“HELLO, I’M SLOANE COOPER,” I SAY TO THE THREE MEN, WHO RISE and greet me, one by one. Jack Palmer, Founder and President. Kenji Sugano, Lead Engineer. Ross Feldman, Vice President of Product. I shake each of their hands firmly, sure to look them in the eye as I do.
My interviewers take their seats and I follow suit. I knew they were all men, of course, which would be no different at any other major player in this space. Especially when most of the games developed at this firm, in particular, center around zombies, aliens, and post-apocalyptic survival. Apparently, I’m one of only a few women who’d sell a kidney to design these types of games at a firm like this. Or if there are more women like me out there, I just haven’t found them. And at this firm, the longest-standing game development company in the US, having created many of the top sellers, past and present, it’s no surprise that a twenty-eight-year-old, half-Indian woman would stick out. Whether I stand out in a good way is yet to be decided.
“Sloane, thank you for being here. Your online portfolio is intriguing,” Jack Palmer says. His thick, back-combed white hair is offset by his gray O’Neill T-shirt and floral board shorts. His tanned skin reminds me of a slice of raspberry fruit leather.
Jack Palmer is the youngest recipient of the Game Developers Choice Awards’ Lifetime Achievement Award, has attended the White House Correspondents’ Dinner twice, and was featured last year on the cover of Forbes. He’s been photographed at Dubai rooftop parties, laughing with Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk. He is still highly involved in development and game production, even after twenty-one years heading up the company, and, amazingly, he’s done it all while maintaining a relatively small, start-up-like team.
“Thank you for having me, Jack Palmer,” I say.
He smirks as he unwraps the tinfoil from a meatball sub. Great. He knows I’m in hero-worship mode. Not a good start.
I expect some small talk—an opportunity to show off my knowledge of the company—but they dive right in. The three of them volley detailed questions about my designs, Jack in between too-large bites of his sandwich. How did I come up with my concepts? Which games do I play myself? What’s my high score on Immortal Clash? With every answer, I know they are impressed. Or perhaps surprised. I can feel it as the discussion grows deeper with each question. It’s only as we approach the end of the interview that they successfully put me back on my sensible black heels.
“Tell us, Sloane,” Jack Palmer says, wiping marinara from his chin with a crumpled napkin, then leaning forward and clasping his hands together in front of him against the table. “What’s your . . . life situation?”
“What do you mean, exactly?”
“Are you married? Do you have kids?”
“Oh, no, I am alone. All by myself. Alone.” Stop talking.
“That’s good news,” Kenji Sugano says, and for a split second I wonder if there’s a sexual-favors component to this interview and, perhaps, the job itself. I’ve heard stories of this type of behavior in the gaming world, of course. Of women being limited to low-impact positions like debugging and testing instead of design and development. Of endless sexual invitation. Of having to sit quietly by while that misogyny makes its way into the games in the form of sexually charged female heroines who have intercourse with every creature they encounter. The Reddit threads are endless on this topic.
Just as I’m assessing how to decline their advances tactfully, Kenji adds, “The last girl we hired—”
Jack Palmer clears his throat.
“Woman,” Kenji corrects himself. “The last woman we hired had a lot of . . .” His eyes dart to Jack’s then back to me. “Personal issues. Relationship stuff, mostly, but it bled into her work.”
Jack Palmer’s eyes pulse wide as he nods. Kenji Sugano scrunches his face in what I assume to be disgust. Ross Feldman lets out a yelping laugh, then quickly looks down at his chair, as if it made the noise instead of him.
Ah. Kenji isn’t being suggestive. They just don’t want to hire a “troublesome girl-woman.” Or what they deem as such. Which, as I’m quickly gathering, means one with a romantic life. I look up at the framed poster of Princess Zelda on the wall across from me and silently ask her for some help here.
“I’m as low-maintenance as they come, gentlemen. So incredibly low-maintenance. And I’m happily, resolutely, forever single.” I wince at the fact that I’m discussing my lack of a romantic life in a job interview with Jack Palmer.
They all nod in approval, which keeps me talking. “I would be fully dedicated to this job. You don’t have to worry about that.”
“Well, that’s a relief. Anita urged us to hire that last one and it didn’t work out. Like at all. She had . . .”
“Too many personal issues.” I nod, finishing Jack Palmer’s sentence, so he knows I’m listening. He points his pen at me and winks in approval.
“Yes. Exactly. So, if you were to get this job, you would . . .”
They all raise their chins, eyes questioning. I unconsciously mimic them as I gain an understanding of what’s supposed to come next.
“. . . have no personal life whatsoever,” I state slowly as my chin comes down.
They all nod again.
I think of my mom, how urgently she’s trying to push me back into engineering. And how I have no solid counterargument as long as I’m unemployed. I think of my bank balance—how, despite saving enough to get me through six months of job searching, I am about to be two months past due on my rent thanks to my car’s recent demand for a new transmission. Mostly, though, I think about how this job, this career, is the only thing I’ve ever wanted with every fiber of my being.
“And do you want kids?” Kenji Sugano asks. The topic has come up twice now. “Children are great and all, but you know, difficult for someone trying to build their way up in a company like this. Taking months off to have a baby, leaving early to relieve the sitter, stuff like that is hard with a team like ours, with our demanding schedules and tight release dates and such.” He leans back in his chair, bouncing forward and back a bit, arms crossed against his chest. “Could you imagine a new hire taking months off at a time? That could delay game rollouts.”
