So WP, here in the states we have something called At WIll Employment. I won't post the definition here but it basically states you as an employee are free to leave whenever you like and the company is allowed to dismiss you whenever they like for whatever reason. However, it does not apply if it's an illegal dismissal like if it were regarding race etc. And I just want to say, whether you're a man or a woman, black or white, gay or straight, if you work in a corporate environment and you are open with your disrespect to customers you WILL be let go. It isn't specific to the gaming industry. This is the case for ALL industries and every fortune 50 company I've ever worked for.
Ohio is also an "at will" state, even my rinky dink company of ~30 people has a strict social media policy and new hires are given a handbook about social media. If I mentioned my company on Twitter and then went after a customer the way she did, I'd be rightfully fired as well.
There's a line between openly speaking truth to power as she puts it and being plain rude. The people that give the feedback are still the customers, and no matter what happens you shouldn't be rude to your customers, especially when they're not even being rude themselves. When customers get violent in any way then you have a problem but that just doesn't apply in this case.
She might be rude, but if a customer walks in and says “Your carbonara should’ve been made this and that way “ when your entire generation of family hails from Naples and you’ve been doing this for a while now - I’d be pissed, even if they’re being polite. If you don’t know how the processes are being implemented, ask first and get to know more before even attempting to opine. Cause you’ll come across as a stereotypical know it all.
Shakir Othman not really. Price was talking about her work on a public platform and then threw a fit when someone had a different idea he wanted to discuss with her
But you don't start verbally abusing someone who doesn't like your carbonara. And when a customer actually isn't happy with their food you are going to want to find out why of course, because it's supposed to be so good right? Then you can find out if it actually could've been prepared less well than the usual because of some reason, or maybe the person itself doesn't know what a good carbonara tastes like? What you don't do however is (verbally) abuse that customer because you're a "know it all" always try to stay polite and humble. Everyone hates "toxic" behaviour, don't be like that and don't act toxic yourself.
Not a very good example. Food is done differently in different regions of the same country/world. Of course people might come up to you and be surprised that a specific food was done in a different way. Also the opinion wasn't presented in the manner you describe.
I disagree, she clearly was retaliating against someone who was disagreeing with her and showing kindness, which she misconstrued as weakness to attack.
I don't think she was standing up for anything. Every single thing that was brought up as "things women have to deal with" sounded like the most innocuous, mundane things that every guy I've ever know has had to deal with without the support of every single media outlet, movie star & professor in the country.
This whole thing boils down to the fact that Jessica wen't on a public forum whose purpose is to share one's thoughts and for people to respond to those thoughts. I doesn't matter if she asked for his opinion because she decided to post in a place where feedback is 50% of the platform's purpose
While this situation ended badly for all of us, I need to keep reminding myself that they're not children. They're adults who can judge a situation and react accordingly. They chose a specific way, and as an adult, you will also have to deal with the consequencs of your actions. She could've gone for a neutral dev-response, ending the conversation then and there, but she specifically chose not to - and while I understand her reasoning regarding females in male-dominated professions, her response is not acceptable for any adult, let alone any professional in any similar situation. What hurts me the most is that, just shortly before the incident, Deroir praised her. He loved her work, her AMA responses. She didn't just shut down an ArenaNet partner, or "some guy", she insulted a fan of her work and assumed the worst. Her actions cannot be justified, regardless of how good the reasons are. What a sad day that was, oh man. Another thing that keeps popping back into my mind: we read "no longer at the company" and we assume "fired". We don't know what went on behind closed doors, we don't know what offers they got. In JP's case, I can understand the decision was quicker, but In PF's case.. you don't just fire someone who has worked at your company for 12+ years. There's more to the story than we'll ever know, and assuming ArenaNet went to reddit, went "Oh shiet" and fired them straight up just doesn't feel right.
yep I genuinely think that she needs some professional help, because she went the road where she thinks that everyone is evil and that made her evil in the end.
true the wording does not HAVE to mean "fired". another thought I want to throw in though since something like this exists where I'm working: depending on where you work you can have clauses in your contract or other agreements between company and employer regarding social media and how to use or not use them which can even extend into your private time AND be valid reason for a contract termination if not uphold. We as people outside of arenanet obviously dont know if and what kind of agreements might exist for the developers but something of that kind COULD have also played a role when it came to the decision Mo apparently made at the end.
Very nuanced comment! Also her statement that Deroir is one in a long line implies she believes a lot of the community have harassed her and will taint any future interaction she has with us. I wonder if it would have been as bad if she specifically said Deroir's comment felt over the line specifically.
The verge article qutoes JP saying she was fired: [quote] Price adds that she believes her firing was an emotional reaction on the part of ArenaNet co-founder Mike O’Brien. “He fired me personally, and the meeting was mostly him venting his feelings at me,” she says. “I understand being afraid when you see the Reddit mob coming for you, but if people with less power can weather it - and we do, regularly - so can he.”
I still don't understand why so many of these feminists and SJWs hate TB. Granted I haven't looked too much into the situation but from my perspective he was rather milquetoast and even servile on any sort of gender-related kerfuffle in the industry.
ArcViper Its because he supported Gamergate. Thats like the big bad boogieman for SJW, Radical feminists but most importantly game journalists and anyone working in the industry that has rubbed elbows inappropriately with the former.
The TB part should've been enought for her to get fired from every single company no matter in what field. From all the drama and shit I understand that Arenanet emplyoes are not happy with their jobs. Which is not suprising and I can only be happy becouse this mean Arenanet are actualy holding high standard.
I have no idea what the hiring contract at Arenanet states, and I won't pretend that I do, nor do I know what is standard practice in the US, so I could be totally off, but I assume it is similar to what we have here in Israel? I work in design and photography, and basically every contract I've had to sign had one detailed clause about social media and behavior offline. My current contract pretty much tells me to do wtf I want as long as I don't do it under company name, or can't otherwise reflect badly on the company I work for. I would assume JP's contract would be something similar if I had to guess. Either way, it is not uncommon practice for companies to fire an employee if that employee makes them look bad as a company. As for JP herself, I'm a firm believer of separating the art from the artist, after all I want to enjoy the product, not be friends with the artist (and while I don't follow AMAs, I think she's good at her job from what Deroir and WP said), so while I do think she's a horrible human for rejoicing the death of a cancer patient and being borderline racist, I don't think those should be the cause for termination. Personally attacking fans, however, should be, especially after she continued to attack Deroir after he has apologized, twice, and tried to make this into a gender thing (which might be why Fries also getting fired, to show that it's not about gender). Her termination was well deserved imo, and was bound to happen sooner or later. Fries's, not so much. Lastly, artists should grow thicker skin. getting critiqued harshly and having people telling you how things should be done comes with the territory, for the most part, it really is just people passionate about your art and want to help you improve. Do you have any idea how many critiques I get a day? I wish they were as nice as Deroir, who, while awkward, meant no harm. and said she was amazing the day before on stream. This happened on social media, too, not real life, which means that while it is for all the world to see, she has the advantage of just ignoring it, or waiting to cool off before posting a response. I understand her frustration, but act professional, damn it, not everyone is out to get you. Also, something artists tend to forget (and I'm guilty of this too, I admit, far too often, haha) is that while a concept is obvious to her, it is often not to those who are outside the industry. If she really did not want any feedback then I think Twitter (which I think is horrible platform for discussion due to character limit to begin with, but that's a different topic) might not be her best option. A blog or journal of some sort with comments turned off might be a much better option. Hell, at least that sends a clear message that you aren't interested in discussions. PS: As (ironically enough) JP herself said, why are they on twitter and not in a bbq when it's independence day? I thought if there's one thing Israelis and Americans have in common it's bbqs, and especially company bbqs on some holidays.
Khaled Assaf The US is the same with it's business practices. Even as a low level employee we sign a paper that states we may be terminated without warning or justification at any time.
Literally every job I have worked since twitter has a page in the contract and paperwork specifically about social media, and "do not embarrass the company" is in there about five times in various wordings. One of them even required you to do an online re-authorization of this every four months.
Yeah well here's the rub do you do it under company name if said company name is in your bio? That's where the real debate should lie because that is in fact what was going on. I personally think If these people would just take their workplace out of their bio all this could be prevented . It's a pretty common practice around the world to not allow people to wear their work uniform outside of work for a reason. I think they can act like as much of a asshole as they want they just need to learn to separate themselves from their workplace.
Right on... I thought the same thing. If you don't want feedback, don't do it on social media, and if you want to vent online use your head and use some alt ID (duh!).
החלק שהכי לא הבנתי זה למה היא בא בתקיפות. סך הכל עם התגובה שלו לא התאימה לה היא יכלה פשוט להגיד לא "מהנסיון שלי זה לא עובד אבל תודה על ההצעה" וזהו. יצא קצת מטומטמת.
i just can't understand why she jumped the gun with the gender card after this very good explanation of how she went about the idea withthe blank slate commander ... she clearly is capeable to defend her actions in a rational way, but then blew the barn from one moment to the next
I'm not sure whether it's because WoodenPotatoes is in the UK, but in the US definitely the political climate has made women feel attacked (and arguably also emboldened women to point out they've been attacked). Whether or not it's justified for Price to do it, I do sympathize with American women in tech or game industries where their life has sucked more in the past while, and that's the context that deserves consideration at least.
If you'll read her Twitter you'll see she tweets about this gender identity crap every day. She's clearly obsessed with it and she thinks everyone else is too. So when she receives criticism she thinks "oh must be because im a womyn".
MT Silver I'm not denying that, in fact I find her behaviour in this case objectionable. But the case is that for her social climate, people ARE obsessed with gender one way or another. Whether it's women who want to champion gender or men trying to champion men's rights or whatnot, it's just a heightened topic. It's bigger than Price, is what I'm saying. I don't think individuals necessarily should be taken to task for influences they can't help. To me it's like someone growing up in a cult or something.
MT Silver i know i've been digging in her Twitter...still it's just sad to see humanity just not able to push their stupid prejudice aside and not spread more hate... people have to stop running around in their filter bubbles and not trying to push their opinions on others... at least not in an extrimist way ...
Radical.Compounds Feel attacked? By what? Women are the most empowered and coddled group in all modern societies. It isn't even close. And yet they have the audacity to claim sexism whenever they're critiqued.
From my point of view when the president of a company ask the community to promote the game we paid for via word of mouth then you are god damn right iam gonna give you my feedback.
Wow, WP! This was very professionally done. Focusing on the right topics, offering a wide variety of viewpoints, remaining objective on such a heated topic... Thank you for making this video! Very refreshing after the dogpiling of snarky remarks and one-liners of Reddit!
Celebrating anyone's death is truly awful/deplorable in and of itself. But Total Biscuit was generally a really well respected personality in the gaming community. Realizing that's who she was talking about is really sad for me :( His public struggle against his cancer is just sub-human to be glad about. I don't wish even her to die, nor will I celebrate when she does. But I certainly don't want her working at any game company I support.
@Jonathan Soko Funny enough you mention that. Last month (or close to it) another ANet developer (though not actively working on GW2) doxxed a guy claiming he was a white supremacist and the one responsible for that hit and run on an interstate where people were protesting at 1 AM for whatever reason. From what I could tell ANet decided to stay ignorant of it.
Thank you for giving both sides so clearly. And I agree with your points. As a creator myself (a writer of fiction) I understand the tendency to view your own creative work as “your baby” but I learned a long time ago that you need to be able to receive criticism or discussion without lashing out. Also, as a woman myself, it really bugs me when she uses a real issue as a defense/excuse for her bad behavior. It cheapens the real issue as a valid problem when that happens.
I think she's a bitch who got what was coming to her, given she celebrated Totalbiscuit's death. But I don't think she should have been fired for saying what she said about him. That conversation had nothing to do with Guild Wars 2 and I think Arenanet would be overstepping their boundaries if they fired people for their opinions on things that have nothing to do with their company. That kind of power could be used to horrible effect in situations where it was far less deserving.
She would've had that statement gone viral at the time and caused ANet loss in revenue. It's just that her comment at the time was overshadowed by that made by a Bioware dev, and so went unnoticed.
I could not stand TotalBiscuit myself but to watch the amount of worms who came out on Twitter to celebrate his death was surreal. Basically pissing in the face of his family.
Did she? IF you are correct then all of my sympathies are gone. I loved Totalbiscuit, but even if I didn't no one should ever celebrate the death of anyone.
Badger's Den pretty much yes...on his streams, vidoes and when hes on other discussions like Tea Time, he appears to be a very sweet, intelligent, polite guy.
See for me I can only do derior in small doses on certain types of videos because otherwise he starts coming off as arrogant and condescending. He doesn't seem to do it maliciously but there is that old saying about it being a fine line between arrogance and confidence. Even so no one deserves someone to go nuclear on them
LOL even just in the MMO genre, she might explode IRL if she was working for games like Black Desert Online. GW2 was probably the best job she'll ever have.
Arctorius Tyrilian I'd say she probably struggles bigtime in her job and needs others to carry her along. They just become a burden than worth keeping around.
Like it or not, social media carries a lot of weight these days. People in other professions have been fired for similar comments. In this case, I feel the saying "If you have nothing nice to say, then don't say anything" rings true. Jessica should've just walked away, and the way she acted was honestly not something the community, or Anet as a company, should put up with. Peter on the other, was just an unfortunate casualty in this. Yes, he was standing up for a co-worker, but there are some fights you're best staying out of. Also, just don't bring up gender politics. Since the whole Anita thing, that is a REALLY touchy subject for gamers. It has it's time and place, but this was certainly not one of those, nor was it needed.
I have to say that Jessica and Peter are just wrong. There is no such thing as a "private" social media account. You can mark it as private etc BUT many companies my own included have social media policies stating that regardless you represent the company and can be held accountable. HR departments constantly search the Facebook accounts of applications to see what type of people that they are.
She could make an anonymous account for "private" use. But that would take away the credibility and attention she gets by posting under her own name. Can't have your cake and eat it.
#notificationgang but in all honesty, while not celebrating JP losing her job, the way she disrespected TotalBiscuit’s passing and the community as a whole makes me not really feel for her at all
Peter Fries I'm genuinely sorry for. But I agree on JP. I don't want be happy about someone losing their job but I can't in all honesty say I'm too sad either. Looking through her twitter history, you'll see she mocked Totalbiscuit's passing, resorted to various insults and derogative terms to gamers and even large communities (like "fuck Spain"), and somehow even managed to get triggered by Avengers: Infinity War because it's "3 hours of racism and misogyny"; just two highlights of years of being extremely hostile and toxic. Even before Deroir and Inks, she was incredibly disrespectful to Jebro. She just reminds me of someone with initials A.S. Even after getting fired she's still spinning the sexism narrative because Deroir and Inks were clearly toxic misogynistic pigs mansplaining to her, because only female devs get hate. No, I've not seen Chris Cleary get utterly shit on, or MO get absolutely memed, or various other male devs getting fucking destroyed on the internet. It's clearly because they are female right? I don't deny women have it rough in these circles, I do feel really bad for women sometimes but this nonsense from JP is just a victim complex, and a very aggressive, destructive one. Bear in mind her ending quotes from Kotaku are deliberately sent out to SPITE Arenanet and incite mistrust amongst any female devs or staff still within Arenanet.
