Slashdot Mirror
Game Company Fires Two Employees Who Complained About 'Mansplaining' on Twitter (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader quotes the Verge:
On July 3rd, narrative designer Jessica Price tweeted a 29-tweet thread dissecting the challenges of writing player characters in an MMORPG. A streamer who goes by Deroir responded, "Really interesting thread to read! However, allow me to disagree slightly," and shared a three-tweet explanation of how narrative design influences player expression in the sort of games that Price narratively designs. Price both replied directly to Deroir, tweeting "thanks for trying to tell me what we do internally, my dude," and retweeted his response with the caption "today in being a female game dev: 'Allow me -- a person who does not work with you -- to explain to you how you do your job....'"
Price's suggestion that Deroir was mansplaining game development -- an area where he does not have the same knowledge or experience -- sparked anger among the ArenaNet community. She subsequently responded to those criticizing her on Twitter. [Here's the first lines of that tweet. "Since we've got a lot of hurt manfeels today, lemme make something clear: this is my feed. I'm not on the clock here. I'm not your emotional courtesan just because I'm a dev. Don't expect me to pretend to like you here. The attempts of fans to exert ownership over our personal lives and times are something I am hardcore about stopping."] Price was fired shortly after. Although many fans are comparing this to something like working in a restaurant -- be polite to the customer, or get fired -- Price says it's impossible to talk about this incident without larger context about systematic online harassment, particularly the sometimes abusive relationship between fans and game developers and the failure of game companies to address it. "Game companies are generally unwilling to be honest with themselves about how they're complicit in creating and sustaining that environment," she tells The Verge...
Price adds that she believes her firing was an emotional reaction on the part of ArenaNet co-founder Mike O'Brien. "He fired me personally, and the meeting was mostly him venting his feelings at me," she says. "I understand being afraid when you see the Reddit mob coming for you, but if people with less power can weather it -- and we do, regularly -- so can he...."
"We can probably fire anyone on the GW2 dev team as long we make a big enough stink," wrote one user on the Guild Wars 2 subreddit. "Nobody at Arenanet is safe from the hand of reddit. We're literally running the company now..." UPDATE (7/12/18): That user eventually clarified that their remark was satirical, identifying themself as an angry Reddit user who felt powerless and "surrounded by individuals who are so thoughtless and shitty I was hoping I'd appeal to some sort of sense of decency by writing the most vile shit I could think of... I took it down because I realized that nobody was going to disagree with me."
ArenaNet also fired Peter Fries, a writer who'd worked for them for 12 years, apparently for defending Price in a series of now-deleted tweets. (For example, "Here's a bit of insight that I legitimately hope [Deroir] reflects on: she never asked for his feedback.")
"The message is very clear, especially to women at the company," Jessica Price tells the Verge. "If Reddit wants you fired, we'll fire you. The quality of your work doesn't matter."
Price's suggestion that Deroir was mansplaining game development -- an area where he does not have the same knowledge or experience -- sparked anger among the ArenaNet community. She subsequently responded to those criticizing her on Twitter. [Here's the first lines of that tweet. "Since we've got a lot of hurt manfeels today, lemme make something clear: this is my feed. I'm not on the clock here. I'm not your emotional courtesan just because I'm a dev. Don't expect me to pretend to like you here. The attempts of fans to exert ownership over our personal lives and times are something I am hardcore about stopping."] Price was fired shortly after. Although many fans are comparing this to something like working in a restaurant -- be polite to the customer, or get fired -- Price says it's impossible to talk about this incident without larger context about systematic online harassment, particularly the sometimes abusive relationship between fans and game developers and the failure of game companies to address it. "Game companies are generally unwilling to be honest with themselves about how they're complicit in creating and sustaining that environment," she tells The Verge...
Price adds that she believes her firing was an emotional reaction on the part of ArenaNet co-founder Mike O'Brien. "He fired me personally, and the meeting was mostly him venting his feelings at me," she says. "I understand being afraid when you see the Reddit mob coming for you, but if people with less power can weather it -- and we do, regularly -- so can he...."
"We can probably fire anyone on the GW2 dev team as long we make a big enough stink," wrote one user on the Guild Wars 2 subreddit. "Nobody at Arenanet is safe from the hand of reddit. We're literally running the company now..." UPDATE (7/12/18): That user eventually clarified that their remark was satirical, identifying themself as an angry Reddit user who felt powerless and "surrounded by individuals who are so thoughtless and shitty I was hoping I'd appeal to some sort of sense of decency by writing the most vile shit I could think of... I took it down because I realized that nobody was going to disagree with me."
ArenaNet also fired Peter Fries, a writer who'd worked for them for 12 years, apparently for defending Price in a series of now-deleted tweets. (For example, "Here's a bit of insight that I legitimately hope [Deroir] reflects on: she never asked for his feedback.")
"The message is very clear, especially to women at the company," Jessica Price tells the Verge. "If Reddit wants you fired, we'll fire you. The quality of your work doesn't matter."
Someone who is unable to take valid criticism, immediately making a fuss about on it on social media, generalizing members of both genders, isn't good a look for a company.
That term was invented by Neo-Nazism-feminists. Their way is the only way, and it doesn't include men at all, as men are evil in everything they do.. Its very sickening.
Quoth Jessica on the death of John "TotalBiscuit" Bain (dead at age 33 by cancer): "The kindest thing I can say is "I'm glad he's no longer around to keep doing harm.""
let me make it crystal clear:
you responded to simple criticism with sexist remarks.
that shit don't fly.
First, let's get the obvious out of the way: women also try to explain and argue things they have no clue about.
So if I say "you're cluelessly explaining", versus "you're cluelessly explaining in a MAN way", does the second add any information besides the implication that men are bad? If "mansplaining" is a pejorative term, this situation becomes simple: in the US, if someone is a bigot in public and gets caught, their company typically fires them.
On the other hand, I think that response is a problem in US culture. Everyone has ugly aspects in their personality. Firing should not be a standard response whenever a bit of ugliness rises to the surface. This seems like a bit of Puritan legacy which our European friends don't share.
A cat can't teach a dog to bark.
She got fired for being a sexist jerk. Her co-worker got fired for joining into the sexist attack. The person that responded to her, Deroir, said nothing sexist, demeaning, belittling, or insulting to her. SHE is the one who took things too. She could have simply ignored the comments if she did not want to interact with him. Reddit did not do the damage, she and her co-worker did this to themselves.
She was being an asshole, fueled/excused by her idea that men are enemies, while somewhat representing the Company (which customers likely are 90% men), and got burned. Big deal.
It's weird how the left whines about how we talk about each other (here in Sweden at-least, once we've finally started to trash-talk them back) and how supposedly now the dscussions are so toxic / uncivilized even though their method operandi has always been screaming and trying to put shameful words onto people rather than actually meeting an argument or having a conversation. They used to be such great fans of it. And I still think they are. And I still think they will continue. It's just that it's pretty boring to be on the receiving end .. "There's a problem people don't dare to speak what's on their mind!" - yeah⦠can't imagine anyone having had such problems before!!
Anyway, feminism is cancer and sexist.
This woman is the sort of toxic "feminist" that _MUST_ be the victim. ALL THE TIME. And if you're male? you're both THE PROBLEM and WRONG.
She was a writer at a game developer. She took a nice big crap on the majority of their playerbase. They were right to fire her. And I hope she's made good investments. Because this is the sort of publicity that buries not just a job, but a career.
Iâ(TM)m tired of this PC bullshit but if it gets men fired regularly then also having it get women fired too is long overdue. Gender equality ladies!!!!
And, of course, The Verge tries to spin this 180 degrees to make HER the victim. Nope. SHE is the one that caused her own firing.
Man/Woman/Other-splaining. A sexist word no matter what the prefix is.
That's 50% of the population right there. If I have to walk on eggshells because you might make it a gender issue, who is the one using gender as a weapon?
Not denying sexism exists, it does. It also exists in these hardcore gaming feminists, who are shooting themselves in the foot with really rather terrible arguments and soundbites.
It no longer amazes me when these snowflake females whine about "real world reality" not matching their "fem world reality" thinking.
Suck it up girl! The world is really tough out there. Nobody owes you anything and everyone will have an opinion, right or wrong.
Maybe those on social media should take the time to learn a "real world lesson" here.
If social media can connect you to your employer, then anything you say about your work in public on social media will likely reflect on your employer, right or wrong. Most employers do not like their employees "going rogue" by spouting off comments in public that reflect badly on the company. Why? It's bad for the stock price. It spoils the carefully crafted corporate image that's managed by public relations types. And it can negatively impact future sales.
Even woorse, your comments might attract negative social media commentary towards the company. Note the Reddit outrage directed at this company due to the comments of this female.
So let me repeat myself.
If your social media postings can connect you to your current employer, then expect your comments to attract lots of scrutiny, right or wrong.
Oh, you might want to consider this. Lots of employers now search social media when considering new hires. If they find that you like to post "work related" stuff on social media, then they might have second thoughts about hiring you since you might appear to be untrustworthy with company information.
If your social media "runs down" your experiences with past employers, then future prospective employers might be reluctant to consider you. Why? They have a corporate image to manage, and hiring a new employee that has a habit of "airing dirty laundry in public" after they leave can be bad for business.
Lots of people really don't consider the impact of their social media postings on their employment, but they should. So when in doubt, don't post it and you'll likely save having to explain it later to someone that might hold your future at your current employer in the palm of their hands.
magic word: poetry
There are several comments highly critical of Price's sexist attitude, and I would tend to agree, except that reading the article, I think "mansplaining" might be the reporter's choice of words, rather than Price's.
Why does anyone still read rags like The Verge?
I would also tend to lean to warning and then firing developers who argued with young teenagers on line not as a stranger but as an employee of the company.
Oh noes, the horror, seemingly adult developers are getting harassed by teenage boys and girls. Yep, that is a real problem and the problem is not the teenage boys and girls, they are just being what you would expect children to do as the struggle with the hormonal changes of adolescence. The adult employees are the problem and their inability to mature, hence warning then firings.
If they are adults and they arguing shite with adolescents online, then they are problem and they need to grow the fuck up and shut the fuck up if they can not control themselves.
Gamergate, adult narcissistic women, arguing shite with young teenage boys and those narcissistic women claiming it meant something so, they could play the victim and profit by it (technically the behaviour of the women was child abuse as it promoted bad behaviour in the children they targeted, so the children would hurl insults at them online).
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
My understanding is, the guy who messaged her, was very tame in his reply, it was a direct reply to her tweet and I believe he works or worked with them or he was some kind of official partner.
He also was quite tame in his response and gender had nothing to do with it. Furthermore, his behaviour the remainder of the night, was very much polite and lite, he really wanted nothing to do with an internet lynching and was just disapointed by her reply.
Her reply was a quote tweet (ie: a shaming) to make them look bad and went on to a gender whine.
I've become very sick of this gender politics / identity politics bullshit, she was foolish to defer to the "I'm a woman so he's not allow to question me" however that being said, firing her seems a bit excessive.
I'm not sure why this belongs on bloody slashdot though, more political stuff eh?
And nothing of value was lost.
She got fired for being a sexist jerk.
Really? Which official company channel did she use while being a sexist jerk? I hope your employer sees this and fires you because I think you're and idiot and they are an idiot for hiring you.
...don't freak out when someone disagrees with you online.
Yeah, because Slashdotters never get their panties in a twist when someone they perceive as a layman in a subject tries to correct a person working in that field...
Those who do not learn from commit history are doomed to regress it.
So, a person - presumably a customer - posts his opinion on a subject.
A developer, with a huge following immediately publicly shames him, and retweets, using their large public following to embarrass the person who deigned to weigh in on a subject that apparently only developers know about.
The publisher then sacks the employee for bringing the company into disrepute.
Sacking seems a little heavy handed here, but I don't think the employee was in the right.
Is she? Did she formally issue a position on something on the clock? Did she waste time at work? Did she fail at her job? Yeah she came across as an arse, but in her own time.
She is the victim here in terms of her firing. Just not in terms of people being pissy at here. Don't conflate the two. Employers should not have power over our personal lives.
Job security should be a powerful reason to stay away from social media. I get it that online presence for digital era professionals sort of strengthens our self-image for future endeavors when your current job goes bust, but this person had a lot of hubris during and after, judging by the now-too-public burnt bridge in the form of "what I really think about my old boss's ideals".
Error #1 was still believing this lie: "lemme make something clear: this is my feed. I'm not on the clock here."
Used to be that only the president and politicians as public figures had to worry about staying anonymous or keeping things down low.
That nobody has private lives now is pretty grim, even if we don't have the "curse" side-effects of being rich and powerful, everything outside of work will still follow you back home and to your boss after it raises a stink online --even if not immoral (nobody broke any laws leading to jail, but obviously since there is no law protecting employees from having offended their manager outside of working hours, and we are in at-will employment then the boss can just say "Your free actions do not protect you from consequences")
I feel for all of you using pseudonyms. You may feel safe in keeping your twitter and facebook fights and flaming, but we are all just one step away from getting Doxxed, and then someone will *always* have a record of our history that will be immune to our attempts to "delete" it.
people on here will go to fuckin bat for dudes accused of sexual harassment but if some lady contends that men are being rude as fuck to her for being a woman she deserves it? this site sucks you people are trash
She celebrated TotalBiscuit's death, she's a hateful, evil, sexist, racist feminist lunatic, and according to management this was the last straw after a string of far left nutjob bullshit. That's the REAL story. This is not even about reddit. This is about another SJW getting what she deserved.
Not only was he not insulting, he was right. The player's choices usually can't affect the outcome but they can certainly allow the game to develop an understanding of how the player wants to play and respond to them accordingly.
I would also completely disagree with the "she didn't ask for his input" defense. Putting something on twitter is asking for a response. He didn't break into her house and read her diary and then leave her a note disagreeing with her.
But I wouldn't fire either of them over just that nonsense.
Private in the public/protected sense of the word? So how come Deroir was able to read and comment on it?
Private in the sense of personal? So how come she was wittering about work[1]-related stuff rather that posting cat pics?
[1] Using the word in its broadest sense. Definite B Ark material.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
So she got fired for, among other things, being sexist. That's appropriate.
You think I give a fuck about your narrative design insights? Then why would you expect me not to give you my two cents? Of course I'm going to tell you "how to do your job" if what you wrote is at all interesting to me. Sorry for "mansplaining" that to you, darling.
I read what the guy wrote, and what she said in response. Arenanet fucked this up bigtime and I expect a lot of devs there - especially their writers - will be looking at exit strategies. There are plenty of other game companies in Seattle. They will contact Arenanet employees and attempt to poach them.
Jessica Price wrote this long, nuanced article about the way to make the player feel they are participating in the world without breaking the way players project their own personality into their characters. In MMOs (I've worked on two) your character is an avatar; it's yourself in the virtual world. It's not like most games where you're operating an already defined character.
The guy (Deroir I think is his name) replied to this with a suggestion so insultingly simple it deserved scorn. He was polite, but it was a REALLY condescending response. Imagine you drive a truck on a really tricky route and write about all the things you contend with. You've been doing this successfully for years. Then someone says, politely, but meaning to educate you, "if you turned the wheel and used the gas at the same time, how about that?" That's a thing deserving only scorn.
She unloaded on him pretty hard, but it was the right way to nip that idiocy in the bud. If she hadn't most likely a whole bunch of other people would've chimed in with similar stupidity. Arenanet management immediately fired her, plus a colleague who had made a few mild comments in support of her.
Bottom line; your staff are the most important thing you have. If you throw talented long-time staff members to the wolves, you stand a good chance of wrecking your relationship with your staff. Everybody else will see that as ruthlessness and feel fear!
Personally I will now never even consider working with Arenanet's leadership and other devs I know are saying the same thing. That the guy has some sort of business relationship with Arenanet only makes it worse; Now every time the company signs a deal with someone the staff will wonder if that person will endanger their career. The game biz is cut-throat; a little self-inflicted wound can have major effects. Arenanet are probably going to suffer the consequences in an ugly way.
Graham
You still read Slashdot...
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
I think the problem started even before. She apparently started a 29-tweet thread (which should automatically tell you it was not the right medium), expecting no criticism/feedback/etc.
If you don't know what twitter is, stay away. That has worked great for me so far!
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
29 tweets? Sheesh. Doesn't ArenaNet have a forum or something?
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
That workers in the US are indentured slaves. In the EU, employees have a right to a personal life, and it would be illegal to fire someone for expressing their personal opinion as an individual. There's been some talk about "cucks" on here from the usual unfuckables that are particularly funny given that.
