But the guy she went off on wasn't one of the assholes. I highly doubt she woulda got fired if she was going back and forth with someone that was completely disrespectful
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The controversial ArenaNet firings of Guild Wars 2 writers (READ OP)
- Thread starter hydrophilic attack
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I don't have much an opinion on this case beyond internet mobs being fucking awful, but I kinda got iffy vibes from some Youtuber doing a video on the situation where they contextualized as her 'just not getting it' in a way that just smacked of Mansplaining. Well I guess that's another thing, I do think the post replying to her kind of reeks of mansplaining so I feel it was fair for her to call it out. You don't talk to developers like they're children like that.
Except gamers do that to develops all the time. Tons here too, "Why doesn't CoD just update its Engine already?. Is a naive complaint, it's not easy to create a new engine for a game known for its feel and stability. If you're one of Infinity Wards many female graphic engineers do you take that as a insult to you based on your gender or just a stupid complaint based on the persons lack of insight in development?
Now it gets complicated because the guy that tweeted didn't come off as aggressive or in the same manner as my example and the developer seems to have been previously harassed by people because of her gender. Regardless it's expected that one should simply not reply if they feel aggravated froma tweet. A social media account with ties to your employer and in response to a large influencer of your clientele demands more personal responsibility then a comment without thought
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But the issue is the condescending tone of the post; like it isn't self-evidently 'impolite', but the implication here is that the commenter is tutoring the developer, with the implication that she doesn't know any better. If it had been reframed just as a question, or in a way that didn't patronize the developer, there wouldn't be an issue here.
But it plays into a broader climate of women in gaming, or in general really, expected to be more compliant than dudes. It's framed not as a disagreement or a question but as if the developer legitimately hadn't been doing her job properly. And these sorts of slights just build up over time.
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While I agree with many of your posts and understand your anger and frustration, please don't.
It's really not helping. If anything it might make people ignore your otherwise constructive argument altogether. (I'll admit it's kinda cute though.)
That doesn't greatly explain Fries' firing and you're not considering how exactly Price's history could've likely impacted the decision. GG is swift, methodical, and organized and it's conceivable they were on Anet like bees to honey very soon after the initial Twitter exchange.
Many gamers pick on female developers for being woman and not knowing what they are doing and assuming they got th job because of their gender.
An even larger amount of gamers make assumptions by calling developers lazy or expecting things that aren't reasonable, just look at many things on this site, people demanding new graphic engines for established games like I mentioned above with Call of Duty.
Assuming any of the latter complaints must be driven by sexism if it's directed at a woman is proabably not a good idea. If he had a history or any kind of indicator that he chose to call her out based on gender her response would be more justified if still rude due to her position.
There seems to be a theme here that if you're a video game developer the level of responsibility of your comments and expectations of professionalism is less then other industries. If she was an engineer at a big oil company and someone said that she would suffer repercussions. This situation is heightened because of how much more intimate the reletionship is between gamers and developers vs most industries like movies or commercial products. But that doesn't mean the level expected of professionalism demanded by employers is any less
That's a good read.
Also the Arkane narrative designer who dealt with some gamers trying to get her fired, had some pretty good tweets a few days ago.
She posted his tweet on her feed. She pointed all her followers directly at him. She was very much saying that this specific person is terrible
This isnt even remotely analogous. Biden is ACTUALLY SAYING that Obama is the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright. This is an OVERT denigration of every other African American up to that time. He actively denigrates (accidentally) an entire race of people. That is nothing like what Denroir said. Not even close....
Since TB is being brought up I kinda wanna mention some stuff that I find hypocritical.
People are saying Denroir made a unprompted comment about her work. She didn't ask for his opinion and he still gave it to her (Side note, was she not having an AMA? People have mentioned it here before). Therefor he should know the time and place when one should comment on the work of the artist or else it can come off as a slight.
