Guild Wars studio fires two employees after clash with streamer | Hacker News Reader

Guild Wars studio fires two employees after clash with streamer

theverge.com

42 pointsmavhc47 comments

Really caught by surprise by some of the answers here, I don’t mean to offend anyone, just trying to explain why I came to the conclusion I came to.

I think the article is fairly well balanced, giving the fired devs ample space to tell their side of the story, expanding on the dangerous implications of allowing reddit/social media influence the company’s hiring and firing decisions and a short formal statement from the co-founder.

There seems to have been a mixture of bad HR guidelines and naïveté.

I’m frankly appalled that a politely explained, disagreeing opinion, was met with such a toxic response.

As I read the responses I understood the dev to be:

Calling a customer sexist and an “asshat” then explaining that she is free to demonstrate dislike for her customers while speaking about the company and its products and services because she is not doing it during work hours and is using a personal social media account.

I can only imagine what kind of anonymous adolescent vitriol she must have to endure but as a representative of the company she must remain above it.

Should they have been fired?

Not if it’s the 1st occurrence but seriously reprimanded and explained the social media code of conduct carefully.

On the other hand the company has a duty of care for its employees.

Can it not facilitate automatic reporting of abusive messages back to Twitter/Reddit? Hold workshops on how to deal with online harassment?

It seems like it’s a huge issue in the game industry.

Totally deserved IMO.

The employee in question posted some tweets about “narrative design” and some streamer (seemingly politely) replied that he disagreed before reiterating the same points the employee made.

The employee then goes on a mildly offensive rant about how that person was “mansplaining” and how hard it is to be a female game dev.

How about you simply accept that some people on the internet are stupid, will make stupid remarks and may think they’re better than you at your job, and it doesn’t have anything to do with your gender?

I'm not quite sure how a single "mildy offensive rant" justifies someone being fired, instead of a simple "please don't do that again"?

That employee sparked potential controversy by bringing in gender & sexism into a thread that didn’t need it; and such a sensitive topic could lead to a huge fallout for the company. This entire argument should’ve ended with a “you are wrong” reply or simply ignoring (and potentially blocking).

And you just gave anyone with an agenda against your company or individual employees a perfect tool to worsen that: they'll just need to provoke "potential controversy" and you'll damage yourself and them by firing people. You told your employees that you won't back them up if the make a misstep. This seems like a surefire way of making such things worse the next time it happens, instead of presenting your company as one entity that can face problems without much drama.

People are going to make mistakes, especially in industries where it is kind of encouraged they talk to the public, companies should some some loyalty to them.

If you want to argue that the employee has so much responsibility that it can cause huge fallout, you better pay them a lot better.

But that's not the truth, is it? One employee's rant doesn't make company fail. No, this is just a status-reinforcing exercise of people in the company hierarchy.

Frankly, this “much responsibility” shouldn’t exist in a sane world, but the issue is that in today’s world pretty much anything you say can & will be considered offensive by someone and they’re gonna try and shame your brand.

> One employee's rant doesn't make company fail

I have yet to see a case like this, but despite that all marketing & executive-level people seem to believe that, and are happy to fire people in order to save face and reiterate that this behaviour is not approved by the company.

But again, in this case I think the outcome was deserved. I’m tired of people bringing up the gender & sexism card for a simple problem of “someone is wrong on the internet”.

"Frankly, this “much responsibility” shouldn’t exist in a sane world"

Exactly, that's why employees should organize and the society at large should determine where the sanity lies.

"But again, in this case I think the outcome was deserved. I’m tired of people bringing up the gender & sexism card for a simple problem of “someone is wrong on the internet”."

So you disagree in general but here you think it was deserved, because you happen to disagree with her? That's not fair, I think, and is "end justifies the means" argument.

I think it’s deserved in this case because people often bring up gender, sexism, etc to their advantage with often disastrous results for the victim (that only committed the “crime” of being wrong on the internet), so I’m glad this didn’t go according to plan and backfired.

Besides this case I agree with you, people shouldn’t be fired for something they do on their personal social media (although this case also blurs the line on that front, as she was discussing her job as a game developer).

But gender was relevant. You're failing to understand the relentless toxic entitlement shown by many young adult male gamers. That's toxic to everyone, but it's more severe and frequent for women.

You're failing to understand the relentless toxic entitlement shown by many female game devs.

See how I can turn that around and it's just as "true" as your statement, yet doesn't do anything whatsoever for the conversation?

I don’t think I’m failing to understand anything. I perfectly know the gamer community is toxic, having been a victim of their awful behaviour before.