Yeah she came across as an arse, but in her own time.
If it's a firing offense for a male employee, it should be for a female employee as well. But in a male, that's what is called self-assertiveness.
Can work both ways? Who'd a thunk it.
Achievement unlocked: Ultimate Irony!
Um. If you're discussing what you do at work with a customer of your employer, it doesn't matter whether you called the twitter feed a "personal account" - you're speaking for the company. How you behave reflects on your employer, and your employer is justified in telling you not to do that, or, in a particularly egregious case, firing you over it.
Never underestimate the stupidity inherent in all human beings.
Disclaimer: I do game dev.
You're not wrong, but there's a fair bit of debate that goes on about "superficial choice." If the choice has no consequences, is it really a choice, or is it just virtue signalling for the player? How much of an impact does a choice need to have before it becomes part of the story, and how much is just "fake depth?"
Basically, if every choice you make leads to the same place, do any of those choices matter? It's a complex question, both for philosophy and for game development. People get pretty worked up over it.
Never underestimate the stupidity inherent in all human beings.
Deroir is not just some streamer. He has an NPC in the game named after him i.e. he has a special relationship with the company. There were other pillars of the fan community also taking part in the twitter discussion and Price insulted them as well. She called Deroir "rando asshat." Price has been with the company less than a year, so she probably didn't even realize that she was taking a dump on the company's biggest, most high profile fans.
The reddit quote about the "hand of reddit" was almost immediately downvoted to oblivion i.e. the community at large didn't agree with it at all. It was probably posted with the express purpose of including it in the news stories about the incident.
That being said, this isn't really about politics at all. Jessica Price clearly has issues. Even before the incident her twitter was so full of negativity and toxicity that she can't possibly lead a happy life. You don't fly off the handle like that when your things are in order. I hope she eventually gets the help that she so obviously needs.
He was polite, but it was a REALLY condescending response.
She unloaded on him pretty hard, but it was the right way to nip that idiocy in the bud.
I'm a guy and I had to deal with stuff like that when I was younger. For example, when I started with SAIC at the NASA Langley Research Center in 1996. My first time on-site, a much older admin literally started explaining to me how Unix worked. I interrupted him and said that not only was my BSCS degree focus in operating systems, but that I had actually taken a course in BSD internals from Kirk McKusick when I was an admin with Unisys at the NASA LaRC supercomputing group -- I was an admin for their Cray 2 and YMP supercomputers and 3 Convex mini-supercomputers from 1988-1992 -- and that I knew how Unix (and, more specifically, SunOS) worked. He shut up and we got along pretty well after that.
Unfortunately, sometimes pushing back hard is the only way to get any (initial) respect and, unfortunately, I've seen it be worse for women.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
In many sensible countries, publicly making sexist and inflammatory remarks that are related to your work and employment can be sufficient grounds for getting fired. Personally I think firing her just for this isn't warranted... but I wouldn't be surprised if there's a prior history of similar behaviour. Maybe she handled criticism or suggestions from her co-workers with the same grace and tact. From the interview on the Verge, it sure sounds as if she tends to take criticism as a personal attack.
I'm actually more interested in why Fries got fired after defending her on Twitter. As far as I can tell he was perfectly polite.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Please do not engage publicly (or privately) with customers in a negative manner. This is a big "no-no", and can result in a negative outcome, similar to this one.
I agree that firing could be excessive, but it is still within the bounds of how HR can approach these issues.
If you are worried about someone being wrong in the internet, remember the xkcd:
https://xkcd.com/386/
It is not your job to fix the internet.
I am what you would call a "leftist" or even worst an egalitarian "socialist" which is probably a gross word for msot american ;) (e.g. everybody no matter skin color, gender, sexuality , wealth or political affiliation should have the same equality of opportunity + as a specie we fare better when we protect each other so social net to catch those who fall in the crack e.g. illness, financial problem, rehabilitation etc...).
She was rightfully terminated. She was toxic, obnoxious.
As for the "loud mouth" and the whiner as you call them , they are a problem from all political parties. You would better off to recognize that there are loud mouth in the right wing , mysoginistic racist bigot, and loud mouth on the left wing, ultra "mansplaining manhating" "human are the problem ecologist" and I pass many others. They are a minority but both side are using them as a scapegoat to accuse the other party of going too far, and get brownie point from their base. I doubt all dems are as you describe, just like I doubt all reps are nazis racist. But if you believed the minority yelling, that is the impression you would get
My advice : ignore the extreme left and the extreme right yelling, fight them rationally without name calling, and consider they are truly a minority. So if somebody from your party is trying to use the other party loudmouth as a scapegoat, then get skeptic and look closely at the man behind the curtain puppetting the show, because chance are they are pointing at the loudmouth from the other side to bamboozle you , and withdraw attention from the problem of your own side. Just a friendly advice, and if many of you take it, this should bring back the US politic discourse to the center rather than the ultra extreme. And chance is that it would force head of both party to work for the mass, rather than the extreme ideology. Win win.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
If you publicly present yourself as an employee of a company on Twitter, talk about your work and go off on well-known community members, that's not private.
Assuming that's all true - then you roll your eyes and brush the question aside, answer it with some friendly sarcasm, or even with (gasp) a professional response. Not by losing your shit and going on a sexist rant from out of nowhere.
Fixed.
Uh huh. And if you're willing to throw your customers and community under the bus because one of your employees is a snowflake - let me know when you go public so I can buy some put options.
Jessica Price:
Since I spent all kinds of time saying it on a Reddit AMA, and I haven't talked about actual game dev on Twitter in a while, here's a thread about writing for the PC character in an MMO.
The dirty secret is I'm not sure if it's possible to make an MMORPG (or CRPG) character compelling, because people have different expectations about what that character will be, as opposed to a pre-designed character in a single-player game.
People booting up Bioshock know they're playing Jack. People starting Dishonored know they're playing Corvo. People beginning Tomb Raider know they're playing Lara Croft. So in those games, you have more wiggle room to make the protagonist an actual character.
Whereas in an RPG, where the player chooses all kinds of character options and names their character and designs their face and so on, they feel more ownership over that character. They're not playing a character YOU designed--they're playing a character THEY designed.
So if Jack or Lara or Corvo says or does something the player doesn't feel that THEY would say or do, the player's more forgiving, because they have the expectation that they're piloting a character someone else created.
N.B. that I'm not talking about overall plot objectives/quests. Players know going in that the game is going to be telling them what to do, and their character is going to do it, and that holds true even when they've "created" the character.
But the *interpersonal* stuff, the PC's REACTIONS, players respond strongly to. Some people don't like it if they think their character's responding in ways that make them too much of an asshole. Some don't like it if their character's responses seem weak.
So, basically, most things that you'd do writing-wise to give a character, well, CHARACTER, are going to upset a large contingent, maybe even a majority, of your players.
So--I know I've said this before on Twitter, but it's still going to weird people out, but please bear with me--you have to construct your MMO/RPG's PC character's dialogue as if they were Bella Swan from Twilight.
To be clear, I don't think Twilight is good writing. I don't think Bella Swan's a well-constructed book character. And I think people who criticize Twilight for the latter are correct but also missing the reason for Twilight's popularity.
Because Twilight isn't the love story of Bella and Edward. It's the *experience of being loved by Edward.* Which is why Bella's constructed the way she is.
Bella Swan is a carefully constructed blank space, with JUST enough personality to function. All of her personality traits are chosen to avoid preventing the reader from inserting themselves into the space she holds in the story.
She's a bit of a klutz, but JUST enough to make her endearing, not enough to prevent her from actually doing anything the story needs her to do. She's a little bit awkward. JUST enough to be relatable but not enough to actually hinder her. And so on.
And essentially, we have to write the player character in an MMO/RPG the same way.
Specifically in GW2, in the Living World, we can write the Commander with a bit of wry exasperation, a hint of impatience, a touch of "okay, I'm done fooling around with this crap and I'm going to take charge," but most of their lines have to be pretty devoid of personality.
Because if we give them too much personality, it might clash with how the player is imagining Their Commander.
So, how do we tell a TV-like season of story with a protagonist who can't
I agree with you, but you must see that it would be somewhat unworkable to require companies to fully respect the free speech of their employees, as plenty of protected speech is widely considered to be vile. I don't think she said something nearly so terrible, but I can't exactly go campaigning for people who are openly bigoted against minorities or women to keep their employment regardless of their public actions, since at that point we're weighing free speech against free association, and how am I supposed to tell women or minorities that they must be comfortable working with or buying from this person? It's a good idea, but not necessarily one that is actually implementable since everyone will have a different idea of what "level" of protected speech should be protected within employment. There is no objective standard for what free speech is sufficiently "good" free speech and what speech is "bad" speech.
When the mentioned her company by name, she immediately became a PR person.
A cat can't teach a dog to bark.
The guy (Deroir I think is his name) replied to this with a suggestion so insultingly simple it deserved scorn. He was polite, but it was a REALLY condescending response. Imagine you drive a truck on a really tricky route and write about all the things you contend with. You've been doing this successfully for years. Then someone says, politely, but meaning to educate you, "if you turned the wheel and used the gas at the same time, how about that?" That's a thing deserving only scorn.
She unloaded on him pretty hard, but it was the right way to nip that idiocy in the bud.
No it was not right, it was hateful by her.
In your professional workspace you have to deal with morons. Everyday. Customers, or like here business partners. You can tell them off, but you cannot insult them like she did, publicly.
Also there are the different areas of engagement to consider. If you deal with such a person personally at the office, like the two Unix greyboards in the other response, then yes you can, maybe, call him an asshole while personally talking directly to him. You cannot do this on Twitter which is a public forum. It's very different if you call someone in person an asshole or publish it in a trade magazine for the whole industry. Same words, totally different outcome, for good reason.
What's more: the greybeard had to work with this guy everyday, could not avoid him so a clearing of the air is necessary one day, the sooner the better. She could have easily avoided and simply ignored the replies without any consequences to her work, her posting or anything else in her life.
Bottom line: it's not what she did, telling him off, but HOW she did it that got her fired.
If you and your other writers can afford to screen for companies where you can insult business partners, then more power to you. I doubt it will be many companies to choose from unless game text writers are a suddenly very sought after profession.
The forum where the discussion happened was is important. If everybody participating were a game dev with 10 year experience it might make sense to scorn somebody with too simple suggestions or it might not make sense even there. I am not a game dev as I work at tottally different field and even in our company internal discussions it is not allowed to talk like Jessica did.
In this case most of the audience were not professional game devs so simple comments from simple people are expected. If you cannot handle those then do not try to talk to simple people.
I as a simple person did not understand that the suggestion was too simple. To me it sounded like a valid comment. And to get a sexist reply to that seemed totally out of line. Sexist comment is out of line everywhere.
If this was the fist incident this probably wouldn't be that big of a issue but she has a long history. Based on her past behaviour I'm pretty sure this is more of a "last drop" situation than the one defining moment.
This isn't the first time she went off on streamers or made sexist remarks. All the while putting the name of her employer next to every single shitty thing she said, like being glad Totalbiscuit died. She publicly associated her employer with every one of her rants.
Being a game developer does not entitle you to drag your employer into your own personal political crusade.
You're just wrong. First off her article wasn't that insightful to begin with. It's a lot of words yes, but she isn't really saying much and she's very much overcomplicating it.
Perhaps his solution was trite and too simple. But rather than take it as constructive criticism based on the things she was saying, she assumes that she's being told to do her job by a man and that because he's a man his opinion is worthless to her. She's the one that brought gender into it. His advice reads the same whether she's male or female. But her desire to bring gender politics into something as simple as this, means that she is more than willing to blame gender politics for anything else that goes wrong. This is like rabies. As soon as it's detected, she should be put down before it spreads. Unfortunately, someone else seems to have caught the same disease and they needed to be put down too.
Honestly, she's a real walking vicim looking to express victimhood at the slightest comment. But I doubt this comment alone got her fired. People like that are toxic to work with, if she does that at work, everyone would be frightened to point out the tiniest of problems to her for fear she's explodes.
Deroir's comment is valid, mostly agreeing while making a subtle point. She didn't address his (her?) subtle point, or even take the time to be civil.
She could simply have said, "we do address that, for example [character name] in [game] changes personality based on your choices through the game in ways [example1] [example2]... I understand that problem fully and we do address it"
--------------------
Deroir:
Really interesting thread to read! However, allow me to disagree *slightly*. I dont believe the issue lies in the MMORPG genre itself (as your wording seemingly suggest). I believe the issue lies in the contraints of the Living Story's narrative design;
When you want the outcome to be the same across the board for all players' experiences, then yes, by design you are extremely limited in how you can contruct the personality of the PC.
But, if instead players were given the option to meaningfully express *their* character through branching dialogue options (which also aren't just on the checklist for an achievement that forces you through all dialogue options),
then perhaps players would be more invested in the roleplaying aspect of that particular MMORPG. Nonetheless, I appreciate the insightful thread!
... the *real* female feminists back?
You know, the likes of Catherine Deneuve and Co. that don't go running and crying like a baby whenever they get into some grown-up talk that doesn't go exactly as they suspected. You know, the type of woman who can stand her own ground and thus is the type you'd actually want to f*ck and have children with.
I hope this gender studies and hashtag feminism nonsense is over soon, it's starting to get over-the-top silly.
Boy an I glad having found a sweetheart that has her own workshop, builds walls and takes down trees in her spare time, dresses like a supermodel (when we go dancing) and fucks like a p0rnstar. She'd tell this little spoiled bratt off, that's for sure.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
She unloaded on him pretty hard, but it was the right way to nip that idiocy in the bud.
You can scathingly criticise idiocy, and Slashdot will approve - take, for example, Linus's famous rants on Linux development. What Jessica Pride did wrong was to be *sexist*: she criticised the commenter for being a man, and daring to question her, a woman.
Consider, for example, if Linus, instead of writing "it's a f*cking disgrace that you are in denial about the fact that it's the *checking* that is broken, not the code, and are making excuses for shit", had written "thanks for trying to contribute, you woman; this is what men like me have to put up with". The community opinion here would do a full 180, from regarding it as righteous criticism to regarding it as sexist assholery.
To make it worse, Pride's comments here are coming in the context of widespread feminist bigotry, particularly in the games industry. The fact that she's been fired - as a man certainly would have been, if he'd said something similar to a woman - is a small step toward equality.
Perhaps if she had not started womansplaining on twitter, nothing of this would have happened.
Actually, I think you seem to be ignoring what actually happened. Deroir wasn't trolling or being insulting. She attacked him because of his gender. She was being abusive in a very unprofessional way. You don't treat people that way publicly. She could have simply ignored him. She was well known for this type of behavior. This wasn't the first time she's done this. Anet ignored it until she attacked the wrong person. She's a SJW type with a bad work ethic. She was a new hire and she never passed up a chance to attack people with her SJW politics.
People hate SJW. They should have fired her a long time ago.
I was pretty pissed that the Verge left out the Tweets from Deroir in the actual article. It really paints a one-sided picture and sets him up to be the bad guy.
Really interesting thread to read! However, allow me to disagree *slightly*. I dont believe the issue lies in the MMORPG genre itself (as your wording seemingly suggest). I believe the issue lies in the contraints of the Living Story's narrative design; (1 of 3)
Source
When you want the outcome to be the same across the board for all players' experiences, then yes, by design you are extremely limited in how you can contruct the personality of the PC. (2 of 3)
Source
But, if instead players were given the option to meaningfully express *their* character through branching dialogue options (which also aren't just on the checklist for an achievement that forces you through all dialogue options), (3 of 4 cause I count seemingly...)
Source
then perhaps players would be more invested in the roleplaying aspect of that particular MMORPG.
Nonetheless, I appreciate the insightful thread! (End)
Source
Personally, nothing about this came off as sexist or trying to "set a woman straight;" its simple, civil criticism to something someone plastered onto the web publicly. Maybe this was the straw that broke the camel's back and set her off. Verge stated that her posts were motivated by the whole "Dev & Community interaction" that is expected, but if that's the case, then I think the better option would have been to post her 27 tweets into the ArenaNet forum or on a company developer blog where Community Managers could moderate the discourse. Either way, Deroir's not at fault here any more than anyone replying to posts here on Slashdot are.
Really interesting thread to read! However, allow me to disagree *slightly*. I dont believe the issue lies in the MMORPG genre itself (as your wording seemingly suggest). I believe the issue lies in the contraints of the Living Story's narrative design. When you want the outcome to be the same across the board for all players' experiences, then yes, by design you are extremely limited in how you can contruct the personality of the PC. But, if instead players were given the option to meaningfully express *their* character through branching dialogue options (which also aren't just on the checklist for an achievement that forces you through all dialogue options) then perhaps players would be more invested in the roleplaying aspect of that particular MMORPG. Nonetheless, I appreciate the insightful thread!