You realise "GamerGate" was a movement for ethical and honest journalism in gaming, and the whole sexism thing was embroiled later to dilute the whole point of GG?
I'm sorry, WoodenPotatoes, but I don't agree at all with the "Layman explaining what the professional should do" stance you're taking here. My opinion in this matter, as someone who makes movies, is that people who are OUTSIDE of the bubble you reside in (be it games, movies, writing, whatever) can have an untainted/unbiased view on things. A view you've lost the deeper you've crawled into the bubble you reside in. For instance, I write a script, I think everything is completely logical, makes sense, etc... and I let my non-movie maker friend read it, and all of a sudden he throws up A LOT of criticisms. I look into them and, what do you know, from a real-world standpoint, things didn't make as much sense as I first thought it did! Even worse, it's not explained at all why things are the way they are, so I can't say "Well, it's this, or this, or this reason so... In terms of the story, it does make sense." That is why I, personally, love feedback from people who aren't in my bubble (as long as they're actual valid criticisms and feedback, not "IT SUUUUCCCCKKKSSS , GO DIE!!!", which it clearly wasn't). What these people seem to forget, is that they're high profile individuals. For example, Miss Price actually puts in her Twitter Bio that she's a Game Dev. If you don't want people to give their unsolicited opinion on matters, don't put your job in your bio. Put "This is my private account, so no discussions about games will be had here, sorry!" or something rather in your bio to deter quite a large portion of people and when someone DOES go on and post their opinion, just don't respond and block them. If they start an outcry that they didn't get a response, people will point out that "It's her private account and she specifically says in her bio that she won't respond to anything gaming related and delete the tweets... Sorry dude, you're in the wrong." By omitting such a line, she sets herself up for feedback, unsolicited or not. Her responses, however, could have saved things had she been as polite as the person giving feedback was BUT she decided to pull the gender card, acting all like "You're just doing this because I'm a woman and you're salty I'm on top and you're not". That, in my opinion, signals that she actually had a "Oh shit, he's kind of right, but I won't give them that satisfaction,." moment (even if he wasn't right, but she panicked or was drunk or whatever) and decided to COMPLETELY shift the direction away from what the other person said to try and cover her ass. Like, had she replied with something like "Yes, you could implement branching dialogue options, but in the end, they wouldn't matter because all dialogue trees have to converge at the same spot to make the story make sense. This is a model that TellTale uses, and a lot of people are against this 'illusion of choice' since it seems that, in the end, none of your choices matter. Because of that, we decided against it since it would mean more work for the same pay off." then the conversation might have gone in an entirely different way and she'd probably still be employed. The biggest problem that Miss Price seems to have, is that she's what is known as a "Feminazi". Any and all criticism, however valid or invalid, directed at them by a "male" will be viewed as oppression, aggression, mean-spirited, vile, etc... all because they're women. And because of that, I really, really, REALLY can't take anything she spouts seriously. She's part of a disease that has been festering in the core of humanity for quite a few years now and needs to be torn out. Not carefully cut out, but brutally torn out. That's my take on the matter.
Guys, Twitter is now our own "personal space" and we can say whatever we want there without consequence. Did you know that ? I bet Rosanne Barr didn't know that, someone should have told her.
Apologies for the wall of text, but I thought I'd bring a bit of an HR perspective here. As others have explained, many states in the US are At Will Employment states, which means the company was almost certainly fully in their rights to terminate employment, because well...they can do so for any reason that isn't discriminatory. In addition to that, most companies with a product these days have some sort of social media clause in their hiring paperwork that basically stipulates you will not do anything on social media that would damage the image of the company or the company's product. Companies are becoming wise to the fact that the internet exists and this is 2018. These types of agreements are SUPER common here, and I would be extremely surprised if Arenanet didn't have one. Indeed, the fact that Jessica herself says she told Mike in orientation that she was vocal about these things on social media would indicate to me that they probably do. Based on that criteria, Jessica's case for termination was certainly a strong one. As you outlined very effectively in this video, her actions could very easily be considered damaging to both the company's reputation and product, which is why I was personally not at all surprised to read that she was terminated. Seems like a pretty straightforward decision if I'm being perfectly honest, subsequent outrage or no. Peter was a little more interesting, in that his actions were in defense of his colleague, he historically has no history of this sort of thing, and he's been with the company a long time. That said, his actions too could definitely be construed to damage the reputation of the company and product. I would like to think that perhaps his meeting with Mike wasn't quite as straightforward, and I am personally sad to see him go as an avid Guild Wars player since Prophecies, but this is the part where we don't know what happened because it happened behind closed doors. One thing I can say from my experience in HR is that you never know what kinds of things will come to light and/or be said in those meetings. Professionally, I really do feel that Mike made a decision that he fully felt was in the best interests of the company. I can also pretty much guarantee you that he was in his rights to make that decision, whether us as individuals feel it was the right one or not.
She wasn't fired for not appreciating feedback, she was fired for being rude and insulting to a representative (arenanet partner!) of the people who _pay her rent_
The real reason they insulted fans was a cover up because of the new Quaggan and Skirtt mounts coming into the game next patch with 127 new gem store skins each. They didn't want to make it to obvious why they were leaving!
Dont understand me wrong WP i really laughed hard on your sentence with the tits. Like your reasoning and that you actually tried to see both sides of the coin and that you analyse the whole situation. You are doing a great job on your vids and one of few Internet PPl with real reason.
I'm prty sure that's what the initial Honor/Charm/'Strong'(?) response system was designed for in the early gw2. Where the players would have multiple dialog options (for instance to either try to charm, threaten or be honorable) -and those choices would in turn be saved forming the player's personality which later would result in more dialog options that refelct their 'personality'. Ofc that would mean extra development time (since for most situations they would have to record much more stuff to cover all those 'trait' combinations).
Her toxic man-hatred and her bigoted, unprofessional attitude should've gotten her fired a long time ago. I'm glad that she took that white knight, pretend-feminist with her in her fall.
"- A customer shares their thoughts politely - You insult them in reaction for what they shared. - As a consequence, you get fired for insulting a paying customer who enjoys your product and giving feedback with no harm." This is for EVERY COMPANY. This is standard no matter what, she needed to get fired, period. (internet, in person, private, public, social, whatever, doesn't matter)
She is someone who was either incredibly hurt in the past due to some traumatic incident, or has been brainwashed into a state where she thinks that she is constantly under attack from every angle. It's sad because she likely has a comparatively easy life compared to the people who are actually enduring the struggles she's complaining of.
That looks like borderline personality disorder to me. People like that always play the victim and never admit to do any wrong, and they tend to explode over the sligthest perceived provocation. It's very clear that the problem is her toxicity since Deroir and the other people who talked to her were very polite.
SJW echo chambers. They spend so long escalating their rhetoric among one another without repercussion that when they finally slip out into the real world, they have no filter whatsoever and think they can be as vile as they want without a single consequence.
She was fired from Paizo for being a culture warrior, so it was only a matter of time till she would have brought this nonsense to Arenanet. Goodbye, and i hope Arenanet learned a valuable lesson about hiring idealogues such as her.
My question is what is this game without its consumers? Criticism may not always be warranted but when the game itself is a public forum (i.e. an MMORPG) where thousands if not hundreds of thousands of people share an interest. Then the only thing that will improve the quality of life of the "public forum" (the game) is criticism from the people who consume it. It's then up to the community AND the devs to sift through what criticism is valid and which isn't. (Upvoting and downvoting systems, as well as reputation of the individual making the critisim, as well as the relevance of said critisim) I'm sure that this TH-cam channel has had valid criticisms of guild wars that the devs never asked for but ULTIMATELY resulted in a dialog that shifted and challenged the devs to create a better game. Just because something isn't always warranted doesn't mean it isn't healthy for the quality of the game. If I were addicted to alcohol I would never ask someone to criticize me on my drinking habits. It would however benefit me to listen to said criticism if I want to live past 50. ArenaNet has been the first company I have seen in a long time be so open to criticism. What Jessica did was completely counterintuitive to the general environment arenanet says they pride themselves in. If she truly wanted privacy and not to be criticised she would have made her comments in an email or on her Facebook (where only people she has friended can see.) Because she posted it knowing THE ENTIRE internet would see it. She was hoping that post would stroke her ego, and make her look better. When instead what she got was someone disagreeing with her. (Politely at that) she was angry and disappointed. In that emotion played the gender card (to victimize herself.) In an attempt to still garner some kind of egocentric attention that helps her image. This all boils down to one thing. She is incredibly insecure with herself. Otherwise she would have crafted a level headed response to Derior on Twitter, and still be employed. I also believe that your behavior in a public setting should always reflect the company you work for. On the clock or off the clock. An off duty cop is still a cop.. If an off duty cop robs a bank off the clock, that cops behavior still makes the precinct look bad. So the cop must be let go of for the sake other cops who don't rob banks, and are just trying to feed their families. I'm not saying Jessica can't behave how she wants to outside of work PRIVATELY. I am saying that when she is an active consumer on her own time in a PUBLIC setting she needs to act accordingly.. If this thing goes to a courtroom arenanet will have no problems winning because she signed paper work when she "signed" on agreeing to arenanets policies. She should have actually read her employee manual before pridefully touting how that she isn't nice on twitter..I'm sure the leadership at arenanet were giving her pass after pass and this last event was the one that crossed the line. Who ever has the right to speak to a consumer the way she Did?? The consumer is the reason Arenanet even exists to begin with. And you want to marginalize those people???? Good luck being employed in that field. Anyone who works for a large national retail corperation can tell you how stupid she was in this instance. I don't slap a customer who is trying to help me be a better person. I may not need the advice or even have asked for it, and more often than not its a huge waste of my time. But that person is still attempting to help at some level. Warranted or not. She should have had the maturity to say "thank you for your input derior. And gotten the fuck on with her life. SHE WOULD OF STILL HAD A JOB had she done this..... This whole thing is about nothing more than insecurity and ego..nothing else.
Let me just throw it in here. Claiming anything is private on the internets is pretty darn naive. You, as a person, are always accountable for how people view you and how the firm wants you to be viewed as as it reflects on them. If it's right or wrong is another thing but that's just how it is. I'm fairly sure if you're busted with drug possession you'd be let down immediately because no business would be willing to risk their image in such way. Same goes for a business that heavily relies on public relations and the word of mouth for it's success such as an MMO.
It’s called social media. It has social in the name. I don’t understand how people think it would be private. It’s MEANT to be public. It’s meant to be social.
The Big Taco your right it is a public space for people to share there thoughts and for people to give their opinion in them. If she wanted it to be private she could have set her profile for friends only to reply and view.
I wandered over to their twitter accounts (out of curiosity) to find that I was already blocked, though I've never interacted with them and came to this whole thing a week late. C'est la vie.
To my mind, the only thing that couldn't have been dealt with by way of a mere apology was her "rando asshat" tweet. Publicly insulting your customers is a pretty surefire way of getting a ticket to the unemployment line.
The saddest thing is that this seems to be her actual world-view, and she seems unwilling to be apologetic for her actions even for one second. IF there is something that should worry you about people, it's their determination to never, ever, ever, be wrong. It's the exact opposite of what you call an open mind.
It is sad, but honestly it's how most people operate. Think about Religion, Culture, Politics or anything based on "beliefs or viewpoints". It's all rooted in being blindly right. Well in MY faith, in MY culture...this and that is what is deemed "normal" and "right". Even with strong evidence leaning toward a different take...nope, I refuse to believe that because that is not MY reality. It's extremely hard to have a civil discussion that doesn't get heated fast. lol I do think, however, people are making out Jessica to be the "evil villain", but I think there may be an underlying issue that people are not aware of (probably why Peter got involved)...but her delivery was...ugh.
Yeah, first I found myself really disgusted with her unprofessional behavior and her blind judgement, but by now I am really curious what her life has been like, that she so quickly classifies something as sexism. I have to admit I cannot put myself in her shoes (as a male college student), so I cannot know. But yes, her behavior in a public space was still highly unprofessional and her release from the company thus somewhat warranted. I don't believe in villains though, just in people who may be mentally ill or un-educated.
I think your assumption is that the reddit thread is more important than it is. Its not that a massively upvoted reddit thread would be right, Its that a massively upvoted reddit thread is going to share a similar opinion. Lets be honest here, how many of those players are going to be working low level jobs, retail, customer service, the same kind of jobs where you get vitriol spat at you daily. ALL of those people, if they had a fraction of the infractions jessica and peter did, would be fired on the spot. Frankly thats why I believe its short-sighted to say a highly upvoted reddit thread should by itself hold weight. Instead its the small voices gathered together, that are tired of seeing others treated differently that holds weight, and as one of them I would say they are EXTREMELY priviliged to be in the position they were in,, and the way they acted threw it away for them deservedly.
Respect for so cleanly presenting this by the way. And you didn't chicken out and not have an opinion of your own, you stated what you think, but didn't make it the point of the video, it's a fine line to walk. Really tough topic to broach but you did a stellar job, kudos.
I absolutely concur... Disregarding what publicly acceptable behavior is as a spokesperson or envoy for a company's product, or services is and should be a fire-able offense. If someone is too dim, opinionated, or hot-headed to remember that then well....duh, and no it doesn't matter if you're a man/woman/green/blue/purple....no one actually cares..Make us look bad..bu-bye...
I love how she says that the message is clear, especially to women at the company: if Reddit wants you fired, we'll fire you. Completely ignoring the fact that a man was also fired, if anything that's equality.
In the US, when it comes to how you represent the company you work for, you are always on the clock. I think this is especially the case for high profile companies like game developers. If you spew a lot of hate, racism, or sexism on social media, or if you start attack customers on social media, there are very few companies that won't take a heavy handed approach. While it is unfortunate to have 2 exemplary writers leave the story dev team, they both either forgot or made the decision to ignore the golden rule of corporate America: "You are the face of this company. (So don't make us look bad.)" That all aside, wonderful analysis of the situation, WP. I was yet to see the story put in as fair of a light.
No matter how talented Jessica may have been, her toxicity really came around to nip her in the butt. I'm not too certain about Peter's fate, but I find it odd how willing he was to put himself out there for someone who did come off as legitimately unreasonable for harmless feedback. It's as though they've never been on the internet before. Also, yeah sexism exists. But is that her response for every little criticism that comes her way? When does it simply become an excuse to never change or look down a path of improvement? Assuming she's an artist or a writer, criticism will ALWAYS come. Sure, these were internet comments, but she turned pretty defensive over the insight of an individual who was far more polite than your average internet dweller. Honestly, she is the type of person I care little for. Leaning on the excuses of their existence as some sort of badge of accomplishment. A lot of talented people don't have 'official' titles, and for her to look down her nose at others then try to play the victim card really makes me feel no sympathy she lost her job. Maybe she learned some sort of lesson, but because of how arrogant she seems, I doubt it. Also thanks for taking the time to share this.
