There is a reason i don't call myself a gamer. And this just reeks of it.
Just what? Sensible? In tune with reality?
There are a few people who have taken it too far in the direction that we all know (based on your posting history) that you are labeling us, but most of the posters here have been entirely reasonable.
From admitting you don't know, to suspecting you do know.
"I don’t know what she goes through day in, day out, just to be a part of this industry. I highly expect she puts up with a lot more shit than most of her male counterparts."
Interestingly, you don't use this measurement for ArenaNet?
"She’s defending her work, just not in the best or most customer-facing way."
You give the employee every excuse, and the company that defends the idea of cooperation is criticized for blundering? Is this one of those "Help, I'm being repressed!" pieces? ArenaNet seems to distance itself from toxic entitlement.
Sorry Bill. You picked the wrong side of this argument. Too many other IP's are being appropriated from their original audiences and too many XXXgates are going on all because social justice warriors force their agenda upon everyone who merely want drama free and quality products. Diversity arises through variety of product and not through appropriation.
ArenaNet clearly sees how certain multi-billion dollar IPs are being destroyed and losing their core audience along with hemorrhaging earnings because of it. They had to do this. They had to set a precedence. The paying customer has to be respected and employees cannot force their own political agenda not shared by their employer.
SJWs are a cancer within profit based industries. They insult their audience (i.e. Marvel, LucasFilm) through social media and tell them if they don't like their "art", they can stop buying it. They attack anyone against their narrative even if it's a valid argument (this is exactly what happened here), force their own agenda even if not relevant and play the victim card and even go so far as to create fictitious or highly exaggerated stories of damsels in distress. This has been repeated across each and every industry they have gotten their hands into.
The ONLY outcome with allowing this sort of hate speech to continue (oh the irony) is to nip it in the bud IMMEDIATELY or else the company will face titanic losses and audience backlash much like LucasFilm is currently facing.
The stakes are far greater than you make it out to be Bill. The head of ArenaNet may very well be an asshole in his own right but at least he sees the true impact of doing nothing. Customers feel powerless these days. They feel abused and manipulated on multiple entertainment industry fronts. As others have said, if nearly ANY NORMAL employee in ANY NORMAL company would have done this they too would have been instantly fired. There is no defending those 2 (but I direct most of it toward Jessica Price). Price had a long history of it.
The bigger picture here is that this is so fucking widespread that it is cultural now. IP appropriation is real. Organized SJW attacks using social AND mainstream media is real. Disseminating fictional information to support political agendas within non-political industries is real. Anyone clueless to this only has to put some level minded and intelligent research into the current state of Marvel comics (Lord help the movies moving forward), LucasFilm and IPs like Star Wars and Star Trek to see their attempts to completely abandon their canon, historical cultural impact and audiences in favor of agenda based political ideals ... and frankly really shitty story telling that elevates women by deconstructing men.
ArenaNet had their eyes open enough to see it and I Goddamn fucking applaud them for it. The term "Get WOKE. Go BROKE!" is true, and ArenaNet bloody knows it.
I'm not even going to touch the whole social justice issue with a ten foot pole here, but I will give my two cents on the reality I see.
Arenanet is not, has never been, and will not ever be "woke." They are not, as you seem to believe, a conservative company by any means. In fact, they are a liberal company, if anything. More importantly, they are simply a company that respects their customers.
With one hand, they show respect for their left-leaning and LGBT customers by recognizing community run pride events and including LGBT NPC's, including ones as prominent as Caithe, Faolain, Marjory, and Kasmeer.
With the other hand, they show all customers that, regardless of political stance, they cannot tolerate two of their own openly disrespecting customers.
Let's not dilute the conversation by turning this into a political issue. It isn't one. It's a matter of community relations, basic business practice, and nothing else.
Woman is psycho that brings her own personal agenda and political opinions where she should not. What is deal with all this white knighting? Would media be this vocal if man was fired for similar reasons?
I doubt most would be, to be honest. Though with regards to Mr. Bill Murphy, I do believe he would write the same article as the crux of it (from what I gathered) was a mixture of employee morale, passion and potentially scaring other developers on the time to the point where it may feel like a hostile environment for them. The article also mentioned that it ignores unknown variables that aren't made public to us and bases information on what we know.