How is that a condescending response? This being Twitter, perhaps you'll have to read between the lines a bit to see what the guy is getting at; the thrust of that message is not "why don't you use some branching dialogue, you idiots". Deroir's response was well-meant. If it really was a simple or stupid remark, the best thing would be to ignore it or to set him straight, not to pour scorn on him. That most certainly was not the right way to nip it in the bud (unless you're Linus Torvalds)
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
I've been in and around tech a really long time. The sad fact is 95% of employees are easily replaceable. 80% are outright disposable with minimal hassle. If these employees were indispensable they wouldn't have been separated. Those 5% at the top were going to get poached regardless of this. Either by other companies, or by starting their own endeavors. The rest delude themselves into thinking they have security for *reasons*. Because the thought that they could have their livelihood severed within thirty minutes for no reason at all is pretty terrifying. This will have zero consequences for Arenanet. Most of their customers won't even be aware of this. Employees get fired in every sector every day for the contents of their social media. Who you hire reflects on you as a business. What you say on social media reflects on you as a person. I don't feel bad for Jessica Price in the slightest. I do feel bad for Fries. I read his deleted tweets and his sin was trying to explain her behavior and head off a social media lynch mob. He didn't deserve to take a pitchfork over it. I believe he was fired because he was a man who violated the social media policy at the same time and the same way as the woman they were firing. If they were worried about further bad press or lawsuit they had to let him go.
I play the game and know about the incident. She was a very hateful SJW type. Deroir actually liked her. She had that coming and everyone was shocked they didn't fire her earlier.
Specifically what sexist language did she use? "My dude"?
She didn't say "mansplaining" and her complaint seems to be unrelated to it.
Not saying I agree with her reaction but let's at least establish the facts.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Transient anonymity brings out the worst in everyone Mr. Anonymous Coward.
Ain't equality a bitch? Time for more examples of women's privilege in all things dissolving in a putative time of equality.
E Proelio Veritas.
Ah okay, my bad. She said "manfeels". On her personal Twitter account. After being bothered by numerous people.
I guess that's a fireable offense at that company. Glad I don't work there, wouldn't want to be walking on eggshells all the time.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Bitch needs a strong man to put her in her place. Maybe slap her around a little and knock some of that "lib" stuff out of her head. Put a hurting on her. She should be fired and start doing more womanly things anyway. Having a few babies would be a good start. Many of these uppity women are overly hormonal anyway and a couple of pregnancies and dropping a litter often straightens things out. In any case, she has too many beta males in her life. She needs an alpha male to take over and straighten her sorry ass out.
let me make it crystal clear:
you responded to simple criticism with sexist remarks.
that shit don't fly.
More like simpleton criticism. The kind of stuff someone without a clue feels confident stating as an abysmally tone deaf response to a large expert treatise annoyingly often because he happens to be an honorary member of the smart sex.
That most certainly was not the right way to nip it in the bud (unless you're Linus Torvalds)
Despite a lot of publicised blow-ups, they're actually pretty rare. If you look at all his interactions on LKML, Linus shows a lot of patience with new people.
He only really blows up if (a) you're someone he knows and you're pushing something or done something he thinks is dumb and you should know better, or (b) you're new and you haven't listened to something sensible he's given as an answer, a couple of times already.
If you pursue something with him in an intelligent debate, he's quite amenable to having his mind changed on things.
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
Goes on public forum, designed for discourse, to comment about a work subject.
Gets upset and sarcastic when someone replies, saying noone should try to talk about work subject.
Yeah, get fucked lady. You sound insufferable and I'm guessing the folks you work with/for were just waiting for a reason to toss your ass out.
As an employer I didn't think earlier to look at people's social media accounts, but now I think it's unavoidable.
Things are tough enough without having to deal with these idiots.
i dont know where y'all work but where i work, getting in bizarre arguments on a public forum will get you fired. doesn't matter what the fight is about or who is right or wrong. the mere fact you can't keep a professional tone on a public forum reflects badly on the company and they will shitcan you for much less.
She unloaded on him pretty hard, but it was the right way to nip that idiocy in the bud. If she hadn't most likely a whole bunch of other people would've chimed in with similar stupidity
The problem is that she went off on a sexist tangent - imagine for a second the roles were reserved and a male developer made sexist remarks towards a female critic - I think he would have been kicked out so hard he'd still be flying.
Now while I don't agree with the US culture of firing people for (infrequent) stupid remarks on social media, this incident is par for the course.
I hate how the phrase, 'Teach my grandmother to suck eggs', which doesn't try and belittle either sex has been mutated into mansplaining so it can be used as a political weapon against ~50 % of the human population.
Guess what, I am a guy and I get people trying to teach my grandmother to suck eggs constantly from both side of the fence, it happens. If I have the time, I just nod my head and make the appropriate noises at the appropriate time and move on with my life. Otherwise, when I realise it is happening, I tell them I have something else I need to do and go.
It happened to me last week. Bored the hell out of me but I was polite and listened and surprisingly picked up one or two useful tidbits which will help me with the subject at hand in the future. I still found the whole thing frustrating but that's life.
I'm actually more interested in why Fries got fired after defending her on Twitter
In America the hand that feeds you does so at its own pleasure.
If you bite it, slap it, or criticize it, it is free to tell you to go find another hand. ...and I personally feel there is nothing wrong with that. They were both fired for creating negative publicity.
There's prior behavior, for instance she posted publicly how she was glad that TotalBiscuit died. It's very likely that there were many more incidents in the office that we don't know about.
Unfortunately, sometimes pushing back hard is the only way to get any (initial) respect and, unfortunately, I've seen it be worse for women.
Pushing back is not acceptable for a woman. If they are unable to accept their place in the natural hierarchy, they are abusing the privileges granted to them in spite of their sex. Granting them access to education is for the purpose of allowing them to do their part in proudly raising smart sons, not for causing disruptions in the workplace.
If God had intended for women to talk back, he'd not have given them squeeky voices and men superior strength for disciplining them.
Now can you appreciate how ridiculous this sounds? Hopefully. Can your subconscious? Keeping the latter in check is the art of being civilized, what distinguishes man from animal.
She reposted the tweet spinning the story that this had anything to do with being a female game dev. I'm not big on Twitter but people have said that these tweets are normally understood as being a call for harrassment/brigading.
Did you do that, in public, and in front of your customers, while acting as a representative of your company?
And sometimes, too, you have to know to pick your battles.
Because Wired has too many big words.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Only in this case, the person was not even "the moron customer", but one of the polite ones. Go figure.
He made the insultingly simple suggestion because ArenaNet wasn't doing it. By your analogy, it's like you've been driving a truck successfully for years while operating the wheel or the gas one at a time, but never at the same time. Then someone suggests why not try using both at the same time.
The problem the guy was getting at (the dialog choices don't have any consequences in the plot) is much older than MMORPGs and even CRPGs. It existed back in pen-and-paper RPGing. It's called railroading. The GM (or devs) have a set idea for how the plot should progress, and forces your character down that path. Pretty much all computer RPGs do it, with free-form games like Skyrim or Fallout (outside the main plot) being the rare exception. Mainly because it's a helluva lot easier to write one plotline, than to write a choose-your-own-adventure type plotline with multiple branches and possible endings. A proper, respectful reply would've been simply to state that while a branching plotline is desirable, it would require an order of magnitude more resources to produce. And so it becomes an economic choice between players getting only one new branching plotline each year, or multiple linear plotlines throughout the year.
I discussed RPGs a lot with Raph Koster when he was working on Ultima Online. I threw a lot of suggestions at him, some good, many dumb. I developed a tremendous respect for him because he always responded to my suggestions politely (the dumb ones only needed a short reply to shoot down). He was never insulting, and always provided thought-provoking responses which usually demonstrated why the problem was much deeper than it seemed at first glance. He didn't view dumb suggestions as an insult. He saw them as an opportunity to teach the person making the suggestion, so they themselves could perhaps become better game developers in the future. And that ultimately is what allows our civilization to advance - by helping pull people up to your level if you're clearly higher up. Not by getting offended and trying to tear them down because you think their suggestion is insultingly simple.
She made it "on the clock" when she started talking shop online and then shitting on someone publicly using sexist terms who dared to provide his opinion.
You can't have it both ways--you can't use your position at a company to gain a wide audience and the cry foul when you use that position to act like an arse and get called on it.
"She unloaded on him pretty hard, but it was the right way to nip that idiocy in the bud."
So if you think someone is an idiot, it's ok to use a nasty sexist attack? She was a sexist, and you are too.
The same people arguing this position are getting neo-Nazis and garden variety racists fired on social media, should those people get a free pass, too?
Did she formally issue a position on something on the clock?
Yes. She was functioning in an official capacity as an employee of ArenaNet.
Yeah she came across as an arse, but in her own time.
This old fashioned, last-century thinking is precisely why she was fired. If you're presenting yourself as an official from Company X on the internet, the time of day you do so doesn't matter.
Which official company channel did she use while being a sexist jerk?
The one she created when she voluntarily associated her employer and used that association to create a broad audience.
I hope your employer sees this and fires you because I think you're and idiot and they are an idiot for hiring you.
Won't happen because many people aren't stupid enough to associate their online persona to their employer... they know that in doing so they open themselves up to exactly what happened to this lady.
Her comments online would have carried limited weight without that association, it shouldn't be a shock that when she went negative and sexist that same weight would end up against her.
Too bad, so sad, next time don't shit on people while wearing your name tag and a company sign.
What's being on the clock got to do with it? Chris Langham wasn't diddling kids in the studio. Ched Evans was nowhere near a football field. They both got fired - and the second one was even cleared on appeal.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
You are a game developer, but also an idiot if you don't see the problem here.
So you post something on TWITTER, someone extremely politely, responds something you consider stupid. You find "look what stuff I get for being WOMAN" a proper response? Or any hard response for that matter, but this was.probably the worse possible apart from insults involving family members
Why is she using a platform intended for interaction with other people if she didnâ(TM)t want that interaction?
Probably not enough to get fired though, but something tells me there is more to it. Could have just been the last straw and got canned for causing others unwanted headaches.
If we say we're unworthy, will that make you go away?
I don't agree that the company screwed up but it has nothing to do with the content of what was said by either party. The reason I believe that the firing was justified is that the conduct and statement of employees who are known to be employed by an organization reflects upon that organization and the public confidence in the leadership or the organization. Of course Redditors (and users of other public comment forums) 'own' Arenanet and every other company with the fee for service business model. Where do those fees come from if not the Redditors and those like them? Taking a stand for artistic freedom at the expense of alienating those who appreciate the art is fine if you are financially self-sufficient and don't need any revenue from the 'patrons of the arts' a.k.a. paying customers. If it helps, think of the Redditor mobs as as the "player's union". They may not represent the opinion of every player but through democracy in action they have the ear of Arenanet company leadership. I'm not a developer but in my own profession I have observed that if a Marine wants to leave the Corps quickly (irrespective of the end of service date on the enlistment contract) one of the fastest ways to do so is to say something that publicly embarasses the Corps or the chain of command even if the statement falls short of violating the UCMJ. That principal applies to the most senior as well as the most junior Marines (ask the thre Generals who were relieved of command over the past year for saying or doing something that was merely embarassing to the Corps). The simple rule that was not observed in this case was, "Don't embarass the company whose emblem you wear on your pocket or the boss who signs your paycheck." Those who do embarass the organization will, by choice or not, become self-employed and then they can hang a sign in the window that says, "we reserve the right to refuse service to anyone for any reason." The job is not an entitlement. Antagonizing customers (even if you don't recognize them as customers) is almost never a recipe for job security. The Arenanet devs design the GW2 virtual world and understandably may feel a sense of ownership over it but it is the revenue from the customers that allows their virtual world to exist and puts money in their bank accounts. Mike O'Brien probably took for granted that this was understood by Ms. Price. While the boss may not always be right he or she is still the boss.
Ah okay, my bad. She said "manfeels". On her personal Twitter account. After being bothered by numerous people.
I guess that's a fireable offense at that company. Glad I don't work there, wouldn't want to be walking on eggshells all the time.
She claimed misogyny where there was none. To be honest I don't want to work in any place where false claims of harassment are honoured.
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
You've been told many times to stop spamming. GTFO.
She brought up "being a female game dev".
So even if she didn't specifically use the exact word "chair" there were plenty of mentions of things with legs that you sit on and have a back.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Recently, I went through a pretty demanding hiring process for what seemed a very professional, technical, programming-focused company. In fact, that professionalism was the most-appealing-to-me bit, the reason why I wasn't caring too much about spending some time with interviews, coding challenges, etc. I reached the point of having an informal interview with the person managing my application. She was a woman, apparently with not too much technical knowledge. Her attitude was quite different to mine, to the previous (technical) interviewers and to the one of the people with whom I was expected to be dealing. That job was basically about interacting with (experienced) software developers and taking care of programming issues.
When she sent me the time for our informal interview, she made a mistake with the time zone and proposed me a time 1 hour after what she meant. I wrote her back highlighting that error, explaining what I understood that was her intention and how she could easily avoid this kind of problems in the future. I said that perhaps people within that time zone was fine with her convention, but people from other places might have problems. I also highlighted that this might be a source of further problems in the future as far as certain areas, even within the same country, might have different approaches (it was about daylight saving time). She didn't reply to that explanation or say me anything about that in our subsequent chat. I found her behaviour very impolite, disrespectful and kind of indicative of her personality/insecurities/lacks, but didn't say anything.
Logically, I could have not corrected her error and just waited at the two possible times; basically, assuming that person was too stupid to get involved in a simple conversation, precisely provoked by her own mistake. But this would have been against what I consider sensible and even desirable in a potential employer/client: a place where arbitrariness rules isn't for me. We had that informal interview and she said to me that, 2 days afterwards, will tell me if I would go to the final stage or wait some months (they were over-staffed at that moment, but were expecting a big amount of work in brief). Three days later, she wrote me an email saying that I didn't make the cut. I asked her whether I should re-apply in some months or they will be contacting me to do that last interview. Her answer was something on the lines of only being interested in people more compatible with their views and that they weren't planning to consider my application at all?! No idea why she said that. No idea what isolated issue she misinterpreted to come up with a so wrong conclusion. I did like that company's policy and work conditions a lot. I was going to be really good there, everyone winning: they & me. That's why I disliked a lot that uncalled, unfair, unmotivated, even dishonest decision and I did write a quite hard email back to her. Unfortunately, I am already used to unreasonable arbitrariness when dealing with recruiting/HR people, no matter how technical-oriented the company is. But this time seemed different: a so sensible and technically-focused process! Why suddenly bringing that crap into picture? Why making me waste my time and have a preliminary good impression of that company ('s recruiting process), to change it so drastically?
I think that that woman misunderstood my correction as mansplaining (side clarification: I treat everyone identically and that concept has never even remotely defined any of my actions, as what I think that is the case with most of men of my age, education, expectations, etc. everywhere. I even made pretty much the same correction to a man weeks later). Or perhaps any other irrelevant action during our short chat, like me interrupting her? (read previous side clarification). Perhaps it was because I am a man or I am white or I am from outside the US (it was a US company). All what I know is that I passed all the technical tests, was very interested in that job/company and shared their values (at le
Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
Why do we care? The interaction was read by the company and they linked it back to their product, employee, and a customer. It's an at-will employment and the company didn't like the interaction. Thus they fired her.
There are consequences to opening your mouth. Great, having learned that, you can go to 3rd grade.
WHY IS THIS NEWS?
Didn't anyone teach these people that personal opinions do and SHOULD have reactions from all who hear it? Including those who have employment power over you? If you want to criticize your employer, product, coworkers, etc do it anonymously!
If you put your name to it, that's very brave of you! Now chin up, quit whining, and move on! I criticize some of my employer's practices all the time, that doesn't mean I will be shocked if they fire me over it.
The link in TFS shows only the first post that she responded to, but from the quoted section someone politely suggested that she was generalising from her personal experience to an entire industry and she then immediately launched a personal attack in response. If you do that in private, you're an asshat. If you do that after publicly associating your online persona with your company, there's grounds for disciplinary action. Worse, her response explicitly drew attention to her link with her employer.
