It's a joke that this is even a PR 'blunder'. This writer simply took it to far after a well known content creator for GW2 simply and POLITELY retorted to her comment. She FLEW off the handles and then continued to belittle and blame men for all the things wrong with the world of development.
If I make a comment that's sexist/racist that goes against my work-place policy and if I was a public facing figure who BLANTANTLY put on my twitter that I worked for that place, you're god damn right I would have been fired.
It's complete horse-shit and I am *so* happy Arenanet made an example of both her and the white knight that tried to defend her.
After she sent e-mails to all these new outlets, I felt like it not only shot her credibility, but also damaged the argument that females are treated so terribly in the devops work-place. People like her make women look BAD, not good. She's not bringing a discussion to female workplace displacement, but hurting it.
What do you think employers are going to do? Quickly hire MORE females that are "passionate" about female rights? Hell no. Private companies are going to be even worse now.
Thanks for nothing you air-head, I hope you never find another job in game development again.
I don´t get why gaming media is portraying JP as a victim in this case, she is the perpetrator. Peter i guess was collateral damage, he was only stupid enough to fall for JP´s gender nonsense. But we all don´t know what happened behind closed doors, this might have been the end of something going on for a long time.
Listen it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out this woman was absolute nightmare to work with. Most people that are politically obsessed are. They find and make drama where there is none, If you are reading this and scratching your head as to "what the hell is this guy talking about" then you might be the person in the workplace that is driving others mad with your constant political nonsense.
And as far as "getting" why gaming media ie Game journalist's are being so one sided, well thats a topic i unfortunately can't go into or i will probably receive my 3rd warning ie ban
I don't understand, what's so complicated on this topic.
No company will allow an employee to attack a customer for no reason. Because he pays the bills, the pay checks, etc.
Not in the gaming industry. Not in the car industry. Not in any other industry.
Not in America. Not in Europe. Not somewhere else in the world.
If an employee attacks a customer, she or he will be fired. Immidiatly.
There is no guideline needed for this. It's a simple business rule.
And it has nothing to do with social media. If an employee of a supermarket attacks a customer in the market with his fist for no reason, he will be fired too. Immidiatly.
For social media: If you're using your private twitter account, you can do what you want.
But if you put work related stuff on your tweets, you act as an employee of your company. Everything you do as an employee will relate to your company. The good and the bad. And you have to face the consequences of your doing.
Being a women I think there is a lot more damage done to keep playing the gender card when it has nothing to do with it. It is a disservice to women who actually suffer from gender discrimination at work and it simply trivializes the issue if you keep crying wolf.
Being a women I think there is a lot more damage done to keep playing the gender card when it has nothing to do with it. It is a disservice to women who actually suffer from gender discrimination at work and it simply trivializes the issue if you keep crying wolf.
I couldn't agree more, it takes away from the real issues of which there are plenty. Infuriating.
/Cheers, Lahnmir
'the only way he could nail it any better is if he used a cross.'
Kyleran on yours sincerely
'But there are many. You can play them entirely solo, and even offline. Also, you are wrong by default.'
Ikcin in response to yours sincerely debating whether or not single-player offline MMOs exist...
'This does not apply just to ED but SC or any other game. What they will get is Rebirth/X4, likely prettier but equally underwhelming and pointless.
It is incredibly difficult to design some meaningfull leg content that would fit a space ship game - simply because it is not a leg game.
It is just huge resource waste....'
Gdemami absolutely not being an armchair developer
Being a women I think there is a lot more damage done to keep playing the gender card when it has nothing to do with it. It is a disservice to women who actually suffer from gender discrimination at work and it simply trivializes the issue if you keep crying wolf.
I have to tell you it so refreshing to hear you say that and although i don't know you personally i do recognize your avatar as i visit this site quite frequently and now have a whole other respect for you.
I cant figure out why the gaming media is jumping on her
bandwagon. She is a vile toxic
person. You can see from her post
history what type of person she is.
Derior just wanted to engage in some back and forth about the topic. I can’t believe you guys are defending
her. Anyone who is glad someone died of
cancer, even if you didn’t agree with them, is sad, tragic, and a pathetic human being. I could care less what is between her legs ;P.
I'm with the group choosing to say the firing had to be done. Developers are part of a team, even if they are a leader. They shouldn't be treated like they are invaluable regardless of what concepts/ideas they've brought over the years.
