Arenanet Dismisses Two Guild Wars 2 Devs Over Tweets at YouTuber
A writer engaged with a community member on her personal Twitter account and things unraveled from there.
Jessica Price, a narrative designer with ArenaNet with ten years of experience in the industry, was breaking down her thoughts on designing a playable character in an MMO when a "Gw2 tuber" called DeroirGaming decided to chime in and share his take on her opinion.
Today in being a female game dev:
— Jessica Price (@Delafina777) July 4, 2018
"Allow me--a person who does not work with you--explain to you how you do your job." https://t.co/lmK0yJWqGB
While this fellow may have been exceptionally polite in delivering his opinion, the unwanted feedback was condescending and Price let him known it before he eventually retracted his statements. Another employee, Peter Fries, supported Price during her back-and-forth with
GameIndustry.biz reports that the two employees, Price
"As a
This move is setting a strange precedent for ArenaNet and we'll have to wait and see how this impacts the remaining staff and community interactions going forward. The flavor of Price's language is often brought up by those discussing the situation, largely ignoring the condescension and way women in the industry are typically engaged with on these platforms. The interaction also happened on her personal Twitter account away from GW2 forums. Stay tuned to Shacknews for additional updates.
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replyCharles Singletary posted a new article, Arenanet Dismisses Two Guild Wars 2 Devs Over Tweets at YouTuber
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... the unwanted feedback was condescending...
Here's the feedback : https://twitter.com/DeroirGaming/status/1014280605599748096
Making a statement in a public forum is inviting feedback or a discussion. The guy didn't invite himself into anything in doing so - he merely responded to a public post.
Furthermore, I don't see how anything in his tone or word use that can be consider "condescending." There was no questioning of her abilities or her knowledge, but instead questioned some of the fundamental design assumptions placed on the genre by the principle developers of the genre. The only thing the guy didn't provide was a counter-example, but I'd guess anyone who actively plays a lot of MMO's would think of SWTOR with the description.
Regardless, if that is where you place the bar on "unwanted feedback" then all that's left seems to be blind, unquestioning agreement.-
Yeah there was nothing condescending in his reply, and the guy tried to diffuse the situation with later tweets. She took it to a level it shouldn't have gone.
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Do you have an example on how he could have engaged in the discussion without it being blown off as "unwanted feedback" that's "condescending" ?
That's what I'm struggling with. The dude followed the guidelines to respectfully engage in a debate to the letter, yet was blown off with hostility and accusations of bigotry. The article claims he's at fault for having the audacity to even reply to a public post, which leaves me wondering what the alternative is.
Also, he had a different perspective than hers and offered it up for consideration. That's not "questioning her knowledge" but offering another perspective. This is how how discussions begin. If you're going to offer your opinion up on a public forum, then you have to be willing to hear other perspectives.-
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Basic Twitter functionality/etiquette
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No she's probably a crazy bitch who does things for no reason is what I'm guessing, most reasonable explanation IMHO.
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It's bad etiquette on twitter to reply to people?
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Perhaps it’s an industry difference here, but it seems like she broke the rules of any reasonable social media policy that a larger company would have.
Yeah, there may have been some Twitter etiquette norms that maybe weren’t followed, but the tweets were public and visible to those who don’t know or care about community norms. Employees need to be cognizant of this if they talk about their jobs at all on social media.
It should be no surprise that she was fired given the circumstances.
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When you are an employee of a company posting publicly on behalf of your company, you are fully responsible for how you conduct yourself. Even if people are being jerks to you, which this guy wasn't. If you're annoyed by their attitude, you don't lash out, you ignore them. The fact that what this guy said was very innocuous and respectful disagreement makes her attitude all the worse.
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I welcome that feedback whenever I get it.
With creative works, there is no one way to do something.
She was unprofessional as fuck.
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Unless you assume she is some hysterical crazy person I think it's pretty safe to say there is a lot more to this story that we as armchair commenters aren't privy to. I'm guessing she gets unsolicited feedback on her work more than any of us can imagine, and probably a lot more than her male colleagues, and it's reasonable to me that she might blow a gasket at some point over it. That'd be my guess anyway.
Doesn't excuse any behavior but I think it's a pretty safe bet there is a lot more we could do to understand why she behaved that way.-
Having met Jesica at Pax last year and talked on a panel with her on diversity in games I know she is a sane reasonable professional. She has been in the crosshairs of the same kind of nonsense from the internet for a long time. I have no knowledge of this situation, but without question Arena Net is making a poor choice if she was let go over this.
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If she was let go over this, I agree...it's a poor choice of ArenaNet's.
This is a good learning opportunity that was squandered.
