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The ArenaNet Catastrophe Has The Whole Game Industry Rethinking Harassment Policies
Dragnelus
Member EpicPosts: 3,503
One week ago, two Guild Wars 2 narrative designers, Jessica Price and Peter Fries, were fired after Price called out a player of the game on Twitter, prompting widespread backlash. Since then, mobs have tried to employ similar tactics against more women, and game development studios have had to take a hard look at their own social media policies.
Read more at:
https://kotaku.com/in-the-wake-of-arenanet-firings-game-studios-rethink-t-1827591298
Read more at:
https://kotaku.com/in-the-wake-of-arenanet-firings-game-studios-rethink-t-1827591298
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Comments
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JabYRKGWMWo&t=
Yongyea has done a number of videos on the subject that are at least fact based, something you are unlikely to get from Kotaku.
I could not see any other examples of that happing in the article, perhaps I missed them?
I am so sick of all this "hate against women" bullshit when Price was simply a douchebag.
But on the contrary this shows us that we are indeed still quite far from gender equality.
Because no one would have given a damn if the developer who was fired for all those posts would have happened to be a man.
Also in relation to this issue, would you want to be the gaming journalist who sticks his head above the parapet and says "I don't agree"? This is groupthink, go against that in your profession and you become a pariah.
SHE called out?More like they insulted her ability as a writer so she lashed back,imo perfectly fine.
Furthermore Arena.net does not employ Price under Twitter nor do they own Twitter nor does Twitter have anything to do with GW2.
I don't get involved much trying to convey my opinion to a developer straight up but i have called out Blizzard for a terrible job of balancing hearthstone and bringing the game to the ENTIRE community AND bringing multiplayer to the game,imo they have failed on several accounts.Now if a Blizzard employee were to come out and defend their decisions or imo their LACK OF,fine i am not going to cry about it.
There is a reason that female of Star Citizen "Chris's wife"removed herself from twitter,the same problems were happening,only it is VERY odd that in that case Chris's wife claimed the victim of slander and in this case Price/Fries is the victim.Price /Fries criticized for their writing skills and the SC team is often criticized for MISLEADING the ENTIRE community.So who is worse,one gets into a argument with a gamer and the other is misleading the entire community,hmmm ...yeah.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
So rarely it seems, for any issue do people have to look to their own behaviour; it is always about an organisation of some sort needing to do more, or do things differently.
Remember posters, no matter what happens you are never in the wrong.
Personally I felt her barely talked back at her at all.
He just said this is not a problem of MMOs in general but of GW2's Living Story in particular.
What he meant by that in particular.. I don't know.
So this could have turned into a friendly back and forth but things took another turn.
There is absolutely zero evidence to support the claim that the original person’s questions were in any way,shape or form sexist. Zero. Reading his comments show that he is probably one of the most polite people on the internet, and actually until she called him a sexist I had no idea if it was a he or she that posted it.
SHE is the one that took the post, decided she was judge,jury and executioner and publicly blasted her accusation that he was a sexist person across the internet. Whatever “the mob” did later, THIS was an intentional act, by her... and is despicable.
That then fed actual sexist posters as well as sjw folks who both decided that this was going to be a fight for their “team”. They are all wrong, including the fired dev.
The only “clean” person in any of this is the poor guy she dumped on.
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
~~ postlarval ~~
He was friendly while doing it, even when he disagreed with her. That's a best case scenario you wish for as dev.
From a dev standpoint:
Someone repeatedly saying "You are the best! It's all perfect!" is not useful, other than to bloat your ego.
Negative feedback is the useful feedback, it helps to improve the product.
You do not lash out because of negative feedback, you say "thanks for your input", then you look into if the complaint has any merit.
Sometimes it will be quite useless (players are not trained designers or writers afterall, they are also very biased to their own personal preferences), but in other instances it will be extremely helpful because it can point to a flaw you didn't see from your dev viewpoint.
Players see a game from a very different perspective than a dev, it's smart to leverage that.
Insults are ofcourse an annoyance, the noise on top of the signal basically, they just get filtered out. It's part of the job. Can't let it get to you.
In this case there weren't even any insults. Hell, the guy apologized for disagreeing.
JP was very unprofessional and essentially bad at her job. (the job is much more than just writing, especially when you choose to engage with the players)
She had convenient opt-outs, she could have walked away after his tweet or she could have opted to fully work behind the scenes from the getgo, as most devs do.
She chose to directly interact, then handled it horribly. End of story.
the only policy should be a zero tolerance policy for when an employee makes baseless accusations of hate speech and directly insults the community.
Considering the resources required, I doubt it.
On the other hand deroir was simply doing an assist (you just need to watch is twitch stream from the previous day to understand that) so Jessica could expand more on the subject. She could easily have said "that would require too many work hours" and said more.
Also she did lashed back and he stated he was just trying to have a conversation going, expressed his disappointment, apologised and left.
Could have ended here. Jessica could even have said (as she said later) that it was just one of the things that pushed her buttons.
But it didn't, because Jessica decided to say deroir was sexist and any criticism that comes her way is because she is a woman.
And as in "good" internet behaviour, never backtrack just attack more and more...
Currently playing: GW2
Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
It's the world we live in today. Utterly ridiculous.
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
The sense of entitlement that comes with most gamers these days combined with their snowflake attitude. Maybe Jessica did deserve to be sacked, but there is a proper place to provide feedback for the game you are "a prominent member of" and if you have such (bullshit IMO) status you should know well where to provide such feedback.
On Jessica specifically, she made her bed (you need to read real articles on the topic) and she can Lie in it, however, you can find several examples on any game board and across social media where this type of thing takes place nearly constantly. I do not disagree with good customer service, but sometimes people the customer is, in fact, an asshole. As a matter of fact, a lot of times they are when it comes to games. For whatever reason, people feel very entitled to their opinions when it comes to a game. Myself, if I were a game studio, I would develop behind an iron curtain and only start advertising 90 prior to release. I would also not force my developers (beyond community relations) to have a social media presence. Just my opinion on the topic as I feel too many "prominent members" of communities think they know more than they actually know. You're a customer, just like anyone else.
This all points back to my favorite topic of late. Internet regulation. These types of things only add fuel to that fire and before long we will be getting taxed on every e-mail we send, every post we make, etc. in order to pay for an "official organisation" to keep an eye on the internet because 4Chan, Kotaku, and their ilk can not behave like humans when they have interactions on the internet. I doubt this will start tomorrow, but we will provide enough "reasons" for the bureaucrats to step in and provide the safe place our little flowers need.
If you want a new idea, go read an old book.
In order to be insulted, I must first value your opinion.
I have to say, the side that try to exploit this in an attempt to get other women fired or reprimanded are the weakest people on the planet, imagine being so sensitive that the idea of a woman working on something makes you start twitching and acting like an idiot.