Kotaku: GW2 writers fired after Twitter argument. GG pressured firing.

[Bricktop]

-Price didn't get fired for being a woman.

-There was no "mansplaining" nor any sexism in ANY tweet directed at her up to the point she went off.

-What happens after you act in a shitty manner doesn't absolve you from the repercussions of said shitty behavior.

-Her trying to make this issue about being a woman and turn it into a sexism debate, and doubling down on it afterwards, is really disgusting, but it's not surprising given how many ignorant people immediately jumped to her defense without knowing what actually happened. And that includes many in this thread trying to play 'tales from their ass' with the events and people involved.

The fact is Price got fired because of her (repeated) awful behavior on Twitter.

And don't give me this, "it's her personal space" bullshit. She was following up an AMA discussion about and talking with customers of GW2. She wasn't talking about some unrelated tv show or political stance. She was literally in a discussion about her job. She wasn't fired for her ridiculous Infinity War rant, she wasn't fired for the many times shes been outspoken about social issues, she wasn't fired for having thoughts or opinions. She was fired for her attacks on ANet customers while discussing an ANet product.

I want to know where some you people work where you can name drop your company, talk about your companies products, talk about what you do at your company, and then repeatedly insult your customers and keep your job. I have to sit through quarterly social media training because people are too stupid to realize that putting an "opinions are my own" disclaimer on your Twitter account amounts to nothing. When you out yourself as an employee of a company, and talk shop, it literally stops becoming your personal space and you can be held accountable for things that will negatively impact said company. It's basic "How to keep your job in the internet age 101," stuff.

Now let's say you're a senior employee that has been with the company since the earliest days of its existence.

And you get fired for merely defending the employee in your story. Why don't you explain this? And why do people constantly ignore that an extremely senior developer got the axe for something incredibly petty?

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Because, unlike her, we have nothing to go on with his firing. You don't know that he was fired for "merely defending" her. Maybe he said something after tge fact, or maybe he tried to pull the old "if she goes, i go" and they felt getting rid of him was better than keeping her?

Uutil they come out and say exactly what happened we will never know. She made it easy, there is a very public record, his firing is obviously more complicated.

 

[Cabbagehead]

Bullshit, don't try and handwave Kamiya out of this discussion. He's not the owner of the company.

He founded it, yes, but he serves as a director there now. There would be nothing stopping him from being fired by the CEO.

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He will never be fired, i'm telling you that. He would have to be accused of some awful shit and not tweet antics. It would be far harder. Especially in japan when it comes to seniority.

 

[Dick Justice]

So you don't care enough to actually have a discussion about it. Alright my guy.

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Nice try. I suppose this is your idea of a discussion?

Okay, so she could of just not responded to it and all would be fine. He has the right to comment. She didn't have to complain.

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Interesting how the man has a right in this situation, but there's no mentions of the rights of the woman.

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The women has the right to not respond or block him. Or reply without being rude to a fan. Both of them have rights.

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Well, it's good that we have hero men like you that can define what boundaries women have.

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Not to mention insulting the streamer because he's supposedly a "nobody", which makes it perfectly fine to say whatever you want about him.
Get over yourself, your schtick is transparent and beyond pathetic.

 

[olag]

Dudes cannot handle a woman with an outspoken opinion and they fall over each other to justify any form of silencing and punishment of said woman. Hence the large amount of posts trying to jump through all sorts of hoops to justify why women deserve to be silenced and punished.

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I swear you have to be trolling at this point.Because your posts are doing more harm to your arguments than actual good.Price's actions here are clear and there is absolutely no hoops to jump through. She was unprofessional, confrontational and insulting, and no employer in their right mind would keep her after all this became public.

Now the real shame however is the embolded GG crowd who will view all this as an excuse to harass other female game devs many of whom would probably share my stance as well.

 

[Zomba13]

Interesting, because I've never actually stated my opinion on the topic at large at all.

Would you like to tell me what my stance is?

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I'm not saying Epic Youtuber Gamer Lad XD meant anything ill by it. I'm sure he genuinely thought he was helping, but ultimately he was introducing very basic, entry-level information to an experienced educated writer.