I swallow hard, wondering if this is a joke everyone else is in on, if someone is about to jump out with a camera and yell “gotcha!”
Instead, they all just stare at me.
I look around the room, recalling all I know about these three. Jack Palmer is in his early fifties, on his third marriage, with one child from each. Kenji Sugano is, by all accounts, one of the biggest fuckboys of the greater Los Angeles area. And Ross Feldman, well, not much about his personal life came up in my research, but evaluating him now with his wet lips and watchful eyes, questionable porn fetishes seem like a safe bet.
Do I want kids? I think about my parents and our lives as a formidable trio. How they are celebrating their thirtieth wedding anniversary next month with a vow renewal. How they exude this chasmic care for each other that I know comes from time spent and deep knowledge of the person you share consistent space with. How my quiet, passive father still looks up and smiles when my mom enters a room. How he saves her the last bite of every good meal. All things considered, outside of the ruin of our onetime home, my life with them was good. Is good. If only my mom would see me for who I am instead of who she wants me to be. She’s a woman who left her homeland, came to the States, built a solid life she couldn’t have even dreamed of when she was little. Mothers like mine are inevitably disappointed by their daughters. We grew up on opposite ends of privilege.
The truth is, I do want a family. I’m embarrassed to admit it at times, because I want a career—this career—so badly, and I’m meant to believe I can’t have both. That I have to choose. But I’m brazen enough to admit only to myself that I do want it—my parents’ deep partnership, a husband, kids, his-and-hers closets, a double toaster. I do want it. But I don’t know if I’ll ever be brave enough to have it. Not after Zane, and certainly not when it would mean more people to care for and keep safe in this far from perfect world. And perhaps this is Jack Palmer’s profound wisdom showing through, trying to tell me what I’ve already come to believe. I can’t have both.
I need this job, I remind myself, rising slightly in my chair.
Perhaps they are just being hard-asses to see if I can hang. That’s it. I need to prove my ability to hang. “No kids, currently,” I say, and they all nod again. “And look, I hear you. I have absolutely no plans of dating or marrying or procreating anytime soon. Not for like five”—they all raise their eyebrows at me in unison—“fifteen years. Not for, like, fifteen years, at least. I plan on being married to my job. This job, if I were to get it.” They all nod in approval again, and I feel like a puppy they’ve taught a new trick to.
“That’s great. Love to hear these are your plans . . . self-proclaimed, of course, we just so happen to align in thinking,” Jack says. “Can we get that in writing?”
They all laugh heartily and I’m unsure if it’s actually a joke.
“But really,” Jack says, leaning in. He crumples the foil from his sandwich into a ball and rolls it back and forth between his hands. “None of this is required, of course. We’re merely . . . exposing you to the Catapult culture and how to thrive here. We want our next hire to be set up for success. We would never tell an employee what they are and are not allowed to do in their personal lives,” he offers.
Anita’s face flashes in my mind and I wonder how much of a scolding these three received to ensure Jack’s last statement.
I nod. “Of course, Mr. Palmer. I understand.” I make eye contact with each of them. “Completely.”
“Well, if there’s nothing else,” Kenji Sugano says, hands clasping the sides of his chair, elbows pointed behind him, ready to scoot his way out of the room.
“Actually, there is one more thing, if I may,” I say, and he releases. I pull the three binders from my tote and hand them across the table, one to each of them.
“What’s this?” Kenji asks as he flips open the cover to reveal my design portfolio.
“This,” I tell them as I lean in, “is the potential future of Catapult Games.”
I proceed to walk the three of them through my portfolio for as long as they allow me to speak. And they allow it for longer than I anticipate. Their eyes are stationed to the binders, flipping the plastic sleeve-protected pages carefully—Jack Palmer consistently three or so pages ahead of where I’m at in my presentation. I tell them about each character, the type of game they might suit. How Layla, the Tomb Raider–esque hero with pixie-cut fiery red hair, standing next to an arsenal of weapons, would fit into any number of their existing dystopian games as a nice alternative to the one existing female player option in each game. I don’t point out that her chest isn’t disproportionately large and her waist isn’t disproportionately small, as most of their female characters, though I hope they notice her more realistic shape. I tell them about Finn, the hero golden retriever who carries around a teddy bear and looks like a cute, harmless companion until he activates the laser eyes of said bear, capable of severing limbs, heads.
When I’m done, the room falls silent and I await their feedback, growing more distracted by my heartbeat with each brutal second that clicks by.
Jack Palmer is the first to speak. “This is impressive,” he says, closing the binder and clasping his hands atop it. He assesses me for a moment, seemingly wrestling with a thought. Finally, he says, “Here’s what you can do next.”
At this, Kenji and Ross both close their own binders and clasp their hands atop them, mimicking Jack’s position. Kenji’s eyebrows come to a point. Ross’s mouth is open, though I can’t tell if he is confused or just a chronic mouth breather.
“There will be a final interview, but it’s not a meeting,” Jack says. He has a spot of marinara on the right corner of his mouth and the room smells like a pizzeria. “Build a game sample. It should have the potential for commercial success and be something that could fit well within our existing brand portfolio. We’ll make a final hiring decision based on the game designs of the final candidates.”
My mouth is now also open, wider than Ross’s. I’m a final candidate?
I’m a final candidate.
My throat constricts.
Jack stands abruptly, taking my binder to his armpit but leaving the foil and crumbs of his meatball sub. “You’ve got ten days,” he says without looking back as he strides purposefully out the conference room door, Kenji and Ross scurrying out in tow.