Loathe At First Sight: Nothing’s Fair in Video Games
By: Priya Sridhar
Tags: Games, Books, Literature, Romance, Harassment

Thanks to Gamergate, many people know that the gaming industry can suck if you’re not a cis-white male that wants to make games. It especially sucks when you are independent or starting out, and Internet trolls decide to gang pile on you to make things worse. Many Gamergate victims can attest to that while predators get off scot-free.

I will always love a novel that talks about double standards within the gaming industry. Loathe At First Sight does a deep dive into sexism, racism, and unfair expectations. There is some romance because it’s a romantic comedy, but I argue that it talks about how gaming as an industry is unjust and how those who are marginalized need to work much harder.

Loathe At First Sight by Suzanne Park

Melody Joo is a new employee at Seventeen Studios, which makes video games. A former copywriter, Melody is also dealing with parents that consider her too old to be single, and a very sexist office. She hates how the entitled head Ian McKenzie is casual about his so-called genius and putting cutouts of busty videogame characters in her workspace. When the board forces him to accept a pitch of her videogame idea — topless strippers fighting in an apocalypse — he promises to make it very hard for her to succeed because she is a woman in a man’s office. It doesn’t help that there is only one other female producer in the office, with another leaving for more promising opportunities. Add in an intern that is good-looking but Ian’s nephew and maid-of-honor duties for someone she doesn’t consider a friend, and Melody’s life becomes booked.

Things go from bad to worse when someone within the office leaks information about her game to the trolls that make it a point to push women out of games. Melody fights to keep producing the game and to survive the social media thunderstorm that comes in the form of hateful messages, dick pics, and harassing phone calls. She also needs to figure out who the leak is before the people making death threats act on them, and to save her game’s launch. The law won’t help, and people at her workplace aren’t good for that either. Their primary focus is to solve a PR crisis.

This is a comedy, mind, and has quite a few amusing moments to go with a serious crisis. Melody’s very traditional Korean parents tell a stalker on the phone that their daughter doesn’t want a boyfriend so to please hang up and go away. Ian orders her to hire strippers to cosplay for her game at a convention, and she has to find last-minute substitutes after blushing her heart out at a strip club during a recruiting session.

I do like that the gaming discussions, as well as talking about token “diversity” and “harassment” events that actually don’t protect marginalized people in a volatile workplace. Melody is not impressed when she’s chosen to roleplay in a sexual harassment seminar or when a “Celebrate Women in Gaming” event turns out to mainly have Lara Croft cosplayers parading on a walkway.

We also get a firsthand look at the workplace itself. It is not that friendly on a daily basis. While many women work in the building, Melody is one of two women producers, and one of the few minorities. She often has to fend off awkward questions and make sure that her coffee mug is protected. Seattle is one of the few hubs for gaming, with a high cost of living, so she needs to get a new car at some point but can’t afford it.

The title Loathe at First Sight doesn’t just apply to how Melody and the new intern interact; it also refers to how trolls first respond to her game Ultimate Apocalypse before it even has any trailers. They decide they dislike it and to flood her social media and email with hate messages, all because a woman has decided to create a game. The best way to fight back isn’t to feed them, but rather to find the people who will support you, including those that will reveal the trolls’ real identities.

Given her stern upbringing and desire to succeed, Melody is stubborn to a fault. She believes that she has to wear everyone’s hats to prove that she is tougher than the tough guys in the office. Thus, she takes no-nonsense and fights back with everything she has, from standing her ground to “gifting” coffee mugs with secret messages on them. That means, however, that it’s hard for her to realize when someone really wants to help her on a project and doesn’t expect her to learn a new skill on the go.

Nolan as a love interest provides believable chemistry and conflict. He and Melody get a bad first impression of each other when he takes the coffee mug she normally uses and smashes it by accident. Melody pegs him as a guy for nepotism and doesn’t think highly of him since he and Ian are related. In time, however, they have to work together on her project and realize their biases are not going to help. Nolan also admits he’s not happy and needs to become a braver person. Even though Melody likes him, however, dating an intern would become an HR nightmare.

We do have a lovely cast to go with Melody’s tough approach to life. Her friends Candace and Jane ask for help with Jane’s wedding, where Melody agrees to be the maid of honor under protest. Coworker Asher is a pill and a pain-in-the-neck, though he does get better when Melody calls him out for his nonsense. Kat, Melody’s coworker, and fellow gamer, is quite cheerful and matter-of-fact about having to balance her work and home life respectively.

And Ian? Ian is just the worst. He’s good as an antagonist that Melody has to bear to keep her job, but also seems to enjoy tossing others under the bus. With his abrasive personality and melon-sized ego, it’s no wonder that Melody thinks that his nephew will be the same way. She hopes that someday a person can take him down a peg.

Loathe at First Sight is a fun read, and an insightful one. I recommend reading it about ten times over to enjoy all of the fun prose. It makes me feel great to see these serious issues talked about, with possible solutions. What’s more, it provides strategies to handle these double standards and biases, while adding room for a personal life, and love.

Disclaimer: I received a review copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.