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Fired Guild Wars dev rails against the community (shades of GamerGate)

Humbug
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21 hours ago, onlybuilt4cubanxlinx said:

What a bitch.

The only words that could come to mind as well. 

Message added by Crunchy Dragon

Keep this civil, remember the Community Standards.

Jessica Price was an employee of Arenanet, developers of the Guild Wars series. On July 4th she made a series of tweets about story, characters, dialog and player responses in video games. Interesting stuff.

 

One member of the community known as Deroir politely disagreed with her on a particular point, he actually did it in a respectful way fostering further discussion. However she took offense and choose to attack him as shown below playing the gender card which wasn't even a part of the discussion.

 

 

 

Predictably this unwarranted attack on the community did not sit well with ArenaNet CEO Michael O Brien. The next day he called her into his office and fired her.

 

Since this happened Jessica Price was able to generate some sympathy from a few websites. She also gave interviews and press statements, below are some of the quotes which Jessica made in defence of her position. She even thinks ArenaNet was sexist for the manner in which a man fired her.

 

Quote

“The whole thing was highly unprofessional,”


"There was zero reason for him to be there. He wanted to vent his anger, and he had the power to command a woman to stand there while he took his feelings out on her, so he did. Then he walked out, [the manager] got my stuff from my desk and the HR person asked for my key card.”

“I was told during my interview and subsequent hiring communications that ArenaNet respected my willingness to speak up on issues in the industry and had no desire to muzzle me,”

“I had, in my time there, zero warnings about my social media use. Everything I said on Twitter was consistent with what I’ve been saying for years and how I’ve been saying it.”

“They promised me that I wouldn’t have to check my identity at the door. They said that they admired my willingness to speak up about issues in the industry."

“There was so much that we were doing internally that encouraged me to hope, to trust them. There were executives talking about diversity, and building a nontoxic work environment, and acknowledging that talk wasn’t enough — that they had to put money and effort and leadership behind it.”

"There were meetings in which executives promised us that they wanted us to speak up about the ugly things, the harmful things, and that we wouldn’t be punished for doing so,”

“There was constant talk about how to make it the sort of place that you’d dream of working at, not just because of the cool games we were making, not just because of the benefits and perks, but because it was going to be a corrective to the exploitation and toxicity of so much of the industry. "

“And so it’s devastating that a company talking all that talk folded like a cheap card table the first time their values were actually tested. Doing the right thing is hard, sure, but doing it regularly makes it easier to keep doing it. And the corollary to that is that capitulating makes it harder to stop capitulating.”

“Let’s be clear: In 2018, it’s absurd to pretend ignorance of what would happen to a woman fired for speaking about sexism, because he feels she got too uppity,” Price said. “He painted a target on everyone’s back. He didn’t just fail Peter and me, or even the employees for which he was responsible. He failed the entire industry.”

“He caved to a handful of people and an army of bots and sock puppets,” she added. “Now he’s got almost every female developer I know — as well as some men — furious with him. I’ve got recruiters pinging me promising they’ll steer candidates away from ArenaNet, and game design professors saying they’re going to warn their students away. I’ve also had a lot of ArenaNet co-workers and other industry colleagues contacting me to express how afraid this has made them.”

“I looked every female narrative designer on the team in the eye and told her, ‘This place will value you, and will let you be who you are.’ They trusted me, and I led them wrong."

“The wounds from GamerGate had just started to heal in terms of women in the industry starting to relax and trust their employers,”

“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.’”
 

 

https://www.polygon.com/2018/7/9/17549492/arenanet-jessica-price-guild-wars-2-writer-fired

http://fortune.com/2018/07/08/arenanet-guildwars2-game-developers-fired/

 

To play devil's advocate for a second I don't doubt Jessica's word that she has faced sexism in the industry. I would love to see the most talented people contribute their work to our beloved hobby, and a person's gender should never stand in the way of that. Furthermore a person's gender should never be grounds for judging their competance, the work they do should be judged based on merit. Jessica seems to have been a talented person who did good work. Having said that she also seems delusional person to me, she thinks it's ok to attack random innocent members of the community based on injustices that she has faced in the past, she cannot understand the responsibility of representing her employer in public. Amazingly she thinks the community is more toxic than her.