Twitter makes no difference, if you go around saying 'as an employee of FooCorp, I am an expert in this' via any communication channel, then if you subsequently act in such a way that reflects poorly on FooCorp then you'd expect issues. It isn't private communication when you're broadcasting it in public and using your company's name.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
leaving aside hidden advertising posts (i.e. all artists cultivating a cult of personality) only fools, narcassists and the lonely post on twitter.
Honestly, a company which fires faithful, long-time employees and then puts their severed heads on display on a game forum for the mob to behold is worthless, from a moral standpoint even before the professional one. No one worth his salt should be working at such a toxic place.
SJW cunt bashed a customer while clearly acting as a representative of her company, talking about company stuff.
What sort of thin skinned moron posts a 29 thread tweet and expects only 200% agreeing feedback?
She never should have been hired and should have been fired much earlier for being a cunt around the office. No one needs to walk on egg shells at work to avoid having some SJW cunt explode at you over some trivial work crap.
"These are our private social media accounts"
Do Milennials really believe that? They aren't YOUR accounts and they aren't private. They aren't your "space". They are owned by Twitter and their corporate partners. Get off Twitter.
>"I am what you would call a "leftist" or even worst an egalitarian "socialist"[...](e.g. everybody no matter skin color, gender, sexuality , wealth or political affiliation should have the same equality of opportunity "
That is not my understanding or observations at all. Actually, that is more of a Centrist or Right position that you stated, not "Left". The Right believes in equality of opportunity. The Left believes in equality of OUTCOMES (like so called "equal opportunity"). The latter is requires limiting/punishing/"equalizing" those who do well based on group identity to try and force equal outcomes and wealth distribution (one of several definitions of Socialism).
Otherwise, I agree with what you are saying that she was rightfully fired, both political parties have loud mouths and bad players, and that generally it is a minority of troublemakers.
As an employer, I always do a quick web search for the candidate's name. It almost never produces anything that sways my hiring choice. But, in this case, if I saw the nonsense she posts on twitter, I definitely wouldn't hire her even if she's fantastic at her job. I, and I'm sure many others, try to construct a great team of people who are low ego, accept criticism, and won't create drama. This person, I'm pretty sure, would make a real mess of my team, and a quick web search in the future will tell all potential future employers that.
Hey APK, it's time you fired yourself for ruining the reputation of your product.
social media fuckheads wield power. too much power. companies cave in to them almost all the time because of the stigma of bad publicity.
if you want to whine to the ceo of a company, demand 'action' that affects other peoples' lives and livelihood.. shed the anonymity you're hiding behind on social media. i fucking dare you to. oh, you don't wanna? you're not that committed to your "cause"? then shut the fuck up.
you, the ceo, should have some balls, too, and not give-in to anonymous fuckheads online. these people continue to directly harass and threaten even after their 'job' was completed, so yea, they do not deserve a voice. they do not deserve to be heard.
reddit doesn't need to eliminate anonymity, but they do need to actually exert some control over their most toxic users and subs but they, too, are afraid of their own users and let them continue.
The chain of events:
1. A woman game dev posts something work-related. Innocuous enough so far.
2. Some guy on Twitter annoyingly tells her how to do her job.
3. The game dev overreacts, humiliates the guy and turns it political. This was unprofessional and stupid.
4. Said guy on Twitter overreacts as well. Oh boy. Stupid.
5. As things get uglier, a co-worker of hers decides it's a good idea to risk his career and join in the now politically charged discussion. Unsurprisingly, it doesn't go well for him.
6. In a perfect storm of stupidity and immaturity from all sides, it snowballs on Twitter.
7. The game company fires her and her co-worker as damage control. They were justified to do this, since they acted unprofessionally, but this turned out to be a PR disaster for them. No way to win. That's what they get for associating with idiots.
8. The media smells blood in the water like the sharks they are. It's a national political issue now. And yet, it's such a stupid, pointless fight that made 2 people lose their jobs over something so frivolous as "mansplaining".
I have no comment. I just look at the stupidity of everyone involved and laugh. It's better to laugh than to get depressed...
"You should never doubt what nobody is sure about." -- Willy Wonka
Wrong! Staff are not the most important thing a company has. Their good reputation with their customers is.
Keeping a vicious evil hateful piece of trash on the payroll is not good for business. She does not add enough value to overcome her huge negatives and especially not when compared to someone else who would do her job better without the bullshit.
As far as game companies go, there are a zillion people willing to work for peanuts because they want to work at a game company. Both of them will be easily replaced before the month is out and by people more interested in keeping customers happy than by hateful assholes who put their own agenda above the company when represent9the company online.
She will not easily get a new job in that industry. No sane hiring manager will want to deal with her crap.
This is something people don't seem to realise about twitter. It's publishing. Posting something on twitter is no different from the NYT posting something on their website's front page. The reach may be smaller, but you are publishing an opinion online, and on a forum which explicitly invites feedback.
If you don't want strangers responding, then post it on facebook, or something where you have to explicitly be accepted (I think even twitter allows this).
she works in Many Men Online Roleplaying Girls (MMORPGs) and mocks men. haha... of course she will be fired.
Just end reddit already
this kind of group mentality always ends up with an iq equal or lower than the lowest iq in the group.
Joke:
Similar example: A company fired someone for having a dirty fingernail.
If I post something publicly about my companies product, and a customer politely posts a different view - *no matter how incorrect or not it might be* - and I unload on them using gender/ethnic/racial/sexual/religious slurs or insults, my ass will rightly get fired too.
It's not OK just because she is a woman attacking a man, or men in general. There is a really simple test for this kind of stuff. Replace "man" with any "less privileged" group and see how it reads:
"Since we've got a lot of hurt Jewfeels today, lemme make something clear: this is my feed. [...] Don't expect me to pretend to like you here."
Can you not see why that isn't an acceptable thing to say in public? Would you hire someone who was on record having said such things?
Posting AC because people have lost their jobs for anything less than total support of attacking straight white males.
"The message is very clear, especially to women at the company," Jessica Price tells the Verge. "If Reddit wants you fired, we'll fire you. The quality of your work doesn't matter."
The reality has ALWAYS been the quality of your work doesn't matter if you embarrass the company in a public forum or are a total asshat that doesn't work well with others.
I'm reminded of the quote (I don't know where it came from), don't ask a question unless you want to hear the answer. Or, in this case, don't post something unless you can tolerate the responses.
Nothing to see here, just another snowflake that can't handle differing opinions and wants to play the victim card to justify their original position and blame others for their inability to play well with others.
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
First it has literally always been the case that if you bring your company into public disrepute you can get fired. Executives frequently have contract clauses that cover things not even at all tied to your job. Like if you get caught cheating on your spouse and it's in the news, they can be fired. In this case reddit is particulary influential because it represents a lot of the gaming community (i.e., their customers).
Second, I'm annoyed, and I say this as a man who is a feminist, that the term mansplaining has been hijacked. It was created to explain some specific scenarios, namely when a man either brazenly "steals" what a woman just said and claims it as his own simply because he reworded it or when a man talks down to a woman with no good reason in a manner not relevant to the discussion. But now it's been hijacked to mean "if a man disagrees with a woman" (btw I'm fully aware of the irony that what I just did would be called mansplaining by those sorts).
But the facts here are simple, she used an entirely inappropriate platform to post a long ponderous sermon on something and then when someone disagreed, she went in for an ad hominem attack because she had no real response to the criticism.
Thank you APK, you are a true asset to our community. I look forward to your next gift.
Support your local school shooter, give them your firearms.
She was a sexist jerk for years before she was ever fired. She was fired because her policy of hatred, anger, and insult slinging finally garnered her a big enough following to potentially affect the profits of the people she worked for.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Like emailing it to specific people. I believe they used to do that in the old days with a neat trick called lists or something like that.
But then you won't get the ego boost from all the views and thumbs-ups.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
That's simple. Don't put your employer in your profile and never refer directly to that employer when talking about things at work which bother you. When you list your employer, you're associating yourself with that employer. When you put that you're in an elevated position with that employer, expect to be held accountable. It's the height of ignorance and entitled behavior to think the two are not interrelated
Sig not found.
> (e.g. everybody no matter skin color, gender, sexuality , wealth or
>political affiliation should have the same equality of opportunity
should. Nope, life is not equal about opportunities. No people have not the same opportunities. This is fucking life, this is not a fair game. The game is rigged before you are born. No legs? No fucking running. Genetic factor causing diabetes, or cystic fibrosis or sickle cell disease? Nope no fcking equal life expectancy, freaking hard time planned.
This is not about opportunities, not everybody is born in the same place on the same time or right place at the right moment. Just grow up. Life sucks. This is about rights, not about opportunities.
...as it claims yet another job.
Peter opened his mouth to defend.his co worker and add to her victim hood . You don't need people Can't see through the bullshit.
Don't mix work and personal stuff.
If you aren't being paid to talk about your work, keep your mouth shut in public.
Doesn't matter if you are on twitter, reddit, or a personal blog. STFU. Let the PR guys handle it. If there aren't PR guys, then upper management gets that ball.
Women coders tend to have strong personalities when they work in male-dominated teams. It is a survival technique and necessary. That is something each team learns and respects. But in public, women are culturally expected to be less confrontational. I didn't make this rule. Heck, I want a woman who does stand up and shares her opinions and points out when I'm wrong, but only when I'm really wrong. Being argumentative just to be bitchy doesn't fly.
reddit is a nasty place. If you are active on social networks and aren't posting uplifting statements/comments/replies, please step back away from the keyboard. Words can hurt some people. That's bad. Don't be mean.
Even if the other person is being a bitch.
The guy (Deroir I think is his name) replied to this with a suggestion so insultingly simple it deserved scorn. He was polite, but it was a REALLY condescending response.
I don't really get when polite got entirely equated with simply not swearing or making overy threats. Being incredibly condescending (without swearing) is not in any way polite.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
No it was not right, it was hateful by her.
Christ what a snowflake.
If you are incredibly rude to someone (being condescending with or without swearing is rude) then you're a massive snowflake if you get offended when thye tell you to fuck right off.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
She posted about the company on a public forum and claimed victim hood against a partner of said company on the public forum.
She could of at any point not respond at all or Engage the partner in adult dialogue.
She chose to play the victim and make this a sexism issue where it wasn't.
This isn't even a first world problem. It's a first county problem. Two very well paid (relative to the median in the US) folks, one openly representing her employer, got into a documented shouting match. One was fired by a better paid boss. IMO, if she's representing her employer, which she was, she needed to keep it civil. I'd fire someone representing my company this way, and expect to get fired were it me.
That said, this entire thing would get laughed at as a bunch of pencil necks (aka undesirables) by the majority of citizens in the US. This is the pinnacle of privilege, and they need to STFU and get a life, as they are arguing about how to create a FAKE LIFE.
I have looked around, and there are even regular commenters on The Mary Sue who are not coming strongly to her defense, because she is a low-social-skills person who apparently has an antagonistic approach to discussion.
But the real problem is that there are a bunch of 'Mannist' type reverse sexists who are crowing about the firing like it's a victory for 'their side' when it's actually an instance of a woman getting fired for having a chip on her shoulder and not being very civil about her response.
ArenaNet stepped in it bigtime; their game is probably the big MMO with the most 'progressive' culture and storyline. They're never going to win over the people who stumble over their dicks during torch parades. Those dudes are not their customers.
She was probably wrong in the approach of her response, but the hooligans watching from the sidelines are waving their torches and hooting now, and that's not a good thing.
I am a developer of 25 years.
I have 0 idea what level of expertise you have until you tell me. I have to assume 0. FizzBuzz was invented for a reason. It is that bad.
Some people I find when I am telling them things tend to let me ramble on. They give no feedback on where they are at. I keep having to prompt them "Are you getting this? Have you done anything like this before?" I am currently working with a *very* shy woman. She is very sharp but it is very hard to tell what she does know and does not. So unfortunately I have to start a square 1 with many things as I bisect where she is at.
Also as I have to tell many people fresh out that your college exp is basically worthless in the real world. You will get to unlearn many bad habits and pick up new bad habits. :)
A bunch of snowflakes got upset at an opinion they didn't like and got the person expressing it fired. Gee, never heard that before...
So a dev was snarky at a player and got fired? Oh, she upset a bunch of redpillers. Didn't she realize that such banter is reserved for men?
I found a great summary of the situation for the tl;dr crowd: "Fired Guild Wars 2 Dev Responds and Still Doesn't Get It..." - YongYea https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
You're right, this could be a huge problem for Arenanet. It might take them longer than 5 minutes now to find young, over-educated, self-entitled people who want to write video game dialogue for a living.
It's simple really. I know that I would now like to know everything she has ever worked on, so that I can go out of my way to not buy it.
See how that works? This is why you don't want people like her working for you.
It's bad for business.
You asshat! Stop mansplaining your hetereopatriarchial philosophy.
Oh, I see, employers are justified in firing employees for having the wrong views and reflecting poorly on the company. But only when it's not in alignment with a progressive ideal, like with James Damore.
If it's a progressive viewpoint being portrayed, then it deserves full protection of law and human rights, first amendment and all that.
If you're wondering why people don't take you seriously, and look at you as a pile of garbz, this is one of the reasons why. Hypocrisy.
Never succeed. And when they fail, they always blame someone else.
She acted like a SJW / White Knight and got treated appropriately :)
Someone need to learn the value of a trusted VPN and being anonymous! Don't be martyrdumb!
There is nothing private about a public twitter profile verified with your employer. Try twisting facts again!
100% agree with the firing. She was out of line and just being a terrible person in general. Don’t post, don’t tweet if you don’t want comment or dialog.thanks.
Time for a rename.
AC comments get piped to
And that's exactly, how things ought to be. No one owes you a job. You can resign at any moment, and the employer can let you go at any moment as well.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Publicly act a cunt, get fired.
Being a woman doesn't get you a free pass to being a cunt.
Friendly reminder of what socialism is: any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods
Socialism doesn't center about "skin color, gender, sexuality , wealth or political affiliation should have the same equality of opportunity", though it assumes that by expropriating companies from the people that manage them and let them managed by the state would result in equal opportunity. That's false, it only results in benefits to the aparatchiks that end up managing them and making them less efficient through corruption and graft.
Re. your rant on us-vs-them divisive propagandizing: You make too much damn sense. Begone from here, heretic!
specifically it adds context, e.g. that a woman is getting criticism that a man would not have. Here's a pretty good write up about it and also why the term has been diluted.
That said, the tweet she was responding to didn't sound like mansplaining to me. I didn't detect anything condescending. I'm wondering if the Total Biscuit tweet elsewhere on this thread is real (I can't find a reliable source for it online, just a few forum posts) and if this wasn't the straw that broke the camel's back.
In any case one good point has been made: the Reddit Mob, once mobilized, can get anyone at the company fired. That's not a good thing.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
She started a discussion pointing out that she works there, she had in her bio that she worked there.
At that point it doesn't matter if she is on the clock. She is representing the company she works for if she uses their name and IP in her discussion.
Reddit definitely did the damage here. I'm nervous about how Mob Rule just got vindicated. I felt the same way when all those Neo Nazi's were being fired from their jobs. Firing people for being jerks doesn't make them less jerks. It cuts them off from their income, the pressure of which is going to make them worse, not better.
On a side note, she probably can't ignore the comments though. It sounds like she's expected to engage with the community as part of her job. And yes, that means outside of work. Being forced to work off the clock is pretty common in America and it was one of the things she was complaining about in her posts.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Most of the good stuff at Wired is paywalled.
but it would be nice if you were aware about talking down to people. If you personally are, great! Thanks, and keep up the good work. But a lot of people aren't. Don't forget it wasn't too long ago that this wasn't too far from the truth.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
it goes a little awry when the crazies are running the party ... lol *gets popcorn*
Once again, your personal reality is 180 degrees out of phase with the real world.
SHE was the one who blew up and pulled the sexist card because she obviously can't handle criticism. SHE was the snowflake. The other guy didn't lose his shit at all.
I pay good money to play Guild Wars 2 and to provide reasonable feedback to that company. If one of there employees insults me for being a man and "mansplaining" my opinion I will take my business elsewhere. ArenaNet was fully in his right to dismiss this employee and focus on customers that give them $$ Being a women or whatever you are still representing a company in your social media if you post that you work for them. This is a good turn of events.
https://twitter.com/Delafina77...
Yeah, she overreacted and got herself fired. This would've been the same outcome had a man developer responded with a sexist rant against a female fan disagreeing with one of his points.
Nothing to see here. In fact, it's good to see some real equality for once.
2015 was peak social-justice, ya dingus. Everybody hates SJWs nowadays. They even hate themselves lol.