She makes an unprompted tweet about TB after he dies and leaves behind a widowed wife, debt from cancer treatment an son with no father. Nobody asked her to her opinion on his death. It was not a reply. It was a straight up comment, unasked for by anyone. But that's fine?
The more I participate in this thread the less I feel like she should have been fired based off just these 3 incidents. (Rude to coworkers husband, TB comment, this incident). That opinion changes if there were any issues internally.
How likely do you guys think this is just because of the tweets, do you think she could have had issues with other coworkers? If I seem to be building a narrative tell me but I think I'm being fair based off the comments she has made
People are saying Denroir made a unprompted comment about her work. She didn't ask for his opinion and he still gave it to her (Side note, was she not having an AMA? People have mentioned it here before). Therefor he should know the time and place when one should comment on the work of the artist or else it can come off as a slight.
She makes an unprompted tweet about TB after he dies and leaves behind a widowed wife, debt from cancer treatment an son with no father. Nobody asked her to her opinion on his death. It was not a reply. It was a straight up comment, unasked for by anyone. But that's fine?
The more I participate in this thread the less I feel like she should have been fired based off just these 3 incidents. (Rude to coworkers husband, TB comment, this incident). That opinion changes if there were any issues internally.
How likely do you guys think this is just because of the tweets, do you think she could have had issues with other coworkers? If I seem to be building a narrative tell me but I think I'm being fair based off the comments she has made
I'm sure the counter would be it's fine because she didn't @ his widow. It's already been conceded that the streamer's thoughts may have been acceptable if he didn't address Price directly
Exactly. Why should Deroir have to assume the mantle of poster child "sexist mansplainer" when nothing I have found in his history remotely indicates consistently sexist behavior. It'd be like holding up Price (as the Gamergate crowd does) as a stereotypical shrill female game developer. Both actions seem shitty from my perspective.
User banned for thread derail attempt, length permanent by own request
So I didn't chose to weigh in on this until now because I feel like with the mods are being a little too one-sided in this (sorry mods but I really gotta disagree with some of these bans.)
It is a shame that Fries got fired because all he really did was walk into the shooting range. He defended the wrong person for sure but he didn't do anything wrong himself, from what I have seen (and you can prove me wrong) but he wasn't toxic. what he deserved was to be pulled aside and have a quick convo about the situation. Price on the otherhand has had a history of making mountains out of molehills and generally rudeness/toxicity. Regardless of whether or not Deroir was being sexist (I didn't see any evidence) you DO NOT treat your customers like that. Whatever you do on your public social media account should affect your professional career and given her previous record of toxicity I think her being fired is a harsh but fair conclusion to this story.
This was something she did some time back:
I know this was a while ago but its just proof of her history of toxicity. This is flat-out wrong behaviour. Its aggressive and it has no place for anyone who's job is to create because with creation becomes criticism and you have to deal with that and not snap like she did.
This is a little off-topic now but I feel like I have to say this here. Mods, saying video game journalism coverage is bad is not a problem and personally it makes me a little sick that you are banning people for speaking out against them. Not to say that I agree or anything but the whole purpose of this kinda website is to voice opinions and you have to let that happen.
I agree with this fellow user but mostly on the subject of moderation and the subject of double standards. There are users in this very thread that are offensive,dismissive and trolling and noone got not even a warning or ban. There was even an instance that one user( the cute barking one) that got banned for 5 minutes and mysteriously unbanned and some users you questing what happened got banned themselves. There is an agenda and a group of users that follow that that get free pass on anything they say and anyone who disagrees is marked as gator/bigot/mysoginist/sexist and gets banned! A lot of bans here where unjustifies and a few more that where,they were not given.
Also in the topic of 'vilifying journalism' I also think that is a really harsh policy to ban anyone who try to critisize an article especially when there are cases of relly clickbate biased pieces that the mods defend.(These are general remarks from my stay here and not saying that about the current articles in this op even though they are partial and try to elevate the matter to a gender issue).