But in this case this doesn’t even have to do anything with gamers - it’s just a developer explaining something and another person politely disagreeing and thinking they can do the job better, which frankly happens to everyone in every industry (junior person arrives and thinks they’re better than everyone else and know everything).

Consider she was fired from previous job for similar displays.

The reply didn't address anything she said, it just dismissed it. I realize that people aren't especially good readers and such, but that isn't polite engagement, it's obnoxious.

It's bizarre to me that anyone outside the company would think they needed to care about her pretty fucking mild reactions.

You are wrong, the guy who commented on her tweets were probably her biggest fan. Video by him a few days earlier:

https://clips.twitch.tv/CrypticMistyStingrayDxCat

Quote: "I love Jessica Price's responses. She is the god of AMA's. She just gives great answers all the way through, it is absolutely amazing to read through."

He probably don't think that any longer.

Anyhow, if you can read a well meaning comment by such a person and think that it is toxic then it is probably you who are the toxic person.

Yeah, I'm kind of an asshole.

Note however that I said "obnoxious" and not "toxic".

I wonder though why you think his being a fan is relevant to what I said? I'd think if you really like someone's work you'd be careful to actually engage with their commentary about it and not just dismiss it.

She discusses at length about how giving the character any strong personality will stop players identifying with the character and he comes back with using more branching dialogue. But (speaking as someone who could give a shit about narrative games), it's sort of obvious that players will take branches that they don't end up identifying with...

I have to say that despite the perspective taken by the author, I'm finding it hard to sympathise with the ex-enployees in question. What an absolute overreaction, and display of dangerous levels of insecurity.

Is The Verge considered to practice good journalism? Reading the article it doesn't seem objective but rather inflammatory.

But maybe it is intentional? In order to "fish" for more reader interaction and sharing.

IMO, Verge was a shit show from day one...

Just my opinion, but employees really should start organizing and demand free speech laws to cover work. It's insane that skilled people are fired over some minor disagreement on Twitter.

Minor disagreement? This was a series of tweets related to an AMA. The other person made some perfectly civil remarks pertinent to the discussion that could have been engaged with, or could have been ignored. Instead the employee went on an ad hominem rampage, calling the commenter a "rando asshat" who was purporting to tell her how to do her job. Then she brags about her 10 years of work experience in game dev, which apparently makes her infallible. Then she made it about gender. From my third-party disinterested point of view, she was the one harassing him at this point. It makes sense to me that the company broke off their association with her after this.

I have the feeling they already wanted to fire the problem person but did not had a reason yet.

Whatever she said, it has nothing to do with her company and her company shouldn't get involved in the punishment (should there be any at all).

Let's say I am employee of a company, which makes computers, and I have a disagreement with my neighbor. He is a customer of that company, because he bought a computer from them. Does that mean I can be fired? How is that different from a police state?

No, society needs to wake up and determine where are the boundaries of this. The truth is, social media put everything, even companies, under wider scrutiny than ever before.

It's like when a printing press was invented, it put governments under wider scrutiny. They fought back, and it took 500 years before it became generally accepted that we should have free speech.

Well, if you posted about your company's work on a public forum, and the disagreement was with regard to that, I believe it's fair if the company feels your behavior, good or bad, reflects on them. Employment is more of a relationship than a right. It's just bad form to blow up at customers like that.

You could also say:

"If you posted about your nation's situation on a public forum, and the disagreement was with regard to that, I believe it's fair if the government feels your behavior, good or bad, reflects on them. Citizenship is more of a relationship than a right."

Yet, in the West at least, we disagree with this view, that people should be punished if they talk badly about their nation (and the government). It didn't come naturally to this point; it was a huge effort of many activists over centuries to get to that point. And I think the same should be true about employees, and that it's time we have a debate about that.

This is absurd. Employee/employer relationship is nowhere near the same as citizen/government relationship.

It's not the same, of course. In the past, citizen/government relationship was the only social hierarchy in town and not offending people in the hierarchy was a matter of life and death.

Eventually, we replaced it with many little social hierarchies, like employee/employer, but social hierarchies nonetheless. Now it's only a minor inconvenience in life to make any of those little emperors angry.

However, that said, the arguments for free speech are the same. People should have freedom to speak truth to power and this freedom is beneficial. This includes freedom to speak truth to the outsiders of the social group in which the hierarchy happens to be. And it also establishes the boundary where that social hierarchy can extends its power.

You're overthinking it. ArenaNet is a business. She was their employee. This relationship is voluntary on both sides.

If she behaves in a manner which undermines their interests, they have every right to terminate the relationship.

