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."

Comments

Good

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Good

[Luckyo]

The company she answered as a representative of (discussion was specifically about main product of ArenaNet), and that she put on her twitter as being representative of.

Essentially pillorying for "sexism on twitter" is finally starting to go both ways, rather than being a one way train that it was for last few years. And the standard misandrist crowd that is used to it being a one way street is reeling.

Re:Good

[fazig]

In several of her tweets she wrote about GW2 at least two times and implied that she was working on it using words like:

Specifically in GW2, in the Living World, we can write the Commander with

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.

Re:Good

[Hognoxious]

Deroir's post (though I don't understand the half of it) is at least polite in tone.

Her post was the one with the obscenities and personal attacks.

Do you even know when you're lying?

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Good

[goose-incarnated]

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.)

Re:Good

[fazig]

It's certainly a possibility that they're nice in person.
But from my perspective the way they chose to portrait themselves on twitter and that is all I have to base my assumption on. I've got nothing that urges me to assume otherwise - Occam's Razor.
But since you appear to resort to questioning the person who makes the statement instead of the statement on its own merits: let me ask why you assume that my observation is due to how their twitter sounded in my head, based on a few internet sentences?

Re:Good

[fazig]

So? People make first impressions and others make their assumptions based on that. It may not be fair, but sometimes it can be a very important thing to keep in mind when interacting with certain people, like customers.
We are talking about a person who states on their twitter that they work on a specific game for a specific company. People who read their twitter are going to judge them based on their statements there. And the readers are going to assume that they're at least speaking in a somewhat official capacity of that company. The way they stated their affiliation is also used to claim some sort of authority here and there:

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. PSA.

Source: https://twitter.com/Delafina77...
And if you act like that, affiliating yourself with a company you have to expect that said company may not like the publicity that you're creating for them. Will that company ask people who are upset to get to know that person on a more intimate level? Maybe they should, but that's not very economic for them to do so. So they're looking for cheaper solutions. Like I said, I don't think that firing them was the right choice, especially if they were doing good work.
But unfortunately that is how the business world works. If you manage to piss off/alienate a bunch of people - (potential) customers - while associating yourself with your employer, you'll get into trouble.

Re:Good

[Hognoxious]

Heck, after WWI fourteen states even made it illegal to teach German in schools.

I thought that was a child cruelty issue?

I bet they have a word for that. A word. A long one.

Re:Good

[Bing Tsher E]

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.

Re: Good

[Ol Olsoc]

Reading comprehension fail; that's hardly what happened. What happened... was that on a public forum, in front of the world to see, she - and her more experienced colleague who had his tongue up her ass - revealed some particularly entertaining personality flaws... and got what they - and far too many others clearly fucking deserve.

what is impressive is the double standard employed by some folks.

While she was on her "mansplaining" tirade, she didn't seem to mind giving a tour de force in "womansplaining" and incredibly rude and bigoted sexism on her part.

My non-genderized advice to the woman is simple - You were acting like an asshole, Ms Price. Don't act like an asshole does.

Re:Good

[Raenex]

a parasite like a streamer

How is a streamer a parasite? Has he infected the host, and is taking value away from them? Or is he part of a larger community of fans?

A 'golden customer' who 'the staff' should not be allowed to displease.

The employees should not treat any of their customers that way.

Some beancounter must have done a study that showed that "Lottery Box" sales aren't impacted if people don't actually play the game.

Oh, I see, you think because people watch they won't play, as opposed to people who play and also watch, or people who started watching and became players. What a sad state of affairs.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Good

[Ol Olsoc]

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.

Re:Good

[Ol Olsoc]

...let me ask why you assume that my observation is due to how their twitter sounded in my head, based on a few internet sentences?

Because you yourself said you "assume she's an unpleasant person" because of her Twitter, which implies you've never met her. Interpreting sentences is a fill in the blank process rather than hearing what someone is saying in context.

You are right. She might be a sweet loving person who only wants the very best for everyone in this world, man or woman, race creed or religion.

But here's the problem. What she wrote is the sort of thing a sexist bigoted man hating asshole might write.

So yeah, she might not be a sexist bigoted man hating asshole.

She's just writing using the language that a sexist bigoted man hating asshole might use. That doesn't mean she is, just that she argues with those tool

So you can understand a lot of people's confusion with thinking that she might personally reflect the qualities of such a person when she writes that way.

Re: Good

[Ol Olsoc]

And "asshole" is gender-fluid.

