General Gaming WOMAN FIRED FROM JOB! Don't miss this hot Guild Wars 2 drama.

[ThreePi]

35 minutes ago, SFLUFAN said:

If that is true and she was terminated without warning/counseling from HR for her social media activities in regard to fan interaction, then that changes my perception of events entirely, especially since ArenaNet was well aware of her social media use to address the industry's anti-woman toxicity issues.

I dunno, publicly calling out a popular streamer for your game a "rando asshat" seems pretty actionable regardless of whether she's outspoken on social media about some issues.

[ThreePi]

2 minutes ago, SFLUFAN said:

Right - we have only her side from the Polygon interview regarding the events of July 5. 

 

The ArenaNet employee handbook SHOULD have a section covering social media interaction with fans if the firm does encourage that interaction as a routine part of an employee's expected functions.  This is even more important if the firm encourages an atmosphere of being "outspoken and fearless" and if "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..."

 

If a firm values those things, then it must make every effort to ensure that its employees understand what the "boundaries" around those things are in a culture of engagement with the community at large.  The ArenaNet CEO's statement to Polygon says "The expectation was to behave professionally and respectfully, or at least walk away."  Was that expectation communicated to employees?  Were there policies and procedures in place that documented what would happen if such an expectation was violated?  

Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but "do not openly insult our customers" probably doesn't need to be explicitly spelled out somewhere for employees to follow it.

 

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

1 hour ago, ThreePi said:

Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but "do not openly insult our customers" probably doesn't need to be explicitly spelled out somewhere for employees to follow it.

In any other commercial situation, there would be little doubt.  However, in this type of environment where interaction with the nebulous entity known as "the community" (which is even more complicated by the presence of "influencers"/streamers) takes on a vital role, I think that more specific, detailed guidelines that govern the nature of that interaction (the use of official versus personal social media, self-identification as a member of the company, etc.) need to be provided to cover both the employee AND the company.

[XxEvil AshxX]

If she was a dude, nobody wouldvecared. It wouldnt have even made headlines. Its a big deal because she screamed sexism on twitter, andnow she's screaming sexism cuz she got fired.

 

She probably screams sexism when she gets a flat tire, burns her toast, or thecat shits on the floor.

 

If she wants people to take her seriously she should stop crying wolf.

[DemonEyesJason]

The media has really kind of clinged to that Reddit post of swinging around their power, where it was downvoted into oblivion by the rest of the community before the user deleted it and come find out, it was a troll post were the user that made it admitted he/she did it because of their hatred of the GW2 community.

 

I still am of the sort in that I wouldn't fired her right away, but given her the opportunity to apologize, which from what I take, that's what most of the community wanted in this situation, but she also seems to not understand or will ever understand what she did wrong and probably would have gotten fired because she wouldn't have apologized.  Game "journalists" aren't really helping her either.  In trying to boost their own clicks, they've given her a platform to essentially muddy her own name that isn't going to help her in future employment searches.  She already ran Paizo through the mud and now she's doing the same to Arena Net.  With that and looking at her past Twitter history, she could have just blacklisted herself out of the industry thanks to the help of Polygon and other websites as she looks extremely like a toxic employee to have to contend with due to everything that has come out about her in the past week.

 

[LazyPiranha]

17 minutes ago, XxEvil AshxX said:

If she was a dude, nobody wouldvecared. It wouldnt have even made headlines. Its a big deal because she screamed sexism on twitter, andnow she's screaming sexism cuz she got fired.

 

She probably screams sexism when she gets a flat tire, burns her toast, or thecat shits on the floor.

 

If she wants people to take her seriously she should stop crying wolf.

 

Yeah, it’s not like there isn’t an easily verifiable problem with a dedicated group of people specifically targeting women in game development or anything...  Must just be one uppity broad.

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

It appears that I was somewhat prescient in my last post:

 

The Independent Game Developers Association has called for studios to publish "transparent and well-understood guidelines for staff members" with regards to social media use. This follows the recent dismissal of two Guild Wars 2 writers by ArenaNet following a heated Twitter exchange with a partnered streamer.

 

The IGDA blog post and the suggested questions it "expects game developers to ask, and every company should address, before chatting with players on social media" can be found here.

 

 

[XxEvil AshxX]

1 hour ago, LazyPiranha said:

 

Yeah, it’s not like there isn’t an easily verifiable problem with a dedicated group of people specifically targeting women in game development or anything...  Must just be one uppity broad.

 

I'm not saying there isn't an existing problem. But that doesnt dismiss the fact that her creating an issue when there wasnt one makes others increasingly tone deaf whenever something else legitimately requires attention.