The sad thing is, she didn't learn a lesson, instead she's using this situation and the victim role she's placed upon her entire life, to reinforce all of the things that make her so cancerous to begin with. The funniest part, is how the feminists are jumping to defend her, and support her behavior, they could have easily used this situation to actually help their cause, instead they're opening many peoples eyes to just how much of a joke they really are. There was a time when I used to fight for the things the left believes in, but not anymore, I can't support the authoritarian behaviors, the censorship, and the hypocrisy any longer.
"Developers - especially women developers - often have to act as customer service" Erm, guy here, most of my family and friends are devs, from 18-65, from banks to start-ups, from financials to web development, we all deal with customer service. It's probably one of the biggest tasks daily, be it that we explain to the project manager who explains it to the customer, or the senior who directly interfaces with the customer, or even proper scoping, at no point will you escape from this. We build products for people/customers, if we don't know how our customers feel about it, then any changes are probably worthless. Had a friend, due to a bugfix he wasn't allowed to deploy for two months due to management (long story), he spent that entire time only dealing/replying to customer support tickets. Absolutely normal for the entire industry unless you're in that top 0.1% who deal with extremely specialized stuff and only report directly to their head (and that can be argued to be customer relations as well). Hope she doesn't get hired anywhere, would just make the working environment terrible as everyone would have to be on their toes, causing stress as everyone would be scared to talk/communicate in case it's taken in the wrong way, leading to lower productivity, less discussions and probably a higher staff turnover. Above is all my opinion/my interpretation of what I have experienced.
I don't understand this whole "Private social media account" concept/argument - there is no such thing, how do they not realise that you are responsible for what you do/say on social media. This is a very staple part of employment, whilst you are employed with a company, the way you conduct yourself on social media does reflect upon the your employer - as such you must keep yourself in check/act professional at all times. The only way you could feasibly circumvent this is by having alternative media accounts, something that cant be linked back to your employer??
An Aussie Guy There very much is the ability to have a private account, where for people to see and interact with your tweets you must give them permission when they request to follow you. That said, these accounts were not private in any way or form. The word they were looking for is "personal" and even then, they list their jobs and job title as well as talk in detail about their work. They clearly don't understand how social media works.
I'm not surprised that Jessica was fired. She was a bad attitude from the first slightly critical reply. I am, however, surprised that Peter's punishment was the same. He wasn't nearly the jerk that she was. Side note: I dig the 45 minute to an hour long format. I wish a few other TH-camrs that I subscribe to would lengthen their show times from 10 or 15 minutes to 30 to an hour.
Fries wasn't as bad, but he was still exhibiting the same eye-roll-inducing religious zealotry that she was, and with how sick men are of being demonized by their cult, I don't think keeping him on would've been very good for public relations.
I won't question her skills in writings etc she is certainly very competent but one thing is sure, with that personality she has no place in a company and I can already feel the sighs of relieves of her former coworkers, imagine working with someone like that...
The problem with the whole "I'm an expert and you're not" thing is this: 1) No one knows Deroir's credentials - including Jessica Price. Her assumption that Deroir knows nothing about game development is just as arrogant as Deroir's statements ( if he is indeed someone with zero game development experience ). Attacking someone's credentials when you have no idea what those credentials are is nonsense. He could have game development experience, or he could as you said have been some 40 year old in his Mom's basement. The problem is that we do not know so we can't actually say that. You can't just go around telling people what credentials they do and don't have. 2) Attacking Deroir's credentials in the first place is a red herring. Rather than typing a proper rebuttal or addressing what Deroir says, she immediately changes the subject and starts comparing their experiences within the industry. 3) Someone doesn't have to actually work in an industry to know something about it. It's the equivalent of someone who has no cooking or food service experience going to McDonald's and saying "this burger is subpar", and then the CEO of McDonald's responding on Twitter with "Dude, I've been working in this industry for a very long time, and you haven't, so your statement is invalid." No, that's not how this works. You don't have to work at McDonald's or ANY restaurant to weigh in on the food they serve. Similarly, you don't have to work in the gaming industry for a decade to go onto Twitter and say there's a flaw with a design choice a company made in their game. 4) If Jessica has as much knowledge and experience over this guy as she claims she has, why couldn't she have just effortlessly explained why the guy was actually wrong instead of relying on fallacies to excuse herself of the responsibility of doing so? It shouldn't be difficult at all for a game industry veteran of 10+ years to defeat a 40 year old living in his Mom's basement right? So why couldn't she just shut him down with a rational argument? Is it because she really didn't feel like it, or is it because in reality, she had no real comeback to the statements he made and she escaped the situation the only way she knew how: by playing the victim card.
If she did not want to argue with Deroir, there are several things she could have said instead. 1) Thank him for his input and ignore his comments when she goes back to work. 2) Apologize that this is not a public discussion of game content and direct him to the game official forums 3) Nothing at all, still a better answer than what she did say.
camdevtube You’re forgetting that A. She’s a woman and women don’t think or argue with logic but with feelings and B. She’s a sjw leftist so ramp up the emotional argumentation times 100.
I'm from Brazil and I lived with a bank manager for a couple of months who told me he didn't have a twitter or facebook account because he was legally forgidden to do so. At the time, I kinda saw the point behind it but still was very skeptical about it because, in my head, it was like taking away his freedom of speech and individuality, kinda chaining him to this company. Now, looking at Jessica and the way she basically treated social media like a "Dear diary" and started a crusade with her own customers, it makes a lot more sense to me. People have the right to be pissed off somedays and want to vent, but doing so in public (even worst, venting about your job to people that consume your product) is far beyond unprofessional. She may want to justify it with being "a female in the industry" but I hardly believe she truly represents anyone who goes through abuse by the way she handled herself.
Take this away from the political BS and what do you have? An employee insulted and hurled damaging accusations at a customer in response to no provocation whatsoever, and excused their actions with essentially "other people were mean to me and so this random person who did nothing totally deserved all the hatred I piled on him". Being provoked and lashing out at someone completely unrelated just because they happen to be there at the time is accepted behavior for a toddler, and deserving of a lecture to a 6-year-old. For an adult to behave that way simply isn't acceptable. As for firing someone for that behavior, maybe you shouldn't if it was a one off event, the person was sincerely apologetic, they showed understanding of how they were at fault, and they were unlikely to commit the same action again. My understanding is that none of those criteria were met here.
I feel that if you are using a personal account to talk about something that is work related on a public platform you are inviting discussion about that topic, especially after something as public as an AMA . Her initial post was insightful, but her responce to a fan's musings was abhorrent. In my father's words; 'politeness costs you nothing, but buys you the world.' I genuinely believe Peter was just attempting to defend a colleague without seeing the full picture. His loss is a sad one, however Jessica was toxic and unempathetic to her audience. It was rigid and unmoved. SHE was wronged. SHE was being discriminated against. Instead of opening a discussion about a topic people were clearly interested in, she attacked. I am disgusted at her use of the sex card. She clearly has never felt what true discrimination is if she is using it in this context. As a woman and a gamer, I am sickened that she has become a figurehead for how we react. While wp showed tact in this video, I cant help my revulsion to this Jessica.
KittiWithKatana That’s honestly one of the things that bummed me out the most. I’d have fired her after the TB tweets but with what she said a few days back that could have started a really interesting debate on the subject and she articulated it really well. With it being on Twitter plenty of people would be excited to have a chance to contribute to the discussion and it’s a very important one for narrative driven MMO’s. For some reason though she had to go ballistic and start acting unprofessional and sexist. Frankly I’m pretty happy with how the Commander is portrayed in the story but it wouldn’t hurt her at all to listen to others perspectives and see if they may have insight she didn’t see before.
To be fair the precedent was already set. SJW have been doing this for years. I mean the shit on reddit wasn't even that hot compared to the hellfire people get for not following SJW ideals. If a small loud minority of bad actors can cause people to lose their jobs and flee from there homes in threat of persecution, what makes them think they are immune to that sort of thing happening to them? Like I said, it wasn't even that bad. People were more trying to figure out her damage then anything else.
I appreciate that there are constructive conversations happening about this situation. Thank you for your insight WP! I hope this does not cause too much damage on Anet's side of things. They have proven themselves to be a genuinely good gaming company, and it's hard to see such drama being exchanged that they do not stand for.
I play GW2, so not some rando, this was the proper decision in my mind and makes me happy to invest my time and money in this company. I do feel sorry for Peter, I think he was trying to be a loyal team member. Unfortunately, Jessica Price is so toxic she had to be removed at any cost. Since she sees everything thru her feminist lens, she was going to raise hell if she were fired. I think MO had to fire them both to avoid her obvious counterattack. My only criticism of management would be this, why did you ever hire Jessica Price in the first place? She's a toxic asset and companies should always be looking to add value. Maybe if there is ever a sequel to Depression Quest, Jessica would be a great asset for that project, but not a game that's meant to be enjoyable.
heathallen sometimes you need to take that risk, that extreme passion can churn out some great art/work but this is unfortunately the negative side of those risks
Would be hilarious if suddenly the quality of the writing and story increased. Developers have nothing to fear from interacting with the community, unless they just so happen to have similar views to people like Jessica.
AzureRoxe I mean it's just writing...it's not like they fired the lead programmer, net programer, or whoever does secruity for ANet... the actual devs lol.
Honestly, her comments on John Bain's passing should tell you all you need to know about her character. While it is sad that two people are now unemployed, it should be noted that it was completely warranted. In my opinion.
WoodenPotatoes, you did a great job in this vid. Thank you for looking at it objectively and playing devil's advocate. In this day and age, where we live in a world where customer service and customer interaction can make or break a company, this whole fiasco wouldn't fly in any company. What Jessica failed to realize is that even though she has her own private twitter feed, she is still representing the company she works for AT ALL TIMES.
I just would like to say that a lot of people seem to think that they were fired purely over reddit and Twitter drama. Can I just suggest that yes that's probably a large part of the reason. However let's not crap all over arenanets policies and procedures and their decision they clearly felt was necessary, Not because of just community outrage. objectively, in most jobs, not just ones where you're in the social public sphere like a game industry, if you react this way to your customer base, and you portray your company In a negative light in social media, yes, you would likely be fired. So please let's not blame it all on the community that "got them fired." unless we know the whole picture, which we dont. Let's be hypothetical and say that Jess or Peter or both, were brought into office to be reprimanded but not fired...But then then argued and kicked off and this led to their dismissal. I'm not suggesting this happened at all, but I'm pointing out that we dont know
You're very correct, we should not assume we know the WHOLE story, and we will most certainly never know it. All sorts of things could have happened in the office that day, and some minor things even before that.
We also don't know the internal history of them as employees. It's entirely likely that they had been reprimanded for other incidents prior to this and the very public nature of this incident is simply the straw that broke the camel's back as it were.
I know teachers use false names (normally their middle name or use maidan name) on social media to avoid being found by their students. Or to have a stage name for work like actors. It is unfortunate, but if you are in a public facing job (which devs would fall under) you will have to do this. Then you can moan about customers to your hearts content
That's not even the issue, she doesn't have to hide her identity, just don't put the company you work for, and your position in your bio, and then make a 22 tweet essay discussing the work your doing for that company and expect people to not respond as though you're speaking as a representative for that company, because the fact is, you are. Everything about this situation, is her behavior while putting herself in a situation where she is representing Arena Net. If she wants to behave a certain way on her personal twitter, she's more than welcome to, but don't bring a strictly work related discussion to your personal twitter, openly state the game and company you work for, and then go off the rails with toxicity towards customers of your employer.
Regardless of it being a private social media account, JP was a representative of Arenanet, whether on the clock or not. Cussing out a customer who monetarily supports your company, and is basically a living advertisement for your product is unacceptable and extremely unprofessional. If I did this at my job, I would get a strong verbal warning or worse. Her reaction was uncalled for and disappointing.
I just remember my Sylvari's dialogue during her quest. NPC: "[Insert Helpless' NPC's name] has gone into the dark forest of eternal doom despite my warnings, where no one's ever returned from." My Sylvari: "Oh no, isn't that dangerous?" Me: " ... " The term "airhead" is simply too light for whatever my character was, lol
So here's an essay that took way too many words. Sorry. I think Jessica acted irrationally and was unwarranted in her annoyance. She lashed out, when she was the one who started a discussion on the internet. All Deroir did was add to that discussion. Jessica had good intentions when she tried to inform the community on the issues with MMO PCs. But it would seem she refuses to accept any view that is not hers. Peter seems to be on point when he talks about the game, but not anywhere else. How he would "respect" someone like her is beyond me. Maybe respect her ability to work on a video game, but as a person? She was one of those arseholes who shit talked TotalBiscuit after he died. Jessica just wanted to play the victim to vent her frustration because someone did not agree with her on the internet despite both her and Deroir having good intentions. Peter, as WP says, chose the wrong battle to fight. She was in the wrong and it made it impossible to defend her adequately, even with his own good intentions. Also Jessica had no point when she says people think they are entitled to her time. *This is the internet* . If you did not want anyone to read and think and comment about what you were saying, you should have wrote your initial (and actually very well thought out and well written) post in your diary. But you didn't because you wanted people to know what you were saying, and to do that they have to use their time to read your words. What gives you the right to those peoples' time? As for not being able to separate work from personal life, when you are directly communicating with the customers of your place of employment, on the topic of your business, then sorry, this is no longer just your personal life, you're back at work, even if you aren't working your shift at that moment. Also, Peter comparing story writing to complex science, is not a good analogy. He has the concept down, but not the scale. Professional writers do tend to know more about what they are doing than amateur ones. However, the audience knows what they do and don't like in a story. Opinions and enjoyment don't play anywhere near as much of a role in launching rockets. To believe a fanbase has nothing to offer when critiquing a story, or that your opinion always overrules theirs, is a recipe for disastrous storytelling. As for them being fired, Jessica was damaging company communication with their customers. I mourn the loss of someone who at least in the writing department seemed to have a very good idea of what they were talking about. But if her writing skills and her damage to dev and fan relations are a packaged deal she has to go. It's not worth it, especially because I get the feeling she was just getting warmed up. If she'd stayed with Arenanet, the fans would not have let it go (regardless of whether they should or shouldn't have). There would have been more altercations with the fanbase, and all would have ended badly for Arenanet. Peter on the other hand was not very aggressive to the fanbase. I think he needed a serious talking to on the topic of trying to diffuse fires rather than giving Jessica petrol even if you think it's the right thing to do. Her claim that Deroir's criticisms were the result of sexism had no basis in reality and he was wrong for defending them, even if sexism is a problem in this industry. I don't think he deserved to be fired though, and I think having a bit of backbone against your consumers is not always a bad thing. So if they fired him just because Reddit and Twitter were mad at him for associating with the wrong person, then that is wrong. But maybe they decided he was damaging relations too and they felt they had to fire him. I can't be sure.