The assertion that it is a loss for the game as a whole is also correct, in my opinion. It's something I said in a past post. Two experienced developers are gone now, and that will only hurt going forward. Even if they're quickly replaced, it takes time to acclimate new employees to the way you do things and how to work with your systems. Not to mention that it feels like part of the soul of Guild Wars is gone now that a senior GW1 developer was caught in the crossfires.
That said, I do not think the above is reason enough to with-hold firing someone that is either toxic or has misrepresented you in serious ways. Stress or not, there are other avenues and stances and even ways to express maturity that she could have taken. There should be no immunity for her behavior as that will also send the wrong message that you're able to conduct yourself in an immature manner and say horrible things while stating you work for Arenanet. Many people sign social media contracts and go through orientations in workplaces now just for this specific reason, and violation of such results in what we saw in this situation.
Though the end quote makes a good implication that immunity to such behavior may actually exist if you're at the top of the food chain. Which is true with most companies in general. The people at the bottom get blamed and fired even for the incompetence of the higher ups (not to say this situation is like that, but just as a matter of fact). My assertion above is that no-one should be immune. Perhaps different degrees, as a shake up at the higher levels may do a lot of harm initially, but as a whole sometimes its needed for the long term health of a company.
I don't believe Fries' firing was justified. My opinion is Price should have been fired a long time ago with what she has said in the past and what stories I've been hearing about her toxic behavior while interacting with others. It's said she was fired from her last job for the exact same thing -- and people wonder why ANet hired her in the first place. Which leads me to a sort of "No Tolerance" philosophy. If they knew she was trouble and potentially gave her warnings or tolerated things because it didn't cause a big ruckus in the community (Similar to how someone else got fired for celebrating someone's death, but she didn't because nobody made note of it), then she should have been gone at the first sign that she hadn't changed her way. The fact that she didn't was a mistake, and was likely because they were thinking about the moral of the employees. Though now that escalated to the point where morale really took a nose dive and they're all potential targets of future zeal.
We don't know how many warnings she was given or anything like that.
But this, in general and in my opinion, is what happens when you're a weak leader. Second chances are fine. Warnings are fine. But sometimes you have to put your foot down before the inevitable happens and trouble makers cause a huge PR disaster like this. Fries himself should have been put on suspension in this case as a hard handed move to someone that barely did anything. Though I have suspected before that it was probably a package deal due to many of the issues at hand, such as the topic of sexism being brought up when it shouldn't have. Again, weak leadership and just trying to please the masses in a quick to make judgment that has long lasting implications.
She (Price) could have easily made an account that no one knows her on to speak on her own terms. But once you put your name out there as well as your company, you represent them. You're free to say what you want, but you also have to deal with the consequences of such when anonymity is gone.
To quote Farcry: "Do you know the definition of insanity?"
Expecting someone that celebrates the death of people and constantly speaks to others in a toxic manner to not inevitably cause a PR nightmare. Who also frequently blocks people that disagree with them and states that they don't care about their opinion. I'm getting the meme of a person in a burning building, drinking tea, while saying "This is fine." in my head. Just saying to yourself that they'll calm themselves down, change their ways by themselves and definitely won't be the cause of future trouble with how sensitive the internet can be nowadays.
Due to frequent travel in my youth, English isn't something I consider my primary language (and thus I obtained quirky ways of writing). German and French were always easier for me despite my family being U.S. citizens for over a century. Spanish I learned as a requirement in school, Japanese and Korean I acquired for my youthful desire of anime and gaming (and also work now). I only debate in English to help me work with it (and limit things). In addition, I'm not smart enough to remain fluent in everything and typically need exposure to get in the groove of things again if I haven't heard it in a while. If you understand Mandarin, I know a little, but it has actually been a challenge and could use some help.
Also, I thoroughly enjoy debates and have accounts on over a dozen sites for this. If you wish to engage in such, please put effort in a post and provide sources -- I will then do the same with what I already wrote (if I didn't) as well as with my responses to your own. Expanding my information on a subject makes my stance either change or strengthen the next time I speak of it or write a thesis. Allow me to thank you sincerely for your time.