Damore is a troublemaker, but his writing wasn't actively abusive. It cited journals and drew conclusions in what was obviously a carefully worded communication he knew would be controversial and even hurtful in some cases. In this case the wording is actively abusive, using derogatory terms that play on gender stereotypes. There is a clear difference in attitude and behavior here even if both people are potentially
sexist. One person walked the line, the other didn't even try to.
refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.
I think more meaningful is, what if all of the choices you do make matter but often in that making the logical, moral, or ethical one is often what produces the worst results? I think philosophers and game developers have a sort of agenda on how choice effects outcome because people in general are the same way. It's difficult enough making games where you can be clearly the villain in any sort of realistic setting because even having the choice is controversial. When it turns into a game where things don't turn out how you expect and suddenly limited information translates into radically different outcome from choices is that still fun? I'd tend to say yes, but then I was a CYOA fan.
Hi sweetie!
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Jessica Price tells the Verge. If Reddit wants you fired, well fire you. The quality of your work doesnt matter.
That is truly insightful coming from an MMORPG character writer, an occupation known for producing quality writing that repeatedly receives not only multiple industry awards, but is up there with the Pulitzers and Nobel laureates for literature.
Iâ(TM)m sorry, but her reaction there was projecting an idea of how she was being treated. She was reacting to a stereotype and not the actual message.
If you condition enough people to see an explanation or disagreement of anything as anti-female mansplaining then people will see that when it isnâ(TM)t there.
The underlying issue is that many people in the U.S. have very limited social ability.
An example: The game development company management did not have the social ability to realize that dealing with this social issue in a foolish way would become widespread news.
If you had the courage of your convictions on this, you would have stated your real name and who your employer is...
There is no God, and Dirac is his prophet.
"It isn't private communication when you're broadcasting it in public and using your company's name. '
This is absolutely true. If people read the contract/terms of service/whatever that they signed/agreed to when they were employed, they'd likely find that there's almost always a clause or notification within warning them about this.
Finally the "everything is sexist/racist/indentity-ist" is starting to back-fire. Some people think they can just release WWIII whenever they think someone is being an "ist", because hey.. they're the "good guy" and the other person is the "bad guy".
Turns out the lady was the bad person! What a plot twist! And she's still totally convinced she's the good one! This is movie plot stuff folks! When are we finally going to have the movie where the self-righteous SJW is given the busy-body PTA treatment? You know, the twisted do-gooder from the right wing who's constantly campaigning against some innocuous thing like water fluoridation, or The Catcher In The Rye in the library. I think in about 10-15 years.
Here's a message to Jessica Price. "Have you no sense of decency?"
Take a good. looong and hard look in the mirror. Now look up McCarthyism. You still won't get it (McCarthy didn't either), but at least you'll recognize yourself in stock characters we make about your type in 15 years.
Maybe more like "Customersplaining"? Wouldn't it be funny if Deroir turned out to be female? Are the Diroir tweets a response that would be unthinkable for a woman?
Price has a history of saying things best left unsaid. She was fired from Paizo a few years back, over another Twitter debacle. Different details, similar behaviour.
I get such a kick out of social justice warriors making up neologisms in their echo chambers such as "mansplaining" or "cis." Normal people don't use those words and don't care anything about them.
It's funny how the media tries to get into the act, too. When a tiny handful of sjws get up in arms about something and complains, to the news content starved media, people are "furious" about this or that inconsequential thing. The media interns must have attended the same sorry schools as the other echo-chamberers.
I never really understood when I was a kid the phrase, "silent majority," but it makes so much sense now. A few sjw loudmouths make the mistake thinking that legions agree with them, or even think the same way as them or use the same made up language that they use. But most people don't, and don't even care.
This made my day.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
She is a sexist scum. Nothing less.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Before Twitter, if I disagreed with the company line I never would have considered getting a megaphone, inviting an interested crowd, and voicing my opinion to them. If I had done that, I'd have been fired. Why do people think they can use an immensely more powerful mouthpiece with impunity?
This might be a good thing! Much of the content in GW2, such as mounts & gliders, things we bought with CASH the expansions for, are gated behind endless stories. We are required to spend hours and hours and hours watching through all their cutscenes. It gotten a lot worse with the expansions. No way to skip ahead. And some of those mastery points require substantial physical dexterity, keyboard & mouse, on the part of the player that is downright impossible for those of us with physical handicaps. (Chef, I'm looking at you.)
All I wanted to do was to play the game I'd bought. Instead I've got to watch all this SJW scripted bullshit that makes The Last Jedi look good. I REALLY don't buy MMORGP games so I can watch Netflix!
A massive turnover in staff couldn't happen to a more deserving bunch of people.
Who would have guessed ?
Do you mean Sprachlehrenkriminalisierung or Sprachlehrgewalttaetigkeitsreduzierungsgesetz?
This is what a reasonable response to Deroir would have looked like.
Mark my words. She will be hired publicly to some prominent feminist organization despite her reputation as a sexist scum.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
That's Marxism. Has many other names, they rename it everytime it genocides 50 million, so on their forth or fifth name now.
'Socialism' can extend to a basically capitalist economy with social safety nets.
Marxism IS a historic failure and should be immediately junked. Social safety nets, not so much.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
The full term is 'equal opportunity under the law'.
There is a birth lottery, no doubt.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
are your lives so devoid of meaning that you can't just stay away from social media? nothing good has come from it, and all the unnecessary drama you experience due to it has not contributed one positive thing to society.
"arenanet fucked this up bigtime"
No. frankly, they didn't. This young woman's been extremely ugly on twitter in the past, and this was just too far.
If you take a shit on my customers, i'm going to fire you. please don't shit on my customers. while in uniform. talking about my product.
Thanks.
"on eggshells"
Now you know how men feel about this shit, that's their every day in an identity politics friendly work environment.
How come is it insultingly simple? You'd have to coordinate with different people working on different areas of the game in order to ensure that extra dialog options presented will be consistent along game's modules. This has potential of being as much of work as adding several more npcs to the game. So there's no wonder that MMORPGs wouldn't let you use much of extraneous replies, because it's not their focus. If you're into roleplay you can do that yourself via in game chat. If you're just for the gameplay you will be annoyed by large amount of extraneous replies instead. So that's what should she have said instead of starting to spew bullshit insults or just plain ignored him.
They perfectly realized that keeping some loser on board who makes a habit of attacking customers is bad for business.
It was the right call.
If she got it into withsome over something that was unrelated to her job and her account did not so clearly associate her withe the company then she can be the biggest cunt she wants and get away with it. But that is not at all what happened here. She made the company look bad and got canned.
Good riddance.
Maybe she will learn how to behave professionally after a few more well justified firings.
If your twitter page says "ArenaNet Narrative Team", rather than "The opinions expressed here do not reflect those of my employer and should not be considered official", then you need to be careful before jumping down random internet person's throat.
She made no effort to separate her personal twitter account from her work, and wasn't very selective about what she said on that account. This should be considered "Professional Behavior 101", but apparently you don't have to be professional-- just yell at everyone with "salty language", and claim sexism if they're offended.
>"Friendly reminder of what socialism is: any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods"
Like I said, one of several definitions. Here is another (straight from Wikipedia":
"Socialism is a range of economic and social systems characterized by social ownership and democratic control of the means of production as well as the political theories and movements associated with them[...]"
Note the words "social systems" in that definition. And those are often defined as:
"the patterned network of relationships constituting a coherent whole that exist between individuals, groups, and institutions."
So put them together and you can end up with:
"Socialism is a range of collective ownership and democratic control of the patterned network of relationships that exist between individuals, groups, and institutions as well as the political theories and movements associated with them"
Socialism is an economic matter and/or a social matter. It is usually hard to separate one from the other. Generally speaking, the "left" is very much interested in controlling individuals' freedoms and choices in the name of the collective. The "right" is very much interested in preserving individuals' freedoms and choices from the control of the collective. Nothing is quite that simple, of course, but it is the general flavor.
Being a girl doesn't give you blanket amnesty when you're being an asshole to customers. She simply decided to be a jerk to a guy who commented on one of her public tweets. His post was insightful and polite, but she decided to blow a gasket and tell him to fuck off. Then, it being Twitter, others got involved, and when it got out of hand, she started crying sexism and mansplaining. Pathetic.
She's clearly an immature, tantrum throwing, supercilious arse. That by itself though, shouldn't be a sackable offence. Couldn't they just have banned her from social media?
What she did is much worse than making false claims. The word "manfeels" is a sexist slur. She said someone's feelings don't matter because of that person's assumed gender.
Good post. I would just add one point of caution.
My advice : ignore the extreme left and the extreme right yelling, fight them rationally without name calling, and consider they are truly a minority.
Those extreme minorities themselves can't be completely ignored. They have to be kept out of positions of power by the rest - from both sides of the politicial spectrum. If that doesn't happen, you will get a near clone of the intolerance in 1930's Nazi Germany. And we all know where that went...
Chris Langham wasn't diddling kids in the studio.
So being bitch on twitter is the same as sexual assault of a minor?
Ched Evans was nowhere near a football field.
Or rape?
Shit man come join us back in reality when you get a chance. We miss you!
and the second one was even cleared on appeal.
And my post stands. Just because something shitty happened to one person does not mean society derranges into a shitty publicity game when it comes to work lives. If he was cleared on appeal than that would be grounds for wrongful dismissal. Mind you not showing up at work because you're actually in prison won't help your case much.
"The guy (Deroir I think is his name) replied to this with a suggestion so insultingly simple it deserved scorn."
You very obviously did NOT read the Twitter thread, at all. Nothing Deroir stated was insulting. If you did read it and came to that conclusion, your faculties are seriously damaged and you need to check yourself into a hospital.
I doubt you're a decent game dev if your logic is that faulty.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Well, it's a good thing the bitch has a history of being rude first and foremost, so quite frankly, the game streamer's initial response was in fact very kind and polite, by her actual fucking standards. That's probably what pissed her off so much, she didn't know how to respond to an actual CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM (something you can't seem to identify.)
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Your job is to make money as a game dev. Not to make games. When you piss off your audience you fail to make money. This makes you a bad game dev. Congrats, you now see the trade off of being in the public eye. You get large sums of wealth but are still a slave to public opinion. Kanye tried to tell the world this but everyone just shamed him.
You very fucking obviously did not read the Twitter thread. Shut the fuck up until you do.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
"women can't be sexist!"
Full retard. we are there!
If you don't want criticism, don't complain on a public forum.
One's behavior has consequences. Welcome to the real world.
I notice YOU weren't stupid enough to list your company name...
He isn't "right" neither is she (from a game design perspective). The way you balance story and player agency is a debate that will probably never end, because there is no right answer.
Her comments are really interesting, a shame it degenerated into a social justice war. I have some interest in game dev, though not a pro myself, and the way storytelling is approached is something that I find particularly interesting. You can have a very strong story with little to no branching and well defined characters (common in JRPGs). You can introduce branching, which gives meaning to player actions, but it "dilutes" the main story because you now have to spend resources in alternate branches instead of perfecting a single path. You can use a "generic adventurer" character, a classic of western RPGs in order to help the player identify to the protagonist, at the expense of a weaker story. Jessica actually explained that better than me (she really is a pro after all).
The answer from Deroir is a hint to the idea of branching, Something that Jessica didn't mention. I expect a response explaining the weaknesses of branching, but instead we got all that crap... Too bad, it started well.
People cannot claim they are "off the clock" on Twitter when they drop names and positions of work in making arguments.
At that point your actions reflect your employer, for good or bad.
If you are known as someone who is generically an expert in the field without others knowing who you work for (like: I have worked for 25 years in narrative gam design) that is one thing, but even then why be an asshole about disagreeing with anyone? You never know who his reading or will be put off by it.
If you are going to start what looks like a rational discussion on ANY open forum, you have to expect response from anywhere, and if you disagree explain why instead of responding with DUR YOU IS STUPID (unless the response is truly a stupid troll).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The fact is in the Age of Internet Shaming there is no such thing as "off-the-clock"
It's very easy to have multiple Twitter accounts (or indeed on pretty much any social media platform), where someone has no idea who you you work for in some of them and only knows as much as you care to reveal.
It would be plenty easy to set up some anon account that argued about game design, where you just let on you worked in the industry.
But then that would not provide the same level of cache about who you work for, winning arguments by the appealing to authority method...
You can't have your cake and eat it too. If you want to be off the clock, remove ties to where you work from where you post.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Of course. The Verge article was written by a woman and they usually write articles with a feminist slant.
Showing that you are qualified and that the other person should best shut up is the complete opposite of accusing them off NOT knowing shit. Respect-by-default might be a nice philosophical position to take, but when you run across loads of un- or under-qualified personnel, it's a tough one to stick to. Understand that, and be prepared to stand up for yourself. Prove yourself useful. If you still get pissed on after that, then maybe there really is a problem.
But you still don't make it personal, which Price very much did, unless you want to burn bridges. Gender has fuckall to do with it.
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
She is the victim here in terms of her firing. Just not in terms of people being pissy at here. Don't conflate the two. Employers should not have power over our personal lives.
And conversely, she shouldn't act as a mouthpiece for her company during her personal time (and being a rabid bitch to her employer's customers in the process). She effectively forfeited her "personal time" when she decided to play the role of PR representative and got rightly busted when she decided to start treating her company's customers like trash.
I have been told "your game should have more plot development", and I said "When making design choices, there are three elements to balance: breadth, depth, and speed. Now choose any two. We have chosen breadth and speed, and depth had to be sacrificed. We wanted to put in more, but you wouldn't have read it anyhow."
His response was "then this isn't my kind of game", and mine was "that's fine". That sort of shit just isn't worth fighting over.
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
Actually for as bad as reddit is. I commend them for not playing like twitter and facebook acting like the know all to the universe. let people run their own pages if you host a platform that gives people the access to their own perceived websites and forums. They should just sit back and collect the ad money to keep the system working smoothly. If you have a subreddit, you're free to ban whoever you like from it, and reddit does not step in and say who you can and cant ban.
I read what the guy wrote, and what she said in response. Arenanet fucked this up bigtime and I expect a lot of devs there - especially their writers - will be looking at exit strategies. There are plenty of other game companies in Seattle. They will contact Arenanet employees and attempt to poach them.
This would be the best possible case for ArenaNet, and I would hope for them that what you're writing is true. If they could, with one single action, repel troubled employees, like this person, while simultaneously signaling to reasonable people that they are welcome and that they won't have to deal with the over-the-top harassment that someone like this would cause, well, I think that's the holy grail of recruitment excellence. If you read the exchange here and your take-away is "I would love to work with this person", then you're probably one of those people that a company would do best to avoid hiring regardless of your skills.
Jessica Price wrote this long, nuanced article about the way to make the player feel they are participating in the world without breaking the way players project their own personality into their characters. In MMOs (I've worked on two) your character is an avatar; it's yourself in the virtual world. It's not like most games where you're operating an already defined character.
The guy (Deroir I think is his name) replied to this with a suggestion so insultingly simple it deserved scorn. He was polite, but it was a REALLY condescending response. Imagine you drive a truck on a really tricky route and write about all the things you contend with. You've been doing this successfully for years. Then someone says, politely, but meaning to educate you, "if you turned the wheel and used the gas at the same time, how about that?" That's a thing deserving only scorn.
She unloaded on him pretty hard, but it was the right way to nip that idiocy in the bud. If she hadn't most likely a whole bunch of other people would've chimed in with similar stupidity. Arenanet management immediately fired her, plus a colleague who had made a few mild comments in support of her.
I work with junior and senior developers all the time who tell me things that I already know. These are people expressing their thoughts to you, and they will express them at the level that they are at, which may be lower or higher than your level. You have to deal with that in an appropriate way. Especially in a public setting while representing her company, discussing a product of the company, in a permanently published and quotable form. She was clearly in the wrong.
Whether she should be fired is another matter. She presumably wasn't fired JUST for this incident.
Bottom line; your staff are the most important thing you have. If you throw talented long-time staff members to the wolves, you stand a good chance of wrecking your relationship with your staff. Everybody else will see that as ruthlessness and feel fear!
Personally I will now never even consider working with Arenanet's leadership and other devs I know are saying the same thing.
ArenaNet just went to the #1 spot on my list of game companies I'd consider working for.
She wrote her thoughts. Someone replied saying what she said is interesting, but on one particular point he disagreed about the relative importance. She went off on her "mansplaining" sexism rant, because they ONLY reason anyone could ever disagree with her on anything would be if they were a sexist pig. Totally impossible for people to have different viewpoints. Disagree with her on just one of her several comments and you're automatically a pig.