Obviously it was a bad decision for her to clap back over social media, because Ultimate Epic Youtuber Gamer Lad XD is just another nobody screaming into the void whose opinion ultimately is useless and means nothing. This is why most of us just have anonymous accounts to vent on.

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I don't really know or care about the topic of TB enough to comment on it or research it. And I'm not trying to defend anyone; in fact above I said that her getting into this was a bad idea. Believe it or not, everything isn't always my side vs your side.

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You opinion is that you don't think (or won't say) that Youtuber meant to mansplain and that he thought he was being genuine in his opinion and that it was a bad decision for Price to fire back at him and it was a bad idea for her to get involved.

Until you got here where it instead turned into Youtuber is a Mr Nobody who is even less important than you (who has a GW1 NPC and not a GW2 NPC) and where you imply he willfully incited a hate-mob to go after her in the tweet where he says he just wants to stay out of it (with the stupid #imfemenist thing in it).

 

[1080peace]

Still don't agree. There is a difference between Kayima, behaving as a caricature referring to people as insects or just blocking left and right, and a response that is just full blown nasty and mean spirited. The other difference is that it's his company. Who is going to reprimand him? Would a female Kayima get the same response? I would say that yes, she would if she was a figurehead and also just offered stupid responses to questions and built her persona on it.

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It seems we just won't agree then.

 

[PtM]

People keep pointing to Price and saying things that this was solely against her, etc, but also forget that Fries was fired

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What did Fries say?

Okay, we don't actually know.

 

[Onebadlion]

Bullshit, don't try and handwave Kamiya out of this discussion. He's not the owner of the company.

He founded it, yes, but he serves as a director there now. There would be nothing stopping him from being fired by the CEO.

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Fine, keep citing him and completely missing the point of why she really got fired.

If you honestly think Kaniya is in a comparable situation you're ignoring the blatant facts.

 

[Quixzlizx]

I don't think it's a disingenuous comparison. A lead designer is even more of a public-facing figure to their respective company than a random dev is, and Kamiya's not only a much bigger asshole on Twitter than this woman was, a lot of people actually love that about him and cheer him on. It's not even about what the companies choose to do or not to do, in this case, but rather, the reactions of the public. Do you think a female dev mouthing off on Twitter the way Kamiya does would get the "lol oh Kamiya you absolute madman <3" type of reactions he often does? Do you think a female Kamiya would get away with his attitude? I sure don't.

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Why did you cut out the rest of my response?

You know, where I specifically said that I knew why she was getting more shit for her attitude than he would?

 

[Zealuu]

Why do you think a person should be able to publicly behave the way they please without bearing the consequences of that? Or is "don't be an asshole directly to our customers when you have our company's name in your bio" really that much to ask?

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I have my employer's name in my Twitter bio, and let me tell you, they really do not give half a shit about what I say to internet randos, whether they barge into my mentions with pointless advice or not.

 

[ChrisD]

I feel like Deroir's second tweet was worded in a highly annoying fashion, but that first one just reminds me of all the posts I used to see on the Awesomenauts forums. Where nearly every poster thought they knew more about game balance than the dev team. That got a lot more vitriolic than disagreeing, though. "These stupid devs don't know what they're doing with their own game," was a very common sentiment there. That said, with this prior "experience" of seeing fans try and tell (in Awesomenauts case a bunch of male) devs what to do, I'm not seeing the mansplaining. I'm seeing another fan telling a dev what to do.

 

[No42.05W70.2]

Now lets see if ArenaNet adds dialogue options to Guild Wars 2.

 

[kaɪt]

It's an unfortunate situation but I think ANet was completely in their rights to do this. Community engagement is important in games like GW2. Look at how beloved the Digital Extremes studio is by the community. Multiple devs from it are active on Twitter and seem to love engaging with their fans. That seems to work really well for them and, hell, it has definitely made me a lot more willing to drop money on the game when the mood strikes.

The person tweeting at Jessica Price seems to be a massive fan of the game (and her) and is a content producer for it. She represents the company, it's straight up in her Twitter bio. If you're a representative of the company saying stuff like "I don't have to pretend to like you on here" and attacking people who are trying to engage with her, that reflects on the company. Guild Wars seems to have a passionate and loyal fanbase, and having someone like Jessica attacking a prominent fan on Twitter is a bad look. I don't know that she should have been fired, I think she could have apologized and just set her profile to private to avoid issues like this in the future, but I guess this is how they decided to go with it.