Especially after eating at Taco Bell.

Re:Good

[azcoyote]

Exactly. When I was developing Dark Deeds on StarCraft 2, I had plenty of people telling me how to do things that I already knew. Many were children who were imagining changes that were sometimes just not practical. I admit that sometimes I did not receive criticism or suggestions well, but I learned that I needed to do my best to be courteous because people had good intentions, and the children in particular were just exercising their creativity.

The dev probably is correct to some extent that she was not being taken seriously, but she should not assume that it's simply because she's a woman. In the end, it's rude of her to respond so crassly to a fan, and it does not built up her fanbase. Instead of treating him like scum, she should have found a way to turn what he said around, showing not only that she has already done what he said, but that she is well beyond him in knowledge. In other words, if she is uncomfortable being addressed as a student, then she needs to use her voice to make herself into a teacher. Instead, she chose to be combative.

Re: Good

[GrabbaTheButt]

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.

Re:Good

[hey!]

Well, I never automatically cheer someone losing their job, because it's so damn hard to apply "do something embarassing, lose your job" consistently. Oh, it's satisfying when somebody is fired for doing something outside work you see as odious, but that's an emotional reaction, not a principled one. For every firing that by your feelings is justly dismissed, there is another whom you feel is an injustice, and people will never agree on which case is which. Which tells you feelings are a lousy guide in this situation.

The fact is in the Age of Internet Shaming there is no such thing as "off-the-clock". I don't think this is a good thing. I think people should be allowed to have time when they aren't responsible to their employers, even if they use that time to be assholes.

The dev's reaction here wasn't criminal; it was uncivil; a childish overreaction which prompted an even more ridiculous overreaction. 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.

Re:Good

[Chibi Merrow]

She publicly celebrated TotalBiscuit's death on her Twitter.

She's an awful person and ArenaNet should've dumped her then, as it proved she's a huge PR risk. Now they've learned their mistake on keeping people who are awful monsters in public while flashing their ArenaNet badge around.

Re:Good

[religionofpeas]

He didn't get her fired. She got herself fired.

And if you don't want to get yourself fired over social media posts, then don't go represent your company on a social network.

Re:Good

[jwymanm]

We need to get to the point where we help each other rather than knee jerk attack one another. Social platform doesn't matter, that is what I am trying. If you say it in a lunch room or on Facebook. Instead of hatred towards one another for thinking certain things, even if they aren't what we really feel or are just silly/wrong, we should go towards acceptance and help one another. Peace with freedom of speech. If you wanted to fire people for what they thought at moment XYZ then we'd all be fired a few times in our lives. At least if you let people say what is on their mind you have an understanding of where they are at at the moment and can adjust your hiring guidelines better in the future. Right now with the way corporations are ran only people tight lipped and either emotionless or worse really good at hiding things they are feeling are promoted and it's creating a sociopathic world. Less and less freedom is happening before our eyes and all we have are social justice warriors and others with frigging pitchforks ready to kill anyone with emotion.

Re: Good

[Crashmarik]

That's odd, because 40 years ago the aclu fought for the rights of nazis to match in skoki.

Seems pretty tolerant of abbhorent political views to me.

What's more they don't do that anymore

https://www.nationalreview.com...

Re: Good

[bistromath007]

Even if you believe that this woman was a victim of mob harassment, it is immaterial to the fact that she started the fight by dumping on some guy giving an honest opinion. "Mansplaining" is one of the most disgusting ideas in the world; it casts in a villanous light the act of making conversation.

Re:Good

[superdave80]

She was being an asshole to someone after they SLIGHTLY disagreed with her take on something. This has nothing to do with 'mansplaining'.

Re:Good

[lgw]

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.

Re:Good

[Maxo-Texas]

I've seen quotes of the post. He complemented her, said her post was interesting and that he agreed with most of it. he had one minor fairly technical point about having multiple dialogue trees so customers could customize their own experience of the character.

I saw nothing about Deroir's post that even displayed inciviliit

She then went nuclear on him. She reacted badly. She attacked one of the companies long term customers who was known to other customers too.

Perhaps you can help me out.

What part of this is trollish?

" âoeReally interesting thread to read! However, allow me to disagree slightly,â and shared a three-tweet explanation of how narrative design influences player expression in the sort of games that Price narratively designs."

She responded with the mansplaining comment here

https://www.theverge.com/2018/...

her comments upset many other fans and so she tweeted...