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Yeah IMHO what was condescending was how he was treated for mostly agreeing and sympathizing but respectfully disagreeing on one point. I would understand if this was one of those veiled "pretend to be reasonable at first" twitter trolls, but he's clearly a guy that lives and breathes the game and provides critique and community content on it. He's not some random hateful MRA trying to bait an argument.
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I think one of the bigger deals about this situation (aside from an angry internet mob getting someone fired) is it really exposes a glaringly obvious double standard. How about Kamiya? When that guy is rude to people, as he is constantly, nerds love him even more for it. Some random woman, tho? Grab the pitchforks lets get 'er fired lads.
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Nah I call BS. Kamiya is a total dick, it's very clearly not sarcasm at all, gaming fans simply think it's funny. People send him the most innocuous stuff/requests for things in his games and he will be a total douchebag to them in reply, way worse than this lady's initial tweet was.
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"I don't like thing"
"How would you make it it better?"
"Beats me! :)"
Amazing. -
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I agree with what Duma said below. And trolls are getting smarter. It is hard to read intent without tone, so I give him that as a potential misread on her part, but given how much she wrote and his replies it feels far more antagonistic and baiting than an honest mistake. Could be wrong, of course, in which case everyone should learn the art of backing off and being calm. Much like in this sub thread. This isn’t something for us to fight each other over or prove each other wrong.
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I’m also not trying to skirt this issue but I ruffled feathers in the other thread about this topic so am avoiding dealing with the folks there who might still want to get into a confrontation.
It’s not clear cut - but given my experiences with people who like to bait and troll online, I see how she saw the reply in a negative way. Duma and I both hit on the ACTUALLY feeling of it. The trick of a good antagonistic remark is there’s no clear cut insult or slur in it. Which means errors can be made.-
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Yuuuuup.
Malicious actors of all kinds on the internet learned/rediscovered the utility of statements that appear benign or ambiguous to outsider groups. Within the outside groups the statements create confusion for the reaction or even sympathy for the attackers, while still getting their message across to in-group members and their targets of harassment. Making the harassed appear the aggressors should they react.
And of course because there is often ambiguity in the read, outgroup actors unknowingly saying similar things can be misread by common targets and thus when targets react poorly to someone acting in good faith, it reduces sympathy for the people being harassed.
It's super fucking frustrating, like a more dangerous and ever growing Poe's Law situation for harassment.
http://chattypics.com/files/clipboard_xal91dyq72.jpg
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No one confronted you in the other thread. No one wants to confront you here, but it would be nice if you would please stop mischaracterizing the intentions of other posters and then claiming to be a victim.
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Duma doesn't explain what is actually wrong with what the guy wrote either. You both just gesture at what he wrote and say "I read it as condescending" or "it's mansplaining" without any real justification or useful explanation of how it could be written in a more respectful manner.
As a result, in both your cases, your statements come across as "don't express disagreement with people" or, less charitably, "don't express disagreement with women".-
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He explains a general phenomenon, but doesn't connect it back to this guy's tweets specifically, which is what I'm trying to get at. The most substantial explanation I've gotten is from Duma, and it basically amounted to "she wrote a lot of tweets and he disagreed with her, therefore he's a troll". Which is bullshit.
Pointing at him and saying his tweets are trolling without being able to articulate something specific, or being able to say "this would be a better way to write tweets that won't be mistaken for a troll", is useless.-
So if we are ever in the same place I can probably articulate it better in person. It’s kind of like how you can be racist and not ever use a literal racial slur - but everyone knows exactly what you are saying and what you are aiming to get out of it.
That’s obviously taking it to 11 but the best I got and I have to get up in 4 hours.
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Well, there was a huge backlash and she got fired for going nuts on this poor guy, so yeah I'm pretty sure it was a "misread". If it was an actual troll nobody would give two shits about him being taken to task. If you can see trolling in something as innocuous as what the dude was posting, you need a break from social media.
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Likewise ma'am. It's just frustrating and a little sad to see people like yourself victim blaming this guy just because you have a weird "feeling" about his post, with nothing of substance to back it up.
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I always assume people know more than I do. Then, I seek clarification. If it becomes clear that they don't or that there is a dialogue to be had, then it's open season.
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Don't post publicly on twitter if you're only looking for an echo chamber.
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Nope, he's being a troll and she was responding, if not wisely, in a way that makes sense.
She spent a bunch of posts giving a high level view from obvious deep experience and the poster was, while vaguely trying to seem polite, fansplaining or mansplaining to her how to do a job that she knows how to do and he does not.
Probably responding on her part was a bad idea, but I'm with her on this one.
Also getting fired over it is messed up and Arena Net should be ashamed.-
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He might as well have started out with "Well actually...." To try to be fair I don't know the guy, I understand he was a highly engaged fan of the game, and probably knows a lot about it. On the other hand she just spent several pages worth of tweets laying out why what she said was true of the MMO genera and he "slightly" disagrees in quotes with the basis of what she said. Maybe he was genuine, and just didn't realize that he was responding in a way that would bait her.. maybe...