I just can't believe that respectful gaming sites like Kotaku , mmorpg ....try to defend this human being (if i say woman maybe some people will say i'm sexist)
Considering what happened when Riot fired someone for desiring a toxic streamer that has been banned to die, ie crickets from the press defending the guy, it seems they are defending her because she is a woman and an activist.
Anyone reasonable understands she was rude to deroir (an arenanet partner with its own in game NPC). It could have ended there (my own own opinion was that deroir comment wasn't exacting touching her argument, but it wasn't a harsh criticism of her work either as Living story structure was set before she came on board, but whatever). Deroir even apologised and left. Deroir, a guy that had just streamed the previous day that he loved how Jessica Price answered question in the reddit AMA, calling her a God of AMAs.
Everyone has a bad day, it is understandable.
But she was not happy with that. She proceeded to castigate him, accusing him of being sexist and going on and on. Even saying she didn't have to pretend she liked the community in her own twitter, the implication being she is lying when she interacts with the community (we all do that when interacting with some of our costumers, but we don't say that).
One can say the punishment was too hard, but the way she behaved after, doesn't seem to indicate that. Everything is about her being a woman, it can never be because she was wrong and acted wrong.
And people keep forgetting that Arenanet are trigger happy with banning community members from their forums for being toxic. In the early days, there used to be a lot of complaints in these forums on how Arenanet were forum nazis.
Mike O'brien simply stood by the company principles - no toxicity allowed. Just because she is a woman that is an activist for women rights, she doesn't get a free pass on common decency when representing Arenanet (she was talking about the game, following a reddit AMA done by Anet, in a twitter account where she states she works at Anet), especially when she likes to accuse other of toxicity when she is the one being toxic.
She made a mistake. The gaming media completely ignored that mistake because she is a tribe member.
Arenanet is clearly a company that promotes diversity, women rights, homosexual rights and transgender rights, and they are not afraid of showing it in their game.
MO statements are reasonable and just common sense that anyone that doesn't have a tribe tshirt on will understand.
This is the case when people are damaging their agendas by not being able to recognise that members of their tribe can be wrong.
Currently playing: GW2 Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
She definitely should have been fired. You don't just shit all over someone for offering constructive criticism, talk about how you don't like the fans/customers but only pretend while on the clock, and falsely claim sexism where there was none along with a bunch of other crap and expect nothing to come of it.
Deroir is an Anet partner, and was streaming and praising her for being amazing with her Q&A's and shit like a couple days before, and then when trying to interact with her, got basically told he was a useless, random piece of shit for absolutely no reason.
There is no defending her response to Deroir, and it seems pretty simple that her being fired was the best course of action to take.
Peter Fries, of course, had to go too, because they were both bringing up gender issues, so Anet couldn't just get rid of the vagina and keep the penis around. I found his posts pretty annoying, as well, but he didn't start the problem, so not sure if he really should have been fired. He white knighted for the wrong person, though, so whatever.
Sorry Bill. You picked the wrong side of this argument. Too many other IP's are being appropriated from their original audiences and too many XXXgates are going on all because social justice warriors force their agenda upon everyone who merely want drama free and quality products. Diversity arises through variety of product and not through appropriation.
ArenaNet clearly sees how certain multi-billion dollar IPs are being destroyed and losing their core audience along with hemorrhaging earnings because of it. They had to do this. They had to set a precedence. The paying customer has to be respected and employees cannot force their own political agenda not shared by their employer.
SJWs are a cancer within profit based industries. They insult their audience (i.e. Marvel, LucasFilm) through social media and tell them if they don't like their "art", they can stop buying it. They attack anyone against their narrative even if it's a valid argument (this is exactly what happened here), force their own agenda even if not relevant and play the victim card and even go so far as to create fictitious or highly exaggerated stories of damsels in distress. This has been repeated across each and every industry they have gotten their hands into.
The ONLY outcome with allowing this sort of hate speech to continue (oh the irony) is to nip it in the bud IMMEDIATELY or else the company will face titanic losses and audience backlash much like LucasFilm is currently facing.
The stakes are far greater than you make it out to be Bill. The head of ArenaNet may very well be an asshole in his own right but at least he sees the true impact of doing nothing. Customers feel powerless these days. They feel abused and manipulated on multiple entertainment industry fronts. As others have said, if nearly ANY NORMAL employee in ANY NORMAL company would have done this they too would have been instantly fired. There is no defending those 2 (but I direct most of it toward Jessica Price). Price had a long history of it.