"âoeIâ(TM)m not on the clock here. Iâ(TM)m not your emotional courtesan just because Iâ(TM)m a dev. Donâ(TM)t expect me to pretend to like you here.â

That's very abrasive, confrontational, and was directed at *many* of the companies customers.

I would have fired her too.

Re:Good

[Ol Olsoc]

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

And now she apparently has the same, so I'm not really sure what you're arguing except that people like overreacting.

The point is that unless we are going to have some sort of magic mind where women are the exact equal of men, yet are not held accountable for what they say and do, we are reaching a point where mansplaining and other derogatory sexist statements from women are going to be treated like the misandry that they are. It is just awkward, to be the victim all of the time, even when you as the victim spout your hatred of males while demanding that if a male disagrees with you, he is a misogynist. That isn't equality, that is demanding untouchable superiority. Is untouchable superiority what you demand for women?

Well I ain't seen that and I've not modified my behaviour.

Well then, I suppose that settles the matter, amirite?

Maybe if you felt you had to then your behaviour was problematic in the first place.

Maybe. Or maybe the guy might have performed a simple risk/reward analysis.

This isn't rocket surgery. There are plenty enough examples of false harassment and false rape claims. While they are not a large number percentage-wise, they exist. if there is no particular upside to male-female interaction, a prudent man what values his career is going to focus on his career, not whatever benefit there might be in unnecessary interactions at work.

It is glaringly obvious that this woman had a rather low threshold for going ballistic. Just sayin' But we are digressing

Saying "a sex issue" is a mighty strange way pf phrasing it.

What is a better phrase? Takin to the patriarchy? Putting men in their place? Drinking male tears? Exposing mansplaining?

And apparently she was well know for it and the company knew and it came up in the interview:

I warned people in my interview that I was loud about these issues on social media and had no intention of shutting up, she told Kotaku of when she first got hired at ArenaNet. They reassured me that they admired [my] willingness to speak truth to power.

This is a fine example of the Mike Tyson defense, where you claim that since people know how you "are" their understanding that leaves you always guilt-free. That since they know that, they are perhaps the guilty party. https://www.indianapolismonthl...

Um, it didn't work with Mike Tyson, and it didn't work with her. And she wasn't speaking truth to power either, just being rude and jumping at the change to play the sex/gender card. And that's a card trick everyone has seen played too often. It isn't a win every argument card any more, even if it was at one time

There is nothing wrong with a woman taking down some asshole who is acting like an asshole. But if she is going to act like an asshole acts in the attempt, there isn't much difference between her and him, unless you always give women a free pass, as if women have no control over what they say and do. Which seems kinda like a prejudice based on a person's sex and is rather demeaning to women.

Re:Good

[Opportunist]

Of course there is. Kindesqualproblemsvermeidungsgesetzesinitiativantrag. Which eventually led to the Kindesqualproblemsvermeidungsgesetz.

But it's not a long word, sorry.

Re:Good

[Dutch Gun]

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).

Re:Good

[Ol Olsoc]

Maybe. Or maybe the guy might have performed a simple risk/reward analysis.

I was fine acting really crappy, but now it's risky so I'm being more careful.

Hey Serviscope minor, this is the second thinly veiled accusation you have made that I am harassing women. Homie does not play that game. If you want an intelligent conversation, that is cool - but you are using the tactics of the people who get fired for being sexist bigots.

Sorry, no - I don't "act really crappy" toward women. I tend to be very reserved with women I do not know very well, because I don't want to upset them. I want to get some idea of their personality first. I have some lady friends who are reserved, and a couple who have incredibly filthy minds. So I eventually tailor my interactions to the lady I am interacting with. But that is hardly treating them crappy.

Re:Good

[meerling]

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.

Re:Good

[UnknownSoldier]

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.

So much for an open discussion I guess. I meant no disrespect AT ALL. Never did. Never will. Neither did I imply I knew better. Nor has this ANYTHING to do with gender. Never did. Never will.
I will retract my comment, cause obviously I'm in the wrong forum for this kind of talk

Frankly, you don't know what the fuck you are talking about.

Not her first rodeo

[ToTheStars]

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.""

Re:Not her first rodeo

[Raenex]

Right, there's a difference indeed â" one hurts someone, the other doesn't. Except perhaps posthumously self-declared advocates of the deceased

Like his wife or kid?

defending the desceased's misbehaviour against possibly legitimate criticism even after his death

Celebrating when somebody dies a horribly painful death from cancer at a young age is magnitudes more disgusting than whatever supposed "harm" TotalBiscuit did.