You summed this situation up far better than I could. I totally agree with you on every point. (Odd, I usually have at least something I disagree with in a post this long.) Thanks for saving me a ton of typing.
I speculate he was fired so she wont be able to use the sex card against ANet. Maybe legal had something to do with it or/and maybe there is some sordid story behind it. I agree, on its own, his firing was unwarranted, though it is troublesome someone that respects JP so much. She is a bitch. Clear as day.
I was already rather pissed that she was still working for Anet before this happened. She was one of the lovely devs that came out and cheered TotalBiscuit's passing on twitter. That alone should of got her the boot
+MooseChoker in a perfect world it should have, but I think Anet did the right thing not firing her for that, because it had nothing to do with Guild Wars 2 or Arenanet. If a company can fire people because of opinions irrelevant to their work, that power is extremely dangerous in the wrong hands. I'm glad she got what she deserved eventually though.
Wait, im confused, are the replies to this comment joking? 'Cause as far as ive read, Siccore didnt actually write anything, forget writing something sexist...
Thanks for giving a very level headed take on what happened. I think you definitely highlighted some of the discussion points on the many facets on what transpired and I really appreciate an honest perspective.
Just seeing this now WP. I genuinely had no idea any of this happened. The only thing I'll say is that the people who I've met who make their Gender/Sexuality their main personality trait tend to be the shittiest people I've ever met. They always hide behind their perceived victimhood status after behind called out for disgusting behaviour.
I'm surprised to didn't add Jessica's original Twitter post that Deroir replied to... Here's my opinion on all of this...Peter Fries' comment on "This is our private accounts" is false. Social media is ALWAYS open to the public unless you make it into a private setting closed off from the public. Meaning anything you say is always possible to be supervised from your bosses. Which obviously happened. Just because JP and PF were on their break hours doesn't mean they should take off a facade and start hating everyone. If you did that IRL everyone would think you were a jerk and you'd never get a job. This would apply to the internet. Also sounds like the Kotaku interview was her chance to say more junk and not the truth. I have mixed feelings about those former workers' tweets...personally I feel this was one of the better approaches to making it stop. Because I don't want more issues with that dev ever again. And if a dev with that kind of personality is in ANet I'd kinda cringe. Going to hope the newer faces are nicer and have better potential. Which, about that part of of the tweet, I don't believe the whole throwing under the bus thing, as for the inexperienced new workers I just hope they bring fresh ideas and something new to the table that ANet hasn't thought of yet. Maybe something that can spin the game into a new direction.
No matter what was said between the two, she’s in the wrong for acting rudely. There is no way around it, yes I can understand the “I don’t want YOUR input” part but it should have been handled a lot better than what we got. After Deroir gave his input she could have simply ignored it or like he said explain why he was wrong. So I say good that she’s gone, no company should tolerate that type of behavior from one of their staff members no matter what position they’re in or how long they have worked there. It hurts me that she was glad that TotalBiscuit passed away. Like no matter what you thought of the guy, have some decency to respect the dead.
I think the only thing I can agree with is this wanting of having a personal Twitter account. Fortunately, I've learned quite early that these things are quite impossible. Specifically, when I applied for my first job using an email that was very silly and used mostly for my online communities and games. I now have 2 accounts for everything. One dedicated to RL that is associated with many aspects of my RL and my gaming accounts where I'm free to geek out and that cannot be associated (at least easily) with me. I don't use either to act like a fool but one is obviously professional and the other recreational (games, games, games, etc.) I think it's very important to have a grasp on the use of social media and I think you put it quite well in your video about how people view and use places like Twitter. This made me very sad about Peter's comments concerning Twitter being private. Great video. It's a shame the clip from Deroir's Twitch clip from the previous day didn't make it in where he specifically was praising the work of Price. He seemed actually very hurt by what happened that didn't really show in his tweets under the respectful replies.
Surreal is right, it's so weird seeing this sort of content from you, but I think this will be the definitive video and sum-up of the event. The only thing I really have to say is that Jessica's behavior would've earned her a firing from virtually any job I can think of, to the point where a lot of games media sites reporting on the incident that try to cast her in a sympathetic light have to actively skip over, like, 80% of her tweets to do it. Even communities that tend to support and parade around anything with the sexism angle are having a hard time actually defending her, and sometimes don't even try. Not only that, but she kept doubling down on it, and make it very clear that she intended to keep doing so. She was openly advertising that she was a troublemaker, so I really don't think you could argue that her firing wasn't completely justified. The real story is Peter Fries, which is just unfortunate, especially when you take those last couple tweets in the video into account. I gotta be honest, I've always felt like the GW2 community doesn't really appreciate how good they have it when it comes to developer interaction, and always suspected that their relative access to developers inspires people to be a little extra petulant or melodramatic in their feedback because they know the devs are watching and if they play it up into this huge, game-ruining issue then maybe they'll get the devs to go back and update the Gandara meta event or something. So if the company has a little bit of Stockholm Syndrome for their playerbase, I honestly wouldn't be too surprise. But even then, it can produce some objectively positive results. I doubt Mo would've pulled the LS teams off their own projects to work on the HoT 2.0 patch if he wasn't as responsive to reddit feedback as he was, and responding so quickly to this drama in an age where many companies try to brush stuff like this under the rug and hope people stop caring in a week is something people have responded very positively to, so it's... complicated.
I get it. Not everyone is a professional in narrative construction for MMORPG's. But you should understand the gun goes both ways. She herself is not Fyodor Dostoevsky. Likening her to a vaccine scientist is a bit much. I know analogies are inaccurate by nature but it gets a little pompous. Maybe being a professional in certain career fields makes your opinion much greater than a layman's but let's not fool ourselves here. . Deroir was not commenting on brain surgery. It's too bad Twilight doesn't teach you about humility. To believe that no one outside of your industry might have an interesting point or perspective is hilarious. How delirious do you have to be to think you are better than everyone? This is called hubris. If you work in the videogame industry it does not necessarily mean you work hard or are in fact Charles Dickens. If you haven't noticed, her attitude is completely afraid of criticism and is in an infantile state. This is not healthy for obvious reasons, mainly being you will never grow. I'm not saying you have to read every piece of criticism as the word of God but criticism, even from a filthy stupid layman, will help your work and mind evolve. She isn't sure it's possible to make a CRPG character compelling yet there are games like Fallout 1 which do exactly that. I mean this is an incredibly basic but fundamental issue in her argument. Not only is it possible but it was done more than twenty years ago. It's truly wondrous that a writer in the videogame industry knows so little about her craft. I can't believe filthy plebs had the gall to voice their laughably ignorant and poorly uneducated opinions. Don't they know she is a professional in the industry and they're not? I hope you understand how this hubristic attitude is a little condescending especially when the person is referencing Twilight. If you want to alienate and anger your customers, do that. I actually empathize with her greatly but at a certain point you are rewarding unhealthy behavior. At the first sign of criticism she immediately gets on a high horse and he wasn't even scratching the surface WoodenPotatoes. This is an indication that she has a bad relationship with criticism for awhile now and thus she will not grow as a writer or a person.
hiverhythm This. All of this. Bless you. I have seen more critical, personally charged arguments in goddamn role-playing communities. ...with better result. This guy wasn't even rude. Criticism is part of creative careers, be you pro or amateur. You can't hone your craft if you won't listen to input.
Aye, I got a bit angry at the end there but when the attitude is "I don't want to hear a word from anyone outside my industry" it only invites harsher criticism. Yes, sometimes the criticism you will get will be truly stupid. But so was the argument essay she wrote up. An elitist attitude won't do you any favors, same as playing the victim card. Sometimes criticism you get is stupid but at the same time you will get very good criticism from a perspective you couldn't have thought of on your own. It is the job of the creator to ignore trolls and find good criticism. If water doesn't flow, it becomes a swamp and if you don't accept criticism your work similarly flounders. The whole elitism and victim card response is simply a deflection from the real issues which is that her argument had some flaws. But I still thought it was an interesting argument never the less. If you are open to different criticisms your work becomes much more capable of dealing with adversity because it constantly changes and evolves.
I really love how you presented this info! It was really fair and thorough ~ I also appreciated how you left us with open-ended questions throughout so we could really consider the nuance of the issue, and that you were light-handed with inserting your own opinion so that we could form our own without bias. Reminded me of why I love to watch your channel!
Just adding, Kotaku is one of the definitions of biased in the dictionary, these days, sadly In closing thoughts: if you don't want to represent your company in a public space, then perhaps add a disclaimer on the comment, or you know, don't add the company you're working for in your bio. People have been fired for much less than what Jessica said. Also, I think we're not seeing the whole picture, I don't think Peter would have been fired if this was just an isolated incident. Either there were more issues internally that were not disclaimed by Anet or maybe he decided to double down on defending Price's stand, ignoring the multitude of rational replies he got, even after his holiday. You don't just let go one of your most iconic employees over some Twitter debacle. Another issue is a hole that Anet sadly dug for themselves, by using social media and player to non-player interactions as a means of marketing, the company is hit *massively* by PR slip-ups like this, so they really can't screw up when it comes to their public image.
I believe Peter was fired to pre-empt any allegations of sexism, and bias by Anet, would they have only fired Jessica for her comments. At least I believe this was partially the reason, as they clearly also wanted to make a clear statement that they do not condone her behavior, and Peter was not only defending it, but attempting to justify it in any future interactions, purely based on what the developer might be doing in real life at the moment. As though anyone was demanding their responses, sometimes people comment online just to share their feedback, I highly doubt the vast majority of comments are made with the expectation of a response, let alone feeling entitled to one. Most people are just putting their thoughts out there, and if they get a response, great, but I highly doubt he even expected one, let alone felt entitled to one. Besides I don't even see what he said as criticism, it was just offering a different way of looking at the problem she was discussing, he wasn't criticizing her belief that "A" is the problem, only suggesting that the problem might be caused by "B" instead.
I would like to find some points to defend the devs because i don't think these stupid social media posts were worth losing 2 jobs but JP is making it really hard. In the kotaku article she didn't even consider that the things she said went a bit too far.
Why? Because they were good devs and fries had been working on the series for almost 13 years so the amount of lost knowledge is huge, there aren't many other people in arenanet who has worked for so long. It's bad for the game, nothing strange about that. But looking at your likes you're here only to jerk of on the "evil sjws getting fired" and don't give a fuck about the game.
She should have been fired when she danced on someone who died of cancer grave. I live in Wa it is a fire at will state they can fire her for any reason. Also I am usually not glad of people being fired but I drinked to her being fired and I am happy. When you add that you work in your twitter then its no longer your "personal twitter". You don't get to acrue people who are fans of gw2 then say this is a personal account and procedded to be rude to them for giving polite critisim. And for the record I have played gw2. Maybe she should have bought a diary if she wanted it remain personal.
That was rich and beautiful, thank you. I was focused the entire video, and I didn't find it boring at all (to the point I felt like if you took it to another 2 hours, I'd probably stay tuned and listened), while reading the facts, pointing your opinions, yet leaving it open for all sides of view, I think you are doing wonderful job there.
Thanks for going in-depth on this. As someone who is on break from GW2 and only heard of this due to the Kotaku article, I appreciate the deep dive so I can understand what happened. Still doesn't lessen the sting of losing Fries though...
![Holy Crap I Finished The Story | Path of Fire Lore, Reactions & Initial Thoughts [ HEAVY SPOILERS]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/dxVC9j_2UaA/mqdefault.jpg)
So WP, here in the states we have something called At WIll Employment. I won't post the definition here but it basically states you as an employee are free to leave whenever you like and the company is allowed to dismiss you whenever they like for whatever reason. However, it does not apply if it's an illegal dismissal like if it were regarding race etc.
And I just want to say, whether you're a man or a woman, black or white, gay or straight, if you work in a corporate environment and you are open with your disrespect to customers you WILL be let go. It isn't specific to the gaming industry. This is the case for ALL industries and every fortune 50 company I've ever worked for.
gtarman8d I am pretty sure that’s a Texas thing only.
Peter Hoang Californian here and we have it. The exact mechanism varies from state to state, but it is a thing.
Several states are including Washington.
Ohio is also an "at will" state, even my rinky dink company of ~30 people has a strict social media policy and new hires are given a handbook about social media. If I mentioned my company on Twitter and then went after a customer the way she did, I'd be rightfully fired as well.
gtarman8d my hero
There's a line between openly speaking truth to power as she puts it and being plain rude.
The people that give the feedback are still the customers, and no matter what happens you shouldn't be rude to your customers, especially when they're not even being rude themselves. When customers get violent in any way then you have a problem but that just doesn't apply in this case.
Po Tato Truth to power sure says as she punches down.
She might be rude, but if a customer walks in and says “Your carbonara should’ve been made this and that way “ when your entire generation of family hails from Naples and you’ve been doing this for a while now - I’d be pissed, even if they’re being polite.
If you don’t know how the processes are being implemented, ask first and get to know more before even attempting to opine.
Cause you’ll come across as a stereotypical know it all.
Shakir Othman not really. Price was talking about her work on a public platform and then threw a fit when someone had a different idea he wanted to discuss with her
But you don't start verbally abusing someone who doesn't like your carbonara.
And when a customer actually isn't happy with their food you are going to want to find out why of course, because it's supposed to be so good right?
Then you can find out if it actually could've been prepared less well than the usual because of some reason, or maybe the person itself doesn't know what a good carbonara tastes like?
What you don't do however is (verbally) abuse that customer because you're a "know it all" always try to stay polite and humble.
Everyone hates "toxic" behaviour, don't be like that and don't act toxic yourself.
Not a very good example. Food is done differently in different regions of the same country/world. Of course people might come up to you and be surprised that a specific food was done in a different way. Also the opinion wasn't presented in the manner you describe.
Hey WP I think this video can be slightly improved if you added some branching dialogue
urusaitteba hahahshaha
This was the noble dialogue option. He is doing an wrathful one next.
Allow me to disagree *slightly*
SpoichicheTV lol how dare u ... u sir are a racist.
*weary stare*
She probably chose "Ferocity" in the dialogue thingy when she was making her character
I guess JP has a hard time making use braching dialogue options in RL as well.
Adras Adraki lmao
I guess she picked the wrong dialogue option...
th-cam.com/video/AuUqpZgHiEE/w-d-xo.html
Price fought the wrong battle here. Standing up for yourself doesn't mean being a jerk to a stranger on the internet, really.
I agree. I am fairly certain you can stand up for yourself without calling others rando asshats.
not even a stranger itr was a paying costumer who was NOT toxic or insulting
I disagree, she clearly was retaliating against someone who was disagreeing with her and showing kindness, which she misconstrued as weakness to attack.
