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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."
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.""
What ever happened to ignoring stuff you don't agree with. A lot of today's generation have always got to have the last word regardless.
On another note, the company I work for has this Customer is always right policy and how we are supposed to be polite to customers even when they are being abusive in your face, spitting, throwing punches all while they are shouting how they have rights. You know the thick one's that come into the store, try to nick stuff then get caught and start throwing punches at the security guard meanwhile shouting "if you touch me I am going to ring the police and do you for assault, I KNOW MY RIGHTS"
You have to laugh at them as they seriously do believe they are in their rights to be abusive and violent but no one else in the world can touch them because of their rights and how the customer is always right etc.
Some customers feel it is always their human rights to buy clothes and goods, wear them and use them, then bring back in a damaged state months later demanding a refund.
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.
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.
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
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.
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!
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.
You consider this relatively mild?
''Like, the next rando asshat who attempts to explain the concept of branching dialogue to me -- as if, you know, having worked in game narrative for a fucking DECADE, I have never heard of it -- is getting instablocked,''
This is about her work. It's traceable to her employer. It doesn't exactly radiate professionalism, does it?
Have you stopped taking your meds or something?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
What ever happened to ignoring stuff you don't agree with. A lot of today's generation have always got to have the last word regardless.
Never existed.
You think previous generations sat still and ignored gay or interracial marriage just because they didn't agree with it?
They lynched people that they didn't agree with back then.
You see those nazi-meetings happening around? Had this been 50 years ago they would have been shot on sight. Now we allow them to speak their opinion.
Heck, after WWI fourteen states even made it illegal to teach German in schools. So much for that free speech.
There were also the thing where dachshounds where almost entirely eradicated from the US because they where considered being a German breed. Many of them were killed it brutal ways to send a message to their owners.
Current generation is a lot more tolerant towards things they don't agree with.
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.
Context matters: Nazis are murderers. You don't want to work with people who would murder you if you were Jew, gay, communist, gypsy, etc.
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
Really interesting thread to read!
However, allow me to disagree *slightly*. I dont[sic] believe the issue lies in the MMORPG genre itself (as your wording seemingly suggest[sic]). I believe the issue lies in the constraints of the Living Story's narrative design; (1 of 3)
That sounds like a polite disagreement. Her response was:
Today in being a female game dev:
"Allow me--a person who does not work with you--explain to you how you do your job"
This was a personal attack, a mischaracterisation of the post (at least the first one, I've not seen 2/3 or 3/3). As a game developer talking to a fan, she was the one in the relative position of power and she uses this to belittle someone.
Her Twitter profile says:
Game producer, writer, editor, howling maenad. ArenaNet Narrative team. Obsessed with lionesses. Salty language. I block often. I won't play demure for you.
i.e. she is explicitly associating herself with ArenaNet. There is no statement that her views do not necessarily reflect the views of her company, she is representing them in public by belittling and insulting their customers. She also seems to think 'play demure' means 'interact like a reasonable human being'.
I'd be willing to bet that if she had a gender-neutral avatar and removed the gendered terminology from her posts and profile then people would think she was a male asshat.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
"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.
You apparently don't know what a White Knight is.
Not everyone who works at a company is representing that company. Your status as an employee is a simple fact; it does not make you a representative to simply state your employer. The Twitter feed was her own private feed and she should be able to say what she wants without fear of retribution.
Every employer I've ever worked for would disagree with you 100%.
Most have very specific policies about social media behaviour and the minute you identify your self as an employee of Company X you have put yourself in a position of representing that Company.
If I decide I want to walk around town carrying a sign that says "Gays should be shot" then my employer isn't impacted and doesn't have much to say about it. Change that to "I work for Company X. Gays should be shot" Then I'm going to get rightly fired as I've now tied Company X to my hate speech. The fact that I'm carrying that sign not on company property while not on company time is completely irrelevant.
PS Apologies to the Gay community for using them as my example above. For the record, people are people and Gay people are perfectly fine and I do not advocate their genocide.
I worked with her nine years ago at S&T and kept up with her until Microsoft Flight imploded due to the fact Microsoft couldn't find decent programmers and no one that knew anything about planes would work with them after Microsoft treated their SMEs for that project like garbage. She was toxic, and she has been getting worse. She made the decision she would rather show her true self how she interacts in person rather than keep her job of six years.
