The Limits of Online Discussion - Female Game Developer fired.

[el_bryanto]

This story involves the MMO Guild Wars 2 but may have applications beyond that. One of the designers for Guild Wars 2 went on her personal twitter feed to express her views on the difficulty of creating an online story that has meaningful characters. Another person responded to her comments to disagree with her. Price responded by saying “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 GW2 community riled up and attacked Price (who had taken the 4th of July off, but she was fired later in that week along with a coworker who had defended her. Arenanet who runs GW2 has defended this firing. There are a lot of places that have the story. Here's one by Polygon, another by PC Gamer.

My initial response to this and subsequent thoughts on it are colored by the nastiness on Youtube towards Price who as a female developer is subject to a lot more criticism and attack then a male would be. I also don't participate on twitter and don't know a lot about it. That said a thought experiment helped me clarify my thoughts on this. Consider the following situations.

1. A female developer is talking with a group of friends about her ideas on game development, she is questioned by a male sitting with her, and she unloads on him.
2. A female developer is talking with a group of friends about her ideas on game development, a male walks over interrupts the conversation to tell her his ideas, and she unloads on him.
3. A female developer is presenting her ideas on game development in a public space, when a male walks up to the podium and presents a counter point, and she unloads on him.

Initially i sort of saw it as the first case, but the truth is that what happened to Price is a lot more like the 2nd or 3rd case. My confusion stems from, I think, what is a private conversation in an online space. If you post something in general discussion here for example you open it up to comment and disagreement. On the other hand I would be very unlikely to post in a dedicated topic forum of a group that I don't belong to. I'm a Cis White Male; while i might have something to learn from reading in the LGBT or Feminism and Diversity, I don't know that I would have much to contribute, or that it would be my place to do so.

Anyway, just something I've been turning over in my mind, and wanted to write out my ideas.

Bryant

[dawg day]

1. Also-- this is pretty polite "unloading"

> Price responded by saying “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.’”>


She got fired for saying that? Really? And someone defending her got fired?

Heck, I say worse things than that every hour or so.

[cagefreesoylentgreen]

8. As someone who actually plays that game

She also said “I don’t have to pretend I like you,” to someone who was not a “rando asshat” as she claimed but a content creator and partner of ArenaNet games.

Mostly the GW2 community was upset at Price’s rudeness, but it spiraled out of control when Kotaku in Action and GamerGate got ahold of it. Suddenly people who had never played the game were dragging her. And now they have a scalp to count.

[kcr]

2. I read a more neutral story abut this and I was okay with her firing

I don't have the link right now but it included the whole twitter thread. I thought her reaction to the fan's opinion, which was stated respectfully, was way over the top, and when he immediately apologized she told him to get the fuck out of her feed because she hadn't invited him in the first place. She was also already on warning with her employer because of a tweet she'd made over a popular YouTuber dying of cancer.

I'm someone who would absolutely be sympathetic to a woman gamer and writer in an industry that no question is hostile. But I'm sorry. She seems utterly unhinged.

[el_bryanto]

3. It's a pity you don't have the link

Do you recall what website you found it on?

Bryant

[kcr]

4. I think it was Kotaku

I just went there but it's scrolled off the first page. I'm just here for a minute before I have to leave so I don't time have to search for it right now, but I'm pretty sure it was them. I think it was someone in the comments that had the full twitter link, too.

[FreepFryer]

5. I found it in about four seconds. Should have posted the link yourself.

https://kotaku.com/guild-wars-2-writers-fired-for-calling-out-fan-on-twitt-1827401422

[NewJeffCT]

6. Thanks for posting that

I agree that I support women in gaming 100%, but it sounds like she went too far.

BTW, I worried about that when my daughter expressed an interest in programming in the gaming industry 3-4 years back - how would my sensitive daughter survive in an industry hostile to women? Of course, now she's interested in a field that's probably even more difficult for women in theater/musical theater - where top colleges have acceptance rates for young women that are lower than the Ivy League. (Not easy for young men in the field, either, but since most high school theater programs are 70-80% girls, each college has a much bigger pool of young women to choose from each year.)

[Lee-Lee]

7. Having read all that and the backstory, I think the firing was justified

She was discussing work matters in a public forum and acted in a way that caused harm to her employer.

She’s jacked up in several ways here.

First she went to Twitter to say something that was public and then when someone responded she acted like it was an invasion of her space or privacy.

Second, I read his response. It wasn’t rude, it wasn’t condescending, it didn’t reference gender. It was another person interested in the topic responding to her public statement made in a platform that is for two-way interactions. It seemed perfectly respectful.

She responded in a totally inappropriate way and caused a lot of people to pile onto the guy.

That caused a backlash against her employer, since the conversation was about her work.

On top of that she was evidently already in trouble for an earlier tweet that caused harn to her employer.

