Ubisoft | Polygamer

Polygamer #109: Dianna Lora of Massive Entertainment

Posted on January 27, 2021 by Ken Gagne

Dianna Lora is an account manager at Massive Entertainment, the Ubisoft studio working on the next Star Wars video game. She is an accomplished multimedia maven, having written reviews, produced videos, and edited podcasts for such outlets as Sony, DualShockers, and GoodgameTV. Now, from her new home in Sweden, Dianna manages corporate relationships with producers, developers, and creators to ensure everyone has what they need to build a successful product together — something she learned from her days in musical theatre.

In this interview, I ask Dianna more about the role an account manager plays in the video game industry; what it’s like to be working with as storied a brand as Star Wars; how being an actor taught her to handle rejection; how someone who’s lived in New York, San Francisco, and Europe defines “home”; what we can do to make it easier for people to go to college; and the problematic behaviors that pop up around Black History Month.

Stream the audio edition of this interview below or from Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, Spotify, Overcast, Pandora, Pocket Casts, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, RadioPublic, or the Internet Archive. Click past the jump for a transcript and links to resources mentioned in this episode.

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:05:11 — 38.3MB) | Embed

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Polygamer #52: Assassin’s Creed voice actor Tristan D. Lalla

Posted on September 28, 2016 by Ken Gagne

Tristan D. Lalla is a star of stage, screen, and game. His video game voice-acting portfolio includes Far Cry 2, Deus Ex Human Evolution, Rainbow Six: Siege — and, most notably, the slave-turned-pirate Adéwale in Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag and its sequels and DLC. But both Tristan and Adéwale had to grow into their roles: Tristan overcome both a speech disorder and shyness to become an actor, and Adéwale was originally from Martinique until Tristan invested his Trinidadian heritage into the character.

In this interview, Tristan shares family and teachers helped him overcome his personal challenges and become an actor; how a stage actor broke into the video game industry, and how being a gamer himself informs his performances; what it’s like to be motion-captured into a game and then to play a game that he’s in; the importance of representation in games, even when gamers can’t see the voice actors; whether directors should take an actor’s personal history and experiences into consideration when casting; and why video games should tackle difficult topics such as slavery.

Stream the audio edition of this interview below or from Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, Overcast, Pandora, Pocket Casts, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, RadioPublic, or the Internet Archive. Click past the jump for his demo reel and for links to resources mentioned in this episode.

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Podcast: Download (Duration: 57:09 — 27.0MB) | Embed

Polygamer #19: Elisa Meléndez on avatars, FragDolls, racial diversity & rock bands

Posted on April 8, 2015 by Ken Gagne

Elisa Meléndez recently spoke on a PAX East 2015 panel about how we create and identify with our avatars in virtual game worlds. This is one of just many topics she’s researched as part of her Ph.D studies in comparative sociology — and her academic career is just one of Elisa’s many aspects. In this podcast, she discusses being, in her husband’s words, a "triple threat" — a queer woman of color — in the gaming industry, the whitewashing of PAX East, a sociological perspective on GamerGate, being a FragDoll cadet, how gaming saved her marriage, fronting for the rock band Crimson and getting her music into the Ubisoft game Rocksmith, coming out to her father as bisexual, whether being a badass is sexist — and much, much more! So much, that this episode of Polygamer clocks in at two hours, twice its usual length.

Download the audio edition of this interview below or from Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, Overcast, Pandora, Pocket Casts, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, RadioPublic, or the Internet Archive. Click past the jump for links to resources mentioned in this episode.

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Podcast: Download (Duration: 2:07:25 — 59.2MB) | Embed

Polygamer #02: Keisha Howard of the Sugar Gamers

Posted on July 23, 2014 by Ken Gagne

Keisha Howard is the founder of the Sugar Gamers, a female-oriented group of over 2,000 gamers in the Chicago area. Unlike Ubisoft’s Frag Dolls, the Sugar Gamers is a non-competitive social group for women, providing an alternative to other gaming groups’ “sausage fests”. In this episode of Polygamer, Keisha debates what constitutes being a gamer, how and why the Sugar Gamers encourage younger women to enter the gaming industry, and whether it’s sexist to refer to women as “girls”. Keisha then turns the table on host Ken Gagne and asks him why men don’t play as female characters, leading to poor sales of games with female protagonists. Also — is it just us, or is innovation in the non-indie space becoming rarer?

This interview is available on YouTube and in Apple Podcasts.

Links mentioned in this episode:

Keisha Howard of the Sugar Gamers
Frag Dolls
Galloping Ghost arcade of Brookfield, IL — Kickstarter and fundraiser
Underground Retrocade of West Dundee, IL
dys4ia — an autobiographical Atari 2600-style game about transgendering
Creating Diversity Playgroups panel at PAX East 2014

Polygamer explores issues of equality and diversity in the gaming industry. New episodes air every other Wednesday on YouTube and in Apple Podcasts.

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:06:03 — 33.5MB) | Embed