Besides, its not like this was their first rodeo or anything. This is just how everything works in life, regardless of where. The higher the position, the lightly the spot-light will shine on whoever is there. That individual becomes a face and thus their actions will reflect whoever they work for. Keeping even just one person on isn't worth the berating they would overall encounter for it, regardless of the circumstance. If someone is "stressed" over the attention in a position like that, they have an increased chance of getting "what they want" by handling issues privately vs a Freudian slip on a public platform.
Of course Anet didn't get involved because they wanted to. As other people have said, if they didn't then they would get more attention by defending such behavior and with how shady NCSoft ultimately is, they dont want EA levels of attention by being associated with a branch that condones such behavior especially with GW2 being their second lowest global earner over the last year (probably changed some since the last expansion). Its the unfortunate reality in this life that everyone is expendable and loyalty has conditions.
I don't understand, what's so complicated on this topic.
No company will allow an employee to attack a customer for no reason. Because he pays the bills, the pay checks, etc.
Not in the gaming industry. Not in the car industry. Not in any other industry.
Not in America. Not in Europe. Not somewhere else in the world.
If an employee attacks a customer, she or he will be fired. Immidiatly.
There is no guideline needed for this. It's a simple business rule.
And it has nothing to do with social media. If an employee of a supermarket attacks a customer in the market with his fist for no reason, he will be fired too. Immidiatly.
For social media: If you're using your private twitter account, you can do what you want.
But if you put work related stuff on your tweets, you act as an employee of your company. Everything you do as an employee will relate to your company. The good and the bad. And you have to face the consequences of your doing.
Welcome to the boards!
I wish it could have been in a thread better for gaming than this fracas, but that's how things go.
This shouldn't even be controversial. The fastest way to get fired at any company is to disrespect customers. That is what JP did. That is why she was fired. End of story.
I don't think it's that simple in this case. And then why was Fries fired? He was, for all I can surmise, loved by both fans and AN employees. Just to CYA and not get a law-suit for discrimination perhaps? The whole thing stinks, and has potential implications for devs at all companies moving forward.
Bullshit Bill. The only thing that stinks is the gaming media's inability to take what these people did at face value, due to the main perpetrator in question being a woman. "Oh well maybe she had some ulterior motive for being an asshole..." Yeah you know I'm sure every asshole in the world believes that about themselves. That in no way changes the fact its wrong, and that there are serious consequences about publicly behaving like, and I can't use this term enough here, an ASSHOLE.
Why was Fries fired? He jumped in and not only supported JP's off base and totally nasty behavior, he also reinforced JP's opinion that fans are contemptibly beneath being worthy to give feedback to the company. Do you seriously not understand what a dick move that was?
I can't argue with this, either.
However, if I were in that position, depending upon the specific content of Fries' comments, I would have considered a lesser reprimand. Specifically (and I know, hindsight is 20/20) considering MO is getting grilled as allowing gender roles to color his decision anyways. If Fries wasn't confrontational with customers as Price was (though I get the feeling he may have been from those who say they saw his comments), and he didn't have an internal record of corrective action being needed, I think a lesser punishment would've been more appropriate.
But again, I didn't get to read the tweets that have, apparently, now been deleted. Their content would dictate a lot in how the company should (and seemingly did) react.
Oh my paws and whiskers, you little scamps and your lack of training in Google Fu. HERE are the deleted tweets.
Now were his comments by themselves excessively rude? No not really. But what he actually did by defending Price's dickhead behavior was to send a double barreled "fuck you", to Deroir and any other fan who might have taken offense, making himself just as culpable of bad behavior as Price.
I'm conflicted. On the one hand, I can see what you're saying here. On the other, if Fries had no previous instances of insubordination, I feel like ending his career might've been a strong move somewhat spurred by fears that allowing him to continue working there would've only fueled the gender bias fantasy Price has been pushing about the situation and gave it false legitimacy in the eyes of many... That's a much tougher call to make than the handling of Price herself.
Seems like an overblown reaction to what should be a public apology and private reprimand of a staff member who spoke out of place on a personal account, thus reflecting poorly on the company.
Probably a lot more behind the scenes, possibly this was a "last straw" for her as others have said.
Maybe other guy was also on his last legs and the public endorsement was warned behind closed doors.
Lots of failure in leadership here, which can only be blamed on the ANET management.
On the flip side, can't allow the mob (players) to run the company.
Mob rule is never good. Pitchforks and protests are rarely based on reality, but instead on emotion and often fear.
ANET should have done a better job controlling the situation.
The mobs decision/opinion can often be wrong, as they tend to not have all the facts, don't understand the limitations, the background information, etc. the same as an insider would.
But submission to authority is also a logical error.
Only solvable via proper dialogue, which obv didn't happen here.