@ESmith Sure, my dude :D
Don't turn your back on a lioness; she will attack.
I don't think she was standing up for anything. Every single thing that was brought up as "things women have to deal with" sounded like the most innocuous, mundane things that every guy I've ever know has had to deal with without the support of every single media outlet, movie star & professor in the country.
This whole thing boils down to the fact that Jessica wen't on a public forum whose purpose is to share one's thoughts and for people to respond to those thoughts. I doesn't matter if she asked for his opinion because she decided to post in a place where feedback is 50% of the platform's purpose
While this situation ended badly for all of us, I need to keep reminding myself that they're not children. They're adults who can judge a situation and react accordingly. They chose a specific way, and as an adult, you will also have to deal with the consequencs of your actions. She could've gone for a neutral dev-response, ending the conversation then and there, but she specifically chose not to - and while I understand her reasoning regarding females in male-dominated professions, her response is not acceptable for any adult, let alone any professional in any similar situation.
What hurts me the most is that, just shortly before the incident, Deroir praised her. He loved her work, her AMA responses. She didn't just shut down an ArenaNet partner, or "some guy", she insulted a fan of her work and assumed the worst. Her actions cannot be justified, regardless of how good the reasons are. What a sad day that was, oh man.
Another thing that keeps popping back into my mind: we read "no longer at the company" and we assume "fired". We don't know what went on behind closed doors, we don't know what offers they got. In JP's case, I can understand the decision was quicker, but In PF's case.. you don't just fire someone who has worked at your company for 12+ years. There's more to the story than we'll ever know, and assuming ArenaNet went to reddit, went "Oh shiet" and fired them straight up just doesn't feel right.
yep I genuinely think that she needs some professional help, because she went the road where she thinks that everyone is evil and that made her evil in the end.
true the wording does not HAVE to mean "fired".
another thought I want to throw in though since something like this exists where I'm working: depending on where you work you can have clauses in your contract or other agreements between company and employer regarding social media and how to use or not use them which can even extend into your private time AND be valid reason for a contract termination if not uphold. We as people outside of arenanet obviously dont know if and what kind of agreements might exist for the developers but something of that kind COULD have also played a role when it came to the decision Mo apparently made at the end.
Very well put.
Very nuanced comment! Also her statement that Deroir is one in a long line implies she believes a lot of the community have harassed her and will taint any future interaction she has with us. I wonder if it would have been as bad if she specifically said Deroir's comment felt over the line specifically.
The verge article qutoes JP saying she was fired:
[quote]
Price adds that she believes her firing was an emotional reaction on the part of ArenaNet co-founder Mike O’Brien. “He fired me personally, and the meeting was mostly him venting his feelings at me,” she says. “I understand being afraid when you see the Reddit mob coming for you, but if people with less power can weather it - and we do, regularly - so can he.”
The second I saw her dissing TotalBiscuit's death, that was it, I can no longer reason or even try to understand someone like her.
I still don't understand why so many of these feminists and SJWs hate TB. Granted I haven't looked too much into the situation but from my perspective he was rather milquetoast and even servile on any sort of gender-related kerfuffle in the industry.
ArcViper They are narssacists who cant stand critisim and when they are critiqued they view it as a direct attack on their person.
Yeah that was very low, like dumpster, crap of a human.
ArcViper Its because he supported Gamergate. Thats like the big bad boogieman for SJW, Radical feminists but most importantly game journalists and anyone working in the industry that has rubbed elbows inappropriately with the former.
The TB part should've been enought for her to get fired from every single company no matter in what field.
From all the drama and shit I understand that Arenanet emplyoes are not happy with their jobs. Which is not suprising and I can only be happy becouse this mean Arenanet are actualy holding high standard.
I have no idea what the hiring contract at Arenanet states, and I won't pretend that I do, nor do I know what is standard practice in the US, so I could be totally off, but I assume it is similar to what we have here in Israel? I work in design and photography, and basically every contract I've had to sign had one detailed clause about social media and behavior offline. My current contract pretty much tells me to do wtf I want as long as I don't do it under company name, or can't otherwise reflect badly on the company I work for. I would assume JP's contract would be something similar if I had to guess. Either way, it is not uncommon practice for companies to fire an employee if that employee makes them look bad as a company.
As for JP herself, I'm a firm believer of separating the art from the artist, after all I want to enjoy the product, not be friends with the artist (and while I don't follow AMAs, I think she's good at her job from what Deroir and WP said), so while I do think she's a horrible human for rejoicing the death of a cancer patient and being borderline racist, I don't think those should be the cause for termination. Personally attacking fans, however, should be, especially after she continued to attack Deroir after he has apologized, twice, and tried to make this into a gender thing (which might be why Fries also getting fired, to show that it's not about gender). Her termination was well deserved imo, and was bound to happen sooner or later. Fries's, not so much.
Lastly, artists should grow thicker skin. getting critiqued harshly and having people telling you how things should be done comes with the territory, for the most part, it really is just people passionate about your art and want to help you improve. Do you have any idea how many critiques I get a day? I wish they were as nice as Deroir, who, while awkward, meant no harm. and said she was amazing the day before on stream. This happened on social media, too, not real life, which means that while it is for all the world to see, she has the advantage of just ignoring it, or waiting to cool off before posting a response. I understand her frustration, but act professional, damn it, not everyone is out to get you. Also, something artists tend to forget (and I'm guilty of this too, I admit, far too often, haha) is that while a concept is obvious to her, it is often not to those who are outside the industry. If she really did not want any feedback then I think Twitter (which I think is horrible platform for discussion due to character limit to begin with, but that's a different topic) might not be her best option. A blog or journal of some sort with comments turned off might be a much better option. Hell, at least that sends a clear message that you aren't interested in discussions.
PS: As (ironically enough) JP herself said, why are they on twitter and not in a bbq when it's independence day? I thought if there's one thing Israelis and Americans have in common it's bbqs, and especially company bbqs on some holidays.
Khaled Assaf The US is the same with it's business practices. Even as a low level employee we sign a paper that states we may be terminated without warning or justification at any time.
Literally every job I have worked since twitter has a page in the contract and paperwork specifically about social media, and "do not embarrass the company" is in there about five times in various wordings. One of them even required you to do an online re-authorization of this every four months.
Yeah well here's the rub do you do it under company name if said company name is in your bio? That's where the real debate should lie because that is in fact what was going on. I personally think If these people would just take their workplace out of their bio all this could be prevented . It's a pretty common practice around the world to not allow people to wear their work uniform outside of work for a reason. I think they can act like as much of a asshole as they want they just need to learn to separate themselves from their workplace.
Right on... I thought the same thing. If you don't want feedback, don't do it on social media, and if you want to vent online use your head and use some alt ID (duh!).
החלק שהכי לא הבנתי זה למה היא בא בתקיפות. סך הכל עם התגובה שלו לא התאימה לה היא יכלה פשוט להגיד לא "מהנסיון שלי זה לא עובד אבל תודה על ההצעה" וזהו. יצא קצת מטומטמת.
i just can't understand why she jumped the gun with the gender card after this very good explanation of how she went about the idea withthe blank slate commander ... she clearly is capeable to defend her actions in a rational way, but then blew the barn from one moment to the next
I'm not sure whether it's because WoodenPotatoes is in the UK, but in the US definitely the political climate has made women feel attacked (and arguably also emboldened women to point out they've been attacked). Whether or not it's justified for Price to do it, I do sympathize with American women in tech or game industries where their life has sucked more in the past while, and that's the context that deserves consideration at least.
If you'll read her Twitter you'll see she tweets about this gender identity crap every day. She's clearly obsessed with it and she thinks everyone else is too. So when she receives criticism she thinks "oh must be because im a womyn".
MT Silver I'm not denying that, in fact I find her behaviour in this case objectionable. But the case is that for her social climate, people ARE obsessed with gender one way or another. Whether it's women who want to champion gender or men trying to champion men's rights or whatnot, it's just a heightened topic. It's bigger than Price, is what I'm saying. I don't think individuals necessarily should be taken to task for influences they can't help. To me it's like someone growing up in a cult or something.
MT Silver i know i've been digging in her Twitter...still it's just sad to see humanity just not able to push their stupid prejudice aside and not spread more hate...
people have to stop running around in their filter bubbles and not trying to push their opinions on others... at least not in an extrimist way ...
Radical.Compounds Feel attacked? By what? Women are the most empowered and coddled group in all modern societies. It isn't even close. And yet they have the audacity to claim sexism whenever they're critiqued.
From my point of view when the president of a company ask the community to promote the game we paid for via word of mouth then you are god damn right iam gonna give you my feedback.
Wow, WP! This was very professionally done. Focusing on the right topics, offering a wide variety of viewpoints, remaining objective on such a heated topic... Thank you for making this video! Very refreshing after the dogpiling of snarky remarks and one-liners of Reddit!
she did openly mock customers, celebrated the death of a youtuber and persoanlly attacked a PARTNER of her company because he gave POLITE critique.
Celebrating anyone's death is truly awful/deplorable in and of itself. But Total Biscuit was generally a really well respected personality in the gaming community. Realizing that's who she was talking about is really sad for me :( His public struggle against his cancer is just sub-human to be glad about. I don't wish even her to die, nor will I celebrate when she does. But I certainly don't want her working at any game company I support.
@Jonathan Soko if she was a man shed be in jail
@Jonathan Soko Funny enough you mention that. Last month (or close to it) another ANet developer (though not actively working on GW2) doxxed a guy claiming he was a white supremacist and the one responsible for that hit and run on an interstate where people were protesting at 1 AM for whatever reason.
From what I could tell ANet decided to stay ignorant of it.
@Jonathan Soko I think she would still be fired. You dont allow your employees atack customers. Expect them to stay customers.
@Jonathan Soko It can be both.
Thank you for giving both sides so clearly.
And I agree with your points. As a creator myself (a writer of fiction) I understand the tendency to view your own creative work as “your baby” but I learned a long time ago that you need to be able to receive criticism or discussion without lashing out.
Also, as a woman myself, it really bugs me when she uses a real issue as a defense/excuse for her bad behavior. It cheapens the real issue as a valid problem when that happens.
Honestly, she should have been gone after she celebrated Totalbiscui't passing the day it was announced.
I think she's a bitch who got what was coming to her, given she celebrated Totalbiscuit's death. But I don't think she should have been fired for saying what she said about him. That conversation had nothing to do with Guild Wars 2 and I think Arenanet would be overstepping their boundaries if they fired people for their opinions on things that have nothing to do with their company. That kind of power could be used to horrible effect in situations where it was far less deserving.
She would've had that statement gone viral at the time and caused ANet loss in revenue. It's just that her comment at the time was overshadowed by that made by a Bioware dev, and so went unnoticed.
Ian Wakefield If she really did that, that shows what a horrible person she is
I could not stand TotalBiscuit myself but to watch the amount of worms who came out on Twitter to celebrate his death was surreal. Basically pissing in the face of his family.
Did she? IF you are correct then all of my sympathies are gone. I loved Totalbiscuit, but even if I didn't no one should ever celebrate the death of anyone.
Deroir is a legend, the most polite person i've ever seen XD
And far more eloquent than I would have been.
Badger's Den pretty much yes...on his streams, vidoes and when hes on other discussions like Tea Time, he appears to be a very sweet, intelligent, polite guy.
See for me I can only do derior in small doses on certain types of videos because otherwise he starts coming off as arrogant and condescending. He doesn't seem to do it maliciously but there is that old saying about it being a fine line between arrogance and confidence.
Even so no one deserves someone to go nuclear on them
Both Deroir and MmoInks are very good, intelligent and sensitive guys. I recommend both channel and twitch.
10% of the fandom being toxic is really high? Maybe she's not as experienced in game development as she thought.
Fuckin eh. We know she's never logged in to a game much less played a table top.
I'd hate to see her play sorry or Monopoly.
LOL even just in the MMO genre, she might explode IRL if she was working for games like Black Desert Online. GW2 was probably the best job she'll ever have.
I hope for her sake she never works for Riot, she might spontaneously melt from the toxicity levels.
Arctorius Tyrilian
I'd say she probably struggles bigtime in her job and needs others to carry her along.
They just become a burden than worth keeping around.
Like it or not, social media carries a lot of weight these days. People in other professions have been fired for similar comments.
In this case, I feel the saying "If you have nothing nice to say, then don't say anything" rings true. Jessica should've just walked away, and the way she acted was honestly not something the community, or Anet as a company, should put up with. Peter on the other, was just an unfortunate casualty in this. Yes, he was standing up for a co-worker, but there are some fights you're best staying out of.
Also, just don't bring up gender politics. Since the whole Anita thing, that is a REALLY touchy subject for gamers. It has it's time and place, but this was certainly not one of those, nor was it needed.
Stand up for someone if you have some valid points. I guess he shouldn't have been drinking in the sun when he was checking his twitter :P
I have to say that Jessica and Peter are just wrong. There is no such thing as a "private" social media account. You can mark it as private etc BUT many companies my own included have social media policies stating that regardless you represent the company and can be held accountable. HR departments constantly search the Facebook accounts of applications to see what type of people that they are.
well said.
She could make an anonymous account for "private" use. But that would take away the credibility and attention she gets by posting under her own name. Can't have your cake and eat it.
#notificationgang but in all honesty, while not celebrating JP losing her job, the way she disrespected TotalBiscuit’s passing and the community as a whole makes me not really feel for her at all
This, I'm sorry but not sorry, good riddance to her
Peter Fries I'm genuinely sorry for.
But I agree on JP. I don't want be happy about someone losing their job but I can't in all honesty say I'm too sad either.
Looking through her twitter history, you'll see she mocked Totalbiscuit's passing, resorted to various insults and derogative terms to gamers and even large communities (like "fuck Spain"), and somehow even managed to get triggered by Avengers: Infinity War because it's "3 hours of racism and misogyny"; just two highlights of years of being extremely hostile and toxic.
Even before Deroir and Inks, she was incredibly disrespectful to Jebro.
She just reminds me of someone with initials A.S.
Even after getting fired she's still spinning the sexism narrative because Deroir and Inks were clearly toxic misogynistic pigs mansplaining to her, because only female devs get hate. No, I've not seen Chris Cleary get utterly shit on, or MO get absolutely memed, or various other male devs getting fucking destroyed on the internet. It's clearly because they are female right? I don't deny women have it rough in these circles, I do feel really bad for women sometimes but this nonsense from JP is just a victim complex, and a very aggressive, destructive one.
Bear in mind her ending quotes from Kotaku are deliberately sent out to SPITE Arenanet and incite mistrust amongst any female devs or staff still within Arenanet.
don't forget that TB was a gamergater ... he deserved all the disrespect he got from female devs.
You realise "GamerGate" was a movement for ethical and honest journalism in gaming, and the whole sexism thing was embroiled later to dilute the whole point of GG?
