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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."
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.
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.
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.
Providing a consistently nice response here is a challenge that mostly women are expected to be up to gracefully, delivering a response that acknowledges the individual's intellectual capacity, the same individual that denies this acknowledgment to the expert.
Oh please. She wrote fiction. She's not a rocket scientist. Furthermore, anybody is allowed their two-bit opinions to your public posts. If you don't like it, don't post publicly. The only person being sexist was Price.
Yes, Price was not exactly acting gracefully here but she was responding on her private blog
No, she lambasted the guy on Twitter and then took it to her blog. She was "verified" on Twitter because she worked for the company, which she listed in her profile. She was talking about her work for the company on Twitter. And then she had a meltdown because a fan of the game respectfully responded to her with a differing opinion.
She deserved to be fired. This is what happens when you hire social "justice" idiots.
The social "justice" idiots that are for Political Correctness were never about civility. They reserved the right to be as uncivil as they wanted, while constraining their opposition with the most stringent edicts.
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.
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
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.
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.