I don't even think it was criticism. It seemed like he thought branching dialog would solve the issue she was talking about, and was looking to get her input on why they didn't go that way or what the issues with it were in the context of an MMO. He wanted to start a discussion, he wasn't telling her that she was doing her job badly. Hell in that Twitch clip he said the opposite, he seemed to love her work. To me it read like a fan wanting to pick her brain on narrative choices, and not someone trying to explain to her how to do her job.

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Great post explaining how I felt about the situation. I saw a few people explaining how the guy's tweet was incredibly naive as it was pointing out something very basic as a solution to Price's problem with character narratives which may had caused her to snap. However, I also see it as him trying to start a conversation and see her point of view in why she didn't go the route he was talking about in his tweet, trying to get into her head on the subject before she just attacked him.

 

[Deleted member 40148]

It's very strange that they got into contact with Price but not ArenaNet

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This indeed jumped out. I am hesitant to dig too deep here as even Era seems to be on a meltdown here. I am unsure how so many users are unfamiliar with etiquette. Have they really not worked for anyone before? But coming back to your remark - If I had to make an educated guess then it would be that Kotaku is just pouring gas into the fire. They are not the most respectable site.

 

[Deleted member 4852]

I'm curious as to where everyone works where you can be rude to your customer/clients as long as they are rude to you first. I've never worked at a place where I felt I could do that without serious repercussions

You know a thread is going well when the word "fallacy" starts getting thrown around all over the place.

 

[Draconis]

What did Fries say?

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Here you go. Here is some of the deleted tweets from Fries.

https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:rRsqS9kFlTcJ:https://twitter.com/Peter_Fries/status/1014590359916048384+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

 

[Deleted member 5596]

Now lets see if ArenaNet adds dialogue options to Guild Wars 2.

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They will not, in the way Deroir expects, because that needs way more development time to implement and design in a meaningful way on a game that is required to have constant content updates to satisfy their playerbase.

 

[cosmicblizzard]

Can you imagine Steve Jobs on Twitter and his reactions to "designers" giving him feedback on product launches? I wish he was around today because the meltdowns would be amazing.

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That would certainly be something, but I don't think it's a good comparison. Jobbs would be untouchable regardless of what he said.

 

[1080peace]

2. Feedback on how to improve your product doesn't have to be asked for. If it's civilly offered, then it should always be welcome.

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You can't actually believe this?

 

[Kyougar]

Under the disguise of politeness you can hide petty attitudes like telling someone you are better and his job.

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Sure thing, he is playing the LONG GAME! He is a complete likable person with thought out responses, never was a part of any hate-group and is a Feminist.
BUT! Beneath lies a monster who just waits for his chance to strike at humanity! All the while posting nice tweets while secretly thinking and meaning vile things.

Seriously, this is ridiculous. Show us his damning tweets, posts or whatever, but don't try to spin a narrative around this dude that makes him a monster.

 

[olag]

I have my employer's name in my Twitter bio, and let me tell you, they really do not give half a shit about what I say to internet randos, whether they barge into my mentions with pointless advice or not.

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Mostly because what you say is not making rounds on the internet. If you said something domb and lord forbid you said it to the wrong person or it ended up on the news, you'd probably get called to your managers office.Now whether you'd be fired for whatever you said is another discussion.

 

[Zomba13]

I feel like Deroir's second tweet was worded in a highly annoying fashion, but that first one just reminds me of all the posts I used to see on the Awesomenauts forums. Where nearly every poster thought they knew more about game balance than the dev team. That got a lot more vitriolic than disagreeing, though. "These stupid devs don't know what they're doing with their own game," was a very common sentiment there. That said, with this prior "experience" of seeing fans try and tell (in Awesomenauts case a bunch of male) devs what to do, I'm not seeing the mansplaining. I'm seeing another fan telling a dev what to do.