The bigger picture here is that this is so fucking widespread that it is cultural now. IP appropriation is real. Organized SJW attacks using social AND mainstream media is real. Disseminating fictional information to support political agendas within non-political industries is real. Anyone clueless to this only has to put some level minded and intelligent research into the current state of Marvel comics (Lord help the movies moving forward), LucasFilm and IPs like Star Wars and Star Trek to see their attempts to completely abandon their canon, historical cultural impact and audiences in favor of agenda based political ideals ... and frankly really shitty story telling that elevates women by deconstructing men.
ArenaNet had their eyes open enough to see it and I Goddamn fucking applaud them for it. The term "Get WOKE. Go BROKE!" is true, and ArenaNet bloody knows it.
I'm not even going to touch the whole social justice issue with a ten foot pole here, but I will give my two cents on the reality I see.
Arenanet is not, has never been, and will not ever be "woke." They are not, as you seem to believe, a conservative company by any means. In fact, they are a liberal company, if anything. More importantly, they are simply a company that respects their customers.
With one hand, they show respect for their left-leaning and LGBT customers by recognizing community run pride events and including LGBT NPC's, including ones as prominent as Caithe, Faolain, Marjory, and Kasmeer.
With the other hand, they show all customers that, regardless of political stance, they cannot tolerate two of their own openly disrespecting customers.
Let's not dilute the conversation by turning this into a political issue. It isn't one. It's a matter of community relations, basic business practice, and nothing else.
The choice was yes. The reason why it must be done goes beyond that. It's the implications of not doing anything ... the basis for Bill's article and my greater point.
Basic business practice you mention is not the current norm. It is not practiced by those purposely driving their IP into the dirt so therefore is not so common or simple as you suggest.
But I do agree, as stated, that it SHOULD be standard practice. The shocking truth why it is not across the entertainment industry (perhaps you are not familiar with Gamergate) is my point of discussion.
"This is my long-winded way of saying perhaps Ms. Price should have been disciplined behind company doors, and instructed to either make her Twitter account private or stop using the platform with advertised ties to the company."
Sure, she should have, but you can tell just by her reaction that she is not the kind of person who would have done that. She would have been fired as a result of refusing to do that, in fact. She clearly has a history and is a pretty despicable person that uses gender as a defense mechanism and pushes sexism towards women forward in a way that sets all women back over 2 decades.
This was hardly a PR blunder. They saved face on this one. If they defended her, this would have created a whole nother problem: ArenaNet stands by sexist employee! ArenaNet craps all over fans and doesn't care!
Jessica Price has reflected on her actions and says that in hindsight she would have called Deroir a "condescending jerk" rather than an "asshat" for his attempt to politely discuss story writing in games with her.
Just what we need, more drama. I understand this is your opinion piece, Bill, and you're certainly entitled to express your opinion on this site, but in my view all it does is prolong the soap opera in this case. I come here to hear about game developments I care about, not social media gaffes that happens every day in every other context.
Men do not stop playing because they grow old. They grow old because they stop playing. -- Oliver Wendell Holmes
While this is an opinion piece, it's a fairly uninformed one.
She had a history of doing this at Paizo prior to ArenaNet and was fired for it.
Do you think that this was an isolated incident? Her Twitter betrays a pattern of vile behavior and one could make the argument that she abused a political ideology in order to be a terrible person.
Jessica Price has reflected on her actions and says that in hindsight she would have called Deroir a "condescending jerk" rather than an "asshat" for his attempt to politely discuss story writing in games with her.
To me she sounds like a disgusting human being, and it seems she didn't learn anything from this either. All here comments were immature and unprofessional. I don't care if you are a woman or a man, don't be an asshole and a horrible human being.
I bet if that feedback came from a woman this would be a whole different story, which indicates that she is a sexist.
Lol just "defending" her work. She brought gender into the topic and made herself the victim, she was not defending she was spewing hate. She was acting like a nazi in her tweets. This whole article is basicly the same as the ones written on kotaku and rock paper shotgun. Female entitlement.... Gtfo. if you wanna see unequality between the sexes, go to eastern country's then we will talk again. Left media bullcrap
While this is an opinion piece, it's a fairly uninformed one.