She was being an asshole to someone after they SLIGHTLY disagreed with her take on something. This has nothing to do with 'mansplaining'.
What self victimization? She wrote some tweets about how challenging her job is (was) and when a guy chose to explain to her how she should do it, she shut him down. That's not victimization.
Missing from TFS was that "the guy" who responded to her was a well-known GW2 player (there's an NPC named after him somewhere IIRC), with more knowledge of the game and game lore than this particular dev. So, she went off on someone not only more knowledgeable about the game than she, but someone the community liked a lot more.
Specifics aside, she publicly attacked a customer. Reason enough.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
But she was responding to someone who seemed like a woman hating asshat who wants women to stop gaming and leave it to real men instead.
I didn't see that at all. Please read what kicked off this mess. I'll quote it exactly.
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 person who responded to her seemed very polite and had compliments for her post, but disagreed with one point of hers. From my perspective, he was trying to start a conversation with her about a topic he was very interested in. The guy is a well-known GW2 streamer and superfan, and actually seemed to admire her and the other devs. When he got rudely shot down, he even apologized and intended to just leave it at that (note: English is not his first language).
You getting mad at my obvious attempt at creating dialogue and discussion with you, instead of just replying that I am wrong or otherwise correct me in my false assumptions, is really just disheartening for me. You do you though. I'm sorry if it offended. I'll leave you to it.
How you could characterize this as some sort of female-hating tirade is beyond me. Did you just make that assumption without actually knowing what was said, or are you reading something more into this than I am?
I'm not defending the later attacks on her (and Peter) later, as that's inexcusable as well. But the initial exchange seemed fairly innocent to me, and for some reason, she took great offense to it and lashed out at him publicly (several times, in fact).
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
In this case he was very polite and was disagreeing on her statement that you can't make compelling characters for MMOs, and he was obviously trying to open a dialog, but she replied by a verbal attack, which included an emoticon the above blurb didn't include. He then simply stated that he was trying to open a dialog, apologized, and politely bowed out. Of course, that wasn't good enough for her, so she put him on blast and escalated even more and making sexist attacks accusing him of "mansplaining".
That wasn't even her last post attacking him. Mind you, this is the same dev that said something pretty unconscionable about the death of Total Biscuit.
It's odd how she also implies that Deroir is a "rando asshat". The truth is that Deroir is a well known youtuber in the GW2 community, works with the company a lot, and even has an NPC in GW2 named after him!
Deroir was nothing but professional and polite in his limited part of the entire exchange.
Jessica was vitriolic and toxic in the extreme.
Then Peter jumped in both feet right into Jessicas pile of shit to defend her extremely inappropriate actions.
Mind you that many other posters were seriously pissed off at both of them, but I in no way think Reddit is why she got fired, rather I suspect that may be why her bosses got wind of this brewing shitstorm. Her actions are totally in line with policy violations that result in firings. Peter trying to defend this garbage is most likely why he got swept away as well. It's very possible that after the ruckus about her celebrating the death the Total Biscuit, she was already on a watch list for F-ups.
As to the extremely weak excuse that this was a "private" account, Peter obviously doesn't understand the difference between private and personal. Jessica tweeted this whole mess on the same account that allows everyone to see it. She started this by talking about being a developer on GW2 and her viewpoints on it. Whether she'll admit it or not, she was acting as a company representative to the public when she went ballistic in full view of everyone, which is something you NEVER do if you want to keep your job.
I find it rather strange how some of those reporting this kerfuffle seem to be leaving out many of her negative actions, and even leave out important parts of the few posts by Deroir. It seems as if they are either not very good at editing, or are trying to make him seem like the bad guy by having a polite and respectful opinion as well as refusing to get involved in an online spat in public. It makes me wonder if somebody has a deceitful agenda of some kind.
Of course, you don't have to believe me, or those writers, just look up the relevant records, but you'll need to check some archives because some of the ex-employees of Areanet later deleted some of their relevant posts.
You DO realize this is the SECOND time she has been fired for harassing customers, right?
The first time was from Paizo Publishing.
Lastly, Deroir isn't just any Guild Wars 2 streamer, he is an ArenaNet partner and even has an NPC named after him in the game.He is one of the largest Guild Wars 2 streamers around.
Furthermore, he even apologized BEFORE she was fired.
Frankly, you don't know what the fuck you are talking about.