 

I would like to end this post on a positive note by leaving a link to the below article. It is just a small sample of talented women who have contributed greatly to the world of gaming. The type of women who can be flagbearers for women in this industry.

http://www.denofgeek.com/us/games/women-in-gaming/235076/25-awesome-women-in-gaming

The above is just a tiny sample, they are much more numerous than the likes of Jessica Price. So let's always support the positive members of the dev community regardless of their gender!

 

Cheers

 

*******************

 

**********

 

Below is the response which ArenaNet CEO Michael O'Brien posted on the guild wars forums.

Quote

 


Recently two of our employees failed to uphold our standards of communicating with players. Their attacks on the community were unacceptable. As a result, they’re no longer with the company.

I want to be clear that the statements they made do not reflect the views of ArenaNet at all. As a company we always strive to have a collaborative relationship with the Guild Wars community. We value your input. We make this game for you.

Mo

 

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/comment/586426#Comment_586426

Thanks @lewdicrous

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This is just a person trying to save face as publicly as possible to try and save their career after making a public mistake that has cost them their job.

 

What makes it stand out is, unfortunatly, we we living in a time of political correctness and very loud SJW's, as such the easy subject to use when its even remotly applicable to a person, is those subjects used by SJW's and the polital correct. In this instance, gender.

 

She will get sympathy, thats unfortunate as she is in the wrong, u can bet if it she was a guy it wouldnt be as big of a deal. That there is whats ironic, she's getting more sympathy becouse she is a she.

 

Still, will soon be forgotten.

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Notice how she didn't name companies, educators, etc. in anyway. No one to point to as examples, which makes me think she's just pulling it out of her ass to save face.

Quote

“...There were executives talking about diversity, and building a nontoxic work environment, and acknowledging that talk wasn’t enough — that they had to put money and effort and leadership behind it.”

"There were meetings in which executives promised us that they wanted us to speak up about the ugly things, the harmful things, and that we wouldn’t be punished for doing so,”

“There was constant talk about how to make it the sort of place that you’d dream of working at, not just because of the cool games we were making, not just because of the benefits and perks, but because it was going to be a corrective to the exploitation and toxicity of so much of the industry. "

2
  • Made things less toxic by removing her.
  • Didn't punish her for talking about the things she's so concerned about, rather, for lashing out with reckless abandon at the community she develops for.
  • Corrected her exploitation and toxicity.

At the end of the day, I am of the opinion that ArenaNet handled this very professionally and very well. And based on her description of them, they sound like a great place to work at. It's a shame she refuses to recognize this for herself.

A society's accepted views of the world surrounding said society is both the making and undoing of society itself.
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invert the roles and you'd have the gaming media rejoicing for: male developers losing his job after insulting female gamer.

 

 

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It really be like that sometimes.

 

Wondering if Deroir is going to talk about this on a stream

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"Let's see what's going on."

[notices that one of the very first things she said involves her victimizing herself with gender]

"Oh god, it's one of these people."

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ArenaNet did the right thing, don't need people like that working for a company that develops games. That works closely with the community (gamers) to gain feedback etc.

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Imagine being a game developer that thinks they are above criticism, attacks their community and then is surprised they got fired.

 

Soooo much entitlement

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4 minutes ago, RotoCoreOne said:

Yet news sites are helping her turn this incident into a gender issue. Smh.

They gotta score cheap political points for those who hardly populate a community.

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If you really think you were mistreated you take them to court, not to social media. If she keeps going at this rate it would be worth it for ArenaNet to sue for ungrounded image damage.

 

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34 minutes ago, RotoCoreOne said:

Yet news sites are helping her turn this incident into a gender issue. Smh.

Because "game developer gets fired for being an idiot" doesn't get as many clicks

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Glad ArenaNet did the right thing here.

Just because you're a female dev, doesn't mean you get a free pass at everything or get to claim the slightest criticism is about gender when it isn't.

 

It's also the same dev who was glad Totalbiscuit died, so frankly, I'm glad she got fired. 

 

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As pointed out to me by @lewdicrous Michael O Brien made an official comment on the guild wars forums. Updated opening post.

Recently two of our employees failed to uphold our standards of communicating with players. Their attacks on the community were unacceptable. As a result, they’re no longer with the company.