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The guys tweet is basic armchair dev 101. It's what happens on every forum or whatever where people who enjoy media post. You always have people say "this should've been like THIS" or "the devs were stupid! ___ is broken!" it's just with Twitter you have a direct line to the people responsible and sometimes they tweet about their work and fans who follow them get notified and think "oh, this is interesting, here are my thoughts". It's just like a post on reddit or on a forum except directed at the person because that is what Twitter is. I mean, it can come across as mansplaining, sure, but it also comes across as video game fan telling video game maker their idea and how their idea is the best, like what happens everywhere else online.

 

[BeeKaine]

To get specific about Kamiya, here's a few things to consider:

1) The japanese workplace is entirely different from the american workplace. Not to say they're better but you generally have to do pretty nasty shit to get fired at all, and for someone as old and relied upon as him, they have no real incentive.

2) Kamiya is an asshole but he doesn't, say, get at people for responding to something he made. He doesn't make a post about Bayonetta and complain about people replying to him about Bayonetta.

3) Race and gender are obviously more terse subjects than getting pissed over asking when Bayonetta 2 is coming to the PS4, and he did actually get shit for calling foreigners "gajins" among other things.

4) Finally, he and the people he talk to make it a game to be the person he gets block. Literally his twitter background is lined with tweets about blocking people. He has built an image in being an asshole, which almost paradoxically weens the idea of him being an asshole.

 

[Deleted member 8861]

It's a combination of factors. First, "I believe the issue lies in the contraints of the Living Story's narrative design" is essentially saying "you chose the wrong writing design path" and AGAIN I have to point out that I am not gonna shit on this guy because most people who do this don't mean harm and are trying to be nice. Then he says "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." which is basically repeating the sentiment that Price already expressed back to her. She already said that as much herself in her tweets, and some person is trying to repeat that back to her as if she didn't come to that conclusion.

He also says "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)". I want to dive into this a little more. First, I would hope that Deroir wasn't specifically referring to GW2 necessarily, but if he was, that's basically the epitome of "why don't you just do it THIS way", ignoring that said "way" would require a complete ground-up restructuring of the writing and game design. You see this in ResetEra threads all the time when people talk about "lazy devs" and why they don't do features that would involve a huge amount of work. If I work for GW2, and this GW2 prominent player says these things, I would assume's talking about the game I work on.

So let's bring these together... When you get this sort of thing every day, and now someone prominent in the community is saying these things to you, no matter how nice the words are and how cordial he's being, when you actually look at the context, it's pretty insulting. THAT STILL DOESN'T WARRANT being rude to him, BUT IT ALSO doesn't warrant being fired, because as I've said before, the easiest way to make this situation cool over would have been a temporary suspension and revoking of social media. And certainly not firing the co-worker who stood up for Price. That's literally throwing to the wolves.

Another reason I don't criticize Deroir as a person is because he very clearly in the twitter thread does not come across as being THAT upset about Price's remarks. Disappointed maybe, but he wasn't calling for her to be fired. There are people who don't want to see Deroir blamed, and he shouldn't be. But part of this is because of ANet's overreaction. If they had a better disciplinary protocol, it wouldn't have reached this point. So as a result he ends up being the victim of a lot of bullshit too. If ANet handled this correctly, Price would be slapped on the wrist, Fries would still have a job, Deroir would not now have to deal with a lot of people incorrectly blaming him, and there's no 20+ page thread on ResetEra.

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Thanks for the breakdown. I hope you don't mind if I offer my interpretation of this, part by part. (If you don't want to discuss my interpretations, just say so.)

First, "I believe the issue lies in the contraints of the Living Story's narrative design" is essentially saying "you chose the wrong writing design path" and AGAIN I have to point out that I am not gonna shit on this guy because most people who do this don't mean harm and are trying to be nice. Then he says "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." which is basically repeating the sentiment that Price already expressed back to her. She already said that as much herself in her tweets, and some person is trying to repeat that back to her as if she didn't come to that conclusion.

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How is that bolded part anything other than offering criticism? And as you say, it's trying to be quite nice. Isn't it constructive criticism? Could this statement be rephrased in a way to not be condescending? Or are players of a game not allowed to critique the writing at all?
Isn't the italics literally just Deroir agreeing with Price here? Isn't reading that as "Deroir ignoring Price has reached the same conclusion" both contradictory with the intended sentiment and in pretty bad faith? I mean, "then yes" sounds like it's acknowledging and reaffirming a point to me. I think you might be reading too much into that one.

