Last Tuesday BBC2 aired their new feature-length drama The Gamechangers, about the 2003 legal feud between Rockstar who make Grand Theft Auto and an evangelical moralising lawyer who believed that violent games were poisoning a generation of teens.
Writing in last weekend’s Sunday Times, Matt Rudd gave the drama a pretty rubbish review, with what he called a hilariously unrealistic script coming in for particular criticism.
Matt Rudd has clearly never worked in a creative / digital agency or start-up. I really enjoyed The Gamechanges and found the script and set design scarily reflective of some of my experiences working in and for agencies, for example:
- excessive use of the word ‘iterative’
- going home ‘early’ at 11pm
- glass walled offices that are not even slightly soundproof, resulting in all arguments being heard by the whole team
- ‘whatever was on the bedroom floor this morning’ dress code
- ping pong table in the office
- Creatives throwing strops re: Artistic Integrity
- getting into legal trouble because you pushed it too far (instead of an evangelical lawyer, thanks to booze brands I’ve been on damage-limitation duty vs. The Portman Group, the ASA and the BACC/Clearcast in the past)
Daniel Radcliffe (who played Rockstar co-founder Sam Houser) and his hipster beard could slot into any creative or digital department without anyone raising an eybrow. And I can think of dozens of agencies whose offices could have doubled for Rockstar’s.
And how did Rockstar react to this less-than-entirely-flattering attention? By behaving like a circa 2003 creative department of course.
(screengrab, the tweets were unsurprisingly later deleted)