She had a history of doing this at Paizo prior to ArenaNet and was fired for it.
Do you think that this was an isolated incident? Her Twitter betrays a pattern of vile behavior and one could make the argument that she abused a political ideology in order to be a terrible person.
Really have to wonder how she managed to get a job at Arenanet in the first place given her history, though perhaps now her future employment opportunities will be severely curtailed, at least within the gaming industry, hard to imagine any developer not looking at this more recent debacle and consider her to be too much of a liablilty and disruptive influence.
There is a reason i don't call myself a gamer. And this just reeks of it.
Regardless of which side you favour, such a generic form of condemnation probably means we are all better off if you don't call yourself a gamer too.
For the same reason I don't call myself a Driver, while I drive for over 20 years, I also don't call myself a Gamer despite gaming quite a lot. It's a hobby, not a personality defining characteristic.
Had I been a professional in the field, then I'd call myself a Gamer.
As someone who has driven as a profession, although only up to class 2 vehicles (hgv) and on a daily basis because living in the countryside you kind of need to be able to drive, i don't consider myself to be a driver, its just something i did as a job once, i do consider myself to be a gamer though, because its my hobby and something i do have a deep interest in. You can think of yourself as being or not being whatever you want, its just an opinion either way, others might not agree with you but that is their opinion and they are just as entitled to them as you are to yours. Me i am proud to be a gamer and i make no apology for it, nor feel the need to, if someone doesn't want to call themselves a gamer and blanket condemns others for being one, well there is a word for that too.
"Also see: lopsided defense of mansplaining in your mentions versus outpouring of sympathy for misunderstood dude in his"
---------------
His behavior in the linked archive is also pretty aggressive.
I feel better about his firing.
Pardon if someone already mentioned it. There's 11 pages of comments I don't have time to read through.
If i had to guess i would say that they didn't have a choice when it came to Peter Fries, that Jessica Price had to go is not really in question, but she in effect also got her co worker fired too, because by sacking JP they probably could not be seen to be going soft on another employee who really should have known better, though i would have to say i think its highly likely that if it had been another female co-worker of JP that was involved, i think it more likely that JP would have been the only one sacked, sadly in this day and age there are more than a few feminists out there that would have called it gender discrimination. I really do not envy Mike Obrian, it was a tough choice and a necessary one, doing nothing would have been the 'easy' choice, doing the right thing however, takes guts, i am just glad that Mike Obrian had them.
... and you are defending this person and simultaneously defaming people in charge of ArenaNet. Look at this thread. Look at how many people are disgusted of your political agenda. Bljah
.. oh and the op also posted an analogy with PTSD -- this is just laughable and pathetic. Yes I am so sympathetic towards this person, she is such a sweetheart.
What the heck is up with this "well respected member of the community and content contributor" comments. Any person that is part of the community should be respected by staff regardless of their supposed "standing". People complain that Price was asserting her "privilege" because she was an employee. The member of the community has no more right to "privilege" than Price did. You have freedom of speech, but that does not protect you from the possible fallout of that speech.
The only thing wrong I see that the A-net did was fire Fries.
@BillMurphy, I would completely agree with you 100% as written, except that Price decided to put her company and position in her twitter profile. By doing so, she alone elevated her private account to semi-work account. She alone decided to go sideways with the community and that is a huge no no, especially when the community is being civil with you.
While I agree in part, mentioning Deroir's status is important for multiple reasons.
The first is that it clarifies that Price damaged the company by not only disrespecting fans, but also by harassing and defaming an officially sponsored partner.
The second is that it shows stupidity or lack of knowledge on her part. She should have known full well who he is and why he should have been trustworthy to her. She should have known that he wasn't just an internet troll.
The third is that it points in the direction of the victim's very public comments praising his harasser prior to the incident. This praise also shows why he specifically reached out to her in the first place, and it makes her treatment of him more tragic. He wasn't just a fan, he was HER fan.