TotalBiscuit passed away????
I'm sorry, WoodenPotatoes, but I don't agree at all with the "Layman explaining what the professional should do" stance you're taking here.
My opinion in this matter, as someone who makes movies, is that people who are OUTSIDE of the bubble you reside in (be it games, movies, writing, whatever) can have an untainted/unbiased view on things. A view you've lost the deeper you've crawled into the bubble you reside in.
For instance, I write a script, I think everything is completely logical, makes sense, etc... and I let my non-movie maker friend read it, and all of a sudden he throws up A LOT of criticisms. I look into them and, what do you know, from a real-world standpoint, things didn't make as much sense as I first thought it did! Even worse, it's not explained at all why things are the way they are, so I can't say "Well, it's this, or this, or this reason so... In terms of the story, it does make sense."
That is why I, personally, love feedback from people who aren't in my bubble (as long as they're actual valid criticisms and feedback, not "IT SUUUUCCCCKKKSSS , GO DIE!!!", which it clearly wasn't).
What these people seem to forget, is that they're high profile individuals. For example, Miss Price actually puts in her Twitter Bio that she's a Game Dev. If you don't want people to give their unsolicited opinion on matters, don't put your job in your bio. Put "This is my private account, so no discussions about games will be had here, sorry!" or something rather in your bio to deter quite a large portion of people and when someone DOES go on and post their opinion, just don't respond and block them. If they start an outcry that they didn't get a response, people will point out that "It's her private account and she specifically says in her bio that she won't respond to anything gaming related and delete the tweets... Sorry dude, you're in the wrong."
By omitting such a line, she sets herself up for feedback, unsolicited or not.
Her responses, however, could have saved things had she been as polite as the person giving feedback was BUT she decided to pull the gender card, acting all like "You're just doing this because I'm a woman and you're salty I'm on top and you're not".
That, in my opinion, signals that she actually had a "Oh shit, he's kind of right, but I won't give them that satisfaction,." moment (even if he wasn't right, but she panicked or was drunk or whatever) and decided to COMPLETELY shift the direction away from what the other person said to try and cover her ass.
Like, had she replied with something like "Yes, you could implement branching dialogue options, but in the end, they wouldn't matter because all dialogue trees have to converge at the same spot to make the story make sense. This is a model that TellTale uses, and a lot of people are against this 'illusion of choice' since it seems that, in the end, none of your choices matter. Because of that, we decided against it since it would mean more work for the same pay off." then the conversation might have gone in an entirely different way and she'd probably still be employed.
The biggest problem that Miss Price seems to have, is that she's what is known as a "Feminazi". Any and all criticism, however valid or invalid, directed at them by a "male" will be viewed as oppression, aggression, mean-spirited, vile, etc... all because they're women. And because of that, I really, really, REALLY can't take anything she spouts seriously. She's part of a disease that has been festering in the core of humanity for quite a few years now and needs to be torn out. Not carefully cut out, but brutally torn out.
That's my take on the matter.
And a point very well made!
man, imagine unironically saying "feminazi"
Guys, Twitter is now our own "personal space" and we can say whatever we want there without consequence. Did you know that ? I bet Rosanne Barr didn't know that, someone should have told her.
We got the president we deserve, not the one we need.
Apologies for the wall of text, but I thought I'd bring a bit of an HR perspective here. As others have explained, many states in the US are At Will Employment states, which means the company was almost certainly fully in their rights to terminate employment, because well...they can do so for any reason that isn't discriminatory. In addition to that, most companies with a product these days have some sort of social media clause in their hiring paperwork that basically stipulates you will not do anything on social media that would damage the image of the company or the company's product. Companies are becoming wise to the fact that the internet exists and this is 2018. These types of agreements are SUPER common here, and I would be extremely surprised if Arenanet didn't have one. Indeed, the fact that Jessica herself says she told Mike in orientation that she was vocal about these things on social media would indicate to me that they probably do.
Based on that criteria, Jessica's case for termination was certainly a strong one. As you outlined very effectively in this video, her actions could very easily be considered damaging to both the company's reputation and product, which is why I was personally not at all surprised to read that she was terminated. Seems like a pretty straightforward decision if I'm being perfectly honest, subsequent outrage or no.
Peter was a little more interesting, in that his actions were in defense of his colleague, he historically has no history of this sort of thing, and he's been with the company a long time. That said, his actions too could definitely be construed to damage the reputation of the company and product. I would like to think that perhaps his meeting with Mike wasn't quite as straightforward, and I am personally sad to see him go as an avid Guild Wars player since Prophecies, but this is the part where we don't know what happened because it happened behind closed doors. One thing I can say from my experience in HR is that you never know what kinds of things will come to light and/or be said in those meetings.
Professionally, I really do feel that Mike made a decision that he fully felt was in the best interests of the company. I can also pretty much guarantee you that he was in his rights to make that decision, whether us as individuals feel it was the right one or not.
She wasn't fired for not appreciating feedback, she was fired for being rude and insulting to a representative (arenanet partner!) of the people who _pay her rent_
Even in his response on livestream, Deroir was apologetic. He feels bad despite knowing he did nothing wrong.
Never a pleasent feeling when something goes this haywire, regardless of the initial spark. :/
Good. Too many soyboys apologize when the media pressure is applied, even though they did nothing wrong. Good for him for standing his ground.
Be nice, please!
The real reason they insulted fans was a cover up because of the new Quaggan and Skirtt mounts coming into the game next patch with 127 new gem store skins each. They didn't want to make it to obvious why they were leaving!
Dont understand me wrong WP i really laughed hard on your sentence with the tits.
Like your reasoning and that you actually tried to see both sides of the coin and that you analyse the whole situation.
You are doing a great job on your vids and one of few Internet PPl with real reason.
wow...
Thanks for a great video.
No one asked for your opinion, nerd! :)
I'm prty sure that's what the initial Honor/Charm/'Strong'(?) response system was designed for in the early gw2. Where the players would have multiple dialog options (for instance to either try to charm, threaten or be honorable) -and those choices would in turn be saved forming the player's personality which later would result in more dialog options that refelct their 'personality'. Ofc that would mean extra development time (since for most situations they would have to record much more stuff to cover all those 'trait' combinations).
Her toxic man-hatred and her bigoted, unprofessional attitude should've gotten her fired a long time ago. I'm glad that she took that white knight, pretend-feminist with her in her fall.
It is a little worrying to me that an ArenaNet narrative veteran like Peter would have feminist "male ally" leanings but it's hardly surprising.
No. Seeing systemic sexism every time when male dares to not agree with you makes you bigoted man-hater.
ArcViper looks like a common case of white knight looking to smash
"- A customer shares their thoughts politely
- You insult them in reaction for what they shared.
- As a consequence, you get fired for insulting a paying customer who enjoys your product and giving feedback with no harm."
This is for EVERY COMPANY. This is standard no matter what, she needed to get fired, period. (internet, in person, private, public, social, whatever, doesn't matter)
Wow... I did not know about that tweet about TB's death... wtf is wrong with this person.
She is someone who was either incredibly hurt in the past due to some traumatic incident, or has been brainwashed into a state where she thinks that she is constantly under attack from every angle. It's sad because she likely has a comparatively easy life compared to the people who are actually enduring the struggles she's complaining of.
That looks like borderline personality disorder to me. People like that always play the victim and never admit to do any wrong, and they tend to explode over the sligthest perceived provocation. It's very clear that the problem is her toxicity since Deroir and the other people who talked to her were very polite.
She's a "feminist."
SJW echo chambers. They spend so long escalating their rhetoric among one another without repercussion that when they finally slip out into the real world, they have no filter whatsoever and think they can be as vile as they want without a single consequence.
It's too common place. Leftist trolls thinking they are valiant feminists.
Praise Joko
Praise Petey!
FOOLS! Praise Aurene
...how do I break this to you...
Akopito Have you seen his palace? He deserves no praise...
Praise taimi
She was fired from Paizo for being a culture warrior, so it was only a matter of time till she would have brought this nonsense to Arenanet. Goodbye, and i hope Arenanet learned a valuable lesson about hiring idealogues such as her.
Don't know about the US but over here you're not necesarily allowed to dig into those things when you're reviewing applicants for a job.
Floipd it’s not her political view ms that will bar her, it’s her abuse to customers. That is out there now and that is grounds to deny work
MegaDeathRay10
Ah yes, that would be.
Job performance has nothing to do with political or ideological views, which the original comment was referring, and I was responding too.
Floipd Performance has everything to do with your job if you decide to comment on policy and ideology.
My question is what is this game without its consumers?
Criticism may not always be warranted but when the game itself is a public forum (i.e. an MMORPG) where thousands if not hundreds of thousands of people share an interest.
Then the only thing that will improve the quality of life of the "public forum" (the game) is criticism from the people who consume it.
It's then up to the community AND the devs to sift through what criticism is valid and which isn't. (Upvoting and downvoting systems, as well as reputation of the individual making the critisim, as well as the relevance of said critisim)
I'm sure that this TH-cam channel has had valid criticisms of guild wars that the devs never asked for but ULTIMATELY resulted in a dialog that shifted and challenged the devs to create a better game.
Just because something isn't always warranted doesn't mean it isn't healthy for the quality of the game.
If I were addicted to alcohol I would never ask someone to criticize me on my drinking habits. It would however benefit me to listen to said criticism if I want to live past 50.
ArenaNet has been the first company I have seen in a long time be so open to criticism. What Jessica did was completely counterintuitive to the general environment arenanet says they pride themselves in.
If she truly wanted privacy and not to be criticised she would have made her comments in an email or on her Facebook (where only people she has friended can see.)
Because she posted it knowing THE ENTIRE internet would see it.
She was hoping that post would stroke her ego, and make her look better. When instead what she got was someone disagreeing with her. (Politely at that) she was angry and disappointed. In that emotion played the gender card (to victimize herself.) In an attempt to still garner some kind of egocentric attention that helps her image.
This all boils down to one thing.
She is incredibly insecure with herself. Otherwise she would have crafted a level headed response to Derior on Twitter, and still be employed.
I also believe that your behavior in a public setting should always reflect the company you work for.
On the clock or off the clock.
An off duty cop is still a cop.. If an off duty cop robs a bank off the clock, that cops behavior still makes the precinct look bad. So the cop must be let go of for the sake other cops who don't rob banks, and are just trying to feed their families.
I'm not saying Jessica can't behave how she wants to outside of work PRIVATELY. I am saying that when she is an active consumer on her own time in a PUBLIC setting she needs to act accordingly..
If this thing goes to a courtroom arenanet will have no problems winning because she signed paper work when she "signed" on agreeing to arenanets policies.
She should have actually read her employee manual before pridefully touting how that she isn't nice on twitter..I'm sure the leadership at arenanet were giving her pass after pass and this last event was the one that crossed the line.
Who ever has the right to speak to a consumer the way she Did?? The consumer is the reason Arenanet even exists to begin with.
And you want to marginalize those people???? Good luck being employed in that field.
Anyone who works for a large national retail corperation can tell you how stupid she was in this instance. I don't slap a customer who is trying to help me be a better person. I may not need the advice or even have asked for it, and more often than not its a huge waste of my time.
But that person is still attempting to help at some level. Warranted or not.
She should have had the maturity to say "thank you for your input derior. And gotten the fuck on with her life.
SHE WOULD OF STILL HAD A JOB had she done this.....
This whole thing is about nothing more than insecurity and ego..nothing else.
Couldn't agree more.
I dunno if I can trust the comment from a guy that thought Deepstone was something about the Echovald forest Kappa
I would have brought the TH-camr to the office, sat him down next to Jessica, and said here is your new partner start working on dialog options.
Let me just throw it in here. Claiming anything is private on the internets is pretty darn naive. You, as a person, are always accountable for how people view you and how the firm wants you to be viewed as as it reflects on them. If it's right or wrong is another thing but that's just how it is. I'm fairly sure if you're busted with drug possession you'd be let down immediately because no business would be willing to risk their image in such way. Same goes for a business that heavily relies on public relations and the word of mouth for it's success such as an MMO.
And it's definitely sad to see Peter go but as you said, that was a dumb hill to pick to die on.
Chrono especially if you’re in the public light, being of some renown! You have an extra responsibility then.
It’s called social media. It has social in the name. I don’t understand how people think it would be private. It’s MEANT to be public. It’s meant to be social.
The Big Taco your right it is a public space for people to share there thoughts and for people to give their opinion in them. If she wanted it to be private she could have set her profile for friends only to reply and view.
weary stare
21:58 2 years later this is not a joke anymore...
I wandered over to their twitter accounts (out of curiosity) to find that I was already blocked, though I've never interacted with them and came to this whole thing a week late. C'est la vie.
To my mind, the only thing that couldn't have been dealt with by way of a mere apology was her "rando asshat" tweet. Publicly insulting your customers is a pretty surefire way of getting a ticket to the unemployment line.
Wow. She really did her best to push herself into the victim's roll. o_o
The saddest thing is that this seems to be her actual world-view, and she seems unwilling to be apologetic for her actions even for one second. IF there is something that should worry you about people, it's their determination to never, ever, ever, be wrong. It's the exact opposite of what you call an open mind.
It is sad, but honestly it's how most people operate. Think about Religion, Culture, Politics or anything based on "beliefs or viewpoints". It's all rooted in being blindly right. Well in MY faith, in MY culture...this and that is what is deemed "normal" and "right". Even with strong evidence leaning toward a different take...nope, I refuse to believe that because that is not MY reality. It's extremely hard to have a civil discussion that doesn't get heated fast. lol I do think, however, people are making out Jessica to be the "evil villain", but I think there may be an underlying issue that people are not aware of (probably why Peter got involved)...but her delivery was...ugh.
Yeah, first I found myself really disgusted with her unprofessional behavior and her blind judgement, but by now I am really curious what her life has been like, that she so quickly classifies something as sexism. I have to admit I cannot put myself in her shoes (as a male college student), so I cannot know. But yes, her behavior in a public space was still highly unprofessional and her release from the company thus somewhat warranted. I don't believe in villains though, just in people who may be mentally ill or un-educated.
Often times when one is so fanatical about their cause, they end up doing more damage to it instead of helping it.
I think your assumption is that the reddit thread is more important than it is. Its not that a massively upvoted reddit thread would be right, Its that a massively upvoted reddit thread is going to share a similar opinion. Lets be honest here, how many of those players are going to be working low level jobs, retail, customer service, the same kind of jobs where you get vitriol spat at you daily. ALL of those people, if they had a fraction of the infractions jessica and peter did, would be fired on the spot. Frankly thats why I believe its short-sighted to say a highly upvoted reddit thread should by itself hold weight. Instead its the small voices gathered together, that are tired of seeing others treated differently that holds weight, and as one of them I would say they are EXTREMELY priviliged to be in the position they were in,, and the way they acted threw it away for them deservedly.