Re:Not her first rodeo

[Raenex]

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.

Re:Not her first rodeo

[Anonymous Coward]

Celebrating when somebody dies a horribly painful death from cancer at a young age is magnitudes more disgusting than whatever supposed "harm" TotalBiscuit did.

People celebrate other people dying from horribly painful deaths all the fucking time. And, again, TotalBiscuit wished cancer on someone else. That he retracted it afterwards is great and maybe it shows that there was a level of decency to the man, but it doesn't really undo the real schadenfreude. It is, after all, not like he was tweeting at a ripe young age (he was 27) when he wished cancer on another person.

Note, I don't celebrate TotalBiscuit's death. But I don't believe that trying to underplay the vileness of a dead man is someone some great service to society nor that family and friends should be shielded from the truth of who a person was. They either should accept that person's faults or really have left/disowned the person quite some time ago.

PS - Seriously, just google Totalbiscuit get cancer and you'll find at least one other example of him saying it. Meanwhile, it looks like he really only apologized years later to Seanza after talking to Seanza about why they were blocked.

Re:Not her first rodeo

[goose-incarnated]

I'm saying if you're going to be a Nazi, don't be surprised when people fight you. You want to pretend like GamerGate wasn't about silencing women developers and keeping women out of gaming but whine about how those mean women said mean things about you like it fell out of the sky from nowhere.

So stop being a disingenuous butthurt snowflake.

You think all black people are nazis, or just me?

By now it's obvious to all but the most ideologically cemented that gamergate wasn't about silencing women devs.

This article is a good example - the woman in question launched an unprovoked sexist attack on a male, but it's the men who are snowflakes?

Just because you are a self-loathing male don't go around hurling insults at the non-self-loathers.

she still does not understand why she got fired?

[Anonymous Coward]

let me make it crystal clear:

you responded to simple criticism with sexist remarks.

that shit don't fly.

Is "mansplaining" a pejorative term?

[piojo]

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.

Re:Is "mansplaining" a pejorative term?

[Calydor]

Game programmer writes lengthy post about why their way of doing things is right.

Gamer says, "Hell no, this is how it looks from the PLAYER's perspective."

Gender doesn't enter into that discussion, and you do see it almost DAILY on any game's main forum or Reddit. How many times have you seen gamers going, "If I was in charge of this project, this is how I would do it."? Hell, doesn't even have to be about games, can be about anything. Armchair psychologists, backseat drivers etc. It's been going on forever.

Re:Is "mansplaining" a pejorative term?

[Raenex]

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.

Re:Is "mansplaining" a pejorative term?

[Hognoxious]

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?

Re:Is "mansplaining" a pejorative term?

[TheRaven64]

The quoted post in the link from TFS does not paint her in a very good light. The response to her initial thing is:

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.

Re:Is "mansplaining" a pejorative term?

[Kjella]

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.

I don't think you've quite gotten the definition of "mansplaining", it's men making simple, condescending explanations to women on the assumption that women are either ignorant or less intelligent. Basically she's accusing him of being a bigot and that he'd not talk like that to her if she was a man. However the world is full of armchair quarterbacks who offer advice or opinions on things they know very little about, often dismissing or belittling experts with many years of experience. Like for example every time dust on the Mars rovers' solar panels comes up somebody goes "Duh, should have put windshield wipers on them." like they got the answer. And if you go into a parenting forum as a male you'll see plenty "womansplaining" too.

Now sexism, racism, ageism, discrimination of sexual or gender identity and various other forms of bigotry are real but you need to have some sort of smoking gun or pattern of behavior to go on. If you're just jumping to the conclusion that everything negative anyone says is because of your sex, skin color and so on throwing out accusations in every direction you're a SJW nutter. And for the longest time you couldn't touch them because that'd only invoke an even bigger accusation of bigotry. I'm sure this woman is now going around saying she got fired for being a woman and standing up for women's rights and the male leader and the male gaming community aka the patriarchy got her fired.

Re:Is "mansplaining" a pejorative term?

[dentin]

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.

I don't think you've quite gotten the definition of "mansplaining", it's men making simple, condescending explanations to women on the assumption that women are either ignorant or less intelligent. Basically she's accusing him of being a bigot and that he'd not talk like that to her if she was a man. However the world is full of armchair quarterbacks who offer advice or opinions on things they know very little about, often dismissing or belittling experts with many years of experience.

