Alex St. John

Alex St. John, along with Craig Eisler and Eric Engstrom, created the original Microsoft DirectX technology platform. Alex became the Microsoft Windows Game technology evangelist for DirectX through his early work at Microsoft (1992-1997) to advance Windows as a dominant graphics and media platform.

Formerly the Founder and Chairman of WildTangent software, an online video game developer and publisher, Alex was appointed in December, 2009 as the President and CTO of Hi5, a social networking site with an emphasis on on-line gaming. Alex is also a frequent contributor to Computer Power User magazine.[1][2]

He described himself on USENET as "Microsofts dually [sic] appointed DirectRepresentative for this technology." He is one of the main subjects of the book Renegades of the Empire and is mentioned in Masters of Doom.

Criticism

In 2014, St. John published a presentation titled "Recruiting, training and retaining Giants" on his website for a group of tech company CEOs. Critics of the presentation used it to highlight the issue of the lack of diversity within Silicon Valley culture.[3]

In 2016, he wrote an article for VentureBeat entitled "Game developers must avoid the ‘wage-slave’ attitude", in which he blames game developers for "embrac[ing] a culture of victimology" when it comes to crunch time.[4] The article was widely criticized,[5][6] and the attention eventually revealed the 2014 presentation, which invoked further criticism, including by St. John's own daughter Amilia, who called it a "horrific toddler meltdown" and a "toxic waste trash fire".[7]

References
  1. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2002-06-25. Retrieved 2007-05-11.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  2. "Alex St. John on Direct3D, OpenGL, and John Carmack". rmitz.org.
  3. Romano, Aja. "Everything wrong with Silicon Valley's bro culture in one gross presentation". Vox. Retrieved 2016-04-21.
  4. "Game developers must avoid the 'wage-slave' attitude". April 16, 2016.
  5. "Devs respond to controversial article defending crunch hours and 'unfair' pay". April 18, 2016.
  6. Chalk, Andy (April 19, 2016). "Why game devs were right to ridicule DirectX co-creator's article glorifying "crunch"".
  7. John, Amilia St (April 21, 2016). "I Am Alex St. John's Daughter, and He Is Wrong About Women in Tech" – via www.wired.com.


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