure they do,’ Rick responded, ‘but if we can get them to move enough to hold back a serious health condition, while they're still of working age, they can keep buying our products for longer.’

Middle management were, as usual, as positive and upbeat as the recruitment team for a sex cult.

With June rolling around again, it's time for X3. Luckily the team did manage to get a serviceable demo together in time. It's a little prone to crashing in places, but people generally understand that this sort of thing is still in development and 'not representative of the final build'. In the case of this vertical slice, it could not be less representative of the final build as it's about 300 times more complete.

The rest of the event passed in a blur of not exactly misdirecting journalists to where they might find Rick and Chad. Meanwhile, over at our curated warzone, those who had camped out in the queue had lit a fire on the display and were trying to cook one of the fake severed limbs, which they'd lifted from over at the Housegueist booth. Turned out they were just foam, albeit very well painted, and the fumes set off the fire alarms at some time during the early hours of the second day.

During our absence, Jeremy had apparently added every other monitor in the entire department to his system, so he could keep everything he needed visible at all times. Apparently ‘The Focus Dome’ boosts productivity, although he claimed that losing his mouse pointer on one of over two hundred screens was a real danger.

Finally rid of all that pesky water from their drinks, Power Crystals will offer the highest caffeine-to-volume ratio that is legally permitted by the FDA (thanks to some loophole regarding dried goods and labelling).

Who Hunts the Whale quotes

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