Honestly her twitter feed is a mess. I have a friend who is a teacher, she is "under investigation" because a SINGLE parent complained about a tweet that did not even pertain to anything other then a kitten she rescued and sadly had to have it put down. She runs a rescue and posted it UNDER HER RESCUE ACCOUNT. Not the school is out to get her fired over this. Honestly in the devs case who got fired, good its about freaking time someone shut her the hell up. But That is not always the case. This is just evidence to be careful what you post.
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Equality seems to be one of the issues here. You cuss and/or tell off a customer and your boss finds out, you get fired. No matter what, that goes equally for everyone. All this pondering of the character or correctness of others, such as "MO" while possibly accurate, has nothing to do with the event that happened and is a slippery slope as it is conjecture. Moral of story do not cuss at the people paying you, no matter who you think you are or who you think they are.
First of all her over reaction to the fan's response to her Twitter article was way over the top. He wasn't even being particularly critical of what she wrote and his comment was both respectful and polite. He may very well have been introducing something to the conversation that was so basic to a professional writer that it seemed not worth even discussing. But she could have either ignored it or responded with an equally polite dismissal of the point.
But she didn't. She went off on him in a very assholish way without the slightest provocation. She then followed that up with many statements doubling-down and revealing a contempt about what the great unwashed has to say and giving the impression that this is how the developers really feel about fan feedback. That IMO, was the firing offense: revealing the culture of contempt for your customers that is one of the dirty little secrets in the industry.
That this ivory tower or bunker mentality exists in industries when talking internally about what their customers criticize is pretty well universal but it is also totally contrary to the feel-good PR they pump out where they bend over backwards to pretend that the opposite is true. "We listen to our customers and we're proud of it" is how they want to be perceived. It's a public image vs. private reality thing and she made it all too clear that contempt for customer feedback is the norm not the exception. That's a peek behind the curtain no business ever wants to reveal. She did, so they fired her.
IMO any PR conscious boss would have done the same for the sake of PR and preserving the myth that they are a customer first business.
I'm not saying that this is a good thing or a bad thing. Nor am I saying that it is wrong to be dismissive of customer feedback since you know so much more about the internals of any issue they comment on than they do. But hell, in what world is it OK to reveal that deep seated contempt for your customers publicly?
Just think about it. In your own work lives - whatever you do - you know for a fact that you know what you're doing much more than your customers do and it's actually pretty rare to get some useful feedback from them. How often do you tell your customers that? And if you do it often, how long did your business last?
Yes, firing her is definitely a PR move to appease fans but I get why it happened and I'm surprised that so many seem to be confused about why she was fired: it's a gigantic issue to try to maintain the illusion of respect for customers at all cost.
Also... this is also about as far away from being a "women in gaming" issue as is possible to get. This was a developer of any sex acting like an asshole toward fans of the game without provocation very publicly.
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
"And it is her personal Twitter, so she should be allowed to say what she feels in that space. But as of this writing, her profile still states she’s part of the ANet team, and that means her actions reflect on the company."
Bingo. You represent the company you work for whether you like it or not. Mike handled this professionally. She keeps giving interviews crapping all over Anet and Mike while playing the victim. She's digging herself a very deep hole.
Equality seems to be one of the issues here. You cuss and/or tell off a customer and your boss finds out, you get fired. No matter what, that goes equally for everyone. All this pondering of the character or correctness of others, such as "MO" while possibly accurate, has nothing to do with the event that happened and is a slippery slope as it is conjecture. Moral of story do not cuss at the people paying you, no matter who you think you are or who you think they are.
Another one, welcome to the boards! This topic certainly seems to be bringing them out of the woodwork.
But yet no mention that she accused someone of sexism or even insulted him calling him "rando asshat" or the fact that she acted rude to a point where she dropped the f bomb to another community member
Jessica was talking about the game on a non-private twitter that lists her as an employee of Arenanet about the game Guildwars 2. She attacked a polite commenter in an aggressive and uncalled for fashion. The commenter apologized and left the conversation.
She however didn't stop and tried to stoke the flames, including making sexist claims which were completely and utterly uncalled for an inappropriate as there previously had been zero content that could be construed as even hinting at sexism.
She has clearly shown herself to be a volatile and unstable bigot.
Then Peter jumped in to defend her extremely indefensible statements and actions with statements that either show a willingness to lie, or a complete lack of understanding of the purpose of their communicating with the public as company representatives. And yes, they were absolutely company representatives by posting on those twitter accounts in public. I'll even guarantee that there is a clause in their contracts that clearly point that out as well.