Respect for so cleanly presenting this by the way. And you didn't chicken out and not have an opinion of your own, you stated what you think, but didn't make it the point of the video, it's a fine line to walk.
Really tough topic to broach but you did a stellar job, kudos.
If I spoke to my patients the way she spoke to gamers, I’d be fired too. No tolerance in my field. Be polite.
I absolutely concur...
Disregarding what publicly acceptable behavior is as a spokesperson or envoy for a company's product, or services is and should be a fire-able offense. If someone is too dim, opinionated, or hot-headed to remember that then well....duh, and no it doesn't matter if you're a man/woman/green/blue/purple....no one actually cares..Make us look bad..bu-bye...
People at my workplace HAVE been fired for mouthing off to customers this way.
One thing to remember. In this circumstance there is absolutely no excuses to act like a jackass. Good vid WP
I love how she says that the message is clear, especially to women at the company: if Reddit wants you fired, we'll fire you. Completely ignoring the fact that a man was also fired, if anything that's equality.
In the US, when it comes to how you represent the company you work for, you are always on the clock. I think this is especially the case for high profile companies like game developers. If you spew a lot of hate, racism, or sexism on social media, or if you start attack customers on social media, there are very few companies that won't take a heavy handed approach. While it is unfortunate to have 2 exemplary writers leave the story dev team, they both either forgot or made the decision to ignore the golden rule of corporate America: "You are the face of this company. (So don't make us look bad.)"
That all aside, wonderful analysis of the situation, WP. I was yet to see the story put in as fair of a light.
No matter how talented Jessica may have been, her toxicity really came around to nip her in the butt. I'm not too certain about Peter's fate, but I find it odd how willing he was to put himself out there for someone who did come off as legitimately unreasonable for harmless feedback. It's as though they've never been on the internet before. Also, yeah sexism exists. But is that her response for every little criticism that comes her way? When does it simply become an excuse to never change or look down a path of improvement? Assuming she's an artist or a writer, criticism will ALWAYS come. Sure, these were internet comments, but she turned pretty defensive over the insight of an individual who was far more polite than your average internet dweller. Honestly, she is the type of person I care little for. Leaning on the excuses of their existence as some sort of badge of accomplishment. A lot of talented people don't have 'official' titles, and for her to look down her nose at others then try to play the victim card really makes me feel no sympathy she lost her job. Maybe she learned some sort of lesson, but because of how arrogant she seems, I doubt it.
Also thanks for taking the time to share this.
The sad thing is, she didn't learn a lesson, instead she's using this situation and the victim role she's placed upon her entire life, to reinforce all of the things that make her so cancerous to begin with. The funniest part, is how the feminists are jumping to defend her, and support her behavior, they could have easily used this situation to actually help their cause, instead they're opening many peoples eyes to just how much of a joke they really are. There was a time when I used to fight for the things the left believes in, but not anymore, I can't support the authoritarian behaviors, the censorship, and the hypocrisy any longer.
"Developers - especially women developers - often have to act as customer service"
Erm, guy here, most of my family and friends are devs, from 18-65, from banks to start-ups, from financials to web development, we all deal with customer service. It's probably one of the biggest tasks daily, be it that we explain to the project manager who explains it to the customer, or the senior who directly interfaces with the customer, or even proper scoping, at no point will you escape from this. We build products for people/customers, if we don't know how our customers feel about it, then any changes are probably worthless.
Had a friend, due to a bugfix he wasn't allowed to deploy for two months due to management (long story), he spent that entire time only dealing/replying to customer support tickets. Absolutely normal for the entire industry unless you're in that top 0.1% who deal with extremely specialized stuff and only report directly to their head (and that can be argued to be customer relations as well).
Hope she doesn't get hired anywhere, would just make the working environment terrible as everyone would have to be on their toes, causing stress as everyone would be scared to talk/communicate in case it's taken in the wrong way, leading to lower productivity, less discussions and probably a higher staff turnover.
Above is all my opinion/my interpretation of what I have experienced.
I don't understand this whole "Private social media account" concept/argument - there is no such thing, how do they not realise that you are responsible for what you do/say on social media. This is a very staple part of employment, whilst you are employed with a company, the way you conduct yourself on social media does reflect upon the your employer - as such you must keep yourself in check/act professional at all times.
The only way you could feasibly circumvent this is by having alternative media accounts, something that cant be linked back to your employer??
An Aussie Guy There very much is the ability to have a private account, where for people to see and interact with your tweets you must give them permission when they request to follow you.
That said, these accounts were not private in any way or form. The word they were looking for is "personal" and even then, they list their jobs and job title as well as talk in detail about their work.
They clearly don't understand how social media works.
I'm not surprised that Jessica was fired. She was a bad attitude from the first slightly critical reply. I am, however, surprised that Peter's punishment was the same. He wasn't nearly the jerk that she was.
Side note: I dig the 45 minute to an hour long format. I wish a few other TH-camrs that I subscribe to would lengthen their show times from 10 or 15 minutes to 30 to an hour.
Fries wasn't as bad, but he was still exhibiting the same eye-roll-inducing religious zealotry that she was, and with how sick men are of being demonized by their cult, I don't think keeping him on would've been very good for public relations.
I won't question her skills in writings etc she is certainly very competent but one thing is sure, with that personality she has no place in a company and I can already feel the sighs of relieves of her former coworkers, imagine working with someone like that...
Bosko Jal Read a few tweets and you deduct that she was a cancer in the workplace. Maybe she was having a bad day and took it out on twitter?
@Big Ro
It's easy to have a bad day when you're foolishly convinced that the world is out to get you.
The problem with the whole "I'm an expert and you're not" thing is this:
1) No one knows Deroir's credentials - including Jessica Price. Her assumption that Deroir knows nothing about game development is just as arrogant as Deroir's statements ( if he is indeed someone with zero game development experience ). Attacking someone's credentials when you have no idea what those credentials are is nonsense. He could have game development experience, or he could as you said have been some 40 year old in his Mom's basement. The problem is that we do not know so we can't actually say that. You can't just go around telling people what credentials they do and don't have.
2) Attacking Deroir's credentials in the first place is a red herring. Rather than typing a proper rebuttal or addressing what Deroir says, she immediately changes the subject and starts comparing their experiences within the industry.
3) Someone doesn't have to actually work in an industry to know something about it. It's the equivalent of someone who has no cooking or food service experience going to McDonald's and saying "this burger is subpar", and then the CEO of McDonald's responding on Twitter with "Dude, I've been working in this industry for a very long time, and you haven't, so your statement is invalid." No, that's not how this works. You don't have to work at McDonald's or ANY restaurant to weigh in on the food they serve. Similarly, you don't have to work in the gaming industry for a decade to go onto Twitter and say there's a flaw with a design choice a company made in their game.
4) If Jessica has as much knowledge and experience over this guy as she claims she has, why couldn't she have just effortlessly explained why the guy was actually wrong instead of relying on fallacies to excuse herself of the responsibility of doing so? It shouldn't be difficult at all for a game industry veteran of 10+ years to defeat a 40 year old living in his Mom's basement right? So why couldn't she just shut him down with a rational argument? Is it because she really didn't feel like it, or is it because in reality, she had no real comeback to the statements he made and she escaped the situation the only way she knew how: by playing the victim card.
How was his comment arrogant? The only arrogance was from her.
If she did not want to argue with Deroir, there are several things she could have said instead.
1) Thank him for his input and ignore his comments when she goes back to work.
2) Apologize that this is not a public discussion of game content and direct him to the game official forums
3) Nothing at all, still a better answer than what she did say.
camdevtube You’re forgetting that A. She’s a woman and women don’t think or argue with logic but with feelings and B. She’s a sjw leftist so ramp up the emotional argumentation times 100.
4 years later, guess which one of the two is faring better.
27:52 ~never have I laughed more at one of WP's 'serious' videos.
Irescend I know, he’s not supposed to know we think that though. That’s our private business ( ‘.’ )
I laughed so hard there too. Cutting to the heart of the matter with sarcasm and humor in a way that I didn't expect from WP but greatly appreciated.
No, I've never watched him stream but I just might if this is more common there...
WP commenting on Drama? 1 Hour? *pulls out popcorn*
I'm from Brazil and I lived with a bank manager for a couple of months who told me he didn't have a twitter or facebook account because he was legally forgidden to do so. At the time, I kinda saw the point behind it but still was very skeptical about it because, in my head, it was like taking away his freedom of speech and individuality, kinda chaining him to this company. Now, looking at Jessica and the way she basically treated social media like a "Dear diary" and started a crusade with her own customers, it makes a lot more sense to me. People have the right to be pissed off somedays and want to vent, but doing so in public (even worst, venting about your job to people that consume your product) is far beyond unprofessional. She may want to justify it with being "a female in the industry" but I hardly believe she truly represents anyone who goes through abuse by the way she handled herself.
watching this 2 years later, story was better and better after they left lol
Take this away from the political BS and what do you have? An employee insulted and hurled damaging accusations at a customer in response to no provocation whatsoever, and excused their actions with essentially "other people were mean to me and so this random person who did nothing totally deserved all the hatred I piled on him".
Being provoked and lashing out at someone completely unrelated just because they happen to be there at the time is accepted behavior for a toddler, and deserving of a lecture to a 6-year-old. For an adult to behave that way simply isn't acceptable.
As for firing someone for that behavior, maybe you shouldn't if it was a one off event, the person was sincerely apologetic, they showed understanding of how they were at fault, and they were unlikely to commit the same action again. My understanding is that none of those criteria were met here.
I feel that if you are using a personal account to talk about something that is work related on a public platform you are inviting discussion about that topic, especially after something as public as an AMA . Her initial post was insightful, but her responce to a fan's musings was abhorrent. In my father's words; 'politeness costs you nothing, but buys you the world.' I genuinely believe Peter was just attempting to defend a colleague without seeing the full picture. His loss is a sad one, however Jessica was toxic and unempathetic to her audience. It was rigid and unmoved. SHE was wronged. SHE was being discriminated against. Instead of opening a discussion about a topic people were clearly interested in, she attacked. I am disgusted at her use of the sex card. She clearly has never felt what true discrimination is if she is using it in this context. As a woman and a gamer, I am sickened that she has become a figurehead for how we react. While wp showed tact in this video, I cant help my revulsion to this Jessica.
KittiWithKatana That’s honestly one of the things that bummed me out the most.
I’d have fired her after the TB tweets but with what she said a few days back that could have started a really interesting debate on the subject and she articulated it really well.
With it being on Twitter plenty of people would be excited to have a chance to contribute to the discussion and it’s a very important one for narrative driven MMO’s.
For some reason though she had to go ballistic and start acting unprofessional and sexist.
Frankly I’m pretty happy with how the Commander is portrayed in the story but it wouldn’t hurt her at all to listen to others perspectives and see if they may have insight she didn’t see before.
why cant certain people just act like adults?
Grumpy Dai They are emotionally immature.
victimhood is a hell of a drug.
Right? I keep seeing people say this sets a precedent. Precedent for what, to not be a garbage person? Oof what a dystopian nightmare to live in
Bleeters ye. I feel jessica deserved to be fired. Peter not so much.
To be fair the precedent was already set. SJW have been doing this for years. I mean the shit on reddit wasn't even that hot compared to the hellfire people get for not following SJW ideals. If a small loud minority of bad actors can cause people to lose their jobs and flee from there homes in threat of persecution, what makes them think they are immune to that sort of thing happening to them? Like I said, it wasn't even that bad. People were more trying to figure out her damage then anything else.
i know you might be expecting lots of hate in this comment section, but i personally love your enormous starchy titaroo's
I appreciate that there are constructive conversations happening about this situation. Thank you for your insight WP! I hope this does not cause too much damage on Anet's side of things. They have proven themselves to be a genuinely good gaming company, and it's hard to see such drama being exchanged that they do not stand for.
I play GW2, so not some rando, this was the proper decision in my mind and makes me happy to invest my time and money in this company. I do feel sorry for Peter, I think he was trying to be a loyal team member. Unfortunately, Jessica Price is so toxic she had to be removed at any cost. Since she sees everything thru her feminist lens, she was going to raise hell if she were fired. I think MO had to fire them both to avoid her obvious counterattack. My only criticism of management would be this, why did you ever hire Jessica Price in the first place? She's a toxic asset and companies should always be looking to add value.
Maybe if there is ever a sequel to Depression Quest, Jessica would be a great asset for that project, but not a game that's meant to be enjoyable.
heathallen sometimes you need to take that risk, that extreme passion can churn out some great art/work but this is unfortunately the negative side of those risks
Would be hilarious if suddenly the quality of the writing and story increased.
Developers have nothing to fear from interacting with the community, unless they just so happen to have similar views to people like Jessica.
AzureRoxe I mean it's just writing...it's not like they fired the lead programmer, net programer, or whoever does secruity for ANet... the actual devs lol.
Honestly, her comments on John Bain's passing should tell you all you need to know about her character. While it is sad that two people are now unemployed, it should be noted that it was completely warranted. In my opinion.
Good job Arenanet
Paul Mega - As long as she updates her bio to tell us where she's working so we can avoid it!
Paul Mega That's not very nice. Is making branded sandwiches something to be ashamed of?
I'm glad Arenanet has gone back to banning trolls.
WoodenPotatoes, you did a great job in this vid. Thank you for looking at it objectively and playing devil's advocate.
In this day and age, where we live in a world where customer service and customer interaction can make or break a company, this whole fiasco wouldn't fly in any company. What Jessica failed to realize is that even though she has her own private twitter feed, she is still representing the company she works for AT ALL TIMES.
The internet: WE WANT JESSICA FIRED!
Peter: Want some Fries with that?
I just would like to say that a lot of people seem to think that they were fired purely over reddit and Twitter drama. Can I just suggest that yes that's probably a large part of the reason. However let's not crap all over arenanets policies and procedures and their decision they clearly felt was necessary, Not because of just community outrage. objectively, in most jobs, not just ones where you're in the social public sphere like a game industry, if you react this way to your customer base, and you portray your company In a negative light in social media, yes, you would likely be fired. So please let's not blame it all on the community that "got them fired." unless we know the whole picture, which we dont. Let's be hypothetical and say that Jess or Peter or both, were brought into office to be reprimanded but not fired...But then then argued and kicked off and this led to their dismissal. I'm not suggesting this happened at all, but I'm pointing out that we dont know
You're very correct, we should not assume we know the WHOLE story, and we will most certainly never know it.
All sorts of things could have happened in the office that day, and some minor things even before that.
We also don't know the internal history of them as employees. It's entirely likely that they had been reprimanded for other incidents prior to this and the very public nature of this incident is simply the straw that broke the camel's back as it were.
Good point.