I want to be clear that the statements they made do not reflect the views of ArenaNet at all. As a company we always strive to have a collaborative relationship with the Guild Wars community. We value your input. We make this game for you.

Mo

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/comment/586426#Comment_586426

 

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Alright, here's how I - as a person who has never played an ArenaNet game before - see this since I find it so fascinating.

 

Writer (Ms. Price) posts a statement about how difficult it is to create compelling characters in MMOs. Streamer - probably unbeknownst to her or she wouldn't have responded the way she did, official ArenaNet partner - provides constructive criticism/rebuttal. Writer then brings up gender inequality - not at all brought up by streamer - as a shield to downplay streamer as a "rando asshat" and to complain about what was constructive criticism.

 

ArenaNet president Mr. O'Brien nailed this one perfectly in his response. Ms. Price really expects sympathy for being fired when she essentially dehumanized and attacked a gamer?

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first: She wasn't the only one who got fired. There was a dude who came to her defense and said "she didn't ask for YOUR Oppinion"

Second: If you be an ass to the customers, you deserve to be fired.

Third: The sad thing is that:

4 hours ago, Humbug said:

Since this happened Jessica Price was able to generate some sympathy from a few websites. S

Be an ass to the customers, get fired and then some sympathy for being a mean person to some dude who was very polite?


Ähm, no, just no.

In the olden days there would have been no one that would have come to defend you when you totally messed up and got fired for your own misbehaviour.

 

 

How about Admitting your Mistakes and owning it?!

Probably she was as bad a person to the CEO as she was on Twitter??

 

But the Response was perfect. You don't need the Radical feminist type to ruin your company! That is a fringe group nobody really cares about.

 

Here is a pretty good summarisation about that shit!

 

"Hell is full of good meanings, but Heaven is full of good works"

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Just gonna say, if I publicly referred to my customers as "asshats", I wouldn't have a job for very long.

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Do women get the short end of the stick in the gaming world (as well as the rest of the world)? Yeah.

Does that entitle a woman to be a complete asshat in a public venue? Nope.

 

There are plenty of women that can do the same job with excellence that would love to take her place. We (both men and women) need to work more towards bringing pay equality and fair treatment to women in the workplace as a whole and women like this don't help that.

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9 minutes ago, GilmourD said:

Do women get the short end of the stick in the gaming world (as well as the rest of the world)? Yeah.

Why??
There were always woman doing gaming stuff. Just take a look at this dude:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLrOm_M6dSSmCun7ijgg9Dw/videos

 

He made some videos about Women/Trans People in Game Development. And the list is long.

Though you might not have been born or have a PC at the time as it was in the 80s! and early 90s.

 

Its more like _EVERYONE_ gets the short end of the stick...

Not just one group...

"Hell is full of good meanings, but Heaven is full of good works"

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4 hours ago, Humbug said:

Predictably this unwarranted attack on the community did not sit well with ArenaNet CEO Michael O Brien. The next day he called her into his office and fired her.

LOL, just LOL.

 

 

However she spins this, and whatever we may think about how companies approach the relationship of their employees with social media, it is a well established fact by now that being an asshole in public will get you fired.

I quickly dug this up:

but I'm sure we can find more threads like this with the appropriate search terms (like the Google dude with his internal memo, while not exactly the same).

Whatever people crying SJW's world dominance may think, you simply don't get away with it, regardless if you do it in the name of feminism, white supremacy, or just your own asswholenessTM.

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4 minutes ago, Stefan Payne said:

Why??
There were always woman doing gaming stuff. Just take a look at this dude:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLrOm_M6dSSmCun7ijgg9Dw/videos

 

He made some videos about Women/Trans People in Game Development. And the list is long.

Though you might not have been born or have a PC at the time as it was in the 80s! and early 90s.

 

Its more like _EVERYONE_ gets the short end of the stick...

Not just one group...

I'm probably about twice as old as you think I am. LOL I was actually playing Intellivision II and Colecovision in the pre-NES days. LOL

 

The video game industry was pretty much started by women back in the '70s and then got pushed out as male executives thought that girls didn't play video games and it was a boys market.

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if a female gamer tried doing this to a male developer and he shut her down, people would parade that dude in the street. Price did nothing wrong. Gaming culture is a cesspool of toxicity and to ignore that is just plain ignorance. 

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