Every company has a social media policy. I can’t even say anything about my employer on social media without clearing it with our media people, or make any comments about work that can be construed negative. We are advised to not list our employer on any social media other than LinkedIn so if we post anything controversial it doesn’t reflect on the company. If I do and it harms them company it’s grounds for firing.

[el_bryanto]

9. Do you think her employer had a responsibility to review her online persona

and determine if it would work for them? She seems to have the impression that her employers understood these things.

“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.”

If they were uncomfortable with how she expressed herself, why did they hire her in the first place?

Bryant

[Lee-Lee]

11. Most employers do

But there is one thing about muzzling people just for speaking on issues.

There is another when your not speaking on issues or being an advocate, but just generally being an ass and causing your employer harm.

So it’s on thing to say “if you speak up about discrimination in the industry even if it ruffles feathers we are ok with that” and then she does it. That’s what her exchange sounds like.

It a totally different story for going off unhinged on a person who just made a polities response to a tweet about your work, or making bad remarks about someone who just died of cancer.

Good employers will take a hit to protect an employee whose social media draws fire for legitimate advocacy. They are a lot less likely to be willing to do so for ones who act like a petulant child and think that should be without repercussions.

[Lee-Lee]

10. As for your question about what is a private question in a public space

Your example of different forums here is a valid way to draw the line.

On Facebook you have groups and communities and one can expect people not invited to not be there. Your own wall you can control who can see it and who may post. And you can ask people not on your friends list to not post on your wall.

But Twitter is public. What you put out there goes to everyone unless you have your tweets set to a protected status that only people you follow can see. If you don’t set any privacy then you are making it public. It’s the most public and out there of all social media, and getting mad at someone for responding to something you put on there is totally irrational.

[Oneironaut]

12. As a gamer and game designer. I hate the gaming community.

Nothing is more soul crushing to me than seeing the current state of the gaming community (as a whole, not just speaking of sub-communities). If I didn’t love what I do so much, the state of the community would make me give up.

Here is what half of the gaming community is:

- Entitled whiners who can never be pleased, and instead snivel at even the slightest issue in a game like it’s the end of the world. They want the perfect game and more - anything else is worse than murder in their eyes.
- Annoying little boys whose parents spoil them by buying them everything and using video games as a baby sitter, therefore depriving them of social skills and manners.
- Misogynist losers, fedora-wearing neckbeards in the MRA / MGTOW movement, white-supremacists who live in their mother’s basement
- Above, but also creepy losers who hate women in general and troll anything that has to do with women. They pretend it’s about gaming, but it’s really about their own misogyny.
- Obnoxious trolls who get off on getting people fired, stalking people, dog-piling, doxing, and cyber-bullying people for the dumbest reasons.
- 4Chan anti-social dorks who think that they’re so edgy, when in reality, they’re just sad losers who have a negative influence on the world.

These people are not worthy of developers’ attention. They’re obnoxious miscreants who are little more than sociopathic bullies. Developers should not need to converse with these morons. Otherwise, see above as an example of what happens. Women especially should never talk to these angry man-children and brats.

These people need to get a life. Get off Twitter, and stop treating gaming like it’s a life and death matter. Maybe then the gaming community might begin to redeem itself, but I doubt it.

[el_bryanto]

16. I have to agree.

While the initial message might have been innocent if unwanted, the attacks have kind of laid bare where most of that community is on women - i.e. it'd be great of they stopped making games or really anything. There's an ugliness to it that is just sickening.

Bryant

[mythology]

13. If the tweet in the PC Gamer article is representative

She overreacted. Not every time a guy says something is an attack on women. I don't mean to diminish the impact of sexism, especially in areas that are traditionally male dominated, and more so online with rape threats and other violence. But I also see people (on many subjects) who use claims that because of some specific characteristic, they can't be challenged. That's intellectually lazy and for me massively undercuts their claims.

That said, I'm sure her reaction was a result of the general flood of abuse women get online rather than the specific remark here. And in that light, it's hard for me to hold it against her. I routinely walk away when I get angry, but I've certainly said things in anger over small things because I was angry about 3 other things. So I can't really blame her.

The divide between personal and professional is hard today. She put out a bunch of tweets related specifically to her job. But if she had said hypothetically about the same thing she works on, the subtext is clear.

Would the company have protected her if she didn't mildly curse at a high profile customer?

[TygrBright]

14. In a situation like this I always ask, "What if the genders were reversed?"

What if Price had been a male game designer, booting about an idea online with gamers in that game community?

And a woman stuck her oar in, and the male game designer responded with something along the lines of "Today in being a guy in Game Design: Suggestions from the Sisterhood" or whatever.

Would that male game designer have gotten the sack?

And would that have been a good thing?

curiously,
Bright

[cagefreesoylentgreen]

15. Yes

See here https://www.kotaku.com.au/2018/02/subnautica-dev-fired-over-hateful-statements/