He also says "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)". I want to dive into this a little more. First, I would hope that Deroir wasn't specifically referring to GW2 necessarily, but if he was, that's basically the epitome of "why don't you just do it THIS way", ignoring that said "way" would require a complete ground-up restructuring of the writing and game design. You see this in ResetEra threads all the time when people talk about "lazy devs" and why they don't do features that would involve a huge amount of work. If I work for GW2, and this GW2 prominent player says these things, I would assume's talking about the game I work on.

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I've got no objection to this one, in the sense that I see how this'd be condescending. I still don't feel this is even subconsciously sexist, though.

So let's bring these together... When you get this sort of thing every day, and now someone prominent in the community is saying these things to you, no matter how nice the words are and how cordial he's being, when you actually look at the context, it's pretty insulting. THAT STILL DOESN'T WARRANT being rude to him, BUT IT ALSO doesn't warrant being fired, because as I've said before, the easiest way to make this situation cool over would have been a temporary suspension and revoking of social media. And certainly not firing the co-worker who stood up for Price. That's literally throwing to the wolves.

Another reason I don't criticize Deroir as a person is because he very clearly in the twitter thread does not come across as being THAT upset about Price's remarks. Disappointed maybe, but he wasn't calling for her to be fired. There are people who don't want to see Deroir blamed, and he shouldn't be. But part of this is because of ANet's overreaction. If they had a better disciplinary protocol, it wouldn't have reached this point. So as a result he ends up being the victim of a lot of bullshit too. If ANet handled this correctly, Price would be slapped on the wrist, Fries would still have a job, Deroir would not now have to deal with a lot of people incorrectly blaming him, and there's no 20+ page thread on ResetEra.

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Agreed to the dot on this one. I'd also add that I really respect he acknowledged his discussion wasn't wanted there and then, and retracted accordingly.

 

[Deleted member 8166]

You can't actually believe this?

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When I had my "how to deal with customers" training this was also one of the rules. Always say "thank you" for improvement offers and say you'll talk about it with the people in your team.

Mind you that was while I worked at a German health insurance company

 

[A Dog]

The political/gender/whatever slant to this argument is pointless. It's unacceptable to call your customers "asshats" and praise the death of the a man who succumbed to cancer.

 

[Deleted member 32018]

This thread is as hilarious as the ones before it....Most companies have social media rules. She obviously didn't follow them and was not a nice person. She is not being a feminist at all and shit like this could lead to backward steps in the movement. Women can be bad people too, it's not just exclusive to the other gender. At the same time the people on reddit saying what they are saying are also extremely disgusting. Both the 2 writers and the reddit GG idiots are in the wrong, that does happen sometimes you know?

 

[Vela]

Now the real shame however is the embolded GG crowd who will view all this as an excuse to harass other female game devs many of whom would probably share my stance as well.

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The real shame is oblivious we'll-intentioned dudes in this thread who don't get how sexism works and how organized harassment campaign works and then proceed to align themselves with Gamergaters because they don't listen and haven't learned anything the last 4 years.

 

[Ravelle]

Okay, so if we set aside the drama for a moment.

I am really curious why she, and everyone else for that writes an article in twitter form which is in my opinion rather silly because besides she could have used a blog post or something, is clearly a public platform that's very known to attract uproar and people jumping on the conversation pile, did she expect to write all that not get any response? If she just wanted an outlet to get something off her chest without wanting any unasked advise and constructive criticism she could have just made a blog post with a lock on moments and be done with it. Her response seems way out of proportion for what he streamer was talking about, in a lot of cases advise is usually unasked, jumping right to the offensive mode toward the person giving advise who's just trying to make conversation and help seems rather rude. If she didn't want to engage with him or his advice she could have just let it be but she instead caused another snow ball effect.

 

[Deleted member 5596]

Sure thing, he is playing the LONG GAME! He is a complete likable person with thought out responses, never was a part of any hate-group and is a Feminist.
BUT! Beneath lies a monster who just waits for his chance to strike at humanity! All the while posting nice tweets while secretly thinking and meaning vile things.

Seriously, this is ridiculous. Show us his damning tweets, posts or whatever, but don't try to spin a narrative around this dude that makes him a monster.

