Game Developers Fired After Arguing With Fans on Twitter

[Hogey]

She was fired from another company last year as well.

 

[Sketch]

Everything about the gaming industry is pathetic, especially the gamers. Just embarrassing to mankind, at this point.

Ok.

This lady still fucked up though. You don't tell your customers off like that especially when they are polite with you and the feedback might even be helpful.

 

[Ruprecht]

Ironic. Many "hardcore" gamers agree with you. From 2014:
52% of gamers are women – but the industry doesn’t know it

I think that's a very broad and inclusive definition of "Gamers".
Usually when I read the term, the author doesn't mean someone that has played a puzzle game on their mobile phone in the last six months.

 

[Concrete]

R.I.P. TB

 

[Terminal Strike]

She seems like a huge cunt and Arenanet were probably relieved to have a clear case to fire her. Looks like they axed Fries too to prevent sexism accusations (Not that its working, bitch is already crying to games "journalists" and hasn't even mentioned the filthy male being fired as collateral damage, its all me, me, me, me).
Serves him right for donning his white cloak and armour to ride out for a harpy that wouldn't piss on him if he was on fire.

 

[TehJesus]

No mention of how this woman celebrated Total Biscuit's death on twitter? She's a toxic human being who hides her shittiness behind her gender, while the usual suspects continue to prove they're the actual bigots by exonerating her solely on the basis of her sex.

 

[Madmick]

Massive differences exist between marketing strategies and the vocal player base who directly communicate with their preferred game developers.

Marketing campaigns and tech industry new hires reaction to gamergate were from not wanting to appear sexist in their practices. For we need to keep in mind that specifically with gaming its the highest grossing entertainment platform. Both need to look beyond what is perceived as their target audience of juvenile males. When that study released last year(or the year before) put males in their early 30's as the average gamer.

Game studios losing money is a byproduct of the required game creation time cycle. By the time the need/want is met the players interest is diverted to a different genre. Best example is World of Warcrafts popularity at the end of last decade. Game studios rushed to create their own for release at the start of this decade. But by that time the players interest in the MMORPG genre was already declining. An once these new MMORPGs were released they didnt have the content of WoW to retain their player count.

Current bubble is of game developers trying to make their game titles esports. Esport production companies hedging their viewers to secure high payout streaming contracts from aspiring websites. An established esports teams being bought out by larger firms.

So happy i spent the last thirty minutes constructing a reply to you only to be replied with a single sentence.

That took you 30 minutes?

 

[Madmick]

I think that's a very broad and inclusive definition of "Gamers".
Usually when I read the term, the author doesn't mean someone that has played a puzzle game on their mobile phone in the last six months.

Yeah, funny, isn't it, how "gamers" becomes such a narrow definition when the industry's political agenda comes into play?

It's almost like that was my real point.

 

[KaNesDeath]

That took you 30 minutes?

Todays my first day off after working the past 10 days straight. I just woke up after passing out on my coach. Currently im exhausted an i wanted that post to be precise across the many topics you brought up. My last reply was rushed an look how badly i butchered that.

 

[Madmick]

Todays my first day off after working the past 10 days straight. I just woke up after passing out on my coach. Currently im exhausted an i wanted that post to be precise across the many topics you brought up. My last reply was rushed an look how badly i butchered that.

Dude, enjoy your days off. You earned it. Don't waste it on my trivial thread.

 

[Ruprecht]

Yeah, funny, isn't it, how "gamers" becomes such a narrow definition when the industry's political agenda comes into play?

It's almost like that was my real point.

Well... I think that article is an example of the opposite. She's promoting a broader definition of "gamer" to push the narrative of the growing importance of women in a once almost exclusively male dominated market. Although she's certainly right about the market expanding.
I mean how many people identify as "gamers" and mean they are an infrequent player of casual games?
In terms of hardware, as much as any actual gaming capability "Gamer" means an aesthetic aimed at young males, with styling cues from racing cars and military hardware (plus way too many RGB LEDs).

 

[Concrete]

ArenaNet ‘folded like a cheap card table,’ says fired Guild Wars 2 writer
Inside the Guild Wars 2 meeting that’s shaken gaming
By Colin Campbell@ColinCampbellx Jul 9, 2018​

Jessica Price, who was fired by ArenaNet last week for arguing with fans of the company’s Guild Wars 2 MMO, said she feels betrayed by how the company “folded like a cheap card table” when confronted by toxic fandom. In an interview with Polygon, she talked about the meeting in which she was fired, and castigated ArenaNet managers for their “highly unprofessional” reaction to a social media controversy.