[Xbob42]

1 hour ago, LazyPiranha said:

 

Yeah, it’s not like there isn’t an easily verifiable problem with a dedicated group of people specifically targeting women in game development or anything...  Must just be one uppity broad.

His entire point was that she's crying wolf. You know what that phrase means, right? If you're calling for sexism where none exists, you're actively muddying up the power of calling out sexism. You're making it meaningless. You're making sure less and less people take sexism seriously. She is the one who is giving actual sexism power with this stupid bullshit. She said something stupid, obnoxious and unprofessional, and paid the price. That's a good life lesson, not fucking sexism.

[Paperclyp]

So if she is telling the truth and was never warned about her conduct on social media, I understand the argument that firing her was a step too far, and I understand the potential message this sends to the twitter mob - hey we can get people fired. 

 

Austin Walker discussed on his podcast the danger of a binary approach to this - that the only consequence for her is to fire her. I think she could have apologized to the very reasonable twitter user that seemed to set her off, even if it was couched in language discussing the harassment I’m sure she does get just kind of explaining that that’s where her head was at. 

 

And really even without an apology I think they could’ve just sat her down and discussed handling these things better in the future and if she doesn’t she might face worse consequences. 

 

But even with all that said I also still feel like she just totally shit the bed with that interaction, and I think anyone in any position at any job is risking their job to speak to someone like that. And I don’t feel like it’s necessarily enabling assholes on twitter to fire her.  

[LazyPiranha]

46 minutes ago, Xbob42 said:

His entire point was that she's crying wolf. You know what that phrase means, right? If you're calling for sexism where none exists, you're actively muddying up the power of calling out sexism. You're making it meaningless. You're making sure less and less people take sexism seriously. She is the one who is giving actual sexism power with this stupid bullshit. She said something stupid, obnoxious and unprofessional, and paid the price. That's a good life lesson, not fucking sexism.

 

This is exactly like crying wolf, because as we all know the famous story involves a young man who cries wolf when there’s an actual wolf right there and all the townspeople watch him get eaten because who stands out in a field anyway?

 

 

[Xbob42]

30 minutes ago, Paperclyp said:

So if she is telling the truth and was never warned about her conduct on social media, I understand the argument that firing her was a step too far, and I understand the potential message this sends to the twitter mob - hey we can get people fired. 

The CEO actually replied concerning that very subject.

 

 

I'm sure the direct quote is out there, but I saw it in that video. Basically the decision was made as they saw it happening, but they were out of the office for the 4th of July and couldn't take action until the next day. He makes it very clear that angry users had nothing to do with it. Jessica herself is the one who got Jessica fired.

[Xbob42]

Just now, LazyPiranha said:

 

This is exactly like crying wolf, because as we all know the famous story involves a young man who cries wolf when there’s an actual wolf right there and all the townspeople watch him get eaten because who stands out in a field anyway?

 

 

Hey look! It's Jessica! Being obtuse and missing the point!

[Bacon]

Just now, Xbob42 said:

Hey look! It's Jessica! Being obtuse and missing the point!

I am pretty sure he has been missing the point the entire time. Or intentionally ignoring the point because he doesn't like it.

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

4 minutes ago, Xbob42 said:

He makes it very clear that angry users had nothing to do with it.

Do you honestly expect him to say otherwise?  No reasonably competent CEO would ever/should ever admit to allowing a braying mob to influence their decision making.

[Xbob42]

Just now, SFLUFAN said:

Do you honestly expect him to say otherwise?  No reasonably competent CEO would ever/should ever admit to allowing a braying mob to influence their decision making.

Well, that and I think it's impossible to extract one from the other. The two issues are intertwined pretty deeply. She said something inflammatory, and people were inflamed. Maybe if no one had commented on it at all she might've gotten away with it? But I dunno, calling your customers rando asshats for being polite and offering suggestions just isn't championing any cause any reasonable CEO would want to be a part of.

[Bacon]

"I was only pretending to be retarded!"

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

12 minutes ago, Xbob42 said:

Well, that and I think it's impossible to extract one from the other. The two issues are intertwined pretty deeply.

In that case, a CEO that is aware of the "political" environment in which this situation occurred as the ArenaNet CEO appears to be should: (a) make a statement similar to the one that was put out regarding the expectations of community interaction and that the company will conduct an internal assessment before making a decision, (b) initiate a "cooling off" period to speak with the parties involved in order to make an informed decision that does not have the appearance of giving in to the braying mob, and (c) execute that action accordingly. 