I've never worked for any place that would put up with her actions like that. Peters is almost forgivable for a newbie if he has no history of doing things like this, though I haven't looked up his past, he is in now way new and so can't use that excuse. Either way, they willing committed career suicide at that company by their own actions.
What she did was text book "NEVER do this in public" stuff that will always get you fired! At least if anyone in the company finds out.
Don't forget, we don't know what else those two have been up to in the company that may have black marks against them. Though we do know that Jessica had publicly bad mouthed a dead guy. I obviously don't know what Anet did over that, but I would completely expect them to put her on watch for something like that.
I'm a lover of games. I have never worked for any of the companies involved. But I have worked at software companies, and I have had customer service training, and I have read the contracts I had to sign. There is no doubt in my mind that she violated a LOT of company rules and got canned because of it. Heck, even if that had been a private correspondence and a higher up in the company saw it, you'd get the boot. Significantly more true for it having been in public.
Just one more note on that, a social media account that anybody off the street can comment on isn't private. If anyone can view it, it's also not private. When both are true, you have to be seriously mentally deficient to imagine that it isn't public.
Don't lie to the public. Don't attack the public. Don't escalate a situation.
In all my time of dealing with people for my companies I worked at, there is only one time they wanted to discuss with me my actions over a call with an abusive person. Even though they had the recordings, they needed my signature on the paperwork as well. They "fired" the customer. That means they later contacted the customer to tell them all licenses for our software were revoked, they'd have to uninstall all of them, and never use our software again! It really does happen! I know that's rather the reverse of the situation with them, but it goes to show that even in such extreme circumstances as I was in, someone who is known to get very defensive, it's possible to act appropriately and try to defuse the situation rather than intentionally escalate it on the companies side.
I've typed far too much for this forum, and I know my skills at explaining this kind of stuff isn't very good, but I hope it made sense to anyone that's read this far. And just to let you know, I have read all the tweets by Deroir, Jessica Price, and Peter Fries that were part of this incident, as well as those they directly replied to, and this includes the ones they later deleted. (Thanks to all the people that archived the whole thing!). So I do know what was discussed, and how. I also noticed that many 'articles' on this are not showing the complete tweets much less all the tweets in a blatant attempt to make her look victimized. She is definitely the bully in this, and attempts to make her look otherwise are very disingenuous of them.
Sorry, getting too verbose again. (Still?) I'll shut up here and leave this thread with one final note. If you have any interest at all in any of this incident or it's participants, do yourself a favor and research the actual tweets. ALL OF THEM. Don't let people posting articles or comments about it show you a limited and distorted view of it. Get the whole story.
One thing people forget. In the USA freedom of speech isn't freedom of consequence. You have the right to say what you want. You don't have the right to be free of the consequences of said speech.
This all just seems like we're losing the ability to think and speak critically. How many of us get our news, by just reading headlines? The attention grabbing BS of the story....
Anyone can be a blogger or 'journalist', but how many know of the rules that go along with it? There are systems and rules in place to keep the 'news clean.'
A bad example, but I remember the news scenes from "good night, and good luck," and David Straithairn's portrayal of Edward R. Murrow. When he reported a news story, he reported the facts. He didn't embellish, he didn't spew vitriol for ratings. He provided the facts and left it up to the listeners to add their own slants to what they heard.
Now it's hard to hear news without wondering who owns them and what their agendas are, or if we already know "Fox vs. CNN" we know their agendas.
The government provided the infrastructure that the media/network companies used, and they were allowed to entertain and advertise as much as they wanted. This was ALLOWED, because they had a stipulation of setting aside airtime each night at set times to provide the nation with news, and nothing but the news.
Now we get sensationalized entertainment with news mixed in. Now we get news based on what's trending and what will get 'hits' as opposed to the facts we may need to hear. How much important stuff are we missing, because they let all the fluff get in the way...
But what can we expect, as all of our politicians live sensationalized lives, instead of keeping their noses to the grindstone and keeping the cogs turning for all of our betterment.
People have forgotten how to think before they speak/act, and it's the norm.
People are getting tired of hearing and reading trash all the time, and are pushing back.
People will continue to get fired for being stupid, and it's easier to be stupid now than ever before.
This all just seems like we're losing the ability to think and speak critically. How many of us get our news, by just reading headlines? The attention grabbing BS of the story....
Anyone can be a blogger or 'journalist', but how many know of the rules that go along with it? There are systems and rules in place to keep the 'news clean.'
A bad example, but I remember the news scenes from "good night, and good luck," and David Straithairn's portrayal of Edward R. Murrow. When he reported a news story, he reported the facts. He didn't embellish, he didn't spew vitriol for ratings. He provided the facts and left it up to the listeners to add their own slants to what they heard.