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I mean, the fact you are polite dosn't mean you can't be unthoughtful and insensible at the matter at hand. Either intentional or unintentional.

 

[Alautilus]

it's fascinating how many people in this thread are unironically saying "well obviously jobs/jaffe/kamiya/etc. would be fine, they own the company, why would they get fired for being dickheads to customers" without any obvious awareness of how this fits into the conversation about double standards

 

[rras1994]

This thread is as hilarious as the ones before it....Most companies have social media rules. She obviously didn't follow them and was not a nice person. She is not being a feminist at all and shit like thus could lead to backward steps in the movement. Women can be bad people too, it's not just exclusive to the other gender. At the same time the people on reddit saying what they are saying are also extremely disgusting. Both the 2 writers and the reddit GG idiots are in the wrong, that does happen sometimes you know?

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They did not show her the social media rules, never gave her a warning previously, and she was upfront with her social media presence and demeanour at interview. They were quite a few steps that Anet missed before firing her. In my country, it would be unfair dismissal.

 

[Deleted member 8861]

It doesn't necessarily mean you're sexist, but it may mean that you're indirectly continuing sexist philosophy.

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What's the "sexist philosophy" here? I don't get what the message I'd be perpetuating would be.

To women, does it give the message that "Men (think they) know inherently more than women" or something?

(Not denying the existence of mansplaning or anything, just never heard it worded as "sexist philosophy" before.)

 

[LightKiosk]

https://www.reddit.com/r/MMORPG/comments/8x1ptz/confirmation_that_the_reddit_will_fire_you_post/

That's a good background going into one of the quotes for the article, and how in general games journalism tends to sensationalize these events without doing much background into said person who provided the quote, and of course people eat it up.

It's pretty simple: she fucked up and said dumb things, maybe this was the first time maybe it wasn't, and in turn caused a backlash resulting in their firing. What company wants to keep a co-worker that stirs shit with the community, fails to apologize for getting aggressive when it wasn't needed, and makes the situation worse? I honestly cannot understand most of the logic going on in this thread right now.

 

[Heckler456]

The real shame is oblivious we'll-intentioned dudes in this thread who don't get how sexism works and how organized harassment campaign works and then proceed to align themselves with Gamergaters because they don't listen and haven't learned anything the last 4 years.

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The interaction between Jessice and the dude wasn't part of "organized harassment".

 

[Amanita]

You can't actually believe this?

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What's so astonishing?

 

[1080peace]

When I had my "how to deal with customers" training this was also one of the rules. Always say "thank you" for improvement offers and say you'll talk about it with the people in your team.

Mind you that was while I worked at a German health insurance company

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Sure, but thinking that every dev should welcome every criticism from every armchair dev at all times is just bonkers.

What's so astonishing?

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See above.

 

[chaos_planes]

https://www.theverge.com/2018/7/6/1...enanet-jessica-price-peter-fries-fired-reddit

According to this Verge article they jumped directly to firing which is 100% grade A bullshit on ANets part.

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I wouldn't take the word of an aggrieved, terminated, employee at face value really. Its not like ANet can really counter this, as they'd end up in court as she would claim her former employer is negatively impacting her chances of future employment.

 

[DanteMenethil]

It is sad to me that so many people are taking the Kotaku article and other sites as the full story. Folks, I implore you, please research the entire incident and see it in it's full light. I strongly recommend reviewing the entire scenario, all of the tweets, including the deleted ones from Fries, and reviewing everything thoroughly. Please. Please don't jump to knee jerk reactions. We have too much of that from extremely vitriolic individuals who all too willingly grab a torch and pitchforks like an angry mob seeking out a werewolf or vampire in an old 50's b horror movie.

I feel, personally, that the Kotaku article is biased, quite heavily in fact. Which is disappointing to me as while I will always very strongly and proudly support women in any and all fields; I also strongly feel that the entire truth of a story should be told. Even if the truth is extremely ugly.

What happened here was an Arena Partner and youtuber that is quite well known responded to Price's multiple tweets after an AMA that followed up on said AMA with additional thoughts. Deroir was extremely polite, sometimes exceedingly so, and sought to engage in some discussion with Price. She then proceeded to go off the rails at a speed of 0-1000 in a very short matter of time.