 

All of that could easily be accomplished by the beginning of this week at the latest and would be seen as a circumspect, reasonable course of action that provides enough separation from the immediacy of the inferno.

[LazyPiranha]

33 minutes ago, Xbob42 said:

Hey look! It's Jessica! Being obtuse and missing the point!

 

I’ll bite.  What’s the point I’m missing here.

[Engel]

12 minutes ago, SFLUFAN said:

In that case, a CEO that is aware of the "political" environment in which this situation occurred as the ArenaNet CEO appears to be should: (a) make a statement similar to the one that was put out regarding the expectations of community interaction and that the company will conduct an internal assessment before making a decision, (b) initiate a "cooling off" period to speak with the parties involved in order to make an informed decision that does not have the appearance of giving in to the braying mob, and (c) execute that action accordingly. 

 

All of that could easily be accomplished by the beginning of this week at the latest and would be seen as a circumspect, reasonable course of action that provides enough separation from the immediacy of the inferno.

She wasn't going to go along with anything other than Anet taking her side.  What this came down to was who was more valuable to the company her or the customers.

 

She also seems to have a history of behaving like this and even in the comments when this whole thing blew up someone complained about her behavior at e3 or some convention and how she was rude.

 

Anet wants to be known as a progressive company so the hired Price, given her history I'm guessing that she turned out to be a bigger headache than she was worth and they took the opportunity to shit can her.  Fries firing was just to blunt calls of sexism, which doesn't seemed to have worked, and I genuinely feel bad for that guy.  His twitter comments since being fired have shown him to be a decent person.  

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

1 minute ago, Engel said:

She wasn't going to go along with anything other than Anet taking her side.  What this came down to was who was more valuable to the company her or the customers.

 

She also seems to have a history of behaving like this and even in the comments when this whole thing blew up someone complained about her behavior at e3 or some convention and how she was rude.

 

Anet wants to be known as a progressive company so the hired Price, given her history I'm guessing that she turned out to be a bigger headache than she was worth and they took the opportunity to shit can her.  Fries firing was just to blunt calls of sexism, which doesn't seemed to have worked, and I genuinely feel bad for that guy.  His twitter comments since being fired have shown him to be a decent person.  

I have no doubt that you're correct that in the end her termination was more than likely inevitable -- I'm suggesting that there was a better way to do that from a purely "optics" standpoint.

 

As for Fries, there is no way in hell ANet could ever hope to salvage the optics for that one.  What they did to him should be a clear red flag for anyone currently working there or considering working there.

[Scape Zero]

7 hours ago, XxEvil AshxX said:

If she was a dude, nobody wouldve cared.

 

I mean we don't even need to hypothesis about that point.

 

Peter Fries was fired for doing less than Jessica did, and literally no one gives a fuck. Same incident, same day. He got zero headlines. Most of these articles are written in a way saying that only one person got fired.

 

The only reason why people are acting like this is some gendered issue is because they are conveniently ignoring the straight white male who was also fired for the exact same incident.

 

I mean if you are looking for an "unjust" reason for firing someone, you could make a much better case championing him.

[DarkStar189]

I find these stories fascinating. In the age of social media you can get yourself fired nice and quick for speaking out of line. Its the type of thing 15-20 years ago you just didn't read about. Now its just a monthly thing. 

[Scape Zero]

18 minutes ago, DarkStar189 said:

I find these stories fascinating. In the age of social media you can get yourself fired nice and quick for speaking out of line. Its the type of thing 15-20 years ago you just didn't read about. Now its just a monthly thing. 

 

Daily thing.

 

I don't think much has really changed though. I'm sure 20 years ago, anyone who was talking shit about their customers to the customers face would have been fired. It's just really easy to do it at home now.

 

20 years ago, someone writing stuff for whatever type of media would have had about zero chances to talk directly to their audience outside of what they wrote. Now it's super easy to put in a Twitter bio that you work for a company, hop on Reddit and tell all the people who are fans of that work that you helped create it, and gain a following. The chances of your fuck ups coming directly back to you with solid evidence are higher than ever, but do you really think if 20 years ago, someone from Nintendo went on national news to say "10% of Zelda players are garbage people" and then called out someone from some magazine for being a "rando asshole person" and some kind of "ist" ending word because they had respectful criticism of one of the Zelda games that that person would keep their job?

 

I don't think so. People just forget what kind of reach they have. When you tie your name to what you write online, it can come back to you.

[HGLatinBoy]

I mean Rosanne wasn't called into HR and warned about her twitter posts, and she was hopped up on something. 

[Brian]

Based off the Polygon article, ArenaNet wanted to create a non-toxic environment and is clearly following through.