Regardless of how one feels about Price's actions and regardless of where one draws the line between rudeness and exasperation in Price's tweets, the fact of the matter is that there is an entire spectrum of responses ArenaNet could have taken, but chose not to. The company could have done anything from pulling their employee aside and discussing their behavior, to giving them an internal reprimand and offered them additional training. Instead, ArenaNet, under the clearly inadequate leadership of Mike O'Brien, made the knee-jerk reaction to fire a member of their team. No dialogue, no nuance, no empathy.
The unethical firings of Price and Fries, together with the reactions of toxic individuals inside and outside of the Guild Wars player community, have had a chilling effect across the industry. Countless workers have been harassed over social media and many are concerned about the implications of this event, some going so far as to delete their personal social media accounts in fear of similar retaliation from hostile players and bosses. ArenaNet has signaled to the entire industry that our job security can be, and almost certainly will be, imperiled by the most vitriolic and volatile players. This event carries echoes of Gamergate, and will only embolden harassers further.
Yes we need bully hunters for game devs ... oh wait we already have them ... you, gaming "journalists". MY HEROES!
Wow, so many people to reply to. So many people being triggered. One could be forgiven for thinking they were all loony lefty snowflakes, because we all know they're the enemies of free speech.
Unfortunately it's getting on towards 1 am here in good old blighty and I want to see who else has abandoned Theresa the appeaser, the Brexit betrayer. So I'll say goodnight to all and don't have collective apoplexy.
lol wow dude you took a debate about some girl popping off at the mouth and turned it completely into a red vs blue argument. If anyone's triggered here it's definitely you. I guess you agree with all the videos out there also of idiots using racial slurs towards people , I guess according to your thought process they should just tough it up and stand for that also right? This woman spewed off banter that made the company look bad if they didn't do anything about it. You turned this into some political correctness argument that doesn't exist. What it boils down to is when you disrespect others on social media you can get canned. It's no different than teachers being fired for drunk pics or talking trash on their facebooks. If you have a high profile job which is viral , you have to use your judgement on what you post.
Got it in one. Yes, I think they should suck it up. It's words not a smack in the mouth. And it's not red vs blue, at least not in my opinion. You either believe in free speech or you oppose it, regardless of where you fall on the political compass.
I'm neither red nor blue according to the last result I had on a political compass test. I'm very much "in the middle".
In yet another example used by someone, why the fuck should a teacher get fired for being drunk? So what if he was on facebook. What if he never took the photo, what if it was his mates? He's never allowed to get shitfaced just because he's a teacher?
The world has gone mad, I tell you.
For me that's entirely different. A teacher has every right to have drunk photos of themselves on Facebook. That doesn't make the school look bad or anything so I can't imagine getting fired over that. It's just a normal part of life and he should be free to use Facebook for it's purpose -sharing things with friends and family. Did this really happen?
Really have to wonder how she managed to get a job at Arenanet in the first place given her history, though perhaps now her future employment opportunities will be severely curtailed, at least within the gaming industry, hard to imagine any developer not looking at this more recent debacle and consider her to be too much of a liablilty and disruptive influence.
She managed to get quietly dismissed from Paizo, and the CEO of that company is both a woman (Lisa Stevens) and fairly progressive.
The indie dev scene is fawning over her and there were a few writers from Arkane Studios who were standing up for her. But those folks don't make hiring decisions, so it's pretty much not putting their money where their mouth is.
Randy Pitchford, CEO of Gearbox, gave tepid support, but walked his statements back when he saw this was not an isolated incident, but a pattern of behavior.
Comments
There are a few people who have taken it too far in the direction that we all know (based on your posting history) that you are labeling us, but most of the posters here have been entirely reasonable.
"I don’t know what she goes through day in, day out, just to be a part of this industry. I highly expect she puts up with a lot more shit than most of her male counterparts."
Interestingly, you don't use this measurement for ArenaNet?
"She’s defending her work, just not in the best or most customer-facing way."
You give the employee every excuse, and the company that defends the idea of cooperation is criticized for blundering? Is this one of those "Help, I'm being repressed!" pieces? ArenaNet seems to distance itself from toxic entitlement.
Arenanet is not, has never been, and will not ever be "woke." They are not, as you seem to believe, a conservative company by any means. In fact, they are a liberal company, if anything. More importantly, they are simply a company that respects their customers.