On the other hand trolls are not what they once were, they don't say "OMG YOUR ARE IDIOT LOLZ" any more. They say something that is on the surface benign but intended to offend the target. And that thread read to me as intended to provoke a response from her. So I'm going with troll... or youtuber trying to provoke drama, which is still a troll.-
Someone using a lot of space to explain something doesn't mean they are universally correct, or correct at all.
He didn't use quotes around "slightly". He used asterisks, indicating emphasis. In a medium that allows font changes, he might have used italics.
It sounds to me like you would consider any disagreement "trolling", but, to try to be fair, I ask you: How do you think his points should have been phrased so as to not "bait her"? -
trolls look like normal people these days, so it's best to yell at normal people just to be safe
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That's such a strange way to look at this and is exactly how the other dev got fired. That said, while I don't support either firing since it seems like an overreaction and I do believe the original post is very possibly the straw that broke the camel's back (i.e. she has had to put up with a lot of crap in the past), she made a big mistake and is now paying the consequences.
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Errr...I don't think so. Her behaviour was rude and uncalled for.
I think this is an example of hubris more than anything.
I've never seen an expert worth their salt fly off the handle like that at someone who challenged their worldview. A self-reflective professional would have taken that feedback and perspective as an invitation for a deep and rich dialogue that could enhance their craft. To be frank, I was gobsmacked when she mentioned her literary critique background.
As someone mentioned above, it speaks to the idea that she probably has some trauma in her life that she is unfortunately carrying into what could have been a really good dialogue.
Without a doubt, "mansplaining" is real, but a dialogue of practitioners is healthy and desirable for those who are interested in perfecting their craft, IMHO. -
"fansplaining"
"mansplaining"
Jesus christ
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lol, first of all, he didn’t criticize her job. He disagreed with her premise and gave logical and non-condescending justifications why.
Second of all she attacked him after he apologized in the event he might have said something that did offend.
Beyond that I don’t particularly care. But to say this has anything to do with trolling is not correct. -
The guy didn't criticize her job, but the framework that she's forced to work within that essentially restricts her ability to better engage with players via the story - a framework largely enforced (possibly accidentally) by designers and whatnot.
There also wasn't a debate - she immediately went to insults & accusations of sexism.
To top it off the guy was among a group of content creators ArenaNet directly interacts with an solicit feedback from to guide the future of their games. And it also looks like he's an active member in at least one gaming positivity / inclusive groups that are popping up to counter the toxic culture. -
I feel like everyone is reading the narrative online about the situation and not the actual tweet from the GW2 fan. He didn't even disagree with her point. He only thought that the narrative problem she brought up was not intrinsic to MMORPGs as she seemed to imply, that there were other approaches (branching narrative through dialogue for example) that were possible. The way he brought it up didn't seem to me to say that GW2 should be that way but that it's another way to do it, possibly with its own positives and negatives.
Here's the tweet again: https://twitter.com/DeroirGaming/status/1014280605599748096
And by the way, he's right as many GW2 players said on the subreddit. *Obviously* there are limits to the branching narrative approach too, and maybe GW2 wouldn't be as good if done that way. A reasonable person could read both her tweets and his response (but not her over-the-top reaction) and come away thinking she had some great insight and he also had something interesting to add. That's where it should have been left.
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Also I mostly agree that firing her was an overreaction (there's a lot we don't know) but given that he's a big community contributor (from what I read?) I think I at least understand the reaction. I mean if a random Fortnite dev took public shots at Ninja over an opinion, it might cause them to take more serious action than if the dev had just overreacted to some "rando asshat" in her words.
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She's a narrative designer, how a game delivers its narrative is... or was literally her job.
He also responds to a thread where she describes issues encountered in her 10 year experience in designing narratives in MMOs with a subtle version of, "Okay but have you ever heard of this super fucking basic concept that literally anyone in narrative design would know about in the first day of Narrative Design 101????? Did you ever think about that???"
Sure the tone is ambiguous, it could be an honest yet ignorant question or it could be intentional dog whistle form of harassment.
Either way shitlords saw a friend in the question and opertunity in the reaction and turned it into harassment.
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I feel the same way. Sometimes people are primed to read something online not in the tone it was meant, and others have pointed out she may have been primed from past bad interactions, and seemingly didn't know who he was either. (Not that he should get special treatment but that she'd have understood it's probably coming from a friendly source, not a sneaky troll.) Same thing with the other dev, he probably just meant to support his coworker and friend. If people can just communicate about misunderstandings it can be deflated. But I guess we'll probably never know the details.
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