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The Character Assassination of Troy Leavitt | Sacred Symbols+ Episode 166

In early 2021, a hack journalist deployed a transparent political attack on a relatively anonymous game dev. The dev's name is Troy Leavitt, a veteran designer of the Utah studio scene with experience at defunct teams like SingleTrac, and more recently at the Disney-owned and then WB-owned Avalanche Studios. There, he quietly toiled away on high-quality licensed games until, like a meteor, his world was blown apart. Why? Because, years prior, he dared question the political orthodoxy of the industry on his YouTube channel. And that's it. A year after his life radically changed, we sat down to talk not only about his experience in the industry going back to the '90s, but what it was like working on Hogwarts Legacy and how he dealt with the fallout surrounding the coordinated attack on his character, his work, and his beliefs. If you don't want to hear about politics, that's fine. Just don't hit play. You've been warned. Get early exclusive access to Sacred Symbols+ at https://www.patreon.com/LastStandMedia

Comments

RD_21

😲

Alex Watson

Feel like I’m just saying the same thing every week on here now. But damn, y’all continue to raise the bar for guests. Can’t wait to listen to this one.

Kenneth Oms

Hey brotha not done with the episode yet, but it’s top notch quality. In regards to ign , I agree that it doesn’t seem like it’s people who are enthusiastic about games. I think we have a mutual acquaintance there back when I worked at igns parent company, the director of their video player, he’s a great guy. I do think the problem is that the company is trying to branch out too much and is probably hiring too many freelancers for everything. They keep trying to feed google news and social by focusing too much on google trends. Meanwhile, google is making changes so that their own proprietary content shows up now for game reviews etc. i think the site has become too much of a content machine and not a lot of it is quality content

Jay Lewis

Can’t. Click. Fast. Enough! 😳😍

Aubrey

It's so refreshing to hear one of these people who have been victimized by the mob tell it like it is instead of making excuses for people who hate them.

Josh Paradysz

Excellent episode. I went in not knowing exactly what to expect but it was a great conversation to listen to.

LastStandMedia

IGN will only survive because of its deep legacy in Google and other places, and its name-recognition. No one goes there for personalities anymore.

Card Captor Corey

As someone in Utah I appreciate you talking about the game development and discussing this with him. The first meetup on the west coast would be awesome if it was here

BettyAnn Moriarty

Wow! What a wonderful, enlightening, honest conversation. Amazing work! Thanks to you both. 👏🏻👍🏻

Anonymous

Great episode Colin. Your description of people wanting to write about other things but just can’t and that’s why they go into games media/journalism is spot on. That stuff is everywhere nowadays.

Tony Parra

That was an amazing episode!

Tacoyaki

Yes! Thank you as always!

Ambitious Casual

GOD! Colin, you are knocking it out of the park with these interviews. Putting in the hard work and delivering some of the best content in games. KEEP IT UP!

The Funky Monk

Doubtful he'd have been able to reply, but I've been wondering if the HP game has gotten rewritten in some way to be more 'trans-friendly' or even make it a central plotline of the story. Was extra curious given his take on woke ideologies permeating game stories. Fantastic interview Colin.

Matthew Mendillo

These interviews have just been getting better and better. Thanks for the continued top notch content. My dollar is well spent here

Austin

All this Utah talk is just making me want y’all to do a live show here. We would show out for sure!

RK128

This was a fantastic interview. Firstly, I completely forgot Avalanche made the Tak games and I loved those growing up so the name drop made me smile. But seeing this kind man have his story told of getting raked over the coils was… it’s just unfair. No one deserves that. And some of the smaller bits, like what you mentioned about IGN was eye opening. Hope we get more content like this going forward because as many have stated, you are really good at asking the right questions and reading a room.

Miky Sh

This episode was so great. Although ss+ interviews are killing, I still wish they were longer. I especially enjoy it when guests go outside of the topic or talk about philosophy and their thought process of things. All and all, things are going in the right direction and makes LSM more worth the subscription. Great job Colin 👍🏼

easelgames

I mean it goes as long as Colin can keep the quality high, and the guests not tied down for hours on end. I appreciate the timeframe being in a more digestible form.

Owen

I think from a conversation perspective it was very passionate. I feel like from an interview perspective though that a lot of time was spent with like Colin’s opinion. And that could be because the interviewee doesn’t know you very well, and so you wanna provide context but from a listener perspective I’ve heard the opinion several times at this point, and it sometimes feels like it’s leading the interviewee to a certain narrative or trying to (whether that’s on purpose or just a result of your passion I have no idea) Really glad he came on though, and y’all continue to get a great lineup of guests.

Keith W

Mormonism will always look cultish because the founder benefited and was enriched by the creation of a new faith. It's very suspicious when someone says they've found secret knowledge, and that they should be King. The Christian church fathers were almost without exception tortured and subjected to gruesome deaths as a reward for their evangelization. They had no worldly incentives.

IslanderButNotLong

LSM keeps hitting it out of the park with these interviews my goodness. Two thumbs up from me! Happy to be a patron here, and I am not going anywhere anytime soon. Thanks for all you do.

Austin

The LDS church is very wealthy today, but during its founding it was in debt and he was shot and killed. So not sure that logic holds. All religions are cults in a traditional sense.

Eebo85

Great episode, and the fact that he wore a RUSH shirt elevates it to beyond greatness!!!

HaydenPotato

Great episode. I live very close to the salt lake area and I can’t believe I never knew avalanche was based there 😂

Jack Sibert

AH YES pre-listen comment- I used to listen to Troy's stuff and have been wanting this episode for so long!

Luke Silletta

Great interview. But I was wierded out because Troy looks EXACTLY like my uncle.

Jefferson Souza

I enjoyed this the most because it introduced me to Troy Leavitt. I picked up in the interview the he has a proclivity to discuss topics adopting a more academic approach, and that was confirmed with his Power Point presentations on his channel. Now I’m binging his old videos and would love to hear more about him on current affairs. As Colin well said at the end, this guy’s a treasure.

Matthew Perry

After watching this it reminded me of an episode you did with nick calandra from the escapist about what the hells happened to games media and was just wondering if you were gonna get him back on anytime soon ?

Fotis Lyto

Ah man so nice to see Troy again, I subbed to his channel so many full moons ago. So nice to see he is still the cool guy he was back then. Also, great conversation Colin. Thank you for this.

Wretched Spawn

I already had admiration for Troy when the media tried stirring up that nothing burger about him. And this podcast only further cemented my respect for him. I look forward to the day when this woke, neo-marxist drivel gets put in its place for good. Excellent episode.

BlindRiot

Great interview, it’s such bullshit what The Wokes put this guy through. He seems like a fine gentleman.

Levelupbrady

This might be one of the best podcasts I've ever listened to.

Sam

Great as usual Colin. Thanks for this! Andrew Yang? Seems like a nice dude, but wasn’t part of his plan to give everyone “free” $1000 per month? We’ll just tax the shit out of you for that “free” money lol. Lastly, everything woke turns to shit!