I really am supportive of all the minorities and I am activily helping them in real life, but I suspect that I will be also marked as troll/bigot for this post because why not?But I could not be silent with all this happening in a forum I had high hopes when and how it was formed but undeserved bans left and right and double standards really sour my visits here. And I know that there are more who think likewise and remain silent or get silenced/banned...
I really hope that the moderators push for equallity and this place become more friendly and promoting civilized dialogue.
PS In the case I get banned please make it permanent and remove my account. I just hope you understand. Thanks in advance and sorry for the long post/slight derail.
I'm curious. What about the articles here at least make them "partial", biased, or clickbait?
If being aggressive about your opinions about blockbuster movies is enough to be a paper trail toward getting fired, probably 90% of the people wanting Price to be fired on Twitter are in trouble due to their Tweets about how The Last Jedi was SJW garbage. Because compared to what I've seen said about that film, what Price said about Infinity War was pretty mild.
Any article that doesn't treat gamers as correct and SJW developers as incorrect hapries is clickbait.
Any article that doesn't treat gamers as correct and SJW developers as incorrect hapries is clickbait.
After reading thru this thread, I have now understood the meaning of the phrase "social media was a mistake". That's my whole takeaway from this fiasco.
greenpower22 As has always been the suggestion on this site: report the posts that you find ban worthy
Agreed. I worked at Riot Games for five years and know what it feels like on the other side. Everything you say is highly scrutinized by a passionate community. It's stressful and ultimately wasn't worth it.
I remember once Marc/Tryndamere was trying to encourage employees to start posting more and interacting more with our community on the forums and reddit. I just looked at him once and was like "Marc, you're asking people to get up and stand in front of 100 million people. It's just not practical."
I feel bad for Jessica Price and really, really bad for Peter Fries, but I also feel bad for ArenaNet. It's a hard situation for both parties. I highly doubt that ArenaNet wanted to fire those two people, and I doubt that the two employees meant harm by their comments. Either way, it's a lose/lose situation.
Maybe I'll ask the mods to drop my alias here. Just feels too risky.
Jesus Christ. How is this ban worthy, this place is a fucking disaster, fuck the censorship team here.
User Banned (1 Week): Personal attacks towards another member
Fuck you.
He did say if they ban him to do it permanently but yeah... it seems a little harsh for that but then again I'm not a mod. This thread has been wild so far.
It's really sad that this poster was banned for saying this. "Account Suicide" is ridiculous seeing as how they said "in the case I get banned", which shouldn't have happened at all.
Disagreeing is basically stating you know better than the person you disagree with. That's fine if both people are on equal footing regarding the subject, but if one has more experience/expertise than the other (especially if that's what their job/qualification is) then it's understandable if they get defensive.
A person with less than fifty posts over the course of 9 months comes in here to make accusations of conspiracy about the staff, claims that the articles being discussed are clickbait, whines about the state of the discussion without participating in it, and backseat mods about who should and shouldn't be banned is incredibly suspect.
Man, why do you guys hate dogs so much?
This is a great article. Especially touches on the Fries thing and how nobody understands why he was fired or why Arenanet hasn't bothered to issue even a generic "harassment is bad mkay" statement. They know what they're doing. They're sending a message to all their employees: you are disposable if the mob wants you gone.
The one thing I will say that I would suggest she should have done is she should not have quote tweeted, she should have screenshotted and blacked out the name.
The old place was taken down by one dude but this whole team is just as bad for different reasons.
Tell me about it. That's bannable under normal circumstances but the user requested any ban be made a perm.
So the user posted temp ban worthy material while requesting a perm if banned.
It's a martyr play.
How about leave him the hell alone instead? Why was that not an option in this scenario?
It was done with discourse and it's not exactly like this place has been running too long.
Since I guess you're on your way out the door, this is a largely pointless response, but his post clearly says that he wants to be permed.
