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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."
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 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.
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.
If that's true (it's the internet, I assume everyone makes everything up) it does sound like she has a history of hitting enter before she thinks.
<tongue-in-cheek>But she's a woman, so whaddya expect.</tongue-in-cheek>
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
Oh wait, I just checked, this stupid girl is definitely part of the "my politics or nothing" crew. I've never, ever interacted with her, but she's taken time out to subscribe to a twitter blocklist and I'm blocked by her. Thanks Randi Harper / Wil Wheaton, sigh.
Gotta shut out that 'other think'
One more thing, "DeroirGaming" or whoever it is? Their tweets regarding it in full are still up and completely polite / not offensive and not looking to stir shit.
https://twitter.com/DeroirGami...
This girl brought this on herself. Considering she's a blocklist user, I change my stance, fuck her. Soak it up girl. You're obviously a politics player.
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
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
Not just a customer, but an official PR partner. She basically made a sexist attack on someone who had official channels in the company reserved specially for people like him.
It was stupidity to the extreme. She would have likely gotten away with it if it wasn't someone who actually had people inside the company who's jobs are to address their immediate concerns related to the company.
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.
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...
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
Source: https://twitter.com/Delafina77...
So I'd assume that she works for whatever company develops GW2, which is ArenaNet.
Now I'm not sure whether or not she deserved to be fired over this incident. Given her twitter I can only assume that she not a very pleasant person. I can understand that ArenaNet does not want to be associated with that part of her. But that doesn't tell a lot about her actual work at ArenaNet. For example I think that Orson Scott Card is an asshole, but his Ender's Game is still a fine piece of writing and worth a read. If this was the first incident I think she deserved a warning and not to be fired right away.
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.
Are you talking about the developer or her boss? Seems like he was the one who overreacted to criticism.
She was the one who previously expressed joy on twitter when someone died from cancer (leaving behind a widow and child) simply because he refused to join the anti-gamergaters.
The person she attacked is a content contributor to the game in question, and has such is considered a business partner by the company.
She launched an unprovoked attacked on a business partner, and got fired as a result.
(PS. You're doing a poor job of hiding your self-loathing these days.)
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
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.
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.
The person she attacked is a content contributor to the game in question, and has such is considered a business partner by the company.
This might be a bit of an aside, but it's a sad state of affairs that a parasite like a streamer is now considered a 'business partner' with the gaming company. A 'golden customer' who 'the staff' should not be allowed to displease.
We have progressed beyond the point where companies like Blizzard sell 'level-boost tokens' that allow people to not have to actually play the game they (apparently) regret having written, which interferes with 'the endgame.'
Now, game companies consider 'streamers' who potential customers can simply watch playing the game to be 'partners.' Some beancounter must have done a study that showed that "Lottery Box" sales aren't impacted if people don't actually play the game.
Former ArenaNet dev here, posting anon for obvious reasons... I don't know Jessica, and I only know Peter in passing (I'm a programmer, and didn't interact with him much). So, I can't say anything about them personally, nor would I wish to. And I certainly don't condone the harassment they've subsequently received. No one deserves crap like that, even if they made a serious mistake themselves.
However, I can tell you this. ArenaNet makes it very clear to employees, at least when I worked there a few years ago, that if you're representing the company in any official or unofficial capacity, you have a very clear responsibility in how you communicate with fans. They even have a class you take to go over all this, for heaven's sake. Everyone should know the rules up front. And this is pretty much the norm for any company in the industry. They tend to give you very clear direction on what you can and can't say in public about your job. I'm a little flabbergasted that Price could say that she had no idea what the rules were.
How you choose to display your social justice (or whatever) views on your own is up to you, of course, and most companies are pretty hands-off about what you say - I'm pretty sure the HR person was talking about this, not when talking about how one would talk to fans about the game. But as soon as you start representing yourself as an ArenaNet developer, you're now representing the company, and you're expected to behave like a professional, not get into internet pissing matches.
Now I'm not sure whether or not she deserved to be fired over this incident. Given her twitter I can only assume that she not a very pleasant person. I can understand that ArenaNet does not want to be associated with that part of her. But that doesn't tell a lot about her actual work at ArenaNet. For example I think that Orson Scott Card is an asshole, but his Ender's Game is still a fine piece of writing and worth a read. If this was the first incident I think she deserved a warning and not to be fired right away.
You do realize that a woman who takes sexism to setting 11 is a hand grenade with the pin pulled, I hope.
Taking advice and turning it into "mansplaining" (did she just assume his gender?) is the mark of a misandryc bigot. If a male told a woman he didn't need to listen to her because "she's only a woman" would have a mob at his front door after being Doxxed
But here's the problem at the company level. #metoo has men being very careful about any and all interactions with women in the workplace.
Given her proven record of trying to turn everything into a sex issue, and how she has shown definitively that any input from a man will be rejected as "mansplaining", it is going to be difficult to find males on staff that will work with her.
I wouldn't be in a room with her without a witness present. Such is life when you decide to be a hand grenade with the pin pulled. So she pretty much got exactly what she deserved.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
I'm sick and tired of people losing jobs over social posts. Smearing people that have worked for decades because of a frigging tweet is way worse than the 5 minutes of bad press a company gets for stupid comments nobody will remember a week from now. Even ones that drive people to the streets do not matter. Internet idiots take themselves too seriously and think they are changing the world when in fact the only power they have now is getting random people fired for one off statements usually made in the heat of the moment. I'd rather 600 racially insensitive comments from someone than one smug asshole getting their social masturbation on by having someone fired for saying the sky is green when we all believe its blue.
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.
I was wondering if a male had been the one to correct a commenter, would the same thing have happened. I think not, because there wouldn't have been the rush to defend the commenter.
It feels like a double standard, as rude men get a pass all the time, or maybe a quiet talking down later by the boss. We're conditioned to assume that if men are aggressive that this is normal and expected, whereas we're supposed to assume that women are polite and agreeable. So when that expectation is broken a lot of people get upset.
I doubt this comment alone got her fired. People like that are toxic to work with
Good point, but I think the company could have handled this in a better way. To start with, by outright firing her, they've given her more of the attention she wants. It's a weaponized Streisand effect, and people like her have learned how to use it to their advantage.
I would suggest, in the future, to make her recant her statements publicly, start giving negative performance reviews, then finally firing her for failing to meet performance expectations.
Most companies have this down to a science. They should have multiple levels of managers above her. She would be called in to long meetings with each one of them to discuss the issue she created. Some good cop/bad cop action. Some "Why aren't you done with your project that's due yet?" knowing full well its because she's been stuck in meetings about her little tantrum. Wearing her down psychologically until she publicly retracts her statements. Once she retracts fully, all her little followers will be deflated and the people she offended will feel a small measure of triumph.
I think this game company should look into hiring some professional management drones. The company seem really unprepared to handle her outburst properly.
After reading Deroir's tweets, I really can't tell what you're referring to. His/her comments were polite, civil, and totally on-topic. They were entirely about issues of game design. There's nothing in them even tangentially related to gender: not his/her own gender, not Price's gender, not depictions of gender in games. They even go out of their way to complement her, calling the original thread "interesting" and "insightful". And Price responded with a bunch of insulting, sexist comments. (Yes, calling someone "my dude" is sexist. Talking about "hurt manfeels" is sexist.)
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.
"I'm too busy to research this and form an educated opinion, but I do have time to tell everyone my uninformed opinion."
No. The company realized that this was a quick and effective way to get rid of a toxic employee and one of her enablers. The original article indicates that the woman churned out 19 tweets and a simple 3-tweet reply caused her to go ballistic.
> 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.