She was condescending, unprofessional, rude beyond measure in my opinion, and was completely unbecoming of an individual in any manner of civility no matter what way one tries to spin it. I feel very strongly about that. If one of my co-workers had reacted to me that way, they would be fired so fast their head would still be spinning.

People keep pointing to Price and saying things that this was solely against her, etc, but also forget that Fries was fired as well.

To wit. If I had acted in such a manner on social media and the company I worked for got wind of it, you can bet your biscuits that I would be hauled in Immediately in front of, if not the CEO / President of the Company himself ( Yes, this is a thing and it would happen if I screwed up like this ) then the director of NIT and would be promptly eviscerated before having to turn in my badge, pack my things, and be escorted off of the premises with due haste. IF I was even afforded the opportunity to GET my things to begin with.

And as much as I frigging LOATHE at At will work states, which mine now is...much to my immense hatred, it doesn't change the fact that any company in such a setting can fire an employ for any reason whatsoever that is deemed a significant enough infraction. Just as an Employee can also leave said company for any reason as well due to said laws.

Arena Net, in my opinion, was absolutely in the right here. I have seen co-workers get hauled out of the building for being rude, but far less to a capacity than she was. Unprofessional behavior is unprofessional behavior. Period. And she had the Arena Net noted in her twitter account and as such was a defacto representative of the company. If she truly did not want comments, her account should have been made private, or she should have stated something like. " These are my thoughts on the matter. I would respectfully like for others to not reply to this post. "

If folks think actions on twitter do not have consequences, please go take a look at Roseanne Barr as a good example of why unprofessional behavior on twitter when representing a company absolutely SHOULD have consequences.

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This is a great post and sums up my thoughts perfectly.

probably why this thread was left up by the mods and the others were closed down so shortly and why they don't clamp down on obvious disingenuous posting going and trolling

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I've been really disappointed on how the mods have handled this event so far.

 

[MrConbon210]

Are any of you camisole with Shane Dawson? A few months ago he went to Ulta beauty store and filmed a short part of his video with two employees there. Of course it got millions of views and the two employees were fired simply for collaborating with him during work.

It sets a precedent. Distance your personal life AS FAR away as you can from your work life.

 

[Zomba13]

When I had my "how to deal with customers" training this was also one of the rules. Always say "thank you" for improvement offers and say you'll talk about it with the people in your team.

Mind you that was while I worked at a German health insurance company

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Yeah, even if you aren't ever going to actually talk to anyone about it, it's just a way to keep the customer happy/placated. You don't say "um... no you asshat, that's a stupid idea. I've worked here for 10 years and you know nothing of this job" because that just creates unnecessary animosity. You just smile, say thank you, and try and get the customer going as fast as possible so you can continue working. Same thing with the angry asshats customers. You can't call them asshats to their faces unless you want your manager to tell you "stop calling the customers asshats".

Obviously, things get weird in the digital age of 100% connection and always online stuff, where you social media affects your job and vice versa. The only way to win is to keep work and private life separate which isn't possible for some, especially in personality driven things or creative jobs where your name is attached to a product. But then, I've not had to deal with it and I'm thankful.

 

[BeeKaine]

Sure, but thinking that every dev should welcome every criticism from every armchair dev at all times is just bonkers.

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She doesn't have to welcome criticism.

She could have easily said nothing at all.

The problem is that she did, in the worst way possible. We would not be having a thread titled "Jessica Price, writer for Guild Wars 2, ignores popular streamer on Twitter".

 

[PtM]

Here you go. Here is some of the deleted tweets from Fries.

https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:rRsqS9kFlTcJ:https://twitter.com/Peter_Fries/status/1014590359916048384+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

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Thanks. Worst I'm seeing is "this nonsense". I fear his firing is just collateral damage.

I'm not seeing the mansplaining. I'm seeing another fan telling a dev what to do.

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I don't think there's much difference there, qualitatively.

 

[Deleted member 5596]

Are any of you camisole with Shane Dawson? A few months ago he went to Ulta beauty store and filmed a short part of his video with two employees there. Of course it got millions of views and the two employees were fired simply for collaborating with him during work.

