Alright, so you’re asking about my time with that whole ‘i s g entertainment’ thing. It’s a name I won’t forget, not because it was some roaring success, at least not for me, but because it taught me a few hard lessons.
See, when I first heard about ‘i s g entertainment’, or rather, the project that was flying that banner, it sounded like the next big thing. You know how it is. They throw around all these buzzwords, talk about synergy and groundbreaking interactive experiences. They had these grand plans, sounded a bit like those giants, you know, building an ‘ecosystem’ where everything connects, from little mobile games to massive online worlds. I was pretty green back then, or maybe just overly optimistic, and I actually bought into it.
My Dive into the ‘i s g’ Whirlpool
I got pulled into a team that was supposed to be developing a core component. I was all fired up, ready to code day and night. My job was to get this specific interactive module up and running. First week, meetings. Second week, more meetings. Third week, they changed the project lead. It was like that from the get-go.
The biggest problem? Nobody seemed to actually agree on what ‘i s g entertainment’ was. For me, it was about this interactive storytelling piece I was hired for. But then you’d hear:
- The marketing folks thought it was an ARG, an alternate reality game.
- The execs from upstairs kept mentioning NFTs, even though nobody on the ground knew how to implement them.
- And one department was convinced it was all about educational software for kids.
It felt like they just threw a bunch of darts at a board of ‘cool ideas’ and called it ‘i s g entertainment’. Total chaos. We’d build something, spend weeks on it, and then someone would come along and say, “Oh, no, that’s not the direction anymore.” Back to square one. My carefully crafted code? Ditched. My prototypes? Ignored.
The Inevitable Crash and Burn (for me, anyway)
I remember this one time, I stayed up for like 72 hours straight, fueled by coffee and sheer willpower, to finish a demo for a big presentation. I was so proud of it. It worked, it looked good, it actually did what they asked for that week. And then, the day before the presentation, the main stakeholder, who hadn’t been seen for a month, waltzes in and says, “This is great, but we’ve decided ‘i s g entertainment’ needs to be more… blue. And also, can it run on a smart fridge?” I kid you not. A smart fridge.
That was kind of the last straw for me. My passion project, the thing I poured my heart into, was being treated like a joke. I spent about a year in that madhouse. Saw good people come and go. Saw budgets balloon and then get slashed without warning. It was a masterclass in how not to run a creative venture.
Eventually, the specific part of ‘i s g entertainment’ I was on got “indefinitely postponed.” That’s corporate speak for “it’s dead, Jim.” I was out of a gig, pretty burnt out, and seriously questioning if I wanted to be in that side of the industry at all. I had a mortgage to pay, man, and that ‘postponement’ didn’t come with a severance package, just a “thanks for your efforts.”
What I Took Away
So, yeah, that’s my ‘i s g entertainment’ story. It’s why I’m so cautious now about projects that sound too grand, too vague. It made me realize that a clear vision and solid leadership are way more important than just having a cool-sounding name or a laundry list of trendy features. After that whole fiasco, I actually pivoted. Started my own small thing, focusing on projects where I have control, where the goals are clear, and where ‘blue’ and ‘smart fridges’ only come up if they actually make sense. It’s less glamorous, maybe, but at least I sleep at night. And when I see a job ad now looking for “dynamic innovators for a revolutionary new entertainment paradigm,” I just chuckle and scroll on by. I’ve had my fill of those.