Now it's hard to hear news without wondering who owns them and what their agendas are, or if we already know "Fox vs. CNN" we know their agendas.
The government provided the infrastructure that the media/network companies used, and they were allowed to entertain and advertise as much as they wanted. This was ALLOWED, because they had a stipulation of setting aside airtime each night at set times to provide the nation with news, and nothing but the news.
Now we get sensationalized entertainment with news mixed in. Now we get news based on what's trending and what will get 'hits' as opposed to the facts we may need to hear. How much important stuff are we missing, because they let all the fluff get in the way...
But what can we expect, as all of our politicians live sensationalized lives, instead of keeping their noses to the grindstone and keeping the cogs turning for all of our betterment.
People have forgotten how to think before they speak/act, and it's the norm.
People are getting tired of hearing and reading trash all the time, and are pushing back.
People will continue to get fired for being stupid, and it's easier to be stupid now than ever before.
Gut Out!
Well, I think a good lesson to be learned here is that, in fact, most people are pretty stupid. And with the coming of the internet they can now display that stupidity to the entire world. I like it, it makes me feel smarter.
/Cheers, Lahnmir
'the only way he could nail it any better is if he used a cross.'
Kyleran on yours sincerely
'But there are many. You can play them entirely solo, and even offline. Also, you are wrong by default.'
Ikcin in response to yours sincerely debating whether or not single-player offline MMOs exist...
'This does not apply just to ED but SC or any other game. What they will get is Rebirth/X4, likely prettier but equally underwhelming and pointless.
It is incredibly difficult to design some meaningfull leg content that would fit a space ship game - simply because it is not a leg game.
It is just huge resource waste....'
Gdemami absolutely not being an armchair developer
These types of articles and the gaming media's response in generalare the very reason terms like SJW and feminist have garnered a negative connotation. This is why trust in mainstream media is at an all-time low in America.
You can't fight fire with fire here. Specifically when that fire is not even controlled, but sprayed about ignorantly, setting the entire village aflame with no regard as to who gets burned.
I'm actually trying to look at it from all sides. And it seems to me that the only person who really got "hurt" from all this may have been Peter Fries.
You keep saying this type of things on the forum replies but its clear from anyone objectively reading your article that its simply not true Bill. Your entire article tried to switch the blame to A-net, at every opportunity tried to marginalize HER behavior She was FAR BEYOND "a little rude" she was factually a sexist bigot and down right evil "glad they are dead". I am not sure how you can defend her hate speech....actually I do know you are in the same twisted ideology camp. Sorry we all know this article's tone would have been far different if it was a male (hell you wrote it about her not the man who was fired for doing far far far less need I say more?) it came through very clear in your overt bias in the article. Oddly enough most every reply you have made literally contradicts the tone and statements of your article.
The pandering doesnt stop either as you push the same SJW crap we are all tired of erroneously being shoved down our throats example? Your assumption she had to endure terrible treatment as a women in gaming... please stop with this epic distortions and flat out misinformation, you know nothing of her treatment yet assumed it was poor?? in the process condemning males in a bigoted way the assumption being "hurr derr guys are sexist jerks who treat women poorly".
Its about time all of these wacko leftists start getting consequences for their outrageous hateful speech the double standard in this country has become sickening where people on the left say the most vile things about others and even advocate violence against people whom they disagree with and nothing is done to curb the behavior so it just keeps getting worse each passing day.
Just think about it. In your own work lives - whatever you do - you know for a fact that you know what you're doing much more than your customers do and it's actually pretty rare to get some useful feedback from them. How often do you tell your customers that? And if you do it often, how long did your business last?
That's the thing about customer feedback: they don't know the internal workings, but it does not make it useless. Anyone specifically trained in the customer experience will tell you that a customer's feedback is rooted in something that makes sense to them. Often times, merely explaining the underlying reasoning why their feedback is flawed and/or cannot be acted upon will cause the customer to recognize there are items they are not privy to.
Belittling the customer will do nothing good for the company. It really doesn't matter what the comment is; again, speaking from my time as an adjuster (as that's the best perspective I can offer here), our female adjusters endured blatant and outright sexism in the form of, "You're a woman, so you can't do your job. Get me a man." They weren't given license to blow up on the customer or start ranting about the larger societal issue: they were trained to explain to the customer that they received all of the same training, knowledge, and instruction as their male counterparts and that their male counterparts would undoubtedly back them up on the fact that they are as qualified, as a female adjuster, as any male adjuster in the office.