With one hand, they show respect for their left-leaning and LGBT customers by recognizing community run pride events and including LGBT NPC's, including ones as prominent as Caithe, Faolain, Marjory, and Kasmeer.
With the other hand, they show all customers that, regardless of political stance, they cannot tolerate two of their own openly disrespecting customers.
Let's not dilute the conversation by turning this into a political issue. It isn't one. It's a matter of community relations, basic business practice, and nothing else.
I doubt most would be, to be honest. Though with regards to Mr. Bill Murphy, I do believe he would write the same article as the crux of it (from what I gathered) was a mixture of employee morale, passion and potentially scaring other developers on the time to the point where it may feel like a hostile environment for them. The article also mentioned that it ignores unknown variables that aren't made public to us and bases information on what we know.
The assertion that it is a loss for the game as a whole is also correct, in my opinion. It's something I said in a past post. Two experienced developers are gone now, and that will only hurt going forward. Even if they're quickly replaced, it takes time to acclimate new employees to the way you do things and how to work with your systems. Not to mention that it feels like part of the soul of Guild Wars is gone now that a senior GW1 developer was caught in the crossfires.
That said, I do not think the above is reason enough to with-hold firing someone that is either toxic or has misrepresented you in serious ways. Stress or not, there are other avenues and stances and even ways to express maturity that she could have taken. There should be no immunity for her behavior as that will also send the wrong message that you're able to conduct yourself in an immature manner and say horrible things while stating you work for Arenanet. Many people sign social media contracts and go through orientations in workplaces now just for this specific reason, and violation of such results in what we saw in this situation.
Though the end quote makes a good implication that immunity to such behavior may actually exist if you're at the top of the food chain. Which is true with most companies in general. The people at the bottom get blamed and fired even for the incompetence of the higher ups (not to say this situation is like that, but just as a matter of fact). My assertion above is that no-one should be immune. Perhaps different degrees, as a shake up at the higher levels may do a lot of harm initially, but as a whole sometimes its needed for the long term health of a company.
I don't believe Fries' firing was justified. My opinion is Price should have been fired a long time ago with what she has said in the past and what stories I've been hearing about her toxic behavior while interacting with others. It's said she was fired from her last job for the exact same thing -- and people wonder why ANet hired her in the first place. Which leads me to a sort of "No Tolerance" philosophy. If they knew she was trouble and potentially gave her warnings or tolerated things because it didn't cause a big ruckus in the community (Similar to how someone else got fired for celebrating someone's death, but she didn't because nobody made note of it), then she should have been gone at the first sign that she hadn't changed her way. The fact that she didn't was a mistake, and was likely because they were thinking about the moral of the employees. Though now that escalated to the point where morale really took a nose dive and they're all potential targets of future zeal.
We don't know how many warnings she was given or anything like that.
But this, in general and in my opinion, is what happens when you're a weak leader. Second chances are fine. Warnings are fine. But sometimes you have to put your foot down before the inevitable happens and trouble makers cause a huge PR disaster like this. Fries himself should have been put on suspension in this case as a hard handed move to someone that barely did anything. Though I have suspected before that it was probably a package deal due to many of the issues at hand, such as the topic of sexism being brought up when it shouldn't have. Again, weak leadership and just trying to please the masses in a quick to make judgment that has long lasting implications.
Anyone reasonable understands she was rude to deroir (an arenanet partner with its own in game NPC). It could have ended there (my own own opinion was that deroir comment wasn't exacting touching her argument, but it wasn't a harsh criticism of her work either as Living story structure was set before she came on board, but whatever). Deroir even apologised and left. Deroir, a guy that had just streamed the previous day that he loved how Jessica Price answered question in the reddit AMA, calling her a God of AMAs.
Everyone has a bad day, it is understandable.
But she was not happy with that. She proceeded to castigate him, accusing him of being sexist and going on and on. Even saying she didn't have to pretend she liked the community in her own twitter, the implication being she is lying when she interacts with the community (we all do that when interacting with some of our costumers, but we don't say that).
One can say the punishment was too hard, but the way she behaved after, doesn't seem to indicate that. Everything is about her being a woman, it can never be because she was wrong and acted wrong.