Until last week, Price worked as a narrative designer on Guild Wars 2. Earlier this month, she wrote a lengthy Twitter thread about the differences between writing characters for linear, narrative-driven games and player characters in MMOs. A prominent Guild Wars 2 streamer and YouTube known as Deroir chimed in to disagree. Price later called Deroir out, tweeting: “Today in being a female game dev: ‘Allow me — a person who does not work with you — explain to you how you do your job.’”

The tweet — and a follow-up in which she said, “the next rando asshat who attempts to explain the concept of branching dialogue to me ... is getting instablocked” — triggered a fierce thread on the Guild Wars subreddit. Fans mostly ignored Price’s point about women professionals constantly being questioned by men. They wanted to express their anger about a member of the community being rebuked.

Price’s bosses, it turned out, agreed with the angry fans. Price was called into a meeting with a manager from the narrative department, a human resources person and ArenaNet president Mike O’Brien.

“I was given no opportunity to argue my case,” she said. “My manager was on vacation. [O’Brien] spent some time insisting that developers must be friends with the company’s customers, and that it was unacceptable to say that we aren’t, even when we’re not on the clock. He told me I’d look back and regret this, because we were doing great work and I’d ruined it.

“The whole thing was highly unprofessional,” she continued. “There was zero reason for him to be there. He wanted to vent his anger, and he had the power to command a woman to stand there while he took his feelings out on her, so he did. Then he walked out, [the manager] got my stuff from my desk and the HR person asked for my key card.”

Price later discovered that her colleague Peter Fries, who’d defended her in social media threads, was also fired.

‘Zero warnings’

Price said she had no previous problem with her bosses about her social media activities.

“I was told during my interview and subsequent hiring communications that ArenaNet respected my willingness to speak up on issues in the industry and had no desire to muzzle me,” she said. “I had, in my time there, zero warnings about my social media use. Everything I said on Twitter was consistent with what I’ve been saying for years and how I’ve been saying it.”

She said she believed that ArenaNet was the sort of company that encouraged individualism and free expression.

“It felt like it was too good to be true when they offered me a job,” she said. “They promised me that I wouldn’t have to check my identity at the door. They said that they admired my willingness to speak up about issues in the industry.

“There was so much that we were doing internally that encouraged me to hope, to trust them. There were executives talking about diversity, and building a nontoxic work environment, and acknowledging that talk wasn’t enough — that they had to put money and effort and leadership behind it.”

That included, Price said, encouragement from ArenaNet management to be outspoken and fearless.

“There were meetings in which executives promised us that they wanted us to speak up about the ugly things, the harmful things, and that we wouldn’t be punished for doing so,” she said. “There was constant talk about how to make it the sort of place that you’d dream of working at, not just because of the cool games we were making, not just because of the benefits and perks, but because it was going to be a corrective to the exploitation and toxicity of so much of the industry.

“And so it’s devastating that a company talking all that talk folded like a cheap card table the first time their values were actually tested. Doing the right thing is hard, sure, but doing it regularly makes it easier to keep doing it. And the corollary to that is that capitulating makes it harder to stop capitulating.”

https://www.polygon.com/2018/7/9/17549492/arenanet-jessica-price-guild-wars-2-writer-fired

I love when they do this. Now a whole new gaming community (GW2) knows that you can't believe a fucking word that's written in Polygon, Kotaku etc. Just speeding up their demise.

 

[Amerikuracana]

You can't fire me.. I have protected status.

 

[Trotsky]

Gamers have been abused so long

Even though I really don't get the Trumpian "damn SJWs" tint, I am glad that you've finally found a persecuted class with which you empathize.

 

[tonni]

It is time for gamers to unite and fight back against SJW's. Little known fact: experience gained in online RPGs easily transfers to real life skills. Brace yourselves.

 

[jefferz]

Fuck that thunder cunt. She had already put a target on her back with that tweet.

 

[Hogey]

Interesting in the second video it shows the person who replied to price live-streaming and talking positively about her before the current events.

 

[Fronk]

Gaming "culture" is cancerous in general. From the basement dwelling incels to the transvestite SJW freaks: it all sucks. Never remove the social stigma from gaming, we don't need these people to take their discussions to the streets.

 

[Dirt Road Soldier]

Everything about the gaming industry is pathetic, especially the gamers. Just embarrassing to mankind, at this point.

Eh, most gamers dont give a shit about things like this one way or the other. The ones that do are easy enough to ignore.

 

[HereticBD]

"SJW Victim Shield" couldn't withstand the blow from the "Patriarchy Mace +1".

She should've applied the "Staff Sexual Harassment" stat buffer. Rookie mistake.