It sets a precedent. Distance your personal life AS FAR away as you can from your work life.

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Weren't there fired because they were neglecting their work during their worktime? How compares to this?

 

[Deleted member 8861]

Okay, so if we set aside the drama for a moment.

I am really curious why she, and everyone else for that writes an article in twitter form which is in my opinion rather silly because besides she could have used a blog post or something, is clearly a public platform that's very known to attract uproar and people jumping on the conversation pile, did she expect to write all that not get any response? If she just wanted an outlet to get something off her chest without wanting any unasked advise and constructive criticism she could have just made a blog post with a lock on moments and be done with it. Her response seems way out of proportion for what he streamer was talking about, in a lot of cases advise is usually unasked, jumping right to the offensive mode toward the person giving advise who's just trying to make conversation and help seems rather rude. If she didn't want to engage with him or his advice she could have just let it be but she instead caused another snow ball effect.

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We're veering dangerously close to victim blaming here, but I think there's some truth in this, in that I really can't blame the streamer for replying to a public Tweet on an account affiliated with someone's work, on a Tweet about their work.

Doesn't posting on Twitter bring with it the understand that people have the right to respond to you? If Price hasn't made it clear that she doesn't want feedback on her argument (that MMO protagonists can't be well written?), is the streamer really to blame for assuming they might be up to debate?

 

[Draconis]

probably why this thread was left up by the mods and the others were closed down so shortly and why they don't clamp down on obvious disingenuous posting going and trolling

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I'm not so sure on that on the Mods end. I am not the type of individual to try and say what others are thinking, as I feel that is unfair to them. It is however disconcerting to me that the Kotaku Article, which has been proven to hold a false narrative in many aspects and is very one sided on another, is being taken as Gospel.

I know a lot of people on this site like to say " I need to see the receipts. " or something akin to those lines. In essence, and in lamens terms, the full story would be appreciated.

Which is why to me, as someone who strongly believes in the truth and abhors and loathes the twisting of facts to fit a narrative, the whole story is vastly disappointing. It's not a story in my opinion, it's a narrative someone wanted to drive. A very one sided narrative that doesn't tell the whole truth. Even in the comments of the Kotaku Article, Nathan is getting a ton of people telling him he isn't telling the whole story.

It's just frustrating to me.

It's very strange that they got into contact with Price but not ArenaNet

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Agreed. Solid journalism in my opinion should get all sides of the story. Arena Net definitely should have been contacted as part of this article and brought into it, at least the attempt should have been made, I feel.

While the article in question cannot be considered either muckracking or yellow journalism in my opinion, it is most definitely an article that is hand tailored to drive home a narrative. One that is unfortunately obfuscating the truth of the matter.

 

[Alautilus]

seriously if your opinion on this is "yeah jessica deserved to be fired" you have to account for peter fries, a 12 year veteran with no history whatsoever of problems, being fired for a single supportive tweet. that makes it crystal fucking clear what's going on here.

 

[Mariolee]

What's the "sexist philosophy" here? I don't get what the message I'd be perpetuating would be.

To women, does it give the message that "Men (think they) know inherently more than women" or something?

(Not denying the existence of mansplaning or anything, just never heard it worded as "sexist philosophy" before.)

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Yeah philosophy might not have been the best wording but that message you posted is correct, based on what some women have told me so I can't speak for all women obviously.

Again getting back to my ORIGINAL point: mansplaining is when a man whose opinion was not asked for nor necessary (in the case of someones health like in medicine) and is not as informed is given to a woman.

Don't overthink this.

 

[MrConbon210]

Weren't there fired because they were neglecting their work during their worktime? How compares to this?

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They were doing a makeover, which is what their job is. So they weren't doing anything wrong other than interacting with a popular YouTube persona. The point is your employer rarely ever wants to see you attached to the company in anything remotely controversial.

 

[BeeKaine]

I don't think there's much difference there, qualitatively.

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First, today I learned "qualitatively" is a word.

Second, there's a huge difference, namely the lack of gendered intent, expectations, what have you in the latter.

You can easily say the latter. It's still not true in this case, but it's reasonable. But besides one person being a man, and the other a woman, there is nothing that implies it's the former in this case. No amount of "unconscious bias" or "well it happens in real life" will change that.