You'll notice that doesn't include putting said customer on blast personally in the public space.
Another article on this crazy woman who got fired from A-Net, Wasn't the last thread of 12 pages of circle jerking enough? She got what she deserved . Gaming Journalist need to stick to GAMING , If you want to talk politics get a job at one of the major news stations or apply to the Washington Post.
This IS about gaming. ArenaNet? Guild Wars 2? Game Developer? Not tooooooo hard to connect the dots. Gaming is more than just the actual games themselves.
That said, I'm quite sure we don't know the entire story and, so far anyway, have only heard Price's retelling. Nobody wins here, especially Fries who was sticking up for someone who's probably his friend, even if somewhat lacking in diplomacy, and got the ax for it which was way over the top.
I personally can't wait for the next news cycle to bury it.
Disagree the fans win, good people win, and A-net wins for standing up to a sexist evil minded bigoted bully.. there are plenty of capable developers to take her place the game will be just fine without the two of them and possibly even better without the constant virtue signaling being inserted to push a personal agenda.
Comments
If I make a comment that's sexist/racist that goes against my work-place policy and if I was a public facing figure who BLANTANTLY put on my twitter that I worked for that place, you're god damn right I would have been fired.
It's complete horse-shit and I am *so* happy Arenanet made an example of both her and the white knight that tried to defend her.
After she sent e-mails to all these new outlets, I felt like it not only shot her credibility, but also damaged the argument that females are treated so terribly in the devops work-place. People like her make women look BAD, not good. She's not bringing a discussion to female workplace displacement, but hurting it.
What do you think employers are going to do? Quickly hire MORE females that are "passionate" about female rights? Hell no. Private companies are going to be even worse now.
Thanks for nothing you air-head, I hope you never find another job in game development again.
And as far as "getting" why gaming media ie Game journalist's are being so one sided, well thats a topic i unfortunately can't go into or i will probably receive my 3rd warning ie ban
Aloha Mr Hand !
No company will allow an employee to attack a customer for no reason. Because he pays the bills, the pay checks, etc.
Not in the gaming industry. Not in the car industry. Not in any other industry.
Not in America. Not in Europe. Not somewhere else in the world.
If an employee attacks a customer, she or he will be fired. Immidiatly.
There is no guideline needed for this. It's a simple business rule.
And it has nothing to do with social media. If an employee of a supermarket attacks a customer in the market with his fist for no reason, he will be fired too. Immidiatly.
For social media: If you're using your private twitter account, you can do what you want.
But if you put work related stuff on your tweets, you act as an employee of your company. Everything you do as an employee will relate to your company. The good and the bad. And you have to face the consequences of your doing.
/Cheers,
Lahnmir
Kyleran on yours sincerely
'But there are many. You can play them entirely solo, and even offline. Also, you are wrong by default.'
Ikcin in response to yours sincerely debating whether or not single-player offline MMOs exist...
'This does not apply just to ED but SC or any other game. What they will get is Rebirth/X4, likely prettier but equally underwhelming and pointless.
It is incredibly difficult to design some meaningfull leg content that would fit a space ship game - simply because it is not a leg game.
It is just huge resource waste....'
Gdemami absolutely not being an armchair developer
Aloha Mr Hand !
I cant figure out why the gaming media is jumping on her bandwagon. She is a vile toxic person. You can see from her post history what type of person she is. Derior just wanted to engage in some back and forth about the topic. I can’t believe you guys are defending her. Anyone who is glad someone died of cancer, even if you didn’t agree with them, is sad, tragic, and a pathetic human being. I could care less what is between her legs ;P.
I wish it could have been in a thread better for gaming than this fracas, but that's how things go.
Seems like an overblown reaction to what should be a public apology and private reprimand of a staff member who spoke out of place on a personal account, thus reflecting poorly on the company.
Probably a lot more behind the scenes, possibly this was a "last straw" for her as others have said.
Maybe other guy was also on his last legs and the public endorsement was warned behind closed doors.
Lots of failure in leadership here, which can only be blamed on the ANET management.
On the flip side, can't allow the mob (players) to run the company.
Mob rule is never good. Pitchforks and protests are rarely based on reality, but instead on emotion and often fear.
ANET should have done a better job controlling the situation.
The mobs decision/opinion can often be wrong, as they tend to not have all the facts, don't understand the limitations, the background information, etc. the same as an insider would.
But submission to authority is also a logical error.
Only solvable via proper dialogue, which obv didn't happen here.
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You missed the part where she goes on sexist rants constantly huh. Yet another gaming website that her stupidity has gotten to.
