Retcon Games is Negrón’s new studio, founded in October 2021, and “Good Bones” is her first game, due out on August 31. The debut comes nearly half a decade after Negrón made headlines for a lawsuit that shook the video game industry: In November 2018, Negrón, along with former employee Melanie McCracken, sued the “League of Legends” publishing house Riot Games for discrimination on the ground. of gender, sexual harassment and misconduct.
“[Starting my own studio] was just that I was sick of everything in the industry and unable to find my way back after the whole process,” Negrón said. thought, “Okay, this is my last chance. And if this doesn’t work, I’ll just do it myself.” Because after the whole Riot situation and the lawsuit, and these years of struggle, my tolerance for the BS at work is just zero.”
The job last year – the “last shot” – failed. And so Negrón kept her promise to create something new.
“Maybe I can start something new with this kind of vision and a set of values that I think the industry is very lacking in a lot of places,” Negrón said. “I just went for it. I thought I had the time, and I’m in a unique place in my life where I can go for it, and not be super concerned about where I’m going to get my next meal. It was liberating and exciting to own the whole vision, the process, to do things in a way that I know works for me.”
“Good Bones” is a game that feels cozy yet spooky, evoking vibes from Negrón’s Puerto Rican heritage, and featuring art and music from Latinx artists. A point-and-click puzzle game with a supernatural twist, “Good Bones” is about a family trying to rebuild in a new house haunted by the ghost of a young woman who can’t remember why she’s there. To discover more about the family, solve puzzles to lo-fi chill beats with a touch of bossa nova. In later parts of the game, there are elements to consider domestic violence.
For now, Retcon Games is a one-person studio. The studio is named after the term “retcon,” short for retroactive continuity, or the idea that a backstory in, say, a TV show can be edited after the fact.
“There are a lot of stories that have been traced to marginalized people. And I want to go back and re-record and let people tell their stories the way they were meant to be,” Negrón said.
She coded ‘Good Bones’ and wrote a novel full of dialogue and background stories herself. The majority of her $5,000 budget went to art and music, a priority for setting the mood and attracting players. More than 3,500 people have added “Good Bones” to their wishlist on Steam, and Negrón estimates that if only a fraction of those people pay $14.99 for the game, it will break even. Anything extra will go towards funding the next game.
“I really want to develop this into something permanent. I hope I can,” Negrón said. “The vision for this studio is solid. My vision, in general, for the kinds of stories that can be told through games, is solid. And I work in a space where not many people are working right now, and those are just, very high quality story driven games with low production.
She hopes to man the studio in time.
“I hope I can grow sustainably and expand the team in the future to get real developers and become a real studio,” Negrón said.
Launching “Good Bones” on her own is in stark contrast to Negrón’s previous work, where she was part of a larger team.
“My experience at Riot was like going into someone else’s vision and trying to execute. Nice work, great work. But certainly not in the rush to create something yourself,’ she said.
Patricia Navarro Guerra, an artist in Caracas, Venezuela, drew the background art for “Good Bones” after Negrón found her online.
“Working on ‘Good Bones’ was an interesting and exciting experience. Each concept assignment for each background felt like a window into a story that remains secret,” says Navarro Guerra. “There are certain places in the main house where I like to play and find out what’s behind all the little details scattered around places designed to be full of nostalgia.”
The path from Riot Games to “Good Bones” was hardly a straight line. Negrón described her last job at the tabletop gaming company Incredible Dream as the same “white, male-dominated space” that was resistant to her attempts to diversify game stories and characters. The company fired her in July, she said.
Incredible Dream CEO Jane Chung Hoffacker disputed Negrón’s characterization in a statement (“70% of our full-time employees are women,” Chung Hoffacker wrote), but declined to share details of Negrón’s termination, citing a nondisclosure agreement.
On the financing side, Negrón said it’s hard to find investors once you’ve made your voice heard in the industry. Video game venture capital financing is often concentrated in the top of a few dozen companies with significant capital.
Venture capital would be a difficult space for me. I don’t think many people want to work with the woman who sued Riot Games, in terms of investment,” Negrón said. “It’s a crude paradox because you have really brilliant people speaking out to make a better industry. And unfortunately, these people who are most likely to go out alone and try something are also the people who can’t get funding because the people they were talking to are in charge of all the money everywhere.”
Riot Games, the publisher of League of Legends, announced last December that it settled its 2018 gender discrimination lawsuit with California state agencies and current and former female employees for $100 million. The company will pay $80 million to class-action suit members and approximately $20 million in plaintiffs’ legal fees. A judge approved the settlement on July 25, and the case is still awaiting final court approval.
“So much has happened behind the scenes for years to make this possible. It’s a sense of relief. I’m just excited that we’re one step closer to the end,” Negrón said.
Riot’s $100 million settlement comes just as the video game industry is taking a big look at its workplace culture. For example, multiple government agencies are investigating “Call of Duty” and “World of Warcraft” developer Activision Blizzard over allegations of employee sexual misconduct and gender discrimination.
For years, video game industry workers have taken steps to organize the industry. A union at indie developer Vodeo Games was recognized by management last December, followed by Raven Software quality assurance testers who won a union election last May. A group of testers at Blizzard Albany, formerly Vicarious Visions, announced their organizational efforts in July.
“I’ve talked to so many people who have approached me and said, ‘You know, I want to do something about what’s going on in my company, but I don’t even know where to start,'” Negrón said. “The fact that I’ve done all the hard work, so I can be like, ‘Yeah, I got you. This is what you do, this is who you talk to.’ That knowledge being shared and used has been amazing, and it’s about time.”
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