Is she? Did she formally issue a position on something on the clock? Did she waste time at work? Did she fail at her job? Yeah she came across as an arse, but in her own time.
She is the victim here in terms of her firing. Just not in terms of people being pissy at here. Don't conflate the two. Employers should not have power over our personal lives.
She used her position to assert authority. If you were to own a bakery and one of your employees, off the clock, not wasting time at work, not failing at their job, said "As a baker at TheGarbz Bakery, all Nazis are wonderful and we must exterminate the jews and the other mongrel races!" would you fire them or just nod your head and say "Well they didn't do it on the clock."
Employers should not have power over our personal lives yes. But what happens when an employee asserts power in their personal life over the business?
They should be fired.
The guy (Deroir I think is his name) replied to this with a suggestion so insultingly simple it deserved scorn. He was polite, but it was a REALLY condescending response. Imagine you drive a truck on a really tricky route and write about all the things you contend with. You've been doing this successfully for years. Then someone says, politely, but meaning to educate you, "if you turned the wheel and used the gas at the same time, how about that?" That's a thing deserving only scorn.
I'm not sure Slashdot is the audience to receive this message. This is the place which responds to every article about a published paper with "but did they take into account this obvious thing that I thought of in 30 seconds?"
That is like her favorite word!
Search her name and Mansplaining.
Keep that spin up and you might just achieve orbit. Perhaps would could attach you to a dynamo and get some usefulness out of you after all.
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
The dev who got fired said it's because she's been doing it a few years that nobody should disagree with her about what makes the most fun game design ("telling my how to do my job").
I've been doing my job, and actively studying to learn to do it better, for twenty years. I make sure all my code gets peer review, because I'm still not perfect. People can have ideas different from mine, and they might be good ideas. I actively encourage new people to peer review my work, reminding them "you don't have to be more experienced than me, or better than me, to see where I might have made a mistake or where I could do something better". I actively seek opinions from other people and never once have I attributed their opinions to their genitalia.
Then why put it on twitter at all? He wasn't mansplaining her job to her he was trying to explain how what she did effected his ability as a player to express himself. I read both her entire tweet and his response and her sort flippant tweet about him being a "rando a--hat". The fact that you are qualified and knowledgeable doesn't mean you cant learn something regardless of your gender.
You're not wrong, but there's a fair bit of debate that goes on about "superficial choice." If the choice has no consequences, is it really a choice, or is it just virtue signalling for the player?
Millennia old problem related to free will. Liberty of spontaneity and liberty of indifference. Does a person have the ability to perform a specific act if they choose to do so and does a person have the ability to act or not to act. If both are not present, there is no free will and all choices are irrelevant.
You're defending someone who lashed out at another person because the opinion was different? If someone says something I perceive as stupid, I don't immediately go into attack mode. I'll either brush it off as a display of ignorance, or start a conversation to look further into why our opinions differ. Best case, both our opinions evolve and are refined. Worst case, nothing changes and we both walk away with our dignity intact.
Funny how even after all the backlash, she still tries to play the gender card yet again: "The message is very clear, especially to *women* at the company,"
Ah, so you walk back your claim that she didn't say anything sexist, but try to excuse it by her posting it on her 'private' twitter. So it's okay to be prejudiced, so long as it's not on your official company twitter account? Is that the argument you're trying to make?
It's harder and harder to be convinced you're not some kind of false flag account.
This is the quality discussion I've come to expect from Slashdot. A "joking" sexist comment is still a sexist comment. And this crap is moderated to +4 or +5. How can you claim gender doesn't enter into the discussion in tech spaces, when these spaces are full of dudebros who drive everyone else out?
I think I've finally figured out why so many of you stick with the delusion tech is a strict meritocracy. Y'all don't want to admit maybe you're not the best at what you do, that toxic culture has driven your competition out. With apologies to Upton Sinclair, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his ego depends upon his not understanding it!"
"Live as if you'll die tomorrow." Ridiculous. You could die later today.
It seems only women can teach women now. Any effort for a man to try to teach women or even express an opinion can be dismissed as "mansplaining". My sympathies to all male teachers out there, they will need to look for new jobs soon.
You can remove your goalposts and take them home. Business and life don't work like that. My ass, if you found out a friend of yours was backstabbing you at someone else's house that you would ignore it.
So true. Kids today don't realize there are many gears involved in a modern company. Views and public relations are important. So is a hostile free workspace. This isn't highschool anymore where you keep showing up.
Employers reserve the right for having only the best people and work with folks they want to do business with.
Respect is important and if you don't give it you don't receive it back
http://saveie6.com/
Parent's post will be quoted by APK in his next deranged cycle. Watch this space!
As a guy who's played games since Zork and before, I see online gaming as worlds or games and worlds don't have plot lines.
There's clearly more going on here that we in the public don't see, but it's good of ArenaNet to not put up with employees attacking customers. There's too much of that going around right now, and companies that let their people tell customers "we don't want customers like you" in response to complaints are finding themselves hemorrhaging customers. Good to see ArenaNet's smarter than that.
We do know she publicly celebrated TotalBiscuit's death, so it's a safe bet that she's not nice to be around. And personally attacking critics in your own industry right up there with ranting at customers, in terms of stupidity. (Seriously, what's going on the mind of a game studio manager when he hires someone who has attacked the most popular and influential PC games critic in the world?)
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
> I'm not on the clock here. I'm not your emotional courtesan just because I'm a dev.
That's because a courtesan usually charges more than $50 for their box of entertainment. And the rates for multi-player just get *weird*.
On her personal Twitter account.
ArenaNet's social media policy is quite clear that if your social media account isn't anonymous, you're publicly representing the company. Which is appropriate for a game studio, especially an MMO (-ish) given the typical interactions between customers and "devs", with forums deep-diving anything ever said by a dev for clues about game changes.
She knew she was speaking as an employee of ArenaNet.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Have you been a manager or a lead? Great A level players encourage firings. If you haven't then you don't know a thing about setting examples. If you let an employee come in late and be rude others will think that is ok and do it too. When they see someone canned they will go oh shit I better watch myself etc.
20/80 rule implies for a good boss. 10% out of the 20% are in the bottom or the top. 80% are average. After every promotion or firing your job is to identify the top and bottoms and prepare more firings and promotions. The 80% follow the best or worst employee always. This is why Dell fires 15% of it's staff each year as do GE.
By keeping her the game publisher acknowledges this as ok and a hostile work environment is acceptable. Sorry she has got to go or the problem will amplify 10x
http://saveie6.com/
Actually, they should have been fired, but for a different reason.
Presumably, they signed an NDA. They shouldn't have been discussing these specifics with outsiders, and in public. The company's approach to "writing player characters in an MMPORG" is presumably proprietary. In most cases, one is even enjoined from even stating that they work for the company. (But, given the widespread practice of in-game credits, the latter be difficult to enforce, and probably is absent from gaming company NDAs.)
Yes, I worked for a gaming company. (Sony). Did I just violate the NDA? Maybe. But I have in-game credits which makes that moot.
I can't imagine, though - even 10 years later - discussing in public e.g. specifics of how fantasy league baseball scoring is implemented.
Business 102: Do not disparage the product (that didn't happen in this case).
Seriously tho... this is part of the problem with Star Wars. Kennedy, Johnson and Abrahms attacked Disney's customers.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
And when enough customers leave that the game caves, how much do you think pomposity will be going for on the open market?
The Left won't like living under the rules they created.
Few things:
She's 29, so if she'd been working for ArenaNet for 12 years, she would have started when she was 17.
Her previous employer was Paizo Inc, makers of the Pathfinder RPG system from 2012-2017.
She worked for them for 1 year, maybe a little more or less. Does that change your opinion on this at all?
This silly bitch should be quiet and go make me a sandwich.
Personal lives? Your employers have a limited right to intrude in them, sure. But expecting that your customers would censor themselves in order to make your personal lives more comfortable? You better have a lot of customers and make sure that your requests for self-censorship don't piss off a lot of customers. Otherwise, it's not that you don't have a job anymore. It's that this job won't exist pretty soon.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
The right question is whether you're role playing or min-max'ing the game mechanics. Like if you get a choice to shoot or not shoot someone and in the latter case an NPC goes "Well if you don't have the balls then I'll do it" so either way he dies. For that character's personality it obviously matters like what role are you playing, if you're min-max'ing you don't really care about the moral choice just whether the XP/loot is worth any penalties you get. Personally I tend to pretty much ignore the RP elements and it's just kill boss X get reward Y unless it's completely level-free like "The Walking Dead". You'll reach the end the question is who did you choose to be to get their, who did you help, who did you betray, who did you kill or let be killed. If you don't care the game is just a bit of trivial button pushing, but then I'd play something else...
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
"It was the right call."
This seems very likely to me: There were social problems long before the current incident. But no one dealt with them. The managers didn't help create social cohesion, which is one of the duties of managers.
When will mainstream media stop twisting the truth or outright making things up to fit "the narrative"?
This is pathetic.
You have to go to eighteen levels of straw manning, word twisting mischaracterization to describe Deroir's comments as anything other than polite and constructive.
she didn't know how to respond to an actual CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM (something you can't seem to identify.
There was nothing constructive in any of his posts. They were startlingly inane.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Speaking of obnoxiously facile replies, Deroir was not "explaining branching dialogue" to the developer as if she'd never heard of it. That is a straw man that keeps being repeated on this subject and it's BS.
You and the other people repeating these tropes are so far out there you can see Pluto from your house. Nowhere did Deroir act as if he was entitled to anything. The only person doing that was a thin-skinned asshole wanting to have a "safe space" from any feedback on a public twitter account with over 10,000 followers.
I could go point-by-point on the rest of your facile bullshit, but I'll just leave you with one of Jessica's tweets where she nastily tells a male reviewer how to do his job.
Not only is Jessica full of shit on all counts, she's a massive hypocrite as well.
plz2lrn2engrish.
Agree on firing bad employees - but stacked ranking is BS. Destroys moral and company loyalty, while rewarding silos and sabotaging your coworkers to make sure someone else is in that bottom 10%.
From the horse's mouth.
Is she? Did she formally issue a position on something on the clock? Did she waste time at work? Did she fail at her job? Yeah she came across as an arse, but in her own time.
She is the victim here in terms of her firing. Just not in terms of people being pissy at here. Don't conflate the two. Employers should not have power over our personal lives.
I suspect that you missed the part where she makes statements identifying her with her employer. Embarrass your employer even when you're "off the clock" and reap the consequences...
I like the lesson taught by Terminator 2 and 3 : whatever the heroes do, Skynet still happens. It's only a specific work of fiction, and the time travel loop can't be reasoned about anyway but it's a non-game example of false choices I can think of.
I don't have much experience playing RPGs other than Lands of Lore and Secret of Mana in the 90s (or DoTA in the 2000s), so I can't help much in the conversation. :)
It seems to me that introducing true choice in games would lead to e.g. a GTA game, where your star rating of being researched by the police/swat/military is permanent
I played Wing Commander IV too, where you had a Big Choice in the game, but you just delayed when it happened. Or you could do dumb things and face the firing squad. I really loved that scene, and I was represented by a real actor (non-English version dubbed by professional voice actors at that) so it felt like I was getting shot by the confederation of planets' firing squad for real.
It doesn't help that the game eventually provides you a pizza bomb that destroys capital ships by melting everyone inside, and nothing stops you using it on any friendly ship. Well during the whole game most of your deaths end with a voice over where you either died a hero or a traitor, that was a nice touch and it was funny.
White people invented all of the modern technology that you take for granted, darkie. But no, you'll go on with your entitlement and "gibs me dat" attitude without ever contributing a damned thing back to the world.
Now go take a fucking bath for once in your life, you stink.
prease2lrn2engrish.
Not true. But even if they were - it was no excuse for Jessica to lose her thoroughly sexist shit. She's also a massive hypocrite as well, given how she has no problems telling male reviewers how to do their jobs with actually inane comments.
Common, even you know this is BS. Just flip the genders - would you be defending a male developer that flipped out on very-politely-delivered feedback and wouldn't stop going off on how the woman asking the question was a dumb broad demanding his time?
Nope: The full term is 'equality under the law.
I am getting sick of this insane propaganda.
That's a psychologically positive way to look at things.
However, as demonstrated by NN Taleb, and also Serge Galam (sociophysics), the loud minority can sway the silent majority, if the majority is indifferent or flexible enough. In other words, either you possess the meta-skills that you have showcased, or, you're going to be enabling some kind of agenda to some degree.
Not true.
Yes true.
Common, even you know this is BS. Just flip the genders
Oh yes. I should just pretend like the world isn't the way it currently is. I know a few women in various tech jobs. They have had to put up with a *lot* of shit that I haven't along these lines.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Warm regards...
"The message is very clear, especially to women at the company," Jessica Price tells the Verge, "deal with polite disagreements politely - especially with people more important than you are."
I just pressed 'F' to pay respects to your post.
You're not wrong, but there's a fair bit of debate that goes on about "superficial choice." If the choice has no consequences, is it really a choice, or is it just virtue signalling for the player? How much of an impact does a choice need to have before it becomes part of the story, and how much is just "fake depth?"
If you're up-front about what your choices affect, then I don't think players will be that mad about having fake choices. It's when a game is sold as letting you make big choices and these choices having a large effect on the story that people get mad when they discover that their choices determine nothing more than the color of explosions in the final cutscene.
I remember playing a game where you'd start a quest and a little warning message would display under it explaining that the rewards from completing the quest would always be the same, but your choices would affect the quest cutscenes that played and nothing else. Letting you know ahead of time that your choices didn't affect the wider world at all, and if you didn't care about the story, you could safely choose whatever you wanted.
Which is what the streamer (Deroir) was trying to get across to Ms Asshat: as long as you're upfront that the choices are meaningless, gamers are cool with having meaningless choices. It's unreasonable to expect an MMO company to create a massive branching story. It just becomes too much effort. Allowing for minor choices and minor changes to dialog can be sufficient to create an illusion of choice, which - as long as the players are aware it's an illusion - is fine. It lets them pretend they're making meaningful choices even while knowing they aren't.
It's like a magic trick. You know that it's a trick, so even if you can't tell how the magician did it, you don't mind being tricked. You knew going into it that it's a trick and you're EXPECTING to get tricked.
The problems come when a game presents options as "meaningful choices!" and players discover that no, they in fact had no meaning, the story would play out the same regardless.
FTFY
Seriously, I went looking for the background here & it seems to me that a dev who happens to be a woman doesn't have a clue on how to engage users of their product. Rather than engage this Deroir person in a dialogue, whether she believed the person had a valid point of view or not, she chose to feel butt-hurt & claim 'mansplaining'. Further the dev can't claim she's just writing on behalf of herself when explaining her point of view of developing a specific game or games for her company.
User feedback should be considered vital to any product being developed, whether that's a game or an automobile. If you don't know how to treat your customers with respect that you deserve to be fired.
This does not excuse any subsequent vitriol directed at her or the guy that tried to defend her poor customer service skills, that's a separate issue that can be condemned in its own right.
And none of this implies Reddit groupies 'own' the company & can get anyone fired, people acting on behalf of a company need to learn customer service skills, that's especially true of Dev's who might rarely interact with users. If necessary train your Devs in proper customer service if they feel it necessary to engage with them on the Internet. This doens't meant they have to give due respect to obvious trolls & assholes, but someone who is simply trying to engage & wasn't doing either shouldn't be insulted.
Yeah, no. That was unprofessional. If people know who you are and where you work, you have to know that what you say represents your company and that the relationship between the company and the customer is in your hands. The way you addressed a customer there was utterly unacceptable. There is no way I'd have someone like that working for me. Everyone has an opinion, and if you can't handle people expressing it in a public forum, then maybe you shouldn't advertise your position there.
Did you insult him by first telling him something like 'You're and idiot, I've done thus & so & know all this'? You don't say you did so I'll assume you are smart enoguh not to insult someone. Educating this more senior person on your experience isn't insulting, they don't necessarily have a clue about your experience so sharing it bluntly & directly isn't insulting, it's educating them to ensure a proper & productive relationship.
This Dev went off immediately on someone who appears to be a very important user of the platform by insulting him...that's just not going to fly no matter who you are.
We live in a world where Narcism is running wild. In this case the fired employee is a prime example. Here you have someone trying to have discussion and this ex employee went nuts. âHow dare you have an opinion!â.that sort of behavior is Bad for idea sharing, discussion and reflects badly on humanity in general. I say good call on the companyâ(TM)s decision. and hopefully the ex grows up and also learns that ya you can say and behave how ever you want BUT THERE ARE CONSEQUENCES.