Wait...her Twitter account is public property and anybody can say anything they want to her...but she has to leave him alone...if he tweets at her...I'm so confused...
I dunno b, there are a lot of posters in the thread making terrible arguments and calling anyone who thinks it's normal for employees to get disciplined for unprofessional behavior secret GGers, bootlickers, etc. and all that is being let rock. Only one banned or warned was the one who escalated it to accusations of pedophilia.
Most of the bans are legit tho
"You guys all suck. The leadership is corrupt and probably going to ban me. The articles being discussed are bad clickbait. I'm a nice guy who supports good causes but you will probably disagree with me anyway." is neither civil nor discourse.
It's an option, but she doesn't owe that to him. He happened to be a great example of dudes treating women in games like they need their job explained to them by someone with zero experience, getting called out is a legit risk for shitty behavior like that.
I can't imagine being a dev like that. I absolutely understand that it's super stressful.
I think the biggest reason for all of this is that ArenaNet has built up this... image? I dunno what to call it. A super big thing is that they have frequent and open dev-player talk. We're talking lots and lots of AMAs, basically every new release is followed by one iirc, and then we have the extra ones separated from that. Also a wide variety of streaming activity, some solely focused on the community. Their Twitter is just a stream of retweeting people's screenshots and (positive) feedback, asking people to send them their best screenshot of this or that kind and so on.
It has been like this since at least around GW2 beta, and I think that has led the community to expect (and they have recieved) more than the "normal" dev-player interaction.
Did this make any sense at all?
that verge piece is good
these people have turned getting women fired into a cottage industry
It totally doesn't. How can you read that and interpret it that way, seriously? He's saying, if you're going to ban me for saying this, then make it permanent.
Look at some of his other posts. There's no reason to question if he was a genuine poster or not. Banning for that is some bullshit.
Why are you distilling and twisting his words overly negatively to fit some narrative? His post is on this very page. This is insane.
I'll say Yeah, I sure as hell don't agree with some of the things she was putting out there especially dancing on John Bain's grave no matter what you think of the guy. And I also do generally believe that regardless of being a personal twitter account or not your always out there representing your company even if you aren't directly speaking for them in an official capacity. That being said according to price this was the first time her actions on social media were ever put into question. You'd think they'd at least pull her to the side one day at work and give her a warning before they went ahead and dropped the axe. Especially (and I don't play Guild wars so this is entirely from what I've gathered) that she seemed to be someone they brought in specifically to help turn the game around on the writing front. For a game that seems to be going through very much of a rough patch.
Axing your top talent like that seems like a rather hasty move.
Definitely, and that's the risk that ArenaNet runs when it encourages its employees to participate in the community. At some point, someone will make a mistake, and when they do, it's always a hard situation. Side with the employee and you lose community trust, or side with the community and disincentivize employee engagement.
My point was more that, right now, game developers are asking themselves right now if community engagement is worth it in the long-run.
It's a question that transcends any one individual isolated incident. I remember back when Blizzard was extremely engaged in the community and had blue posters all the time. Riot also used to have a huge percentage of employees posting on their forums and talking to players in-game.
It's also a question that's starting to transcend individual companies. That's why I mentioned Riot Games: they actively encouraged people to participate in the community. At DICE/EA, a friend of mine was actively encouraged to "take pride in his work on Battlefront 2 and Battlefield 5" (he's a level designer, btw). And yet he won't post either to any of his public profiles because he's afraid of what a gaming mob could do.
Individual developers are asking if it's worth the human cost and stress to be public in the gaming community as a developer.
Spoilers: it's not.
I also think that holding up the "GamerGate mob" or sexual harassment is a little bit of a red herring. They absolutely amplify the negative feelings and stress for female game developers, but, in my opinion, this is a question and problem that seems to defy demographics. Passionate playerbases can become very hostile regardless of the gender of the developer.