But she didn't. She went off on him in a very assholish way without the slightest provocation. She then followed that up with many statements doubling-down and revealing a contempt about what the great unwashed has to say and giving the impression that this is how the developers really feel about fan feedback. That IMO, was the firing offense: revealing the culture of contempt for your customers that is one of the dirty little secrets in the industry.
That this ivory tower or bunker mentality exists in industries when talking internally about what their customers criticize is pretty well universal but it is also totally contrary to the feel-good PR they pump out where they bend over backwards to pretend that the opposite is true. "We listen to our customers and we're proud of it" is how they want to be perceived. It's a public image vs. private reality thing and she made it all too clear that contempt for customer feedback is the norm not the exception. That's a peek behind the curtain no business ever wants to reveal. She did, so they fired her.
IMO any PR conscious boss would have done the same for the sake of PR and preserving the myth that they are a customer first business.
I'm not saying that this is a good thing or a bad thing. Nor am I saying that it is wrong to be dismissive of customer feedback since you know so much more about the internals of any issue they comment on than they do. But hell, in what world is it OK to reveal that deep seated contempt for your customers publicly?
Just think about it. In your own work lives - whatever you do - you know for a fact that you know what you're doing much more than your customers do and it's actually pretty rare to get some useful feedback from them. How often do you tell your customers that? And if you do it often, how long did your business last?
Yes, firing her is definitely a PR move to appease fans but I get why it happened and I'm surprised that so many seem to be confused about why she was fired: it's a gigantic issue to try to maintain the illusion of respect for customers at all cost.
Also... this is also about as far away from being a "women in gaming" issue as is possible to get. This was a developer of any sex acting like an asshole toward fans of the game without provocation very publicly.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
Bingo. You represent the company you work for whether you like it or not. Mike handled this professionally. She keeps giving interviews crapping all over Anet and Mike while playing the victim. She's digging herself a very deep hole.
She however didn't stop and tried to stoke the flames, including making sexist claims which were completely and utterly uncalled for an inappropriate as there previously had been zero content that could be construed as even hinting at sexism.
She has clearly shown herself to be a volatile and unstable bigot.
Then Peter jumped in to defend her extremely indefensible statements and actions with statements that either show a willingness to lie, or a complete lack of understanding of the purpose of their communicating with the public as company representatives. And yes, they were absolutely company representatives by posting on those twitter accounts in public. I'll even guarantee that there is a clause in their contracts that clearly point that out as well.
I've never worked for any place that would put up with her actions like that. Peters is almost forgivable for a newbie if he has no history of doing things like this, though I haven't looked up his past, he is in now way new and so can't use that excuse. Either way, they willing committed career suicide at that company by their own actions.
What she did was text book "NEVER do this in public" stuff that will always get you fired! At least if anyone in the company finds out.
Don't forget, we don't know what else those two have been up to in the company that may have black marks against them. Though we do know that Jessica had publicly bad mouthed a dead guy. I obviously don't know what Anet did over that, but I would completely expect them to put her on watch for something like that.
I'm a lover of games. I have never worked for any of the companies involved. But I have worked at software companies, and I have had customer service training, and I have read the contracts I had to sign. There is no doubt in my mind that she violated a LOT of company rules and got canned because of it. Heck, even if that had been a private correspondence and a higher up in the company saw it, you'd get the boot. Significantly more true for it having been in public.
Just one more note on that, a social media account that anybody off the street can comment on isn't private. If anyone can view it, it's also not private. When both are true, you have to be seriously mentally deficient to imagine that it isn't public.
Don't lie to the public. Don't attack the public. Don't escalate a situation.
In all my time of dealing with people for my companies I worked at, there is only one time they wanted to discuss with me my actions over a call with an abusive person. Even though they had the recordings, they needed my signature on the paperwork as well. They "fired" the customer. That means they later contacted the customer to tell them all licenses for our software were revoked, they'd have to uninstall all of them, and never use our software again! It really does happen! I know that's rather the reverse of the situation with them, but it goes to show that even in such extreme circumstances as I was in, someone who is known to get very defensive, it's possible to act appropriately and try to defuse the situation rather than intentionally escalate it on the companies side.
I've typed far too much for this forum, and I know my skills at explaining this kind of stuff isn't very good, but I hope it made sense to anyone that's read this far. And just to let you know, I have read all the tweets by Deroir, Jessica Price, and Peter Fries that were part of this incident, as well as those they directly replied to, and this includes the ones they later deleted. (Thanks to all the people that archived the whole thing!). So I do know what was discussed, and how. I also noticed that many 'articles' on this are not showing the complete tweets much less all the tweets in a blatant attempt to make her look victimized. She is definitely the bully in this, and attempts to make her look otherwise are very disingenuous of them.