> An unfounded accusation of sexism is just as bad as being sexist yourself.
"All men are sexist when they disagree with me"
That IS sexist. Not "as bad as sexist", actually sexist. It seems that's what she believes.
I find it interesting that you characterize yourself as a socialist but then go on to explain that you believe in 'equality of opportunity' (not 'outcome', which is good) which is exactly what the US Constitution says & also that you believe in society trying to help the less fortunate. The interesting part to me is that in explaining that these are the reasons your a socialist you automatically cleave out a position where everyone who doesn't proclaim to being a socialist must be an asshole. I'm a self-professed pragmatic libertarian & I believe in almost exactly the same things...clearly the main difference isn't our shared belief in 'equality of opportunity' or trying to help our fellow humans but how we believe government should lay their extremely large thumb on the scales in individual choice.
Besides that, while I'd mostly agree with your representation of ignoring the far-left & far-right the problem is that much of the vitriol & even the supposed policy positions being espoused by the supposed 'far-left' are no longer 'far left' at all. Democrats have been using identity politics & screams of 'bigotry' against anyone who might disagree with their policy positions or trying to criticize a 'non-white/non-gender normative' person for years, now they are taking the extreme polices like abolishing ICE and harassing government officials in public mainstream. That's a far cry from being 'far-left' or 'far-right'.
In this case we have a Dev who happens to be a woman who can't handle polite feedback and engagement on a topic. No matter how she personally felt about Deroir's response, screaming 'mansplaining' right off the bat shutdown all reasonable discourse & perpetuates the idea that a man can't engage a woman in any kind of reasonable discourse without being labeled a bigot or sexist. This goes part & parcel with misrepresentation of the 'Gender Pay Gap' (which is entirely misrepresented & likely no longer exists in any meaningful form as 'discrimination'), the use of Title X (or is it XI, can't remember) to force Universities to supply 'equal funding of sports between men & women (without any analysis as to money coming in to Universities for men's sports vs women...question if people are all equal why not just have 1 non-gendered sports team & the best athletes regardless of gender are on it?), the idea of 'rape culture' and 'toxic masculinity'....NONE of these things are 'far-left' and far more toxic to societal discourse then actual far-left (Antifa) or far-right (KKK, neo-Nazis) groups.
In reading your response it seems to me that anyone you've engaged on this question seems to be mixing up two different things, the 'outcome' & the experience/game play in getting there. If choices lead to different experiences, and those experiences have different levels of enjoyment for different players then the choice itself is 'valuable' even if they all get to the same outcome/destination.
I can give you a real world example. I travel from Vegas to my home town in Canada on a regular basis. It's about a 1600 mile drive (give or take). I own a 2-seater sports car (Z4 M Coupe). There are 3 distinct routes to my hometown (give or take a side road or 2), each of these provides a different driving experience but all 3 get me to my home town. I tend to take the more indirect routes that go through the more mountainous ares of Utah, Idaho, & Montana because the route is simply more fun for me. It doesn't matter that I know I could take a more direct route & get there faster, I take the route that is more enjoyable for me. Someone driving an SUV with their family (small children etc.) may take the more direct route because it presents a better value or 'enjoyable experience' to them (safer, faster, or whatever)...
Now, certainly if 'choice has no consequences' (both in the experience of getting to the outcome as well as the outcome itself) then its no choice at all, or at best its a 'coin flip' with no difference in which side comes up, so its entirely superfluous & in terms of a video game is an entire waste of development time & game player time. This is not to say that there isn't complexity in trying to come up with choices that have meaningful differences in experiences by game players, the outcomes can all be the same (though they don't have to be) but the path in getting to the outcome certainly should have meaningful differences even to the same player playing the game more than once & simply making different choices.
Damn you Reddit! Leave poor Kevin Spacey alone.
Sig. Sig. Sputnik
If the boss walks in at 8:30 am and decides that s/he doesn't like your goatee, you can be out the door by 9. Or, in this case, if a female employee refuses to coddle some mansplaining fanboy on the internet, and the boss thinks that she should have (after the fact)..... welp.... polish up that resume. You're gone.
This is codified into state employment laws in the form of "right-to-work" laws. 28 states have them. The other 22 states aren't that far behind. Don't let the double-speak name fool you. They aren't meant to protect employees.
However, these laws aren't really in the favor of employers either. They cut both ways. If any employer makes you sign a non-compete agreement, you can probably laugh, sign it, and then completely ignore it if the employer is so foolish as to ever bring it up again. You can quit any second you want, and the second you quit, the employer has absolutely zero hold over you. Non-competes don't hold up in court.
Hopefully this developer has the toughness to take the hit and promptly put out her resume again. If she's well-respected in her industry, she'll have another job in a few weeks tops.
As I understood him he was saying you could aid player involvement by having 'flavour' choices that didn't lead to branching paths. Kentucky Route Zero does this, and it's not an amazing mechanic but there's an argument for it.
> The left is dividing into a group who is traditionally liberal and favors a diversity of opinions and fairness (and many other left wing policies) and a group who insists on compliance, attacks heretics, and isn't in favor of fairness ("it's okay if innocent men's lives are destroyed")
Agreed. And one group makes the other look really bad. When leading Democrats like Maxine Waters call for harassing the family members of the president's staff, so "they can't go to a gas station, can't shop, can't go to a restaurant ... absolutely harass them", it makes Democrats look bad. Really bad. Kinda like how Trump makes Republicans look bad when he - well when he acts like Trump.
When David Souter was nominated to the Supreme Court, the left held protest rallies and all that, pumping up their donors yelling "he'll overturn Roe vs Wade, and probably force states to make abortion illegal". Of course Souter not only upheld Roe v Wade, but generally was more liberal than even Ruth Bader Ginsburg, or Clinton's other pick, Breyer. I wouldn't be too concerned about Roe vs Wade. It's stare decisis, settled law.
Even in the very unlikely event Roe v Wade was struck down, consider what that would mean. Before Roe, most states allowed abortions. Since then, public opinion has shifted more toward allowing abortion, so absent Roe v Wade likely all states, certainly the vast majority, would allow abortion. A few more conservative states, such as Texas, might require the clinics performing abortions have procedures in place to transfer a patient to a nearby emergency room if complications arise. Texas might ban partial birth abortions, in which the baby's head is crushed as he or she is born. You may agree or disagree with the policies, but the sky isn't actually falling.
That shit doesn't fly? I say it did, and hit the fan right in the middle.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
For this? Nah. I have no idea who your employer is, and since you're responding to an AC, nobody would take it serious anyway.
I'd dare say it's different if you first identify yourself as a representative of your employer and respond with that sexist remark to someone who is a huge influence on your customer base. That might well cost you your job.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
How DARE you say there's something women can't do!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Would you consider "my girl" sexist, if coming from what's essentially a stranger?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
?? you're the one being snarky, keyvin (2788865) ??
Don't let the door hit you in the ass.
I dunno, "The Verge" shoe-horned in the sexist term "mansplaining" where it was never came up. Jessica Price had some sexist comments, specifically "manfeels", and harped on being a female game dev. But that specific term never came up, as far as I can tell.
Of course, the verge ALSO comments:
Toxic members of its community are already counting Price and Fries’ firing as a win.
The example being set for employees is also a bleak one. “The message is very clear, especially to women at the company: if Reddit wants you fired, we’ll fire you,” Price says.
They're stoking BOTH sides of the fire and trying to cause controversy. Because that attracts eyeballs. Scumbag thing to do though. Sounds more like activists than news.
Yeah, agreed. But in this case "Mansplaining" was actually inserted by "The Verge", they're just throwing gas on the fire. It was never said by Jessica Price. What she did say was "manfeels", and harped about being a female game dev. She looks to generally be a SJW type:
(Retweeting someone complaining about others jumping in on public comments) This is being a woman (or, really, an sort of marginalized person) on social media.
Because Weekly World News doesn't update often enough.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
So ... if Trump tweets some bullshit on his private time, we shouldn't impeach him for it?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Hell yes I do. And I steamroll over any armchair self-proclaimed IT security expert whenever they make some really stupid remark.
But then again, I don't have "I'm the CISO of $big_IT_security_research_company" in my Slashdot profile. For EXACTLY this reason.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Jessica Price,
yea, I get it, you were "on your own time as a private citizen posting on twitter", but you chose to post about your WORK, and that connected it to the general populace who buy the products you make at work. This, on TWITTER a public platform for open dialog, means that the twitterverse gets to respond. Suck it up child! If you do not want others to reply, post some other way, if you can't deal with the replies DO NOT READ and certainly DO NOT RESPOND especially with snarky crap where you just denigrate the responder as some "jerk guy who knows nothing". He is a customer and YOU linked your private life post to your work, that makes it YOUR BAD.
Only an idiot sets themselves up this way.
Own it.
Then her reply was at the very least incredibly unprofessional.
I'm in IT security. You can't imagine what kind of outright stupid, if not insane, replies you can get to suggestions. They don't border on being insulting, they are. Imagine you suggest an elaborate lock mechanism and the reply is "well, have you considered just, you know, closing the door?" Fully ignoring that this won't even keep anyone from simply opening it again. This of course being an example but yes, it actually IS that stupid more often than not.
You STILL have to stay polite to customers and business partners. You can't reply with "Gee, no, we did not think of the most blatantly obvious and most blatantly stupid idea first of all, thank you for pointing it out, it's refreshing to see a customer that hires us to then tell us how to do our job, know what, why do we even charge you?"
This is simple professionalism. This is what you have to have if you want to, well, be professional. Cardinal rule number one: YOU DO NOT PISS OFF AND BELITTLE YOUR CUSTOMERS. At least not deliberately. Or at the very least not to their face and in a way those idiots actually understand.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
And has been sense about its 4th anniversary.
Year one Reddit would have never allowed shit like this.
Giving up my 5 digit ID.
been resisting for a while, but it's clear this site is now for teenagers who emotionally identify with tech rather than people who work in tech.
Not guilty is not guilty.
Hardly. Was Roseanne on ABC's clock when she started comparing black women to apes? Your apologia isn't going to happen. Stop trying to make it happen.
Game devs are now talking about unionization. That's how bad Arenanet fucked up here.
Go ahead and talk your apologia to a mirror, and if that doesn't work try a wall.
Having departed from gaming when it stopped being buyable in a store, on physical media, most of which I still have since the beginning of the cdrom era, I agree with your views on impact. However I would like to add that if it becomes obvious a game has no depth, I am more likely to powergame through it just to get it out of the way, and even less likely to want to buy more DLC, collectibles, etc, unless most of the trash who pass for gamers today.
Gaming was supposed to be about fun first. Some games, mostly interactive fiction, and then adventure games, were about telling great stories. Over time they evolved and merged with other game genres to create more compelling and cinematic experiences, whole worlds to explore and, in theory, shape. But what has come to pass today is that outside of a niche of indie developers, and the rare fluke in commercial game development is games that lack that depth, beyond the minimum required to keep players playing. Sure a few turn out to have excellent storylines. But how many of those really last across the sequels? Baldur's Gate 2 and TB did, but outside of items nothing of lasting import carried over from BG1. Some of the Dragon's Age games did. Guild Wars 1->2 had some carryovers for players. But how many other games haven't? Or when they do it is one token footnote among a complete ignorance of your character's actions?
I don't have any suggestions or solutions for this, but it is an observation from someone who used to be a fervent gamer. The skins have changed, but the storylines have not improved nor truly pushed boundaries in 20 years. A few interesting attempts have been made (like the RTS with time travelling that could change what interactions happened in the past/present a few years back), but most have simply been taking an idea that had either been tried experimentally in the past, or finally was technologically feasible, without being in the position to leverage its full potential. Combining something like Dwarf Fortress' npcs with time travel and enough cpu power to rerender the universe in near-real time for instance would be a game changer, not unlike the AI in the finale of S2 of Westworld who ran simulations on humans and factored them down to a small big of code. Being able to have player's repercussions visible across the game world for years to come is something important, especially for MMOs, but also for many single player games. Not all of those changes need to be big, and not every game requires them, but persistent story games are one of those that DO, and needs it written or provided with machine learning capable of keeping the plot self consistent across all permutations. Many games if you break character assumptions will fail in subtle ways. Like if you are a low level character and venture into an unlocked higher level area that you were supposed to be kept out of. For an example of this, Icewind Dale with the Heart of Winter expansion pack and Trials of the Luremaster mini-xp was completeable to the endgame boss (an ice dragon?) with a level 10 or 15 mage-thief with only a few levels of regular xp, You needed hide in shadows, dimension door, invisibility and improved invisibility, and every other boss was skirtable in-game. A few lower level monsters would have to be killed to allow you to rest, but otherwise you could skip every major event in the game (which was boringly linear by the way, a terrible complement to either Baldur's Gate, or Planescape: Torment, the latter of which better met the production values and storyline of BG2/ToB and the later KotOR/Dragon Age games.
And that's called total bullshit. If it were a male developer going on an unhinged sexist rant against a woman making polite feedback, he'd be ejected from the company so fast he could wave at the international space station as he passed it.
His reply was most likely not meant to be condescending, but it was obviously understood as such. More likely than not he genuinely thought he is offering input while what he suggested apparently is one of the "too obvious to mention" things. She could have responded in a polite way, something along the lines of "yeah, that's basically what happens behind the scenes", but instead opted for something like "gee, thanks for telling me how to do my job".
Sorry, but that's just unprofessional. If you say something and your employer's name is next to it or at the very least what you say will be put in context of your employer, you represent your employer with your speech. Act accordingly.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
A cunted cunt goes supercunt and gets the boot.
And deprive us of our daily dose of entertainment?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
No more or less than the people who high-fived when Roseanne was fired.
You and your whiny little buddies seem to be fixated on analogs for manfeels
i hope the irony of this doesn't also hurt your manfeelings...
i'm sure this is unrelated to the other feelings you feel when you examine your collective self images etc.
This is such a cliche, seriously. stop BEING it.
Yeah yeah yeah. That's what they said before, every time. Souter will "end freedom for women", they said.
First off, the vacancy will be filled before the election, and there will be a conservative majority (still). Control of the Senate in the future doesn't change that. There will be a majority conservative Supreme Court no matter what.
Secondly, worst case, never gonna happen, would be Roe v Wade gets overturned, so the voters get to decide on abortion regulation. Texas and Utah would have significant regulations, and the other 48 states would be pretty much unaffected.
Or, to put it into a single word: *bullies*.
Between the explosive growth of the alt-reich on both Reddit and Twitter, and those (invariably male) of whatever political stripe who find infantilism an acceptable form of social interaction, the controlled hypersonic flight into terrain just keeps accelerating.
Putin sure got his money's worth.
The problem is that she has ten years of experience and therefore already knows everything. Or doomed to keep repeating the same mistakes again and again. From her comments I gather she figured out that MMORPGs aren't the root issue despite blaming the game format apparently.
I remember and played the original pen and paper RPGs. The ones where you are forced down a particular set of choices aren't as interesting as some more open ended scenarios. It roughly the difference between reading a book and writing a book. Yes, I know the reason for the choices in the computer game -- limited resources and the devs want to show you _all_ their lovely graphics. A human GM is better. What if you decide to align with the "wrong" side? Mostly for these reasons computer RPGs of any sort don't especially interest me. It's false choice.
I think most managers lack that ability.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
"Not True"
https://games.slashdot.org/com...
FUCKING TRUE YOU DISHONEST PIECE OF SHIT.
Protip: Studies have revealed that people assigning an emotional connotation to words are generally using THEIR OWN MENTAL STATE.
Which means you're the offended one and you're being a typical redirecting piece of shit by putting it elsewhere.
PROVE OTHERWISE THAT YOU DID NOT DO THAT EXACT THING.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
As a freelance artist with a very wide set of contacts in the animation and video game industries, I am directly exposed to the work, the criticism, and the opinions of creative people from numerous fields, including a lot of folks who wear more hats than their teams have heads. I have an immense level of respect for anyone who can just get up each day and begin plowing through the kind of work so many of these people do: Graphic artists, animators, musicians, writers, programmers, voice actors, and everything in between. If you think this shit is easy, it isn't. Doing it poorly is easy. Doing it without a good plan and good direction is easy. Doing it well is another matter entirely, and the amount of dedication, experience, and refinement required to make it in 'the industry' is nothing to sneer at. Being creative is a hobby - being a professional is a lifestyle.