The person she blew up on is a streamer with significant exposure to their target market. If she wasn't mixing "work talk" into her personal account and the disagreement was not related to work, I think it would be a different story, but that isn't what happened.

Unfortunately it reflects on the company, evident by the reaction on reddit with the floating of her being fired and them being responsible. I think people shouldn’t advertise where they work.

They do have free speech, but the company can and should be allowed to fire you if you are sexist or racist towards fans, free speech does not mean free from consequences. In this case she wasn’t sexist but inappropriately pulled the victim card in an attempt at vilifying a fan. That type of behavior is just as hurtful to women in the development industry as other types of sexism. Therefore it is against their communication policy which she should be familiar with and follow if she wants to be free from concequences.

In what world does that rate a firing? Looks like it should rate at most "don't be grouchy on twitter" from a manager. Firing someone with 12 year seniority for defending them? Now that rates a firing - of the manager.

A quick skim of the linked forum shows it to be the usual whiny entitled place that is most game forums and the statement calling it "attacks on the community" is comical. Is such obsequiousness what we now expect?

Maybe it isn't the first time her short fuse got her into trouble at the company. Triggering a social media backlash might've been the last straw.

According to the Price in the article, this was her first such offence.

>Price says that prior to being fired, the company had never discussed her social media presence with her or issued a warning for anything she had posted. “If it was covered in orientation, I wouldn’t know. I got pulled out of orientation to jump into rebreaking the story arc for this season of Living World.”

Her first offence with respect to social media, yes. That's all you can say.

True; but we have no evidence either way for whether any other offences have occured.

My only point was: Maybe the situation is more nuanced than how it is presented in the article (which is usually the case).

>According to the Price in the article, this was her first such offence

badmouthing previous employer, who fired her: https://twitter.com/delafina777/status/922648730918010881?la...

reaction to totalbiscuit passing: https://twitter.com/delafina777/status/1000045432007938048

I suspect this wouldn't be the first time the employee in question would've been disciplined by their employer. Based solely on the relative speed to which gender was introduced into the debate.

Might as well title it "Woman game-dev and meant-well co-worker lose their jobs over immature 'mansplaining' Twitter fight turned political."

The chain of events:

1. A woman game dev posts something work-related. Innocuous enough so far.

2. Some guy on Twitter annoyingly tells her how to do her job better.

3. The game dev overreacts, humiliates the guy and turns it political. This was unprofessional and stupid.

4. Said guy on Twitter overreacts as well. Oh boy. Stupid, but he has nothing to lose but his time and dignity.

5. As things get uglier, a co-worker of hers decides it's a good idea to risk his career and join in the now politically charged discussion. Unsurprisingly, it doesn't go well for him.

6. In a perfect storm of stupidity and immaturity from all sides, it snowballs on Twitter. Woman game devs get people on Twitter SO MAD.

7. The game company fires her and her co-worker as damage control. They were justified to do this, since they acted unprofessionally, but this turned out to be a PR disaster for them. No way to win. That's what they get for associating with fools.

8. The media smells blood in the water like the sharks they are. It's a national political issue now. And yet, it's such a stupid, pointless fight that made 2 people lose their jobs over something so frivolous as "mansplaining".

I have no comment. Why get depressed when you can just point and laugh?

Takeaway: Game development is toxic, don't work there.

The gaming community is toxic in general but frankly this is not the issue here. The employee simply overreacted, responded offensively and got fired.

Game developers get torrents of abuse - the comments on the Reddit thread, and the stuff that has been sent to them since, is appalling.

Sure, the employee shouldn't have reacted that way, but I think I'd have snapped long before then. Besides that, it was their personal twitter feed.

A quick "Hey, please don't feed these trolls, it makes us look bad" email to the employee probably would have sufficed, but firing them was terrible management - look how it has emboldened the strident, entitled little shits who don't realize there are actual human beings making the games.

The best thing that will come of all this is that these two will find better jobs elsewhere, preferably somewhere the management has backbone.

>Game developers get torrents of abuse

I don't believe this is an excuse to treat things as abusive even when they aren't. The person was polite.

> A quick "Hey, please don't feed these trolls, it makes us look bad" email

I work in games. We get these once a month or so. I don't know if Arenanet sends these kinds of emails regularly, but I suspect they do. Even if you do respond to people online, you always have to take the high road.

If your Twitter bio includes your affiliation with the company and you're talking about your job it's no longer purely personal IMHO.

Of course opinions posted are your own and such, but you're still somewhat representing the company.