As a multi-decade game developer, I can't even count the number of times somebody has "mansplained" various aspects of game design to me. Thing is, I'm male, and everyone knows it. The world is indeed full of armchair quarterbacks, and men aren't exempt from it.

God, if only my typical armchair quarterback message was as polite as Derior's. What wonderful world that would be.

Re:Is "mansplaining" a pejorative term?

[Cylix]

This isn't a one time offense.

I invite everyone to search her name, twitter and mansplaining via google. It's not a pleasant trip.

That's the kind of association companies want to avoid and she screwed up enough to get noticed.

NO, it was not the result of a Reddit witch hunt..

[ChodaBoyUSA]

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.

Cry cry cry

[aliquis]

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.

Re:Cry cry cry

[Kokuyo]

I disagree partly. Third-wave feminism is cancer and sexist.

However, I will uphold my opinion that first-wave feminism was long overdue.

Re:NO, it was not the result of a Reddit witch hun

[ChodaBoyUSA]

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.

To accuse someone of mansplaining is sexist by def

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

What a mess.

[AbRASiON]

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?

Re:What a mess.

[AbRASiON]

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'

Re:What a mess.

[AbRASiON]

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.

Let's take gender out of the equation

[91degrees]

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.

Re:Let's take gender out of the equation

[Luckyo]

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.

Re:NO, it was not the result of a Reddit witch hun

[thegarbz]

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.

100% lies

[slashmydots]

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.

Re:she still does not understand why she got fired

[Ecuador]

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!

Re:NO, it was not the result of a Reddit witch hun

[Phydeaux314]

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.

Re:NO, it was not the result of a Reddit witch hun

[Phydeaux314]

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.

The rest of the story

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:I am a game developer. Arenanet made a big mist

[fahrbot-bot]

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.

Re:she still does not understand why she got fired

[JaredOfEuropa]

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.

It is not "the left"

[aepervius]

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.

Didn't have to be a thin skinned sexist asshole

[Uberbah]

The guy (Deroir I think is his name) replied to this with a suggestion so insultingly simple it deserved scorn.

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.

Bottom line; your customers are the most important thing you have, so don't treat them like crap just because you're exasperated.

Fixed.

Personally I will now never even consider working with Arenanet's leadership and other devs I know are saying the same thing.

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.

Re:NO, it was not the result of a Reddit witch hun

[piojo]

When the mentioned her company by name, she immediately became a PR person.

Re:I am a game developer. Arenanet made a big mist

[klingens]

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.

She's a walking victim

[Anonymous Coward]

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!

Re:She's a walking victim

[MacDork]

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.

Re:She's a walking victim

[SoftwareArtist]

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.

Deroir's Tweets

[vix86]

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.

Re:I am a game developer. Arenanet made a big mist

[Solandri]

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.

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.

Re:she still does not understand why she got fired

[goose-incarnated]

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.

Re:she still does not understand why she got fired

[TheRaven64]

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.

Private social media accounts

[110010001000]

"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.

Reality just bit someone ...

[johnlcallaway]

"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.

Re:NO, it was not the result of a Reddit witch hun

[wisnoskij]

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.

Re:NO, it was not the result of a Reddit witch hun

[dontbgay]

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

There absolutely is off the clock

[SuperKendall]

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.

Re:There absolutely is off the clock

[hey!]

You have to be careful enough to avoid leaking enough information for your identity to be crowdsourced by doxxers, which if you want to blog about your profession is extremely difficult.

But I'm also talking about people who get fired from their work for spouting racist rants that are captured by cell phone cameras and are then identified by rando acquaintences. Now I think accosting someone with a hateful rant is an odious thing, but I'm not sure that it should be a firing offense for someone who is not in a public-facing position like a spokesman or C level executive.

The basic problem is that is that shame costs $0 to produce, and it rewards bandwagon-jumpers with that little hit of self-righteous pleasure. This makes drawing lines almost futile, because there's an endless supply of outrage and companies will make the simple economic decision that it's easier to get rid of the employee than get rid of the distraction. If you had to spend a little of your own social capital to take someone down, then maybe things would be different.

She assumes disagreement is chauvinisism

[raymorris]

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.

PS after 20 years studying my craft

[raymorris]

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.

ONE person involved acted stupidly

[Uberbah]

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.

Re:she still does not understand why she got fired

[Opportunist]

That shit doesn't fly? I say it did, and hit the fan right in the middle.