And people keep forgetting that Arenanet are trigger happy with banning community members from their forums for being toxic. In the early days, there used to be a lot of complaints in these forums on how Arenanet were forum nazis.
Mike O'brien simply stood by the company principles - no toxicity allowed.
Just because she is a woman that is an activist for women rights, she doesn't get a free pass on common decency when representing Arenanet (she was talking about the game, following a reddit AMA done by Anet, in a twitter account where she states she works at Anet), especially when she likes to accuse other of toxicity when she is the one being toxic.
She made a mistake. The gaming media completely ignored that mistake because she is a tribe member.
Arenanet is clearly a company that promotes diversity, women rights, homosexual rights and transgender rights, and they are not afraid of showing it in their game.
MO statements are reasonable and just common sense that anyone that doesn't have a tribe tshirt on will understand.
This is the case when people are damaging their agendas by not being able to recognise that members of their tribe can be wrong.
Currently playing: GW2
Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
Deroir is an Anet partner, and was streaming and praising her for being amazing with her Q&A's and shit like a couple days before, and then when trying to interact with her, got basically told he was a useless, random piece of shit for absolutely no reason.
There is no defending her response to Deroir, and it seems pretty simple that her being fired was the best course of action to take.
Peter Fries, of course, had to go too, because they were both bringing up gender issues, so Anet couldn't just get rid of the vagina and keep the penis around. I found his posts pretty annoying, as well, but he didn't start the problem, so not sure if he really should have been fired. He white knighted for the wrong person, though, so whatever.
Basic business practice you mention is not the current norm. It is not practiced by those purposely driving their IP into the dirt so therefore is not so common or simple as you suggest.
But I do agree, as stated, that it SHOULD be standard practice. The shocking truth why it is not across the entertainment industry (perhaps you are not familiar with Gamergate) is my point of discussion.
You stay sassy!
Sure, she should have, but you can tell just by her reaction that she is not the kind of person who would have done that. She would have been fired as a result of refusing to do that, in fact. She clearly has a history and is a pretty despicable person that uses gender as a defense mechanism and pushes sexism towards women forward in a way that sets all women back over 2 decades. This was hardly a PR blunder. They saved face on this one. If they defended her, this would have created a whole nother problem: ArenaNet stands by sexist employee! ArenaNet craps all over fans and doesn't care!
Men do not stop playing because they grow old. They grow old because they stop playing. -- Oliver Wendell Holmes
http://archive.fo/qnRGu
While this is an opinion piece, it's a fairly uninformed one.
She had a history of doing this at Paizo prior to ArenaNet and was fired for it.
Do you think that this was an isolated incident? Her Twitter betrays a pattern of vile behavior and one could make the argument that she abused a political ideology in order to be a terrible person.
Gut Out!
What, me worry?
I really do not envy Mike Obrian, it was a tough choice and a necessary one, doing nothing would have been the 'easy' choice, doing the right thing however, takes guts, i am just glad that Mike Obrian had them.
Look at what she said when Total Biscuit passed away
https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/8wg4pm/what_jessica_price_had_to_say_on_passing_of/
... and you are defending this person and simultaneously defaming people in charge of ArenaNet. Look at this thread. Look at how many people are disgusted of your political agenda. Bljah
.. oh and the op also posted an analogy with PTSD -- this is just laughable and pathetic. Yes I am so sympathetic towards this person, she is such a sweetheart.
We need bully hunters.
The first is that it clarifies that Price damaged the company by not only disrespecting fans, but also by harassing and defaming an officially sponsored partner.
The second is that it shows stupidity or lack of knowledge on her part. She should have known full well who he is and why he should have been trustworthy to her. She should have known that he wasn't just an internet troll.
The third is that it points in the direction of the victim's very public comments praising his harasser prior to the incident. This praise also shows why he specifically reached out to her in the first place, and it makes her treatment of him more tragic. He wasn't just a fan, he was HER fan.
*golfclap*
The indie dev scene is fawning over her and there were a few writers from Arkane Studios who were standing up for her. But those folks don't make hiring decisions, so it's pretty much not putting their money where their mouth is.
Randy Pitchford, CEO of Gearbox, gave tepid support, but walked his statements back when he saw this was not an isolated incident, but a pattern of behavior.