Jessica price has a history of saying pretty offensive stuff (e.g., and in particular, a mean spirited comment about a youtubers death [0]), but she wasn't ever fired for those. I think she was fired this time because she was on social media talking specifically about work, then going on to insult Guild Wars fans and beyond that, multiple 'partners'[1]. Derior in particular has a named NPC in-game [2].

To give some more context in general, this takes place right after an AMA on the guildwars2 subreddit [3] -- which she starts her twitter thread by referencing -- where she was acting in an official capacity as a GW2 developer. She later goes on to say she doesn't have to pretend to like people in the context of twitter [4], which I took to mean as in contrast to the AMA.

And in case there is any question about if the streamer was coming from a negative place and that she was at least right about his intentions, he was praising her in particular on a stream just before the exchange [5]. It's almost tragic. He probably only engaged with her because he thought so much of her.

All this said, I think it more sad than anything. Jessica actually gave some pretty great answers in the AMA, and I was impressed just like Deroir. I was very surprised to see this rash behavior right after her measure responses. And to also lose Peter Fries, who has been with the franchise since either the beginning or very near it, is disheartening.

Also, I think the article is avoiding posting Derior's entire original comment since he ends it very politely. You might want to check all 4 tweets yourself [6], or even the entire thread. Keep in mind that Jessica Price goes on to make other tweets outside the thread though. I guess it's also worth mentioning that the reddit comment referenced in the article had negative karma and was deleted [7].

[0] https://twitter.com/delafina777/status/1000045432007938048

[1] https://welcome.guildwars2.com/en/partner-program

[2] https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Deroir

[3] https://old.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/8vm8jv/living_w...

[4] https://twitter.com/Delafina777/status/101458143393798144

[5] https://clips.twitch.tv/CrypticMistyStingrayDxCat

[6] https://twitter.com/DeroirGaming/status/1014280605599748096

[7] https://archive.fo/lt0wU

Something I think is missing here (and in the article) is a transcript of the conversation in question. So here's one I grabbed from the SSC subreddit culture war thread [0] permalink[1]:

------------------------------------------------------

Jessica Price:

>Since I spent all kinds of time saying it on a Reddit AMA, and I haven't talked about actual game dev on Twitter in a while, here's a thread about writing for the PC character in an MMO.

>The dirty secret is I'm not sure if it's possible to make an MMORPG (or CRPG) character compelling, because people have different expectations about what that character will be, as opposed to a pre-designed character in a single-player game.

>People booting up Bioshock know they're playing Jack. People starting Dishonored know they're playing Corvo. People beginning Tomb Raider know they're playing Lara Croft. So in those games, you have more wiggle room to make the protagonist an actual character.

>Whereas in an RPG, where the player chooses all kinds of character options and names their character and designs their face and so on, they feel more ownership over that character. They're not playing a character YOU designed--they're playing a character THEY designed.

>So if Jack or Lara or Corvo says or does something the player doesn't feel that THEY would say or do, the player's more forgiving, because they have the expectation that they're piloting a character someone else created.

>N.B. that I'm not talking about overall plot objectives/quests. Players know going in that the game is going to be telling them what to do, and their character is going to do it, and that holds true even when they've "created" the character.

>But the * interpersonal* stuff, the PC's REACTIONS, players respond strongly to. Some people don't like it if they think their character's responding in ways that make them too much of an asshole. Some don't like it if their character's responses seem weak.

>So, basically, most things that you'd do writing-wise to give a character, well, CHARACTER, are going to upset a large contingent, maybe even a majority, of your players.

>So--I know I've said this before on Twitter, but it's still going to weird people out, but please bear with me--you have to construct your MMO/RPG's PC character's dialogue as if they were Bella Swan from Twilight.

>To be clear, I don't think Twilight is good writing. I don't think Bella Swan's a well-constructed book character. And I think people who criticize Twilight for the latter are correct but also missing the reason for Twilight's popularity.

>Because Twilight isn't the love story of Bella and Edward. It's the * experience of being loved by Edward.* Which is why Bella's constructed the way she is.

>Bella Swan is a carefully constructed blank space, with JUST enough personality to function. All of her personality traits are chosen to avoid preventing the reader from inserting themselves into the space she holds in the story.

>She's a bit of a klutz, but JUST enough to make her endearing, not enough to prevent her from actually doing anything the story needs her to do. She's a little bit awkward. JUST enough to be relatable but not enough to actually hinder her. And so on.

>And essentially, we have to write the player character in an MMO/RPG the same way.

>Specifically in GW2, in the Living World, we can write the Commander with a bit of wry exasperation, a hint of impatience, a touch of "okay, I'm done fooling around with this crap and I'm going to take charge," but most of their lines have to be pretty devoid of personality.

