It’s not hard to read the things linked early in the thread, even that the medium piece touches on, that occurred. I’m not going to stress again - those events are inappropriate in a workplace. This is why there’s so much couching of “well back then...” and the like. I 100% accept the reading of the situation from anyone who was there. But even if literally every person there was fine with it, it is *still* unacceptable conduct - and in 2018 we don’t need to reward it.
Could you please explain this? I'm asking sincerely, because in the UK the law on workplace harassment requires (among other things) the conduct in question to be "unwanted" by the person subjected to that conduct. Or, in other words, there has to be a "victim", to use your colloquial term.
wtf? youre stealing agency away from people in order to suit your own narrative. whats wrong with you
What?! When someone who was there says there was no culture of sexual harassment, you explicitly deny their voice as unimportant and irrelevant, instead deciding to apply your own narrow moral interpretation.
Not the case in the US according to every ounce of harassment training I’ve ever had in five large corporations.
You keep repeating it because you have no solid argument.
I mean no personal offense to you, but this statement is amongst the most inane things I've ever heard. You seem to mistake what you personally feel morally inappropriate, and what is actually illegal and unlawful conduct.
But what's your reasoning? As opposed to what you've been told by trainers.
You're misinterpreting your training. The vicim there still exists, it's the person that saw the ass grab and found it inappropriate, they can complain to HR. I'm aware of hostile work environment being another reason. But in this case, none of the women who worked there have called it that.
Exactly this, it's the same in the UK. Someone can bring a harassment claim about conduct that wasn't directed at them, but they are still a "victim".
An inappropriate and unprofessional workplace is not the same as harassment. If two coworkers have a consensual sexual relationship, they could easily be violating company policy and that would likely be considered inappropriate for the workplace, but it does not constitute harassment.
Only thing I'm getting is you wouldn't want to work for atari in 30 years ago, which is fine opinion to have. But has nothing to do with sexual harassment.
Seen your edit. Inappropriate /= harassment. Everything that is harassment is inappropriate, but not everything that is inappropriate is harassment. That's why there are legal tests.
This is true in the US as well, I even have personal experience regarding this.
My issue isn't so much that it was brought up by Wu. People make mistakes, but like you said, the GDC barely did any vetting and now they look pretty bad and amateurish.
He's the only one that comes out looking good to me and I only heard of his name like five hours ago.
Shit, GDC could be projecting their own demons.
So all of this I follow a lot more as opposed to the last few pages. It’s hard sometimes to see where [my] personal standards end when presented with something like this.
No, that’s not the way it works. Yes it was a different time as in a different generation and their experiences.
Downplaying Gamergate, downplaying the culture of Atari, it's hard not to consider him partisan.
I should clarify that the reason I really blame Wu is because she's running for Congress with this issue at the forefront of her campaign. If she can't build a researched argument for her central issue, why should she be trusted with public office where she would be dealing with complicated issues way out of her wheelhouse? If she was just speaking as a developer and activist I would hold her to a lower standard
If there are demons it's the industry as a whole. It's only a matter of time before #MeToo blows up in video games just as it had with Hollywood and comics. GDC probably got scared from the numerous examples of other industries rewarding toxic people and felt they had to quickly take action.
Yikes.
Unless something concrete pops up, this was a premature shot.
Even if we accept all that, so what? Brianna Wu is clearly partisan on this subject, being the instigator of the whole thing (after having publicly declared that she wanted there to be a 'metoo for the gaming industry' no less).
Oh it's clear that Wu was opportunistic here. But I specifically said in my post that I have issues with Wu. And even without Wu's role in this story, I've known about Atari's culture already, it's documented. There's a fun episode of The Dollop about it, getting into the history of Pong and how Bushnell didn't copyright the game so people were making ripoffs left and right. But the episode also gets into the cocaine culture of the company, and the 'party atmosphere'. So it's not a fabricated story by any stretch. It's just how we choose to interpret it. I consider those anecdotes provided to be classic examples of abusing a power dynamic and boss-employee relationship.
Yeah, ultimately this is the problem. No one is discounting that a lot of people were likely okay with the culture of Atari at the time (and if it benefited them, I'm fairly certain they were probably even happy about it). The idea that everyone was ok with things like being solicited by their boss is absurd.
You're making a LOT of assumptions about my industry, care to expand on any of these points? Do you think the game industry is run even remotely like hollywood? Why did anyone in the industry have to address Gamergate, then or now?
Because women in gaming, and women at game studios were and are being targetted and harassed, sent death and rape threats. Game developers and publishers stayed silent about a targeted campaign to chase women out of gaming, games journalism and game development, out of fear of the loss of Gamergaters' money on the market. There's nothing 'assumed' about it.
I don't know if you can really consider it 'two sides' of the story when one side wasn't even alive at the time and has no actual evidence or knowledge of any wrongdoing, and the other side are employees from Atari saying that nothing bad happened.
There’s one side: people who were there, including plenty of women.
Even more absurd is the idea that we should condemn someone based on nefarious feelings that "someone somewhere must have felt abused at the time, surely!"
IMO It's pretty obvious that gamergate failed to achieve much of anything, since there are more women in the industry than ever before. Do you think the game industry is full of abusers that aren't being talked about? Who do you think might be the Weinstein of my industry if you had to guess. Which studio is turning a blind eye to harassment?
Why did developers support Gamergate, then and now?
One derives conclusions from evidence. When more or different evidence is presented, one changes said conclusions. That's logical. Fencesitting when presented with shittiness because you're a fan is not. It's called bias.