Sorry, getting too verbose again. (Still?) I'll shut up here and leave this thread with one final note. If you have any interest at all in any of this incident or it's participants, do yourself a favor and research the actual tweets. ALL OF THEM. Don't let people posting articles or comments about it show you a limited and distorted view of it. Get the whole story.
Lost my mind, now trying to lose yours...
Anyone can be a blogger or 'journalist', but how many know of the rules that go along with it? There are systems and rules in place to keep the 'news clean.'
A bad example, but I remember the news scenes from "good night, and good luck," and David Straithairn's portrayal of Edward R. Murrow. When he reported a news story, he reported the facts. He didn't embellish, he didn't spew vitriol for ratings. He provided the facts and left it up to the listeners to add their own slants to what they heard.
Now it's hard to hear news without wondering who owns them and what their agendas are, or if we already know "Fox vs. CNN" we know their agendas.
The government provided the infrastructure that the media/network companies used, and they were allowed to entertain and advertise as much as they wanted. This was ALLOWED, because they had a stipulation of setting aside airtime each night at set times to provide the nation with news, and nothing but the news.
Now we get sensationalized entertainment with news mixed in. Now we get news based on what's trending and what will get 'hits' as opposed to the facts we may need to hear. How much important stuff are we missing, because they let all the fluff get in the way...
But what can we expect, as all of our politicians live sensationalized lives, instead of keeping their noses to the grindstone and keeping the cogs turning for all of our betterment.
People have forgotten how to think before they speak/act, and it's the norm.
People are getting tired of hearing and reading trash all the time, and are pushing back.
People will continue to get fired for being stupid, and it's easier to be stupid now than ever before.
Gut Out!
What, me worry?
/Cheers,
Lahnmir
Kyleran on yours sincerely
'But there are many. You can play them entirely solo, and even offline. Also, you are wrong by default.'
Ikcin in response to yours sincerely debating whether or not single-player offline MMOs exist...
'This does not apply just to ED but SC or any other game. What they will get is Rebirth/X4, likely prettier but equally underwhelming and pointless.
It is incredibly difficult to design some meaningfull leg content that would fit a space ship game - simply because it is not a leg game.
It is just huge resource waste....'
Gdemami absolutely not being an armchair developer
You keep saying this type of things on the forum replies but its clear from anyone objectively reading your article that its simply not true Bill. Your entire article tried to switch the blame to A-net, at every opportunity tried to marginalize HER behavior She was FAR BEYOND "a little rude" she was factually a sexist bigot and down right evil "glad they are dead". I am not sure how you can defend her hate speech....actually I do know you are in the same twisted ideology camp. Sorry we all know this article's tone would have been far different if it was a male (hell you wrote it about her not the man who was fired for doing far far far less need I say more?) it came through very clear in your overt bias in the article. Oddly enough most every reply you have made literally contradicts the tone and statements of your article.
The pandering doesnt stop either as you push the same SJW crap we are all tired of erroneously being shoved down our throats example? Your assumption she had to endure terrible treatment as a women in gaming... please stop with this epic distortions and flat out misinformation, you know nothing of her treatment yet assumed it was poor?? in the process condemning males in a bigoted way the assumption being "hurr derr guys are sexist jerks who treat women poorly".
Its about time all of these wacko leftists start getting consequences for their outrageous hateful speech the double standard in this country has become sickening where people on the left say the most vile things about others and even advocate violence against people whom they disagree with and nothing is done to curb the behavior so it just keeps getting worse each passing day.
Belittling the customer will do nothing good for the company. It really doesn't matter what the comment is; again, speaking from my time as an adjuster (as that's the best perspective I can offer here), our female adjusters endured blatant and outright sexism in the form of, "You're a woman, so you can't do your job. Get me a man." They weren't given license to blow up on the customer or start ranting about the larger societal issue: they were trained to explain to the customer that they received all of the same training, knowledge, and instruction as their male counterparts and that their male counterparts would undoubtedly back them up on the fact that they are as qualified, as a female adjuster, as any male adjuster in the office.
You'll notice that doesn't include putting said customer on blast personally in the public space.
Disagree the fans win, good people win, and A-net wins for standing up to a sexist evil minded bigoted bully.. there are plenty of capable developers to take her place the game will be just fine without the two of them and possibly even better without the constant virtue signaling being inserted to push a personal agenda.