That being said, professional artists, swallow your goddamn pride. Not all of you need this advice, but a lot of you still do. The world doesn't owe you a fucking thing. Nobody cares how hard you worked on something that nobody liked. Nobody cares how many years of experience you have or how many gigs you've worked. If you did a poor job and someone complains, or if someone criticizes your work in some other way, or if an amateur or a member of your audience asks you a stupid question, they are not intruding into your fucking safe space. You didn't ask for their input, and they didn't ask you to become an artist. The free exchange of ideas means being exposed to the unsolicited opinions of people you weren't friends with in school. Deal with it, you fucking paper-skinned pants-pissing crybabies.
I'm getting sick and tired of seeing this entitled attitude on open display, being paraded around by so many of my peers who believe that the world is against them just because they can't put the criticism of others in perspective. Blame whatever you want for this shit, social media sure as fuck isn't helping things, but if there's a culprit we can all agree on here, it's that these people haven't grown the backbone, the fucking skin you need to survive as a professional. This is an impairment of maturity, a gigantic burning red flag of arrested development, and keeping your 'feels' in check is part of being an adult no matter how much you didn't want to become one. When you're a professional, especially someone whose work is exposed for the whole world to see, or someone whose work directly impacts the lives of others, people are going to have things to say about the quality of what you've done. They're going to disagree with you, a lot. None of these 'randos' are stepping on your precious little toes when they give you an opinion, and getting bent out of shape about it like this stupid bitch just makes you and everyone else around you look like a retarded shit-flinging child. Grow the fuck up.
Do we have to tolerate a lot of abuse? You bet we do! Do we have to put up with armchair experts, drooling brain-dead pundits, shady and over-demanding clients, and actual crazy people all the fucking time? Yep! Sure do! Do we have to take every single bit of criticism we receive personally, or even acknowledge it all, especially when it's coming from someone who isn't cutting our checks? No, and we shouldn't. And last but not least, do the shitty working conditions and the way we're treated by the public justify us acting like we're royalty just because we got a fancy degree or a gig with a company that isn't run out of someone's basement? Hell no. These people got what they deserved. They got what a lot of people I know deserve. Humble your fucking selves, my dudes. Sort out your problems constructively and learn to treat your wounded pride without bleeding all over the rest of us. When this kind of shit happens, it makes all of us look bad, it makes people think that we're nothing but a bunch of bedwetters whose fragile egos shatter into pixie dust if we're not being critically pampered all the time, and that's bullshit. You make hard working professiona
I see you, too, have played Mass Effect 3.
how do you like them apples. You've fired us men up now.. prepare yourselves. =P
His reply was most likely not meant to be condescending, but it was obviously understood as such. More likely than not he genuinely thought he is offering input while what he suggested apparently is one of the "too obvious to mention" things.
Great he didn't mean to. You know what happens when you drop a brick on someone's foot when you didn't men to? You suck it up when they yell at you.
She could have responded in a polite way,
Yep she chould for the 10,000th time responded in a polite way when someone yet again "offered input" on something simple and obvious to a 10 year veteran in the field.
Funily enough I look "enough like an engineer" that people rarely if ever (I cannot remember a recent example) try to teach me to suck eggs. If anything they tend to way overshoot and I have to ask them to slow their roll in order to catch up.
I have a few friends who are at an equal level to me and have a somewhat opposite experience. Having actually listened to what they say as opposed to just making assumptions, it gets really really really wearing.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Gaming culture is trash and you're all fucking scum.
Yeah, THAT is the reason that there is union talk. It ain't the insane working hours or the general "squeeze them dry and dump them, replace them with younger material" mentality in the industry. It's one silly incident that everyone will have forgotten about in a month, not working conditions that make you wish you could work in a Chinese sweatshop instead.
Yeah. Right.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
No, when I drop a brick on someone's foot I apologize. Pretty much in the same way he did. Sorry, wasn't meant that way.
And yes, if you're in a professional environment, you respond for the 10,000,000th time politely to the same idiotic "input". Either that or GTFO. Which, essentially, is what she did, if not voluntarily.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It's funny how The Verge tries to scandalize this after SJWs weaponized "shit storms" and it has become "industry standard" to fire people when a "big enough stink" is raised via social media. Thank the #metoo campaign etc. for this and meditate about the merits of due process.
Also in this case the "stink" can be traced back directly to the unprofessional manner in which Price and Fries communicated as representatives of their employer, in violation of company policy. And sure, when you advertise your employment on your twitter page (probably for the merits as GameDev), then people visiting that page or reading tweets in which the employment is mentioned will see you as "representative" and your utterances may be damaging to the employers image.
And here a nugget of wisdom from Jessica herself:
"Shdn't have to keep saying, but 1st only protects from gov censorship. Social/financial consequences are FREE SPEECH WORKING AS INTENDED."
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks
I'm so sick of idiots today and their unnecessary "disclaimers."
It was definitely the right call, remember that this is the same Jessica Price that publicly relished in TotalBiscuit's death.
First of all, calling every critique you don't like mansplaining is sexist and ridiculous.
Secondly, you don't harass your clients. Period. You ignore them or you respond politely to them, but you don't attack them.
Third, lots of us receive unsolicited advice. I get told how to write software by my clients every day. None of them knows a lick of programming. I'm a man though, so I don't get to call it mansplaining. I just tell them they hired me to do the work so they should trust my judgement.
Do I think she should've been fired? Probably not for a first offence. Do I think its because she's a woman? No.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
Psst. Your clients are the most important thing you have. Lots of people have made great games that don't sell.
Treat your staff well, but don't let them abuse your clients.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
Totally OT at this point, but Linus does a pretty good job at only truly blowing his stack at people *who should know better*.
NVidia and Poettering come to mind. There's no reason to blow your stack at an idiot. Just call them an idiot and move on.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
A distinction about his version of 'equality of opportunity' is he said it should apply regardless of wealth, this is pretty important and a major difference from just considering discrimination of sex/color/ethnicity/etc. as moral issues.
As a thought experiment let's consider an idealized version of the military where anyone can possibly become a sergeant, captain, commander. Everyone gets the same food and bunk bed or at least there's a minimum standard such that everyone is well fed and good looking.
Even the US has strong socialist elements like Medicaid and food stamps that will help the zero wealth, low income children attend school but it does a poor job and leaves huge gaps and cracks (such as working poor earning too much for Medicaid and stamps, or welfare and official poverty level being far too low unless mum grows vegetables and cooks every meal from scratch and makes clothes and...)
Going more socialist might be : every child is on Medicaid/Medicare, every parent gets a small pittance to help feed and cloth children (no conditions), every child gets a hot, seated three-course meal at school. This is not even that much at all, it's about what France does, the socialist pinkie commie eurowimp cheese-eating country. It's true it doesn't solve everything either, the state won't make you be born to lawyers or doctors or a restaurant owner etc.
For US culture, you might drop the money handout to parents, keep it as food stamps or whatever you like doing but healthcare and school meal is something I don't think would hurt. Or healthcare - but anyway, edible and palatable food is in the interest of a health insurer.
Well, don't get hung on specifics above, it's the topics themselves. In there I don't give a crap about gender pay gap or rapes or n-word though that may come to point at some point (perhaps real quickly e.g. single mothers with gender pay gap probably is an issue)
"I think most managers lack that ability."
I agree. Most managers know very little about social cohesion, or that they could help, or that it is necessary that they help. It appears to me that is especially true in the United States. In the U.S., people work too much, for example. That limits their time to think about social structure and about building a sense of community.
That is not my understanding or observations at all. Actually, that is more of a Centrist or Right position that you stated, not "Left". The Right believes in equality of opportunity. The Left believes in equality of OUTCOMES (like so called "equal opportunity"). The latter is requires limiting/punishing/"equalizing" those who do well based on group identity to try and force equal outcomes and wealth distribution (one of several definitions of Socialism).
Your understanding is distorted by your own biases and perceptions, as your own words clearly demonstrate a severe degree of favoritism. In reality, the right cries about the indignity of saying outcomes are unequal due to prejudice and discrimination, pretends opportunities are equal, and ruthlessly decries anyone who points out inequalities. They actually prefer denying the existence of their system of oppression and mistreatment, because it validates their own perception that they rose to the top on merit.
But of course, they do decry the existence of any system to address that, or even prefer to believe that somebody else is using the system in a way that hurts and harms them, to make themselves out to be the victim.
Just look around at the right-wingers, and learn their true character.
Or you know, harangue the left like a fool.
I want to read your critique of Lord Of The Rings please. I'm pretty sure it reads: The birds should have flown it in skipping all the BS in between.
Texas and Utah would have significant regulations, and the other 48 states would be pretty much unaffected.
It's more like 17 states.
https://www.guttmacher.org/state-policy/explore/abortion-policy-absence-roe
From the linked page:
17 states have laws that could be used to restrict the legal status of abortion.
4 states have laws that automatically ban abortion if Roe were to be overturned.
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
What Jessica Price had to say on passing of TotalBiscuit (John Peter Bain): "The kindest thing I can say is: 'I'm glad he's no longer around to keep doing harm.' "
Jessica Price on Twitter
TotalBiscuit
The overall issue, in my opinion, is that Jessica Price should have been coached by managers and co-workers to be less self- and other-destructive. Her criticisms were too broad. I've known many 3-year-olds who had that shortcoming. One way of understanding her is to realize that she is unfinished with conflicts that occurred in her childhood.
This is, of course, not a fully-detailed analysis. It is just a short comment on Slashdot.
The underlying point seems to me to be valid: Personal conflicts require helpful action by management and by everyone who works with someone who is acting-out conflicts. That didn't happen, apparently.
Caring management brings enormous benefits. Companies that show sophisticated caring when employees make mistakes attract the best employees, for example.
Koyaanisqatsi
Wow, I had no idea about Koster - I've only read his "Theory of Fun" book, and it was god-awful. I couldn't possibly imagine from that expression that he was an intelligent human ):
You got it right. This is a woman that expressed she was glad at the death of Total Biscuit.
This was just the last straw.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
And yes, if you're in a professional environment, you respond for the 10,000,000th time politely to the same idiotic "input".
Unless you're a dude with a reputation of not suffering fools (e.g. Linus Torvalds, but examples abound), in which case it's fine. Funnily enough I have never heard a female engineer referred to as "not suffering fools", instead rather less flattering terms are always used.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
... o prevent women from posting during a certain time in the month.
Probably the smart phones already have enough data to pinpoint the date. And well, if women go like "Whaaaaat??!?! My smartphones telling me i should think twice before posting!?!?!? BANG!" and throw their phones against the wall - WIN-WIN situation, even the vendors get to sell new phones.
Woman saying something here. I didn't read these tweets, only this story. But it seems to me that if someone posts a 29-tweet thread, on Twitter, in public, to the masses, about something challenging, the likely result will be that someone, somewhere will post suggestions for dealing with said challenge. If she never meant to ask for feedback, what was she doing it for? Just to entertain people with whining? She should just calm down. And unless this is only one in a long series of oversensitive snits, her boss should also calm down and give them both their jobs back.
...you posted in a public forum and didn't expect the public to discuss? n00b.
You honestly think that this is dependent on Linus' gender? Please.
Linus gets away with being a douche because the whole system depends highly on him. Not because he's a guy, not despite being a guy, but because he's a key figure in the Linux project.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
You had me at pointing out I missed "wealth" in the list of things all people should have equal opportunity under.
Of course it is absurd to think that everyone has equal opportunity across socioeconomic boundaries. I don't have the same opportunity to buy a jet as Bill Gates, I don't expect to.
My point however is that socialists seem to think they have a monopoly on compassion because "Government suppiled Universal Healthcare" etc and if I tell people I'm a Libertarian and believe there are better ways that don't entirely skew the market I'm "unfeeling" and without compassion e.g. "think of the children".
If people actually believed that we all (or at least most humans) are generally compassionate human beings than maybe we could have reasonable and intelligent discussions about policies.
I see you quietly latched on to one part while ignoring the other thing I said (examples abounud).
clearly you have an axe to grind and aren't interested in an actual discussion.
And yes I do think gender has a lot to do with it. You never hear a woman described as "not suffering fools" but plenty of loud angry dudes are.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
guild wars 2 is shit
I don't even have a horse in that race, I'm not in the US and we over here in Europe don't blow shit out of proportion, so it honestly couldn't affect me less. But you're comparing some low level developer to a key developer. Independent of gender you'll notice that the latter gets a lot more leeway than the former. You think I'd get away with going to work, putting my hairy, smelly and dirty feet on the table and start clipping my toenails? First I'd be probably asked whether I lost the remaining few marbles I had, then I'll be shown the door.
Now let's take a look at rms.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Isn't she Girlsplaining? Womansplaining? Or how about we just use the work that has existed for many moons to describe exactly this type of person. Bitching!
-- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.
I don't even have a horse in that race
Yeah I mean getting rid of double standards in the industry are for other people!
Independent of gender you'll notice that the latter gets a lot more leeway than the former.
Yep.
and then gender gets layered on top of that.
9 times out of 10 a dude at a given level of seniority and skill will get way more leeway for "not suffering fools" than a woman of the same level. Which is why you never hear of women referred to as "not sufferin fools".
I've mentioned that 3 times now and every time you stuiously ignore it going off on a tangent instead. It looks like you DO have a horse in the race, you just aren't prepared to admit it.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Well, you have made your mind up it seems. So further discussion is pretty much moot.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Says the guy constitutionally incapable of actually addressing points in a discussion. You ignored my main point every single time choosing instead to go off on a tangent.
Your mind is clearly fixed so trying to reason with you is pointless.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
It's twitter... and everyone has an opinion. If she doesn't like it she should fuck off. I don't even care who's right and wrong, at the very basic level it's like she's allowed to have an opinion and say what ever she wants, but as soon as someone else says something it's unbelievable that they dare form their own opinions and express those opinions.
Was that sincere Hatorade or performance art? It's hard to tell for sure these days...
Since you need a picture drawn with crayons, the point isn't to equate Nazism with Jessica Price. The point is that it's absurd to claim it's not the company's concern when you publicly talk about company business on a public Twitter account, to which you've attached your employer's name - and then be a flaming asshole to one of the comapny's partners. Now here's another analogy you'll love: you reason like a Klansman justifying his dislike of Jews "because Jews killed Jesus". More on that in a minute.
Not true. Plot limitations is an old subject not just in MMORPG's but RPG's in general, and as a partner to the company, something Deroir actually knows WTF he's talking about from a user perspective. Bioware had this shit worked out with Mass Effect 3, though they were criminally cut short on time by EA to apply it to the main story. Rather than worry about every branching conversation option or plot choice, just assign points to various options the player has taken to see how the story is resolved a la Rannoch.
But even if it was true, and Deroir asked a dumbass question like "have you considered adding graphics acceleration to the game", nothing justifies Jessica going full sexist nuclear hatorade on his ass. If she was capable of either reason or professionalism, she could have answered something like "that takes much more work - which campaigns in the game would you have traded for more meaningful plot decisions?"
Except Jessica was the one throwing out a *lot* of shit here, not Deroir. You only get to the play the cards on the table here, not bring in some irrelevant baggage & bullshit. Deroir wasn't some high school guidance counselor telling a student she should really consider a liberal arts degree instead of computer science. He wasn't some GamerGate nutjob doxxing a person he didn't like. He wasn't some fuckwad calling everyone a See You Next Tuesday on a livestream.
Pretending to the contrary, and justifying Jessica's abuse of Deroir by other wrongs done by other people to other women, is straight up "Jews killed Jesus" reasoning. Fuck that. But trying to claim moral superiority while literally becoming what you hate - good luck with that too.
They have just as many clueless male designers as they do female designers.
And GW2's "personal story" team is so bad that even Arena Net's original (and pretty good) writers try to distance themselves from them.
Sure, there's a long history of discrimination in the game industry. But this particular interaction didn't have any hint of that until Price decided to introduce it.
This statement could easily be adapted to race relations. "Sure, there's a long history of racism, but this particular interaction didn't have any hint of race until [entity] decided to introduce it.
I'm thinking about Ferguson, Missouri, where a person who happened to be black tried to wrestle a police officer's gun away from him, then charged at the officer. The DoJ under Attorney General Eric Holder found that the officer shot in self-defense, but that was too late for Ferguson, which had already been wrecked by riots.
There's been a lot of talk about "civility" recently, but it all ignores why the civility of others is important to us: it is something people give to us voluntarily. When you start enforcing civility, it is no longer civility, it's conformity.
Similarly, when funds are coercively redistributed from someone who earned them to someone who didn't earn them, no one is being charitable. The spirit of charity is found nowhere in the conformist act of writing out a check to the IRS.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.