>Because if we give them too much personality, it might clash with how the player is imagining Their Commander.

>So, how do we tell a TV-like season of story with a protagonist who can't really have a personality?

>The answer to that, and I dunno, maybe this is too much of how the sausage gets made but whaddaya want from me, any sense of shame I had burned out a long time ago: SLEIGHT OF HAND.

>We SUGGEST that the Commander has a personality in how the other characters interact with and react to them. Even there, we have to be super-careful. We can't even have THEM directly characterize the Commander.

>You'll rarely hear a character say anything about what the Commander always does or doesn't do, except when it's PURELY factual because it's something the game design FORCED the PC to do.

>E.g. "the Commander always finds a way!" because literally if you don't we'll resurrect you until you do.

>We have NPCs react to you with affection, or irritation, or leeriness, or whatever, to suggest that your character has regular habits and ways of interacting that build these relationships. But for the most part, they don't.

>The PC is who you imagine them to be, and the NPCs react in ways that have to FEEL personal, and build a story, while not conflicting with whatever you're imagining your character's personality to be. We WANT you to project.

>Which makes writing the NPCs' relationships with the PC basically like writing horoscopes. It has to feel specific and personal while actually being universal.

>So:

>A) VERY delicate sketches of non-objectionable personality traits (like a hint of wryness or world-weariness)

>B) NPCs that behave as if your character has a distinct personality while not doing so in ways that actually identify what it is

>C) one-sided relationship-building

>Voila. An MMO/RPG character.

>Needless to say, a lot of the color comes from NPCs' relationships with EACH OTHER, even though we try to keep it centered on the PC as much as possible.

>It is a constant, very fragile calibration. We don't always get it right.

>Incidentally, if you've played Ep 3 of this season of GW2's Living World, you've seen this sort of writing taken to an extreme in Joko's final monologue.

>Almost everything he says is about actions the game has forced you to take, not your own character traits, and he's clearly projecting when he talks about what you were thinking, but it's--hopefully!--constructed in a way that feels personal, like he's twisting the knife.

Deroir:

>Really interesting thread to read! However, allow me to disagree * slightly* . I dont believe the issue lies in the MMORPG genre itself (as your wording seemingly suggest). I believe the issue lies in the contraints of the Living Story's narrative design; (1 of 3)

>When you want the outcome to be the same across the board for all players' experiences, then yes, by design you are extremely limited in how you can contruct the personality of the PC. (2 of 3)

>But, if instead players were given the option to meaningfully express * their* character through branching dialogue options (which also aren't just on the checklist for an achievement that forces you through all dialogue options), (3 of 4 cause I count seemingly...)

>then perhaps players would be more invested in the roleplaying aspect of that particular MMORPG. Nonetheless, I appreciate the insightful thread! (End)

Jessica Price:

>thanks for trying to tell me what we do internally, my dude 9_9

Deroir:

>You getting mad at my obvious attempt at creating dialogue and discussion with you, instead of just replying that I am wrong or otherwise correct me in my false assumptions, is really just disheartening for me. You do you though. I'm sorry if it offended. I'll leave you to it.

Jessica Price:

>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."

Deroir:

>So much for an open discussion I guess. I meant no disrespect AT ALL. Never did. Never will. Neither did I imply I knew better. Nor has this ANYTHING to do with gender. Never did. Never will. I will retract my comment, cause obviously I'm in the wrong forum for this kind of talk.

___________

More Jessica Price, in relation to the above chain but not posted as replies to them

>like, the next rando asshat who attempts to explain the concept of branching dialogue to me--as if, you know, having worked in game narrative for a fucking DECADE, I have never heard of it--is getting instablocked. PSA.

>Since we've got a lot of hurt manfeels today, lemme make something clear: this is my feed. I'm not on the clock here. I'm not your emotional courtesan just because I'm a dev. Don't expect me to pretend to like you here.

>The attempts of fans to exert ownership over our personal lives and times are something I am hardcore about stopping. You don't own me, and I don't owe you.

links to some of the tweets:

https://twitter.com/Delafina777/status/1014555719352213504

https://twitter.com/Delafina777/status/1014581433937981445

https://twitter.com/Delafina777/status/1014554296107483136

https://twitter.com/DeroirGaming/status/1014280605599748096

_________

https://clips.twitch.tv/CrypticMistyStingrayDxCat

here is like a 1 minute of the guy that talked to her about this, talking about her like 2 days before this all went. the dude idolized her. He's also an "arenanet partner" and popular streamer of the game; he has an NPC named after him in it.