I know teachers use false names (normally their middle name or use maidan name) on social media to avoid being found by their students. Or to have a stage name for work like actors. It is unfortunate, but if you are in a public facing job (which devs would fall under) you will have to do this. Then you can moan about customers to your hearts content
That's not even the issue, she doesn't have to hide her identity, just don't put the company you work for, and your position in your bio, and then make a 22 tweet essay discussing the work your doing for that company and expect people to not respond as though you're speaking as a representative for that company, because the fact is, you are. Everything about this situation, is her behavior while putting herself in a situation where she is representing Arena Net. If she wants to behave a certain way on her personal twitter, she's more than welcome to, but don't bring a strictly work related discussion to your personal twitter, openly state the game and company you work for, and then go off the rails with toxicity towards customers of your employer.
Regardless of it being a private social media account, JP was a representative of Arenanet, whether on the clock or not. Cussing out a customer who monetarily supports your company, and is basically a living advertisement for your product is unacceptable and extremely unprofessional. If I did this at my job, I would get a strong verbal warning or worse. Her reaction was uncalled for and disappointing.
Freedom of Speech doesn't mean Freedom of Consequence.
In summary: Get Woke, Go Broke!
I just remember my Sylvari's dialogue during her quest.
NPC: "[Insert Helpless' NPC's name] has gone into the dark forest of eternal doom despite my warnings, where no one's ever returned from."
My Sylvari: "Oh no, isn't that dangerous?"
Me: " ... "
The term "airhead" is simply too light for whatever my character was, lol
So here's an essay that took way too many words. Sorry.
I think Jessica acted irrationally and was unwarranted in her annoyance. She lashed out, when she was the one who started a discussion on the internet. All Deroir did was add to that discussion. Jessica had good intentions when she tried to inform the community on the issues with MMO PCs. But it would seem she refuses to accept any view that is not hers. Peter seems to be on point when he talks about the game, but not anywhere else. How he would "respect" someone like her is beyond me. Maybe respect her ability to work on a video game, but as a person? She was one of those arseholes who shit talked TotalBiscuit after he died. Jessica just wanted to play the victim to vent her frustration because someone did not agree with her on the internet despite both her and Deroir having good intentions. Peter, as WP says, chose the wrong battle to fight. She was in the wrong and it made it impossible to defend her adequately, even with his own good intentions.
Also Jessica had no point when she says people think they are entitled to her time. *This is the internet* . If you did not want anyone to read and think and comment about what you were saying, you should have wrote your initial (and actually very well thought out and well written) post in your diary. But you didn't because you wanted people to know what you were saying, and to do that they have to use their time to read your words. What gives you the right to those peoples' time?
As for not being able to separate work from personal life, when you are directly communicating with the customers of your place of employment, on the topic of your business, then sorry, this is no longer just your personal life, you're back at work, even if you aren't working your shift at that moment.
Also, Peter comparing story writing to complex science, is not a good analogy. He has the concept down, but not the scale. Professional writers do tend to know more about what they are doing than amateur ones. However, the audience knows what they do and don't like in a story. Opinions and enjoyment don't play anywhere near as much of a role in launching rockets. To believe a fanbase has nothing to offer when critiquing a story, or that your opinion always overrules theirs, is a recipe for disastrous storytelling.
As for them being fired, Jessica was damaging company communication with their customers. I mourn the loss of someone who at least in the writing department seemed to have a very good idea of what they were talking about. But if her writing skills and her damage to dev and fan relations are a packaged deal she has to go. It's not worth it, especially because I get the feeling she was just getting warmed up. If she'd stayed with Arenanet, the fans would not have let it go (regardless of whether they should or shouldn't have). There would have been more altercations with the fanbase, and all would have ended badly for Arenanet. Peter on the other hand was not very aggressive to the fanbase. I think he needed a serious talking to on the topic of trying to diffuse fires rather than giving Jessica petrol even if you think it's the right thing to do. Her claim that Deroir's criticisms were the result of sexism had no basis in reality and he was wrong for defending them, even if sexism is a problem in this industry. I don't think he deserved to be fired though, and I think having a bit of backbone against your consumers is not always a bad thing. So if they fired him just because Reddit and Twitter were mad at him for associating with the wrong person, then that is wrong. But maybe they decided he was damaging relations too and they felt they had to fire him. I can't be sure.
Don't be scared to post "too many words". Never.
You summed this situation up far better than I could. I totally agree with you on every point. (Odd, I usually have at least something I disagree with in a post this long.) Thanks for saving me a ton of typing.
I speculate he was fired so she wont be able to use the sex card against ANet. Maybe legal had something to do with it or/and maybe there is some sordid story behind it. I agree, on its own, his firing was unwarranted, though it is troublesome someone that respects JP so much. She is a bitch. Clear as day.
I was already rather pissed that she was still working for Anet before this happened. She was one of the lovely devs that came out and cheered TotalBiscuit's passing on twitter. That alone should of got her the boot
+MooseChoker in a perfect world it should have, but I think Anet did the right thing not firing her for that, because it had nothing to do with Guild Wars 2 or Arenanet. If a company can fire people because of opinions irrelevant to their work, that power is extremely dangerous in the wrong hands. I'm glad she got what she deserved eventually though.
ok here is my opinion: . . .
*weary stare*
wow, so uncalled for!! check your privilege!
Wait, im confused, are the replies to this comment joking? 'Cause as far as ive read, Siccore didnt actually write anything, forget writing something sexist...
OtakuMode Engage No, just by looking at him I call tell he’s a man and all men are sexist!!!!!
Slicc and Thicc Aaaaaaaaaaand that statement wasnt sexist at all... okay, now im 100% certain you're being facetious
My employee stated they don't care about the opinions of the consumers. Justifiable firing.
Leonidas Spartan not sure if sarcasm, she broke the clause in her social media policy thats all
Where did that TotalBiscuit comment come from? That was fucked.....
Thanks for giving a very level headed take on what happened. I think you definitely highlighted some of the discussion points on the many facets on what transpired and I really appreciate an honest perspective.
Just seeing this now WP. I genuinely had no idea any of this happened. The only thing I'll say is that the people who I've met who make their Gender/Sexuality their main personality trait tend to be the shittiest people I've ever met. They always hide behind their perceived victimhood status after behind called out for disgusting behaviour.
I'm surprised to didn't add Jessica's original Twitter post that Deroir replied to...
Here's my opinion on all of this...Peter Fries' comment on "This is our private accounts" is false. Social media is ALWAYS open to the public unless you make it into a private setting closed off from the public. Meaning anything you say is always possible to be supervised from your bosses. Which obviously happened. Just because JP and PF were on their break hours doesn't mean they should take off a facade and start hating everyone. If you did that IRL everyone would think you were a jerk and you'd never get a job. This would apply to the internet.
Also sounds like the Kotaku interview was her chance to say more junk and not the truth.
I have mixed feelings about those former workers' tweets...personally I feel this was one of the better approaches to making it stop. Because I don't want more issues with that dev ever again. And if a dev with that kind of personality is in ANet I'd kinda cringe. Going to hope the newer faces are nicer and have better potential. Which, about that part of of the tweet, I don't believe the whole throwing under the bus thing, as for the inexperienced new workers I just hope they bring fresh ideas and something new to the table that ANet hasn't thought of yet. Maybe something that can spin the game into a new direction.
No matter what was said between the two, she’s in the wrong for acting rudely.
There is no way around it, yes I can understand the “I don’t want YOUR input” part but it should have been handled a lot better than what we got. After Deroir gave his input she could have simply ignored it or like he said explain why he was wrong.
So I say good that she’s gone, no company should tolerate that type of behavior from one of their staff members no matter what position they’re in or how long they have worked there.
It hurts me that she was glad that TotalBiscuit passed away. Like no matter what you thought of the guy, have some decency to respect the dead.
WP, the way in which you deal with these dramas is just... great, sincerely awesome. Love you for that too ! Keep up the amazing work
I think the only thing I can agree with is this wanting of having a personal Twitter account. Fortunately, I've learned quite early that these things are quite impossible. Specifically, when I applied for my first job using an email that was very silly and used mostly for my online communities and games. I now have 2 accounts for everything. One dedicated to RL that is associated with many aspects of my RL and my gaming accounts where I'm free to geek out and that cannot be associated (at least easily) with me. I don't use either to act like a fool but one is obviously professional and the other recreational (games, games, games, etc.) I think it's very important to have a grasp on the use of social media and I think you put it quite well in your video about how people view and use places like Twitter. This made me very sad about Peter's comments concerning Twitter being private. Great video. It's a shame the clip from Deroir's Twitch clip from the previous day didn't make it in where he specifically was praising the work of Price. He seemed actually very hurt by what happened that didn't really show in his tweets under the respectful replies.
No social skills? Don't get a social media account.
Surreal is right, it's so weird seeing this sort of content from you, but I think this will be the definitive video and sum-up of the event.
The only thing I really have to say is that Jessica's behavior would've earned her a firing from virtually any job I can think of, to the point where a lot of games media sites reporting on the incident that try to cast her in a sympathetic light have to actively skip over, like, 80% of her tweets to do it. Even communities that tend to support and parade around anything with the sexism angle are having a hard time actually defending her, and sometimes don't even try. Not only that, but she kept doubling down on it, and make it very clear that she intended to keep doing so. She was openly advertising that she was a troublemaker, so I really don't think you could argue that her firing wasn't completely justified.
The real story is Peter Fries, which is just unfortunate, especially when you take those last couple tweets in the video into account. I gotta be honest, I've always felt like the GW2 community doesn't really appreciate how good they have it when it comes to developer interaction, and always suspected that their relative access to developers inspires people to be a little extra petulant or melodramatic in their feedback because they know the devs are watching and if they play it up into this huge, game-ruining issue then maybe they'll get the devs to go back and update the Gandara meta event or something.
So if the company has a little bit of Stockholm Syndrome for their playerbase, I honestly wouldn't be too surprise. But even then, it can produce some objectively positive results. I doubt Mo would've pulled the LS teams off their own projects to work on the HoT 2.0 patch if he wasn't as responsive to reddit feedback as he was, and responding so quickly to this drama in an age where many companies try to brush stuff like this under the rug and hope people stop caring in a week is something people have responded very positively to, so it's... complicated.
I don't think PF deserved his outcome buuut he did pick quite the battle to fight xD
Also WP thank you for the very indepth video. I am thankful that you are not afraid to cover everything. I enjoy your long videos!
And in the middle of all of this I see a fellow guildmate running with you, it made me smile and I hope we can all go back to enjoy the game now.
I like gw2 alot i dont want it to die
It will not die, but maybe it will have an influence on the content cadence for the Living Story.
I was really hoping WP was going to do his whole female npc voices like from his let's plays. Just me?
ahahahahaha shh stephen those don't exist
WoodenPotatoes sexist asshat!
I get it. Not everyone is a professional in narrative construction for MMORPG's. But you should understand the gun goes both ways. She herself is not Fyodor Dostoevsky. Likening her to a vaccine scientist is a bit much. I know analogies are inaccurate by nature but it gets a little pompous. Maybe being a professional in certain career fields makes your opinion much greater than a layman's but let's not fool ourselves here. . Deroir was not commenting on brain surgery. It's too bad Twilight doesn't teach you about humility. To believe that no one outside of your industry might have an interesting point or perspective is hilarious. How delirious do you have to be to think you are better than everyone? This is called hubris. If you work in the videogame industry it does not necessarily mean you work hard or are in fact Charles Dickens. If you haven't noticed, her attitude is completely afraid of criticism and is in an infantile state. This is not healthy for obvious reasons, mainly being you will never grow. I'm not saying you have to read every piece of criticism as the word of God but criticism, even from a filthy stupid layman, will help your work and mind evolve. She isn't sure it's possible to make a CRPG character compelling yet there are games like Fallout 1 which do exactly that. I mean this is an incredibly basic but fundamental issue in her argument. Not only is it possible but it was done more than twenty years ago. It's truly wondrous that a writer in the videogame industry knows so little about her craft. I can't believe filthy plebs had the gall to voice their laughably ignorant and poorly uneducated opinions. Don't they know she is a professional in the industry and they're not? I hope you understand how this hubristic attitude is a little condescending especially when the person is referencing Twilight. If you want to alienate and anger your customers, do that. I actually empathize with her greatly but at a certain point you are rewarding unhealthy behavior. At the first sign of criticism she immediately gets on a high horse and he wasn't even scratching the surface WoodenPotatoes. This is an indication that she has a bad relationship with criticism for awhile now and thus she will not grow as a writer or a person.
hiverhythm This. All of this. Bless you. I have seen more critical, personally charged arguments in goddamn role-playing communities. ...with better result. This guy wasn't even rude. Criticism is part of creative careers, be you pro or amateur. You can't hone your craft if you won't listen to input.
Aye, I got a bit angry at the end there but when the attitude is "I don't want to hear a word from anyone outside my industry" it only invites harsher criticism.
Yes, sometimes the criticism you will get will be truly stupid. But so was the argument essay she wrote up. An elitist attitude won't do you any favors, same as playing the victim card. Sometimes criticism you get is stupid but at the same time you will get very good criticism from a perspective you couldn't have thought of on your own. It is the job of the creator to ignore trolls and find good criticism. If water doesn't flow, it becomes a swamp and if you don't accept criticism your work similarly flounders. The whole elitism and victim card response is simply a deflection from the real issues which is that her argument had some flaws. But I still thought it was an interesting argument never the less. If you are open to different criticisms your work becomes much more capable of dealing with adversity because it constantly changes and evolves.
>This is called hubris
This is called narcissistic personality disorder, to be more specific.
Yeah I probably should have been more liberal with my enter key.
I really love how you presented this info! It was really fair and thorough ~ I also appreciated how you left us with open-ended questions throughout so we could really consider the nuance of the issue, and that you were light-handed with inserting your own opinion so that we could form our own without bias.
Reminded me of why I love to watch your channel!
Regardless of how I feel about these events, this video is great. Thanks for taking the time to make something thought out and exact.
Just adding, Kotaku is one of the definitions of biased in the dictionary, these days, sadly
In closing thoughts: if you don't want to represent your company in a public space, then perhaps add a disclaimer on the comment, or you know, don't add the company you're working for in your bio. People have been fired for much less than what Jessica said. Also, I think we're not seeing the whole picture, I don't think Peter would have been fired if this was just an isolated incident. Either there were more issues internally that were not disclaimed by Anet or maybe he decided to double down on defending Price's stand, ignoring the multitude of rational replies he got, even after his holiday. You don't just let go one of your most iconic employees over some Twitter debacle. Another issue is a hole that Anet sadly dug for themselves, by using social media and player to non-player interactions as a means of marketing, the company is hit *massively* by PR slip-ups like this, so they really can't screw up when it comes to their public image.
I believe Peter was fired to pre-empt any allegations of sexism, and bias by Anet, would they have only fired Jessica for her comments. At least I believe this was partially the reason, as they clearly also wanted to make a clear statement that they do not condone her behavior, and Peter was not only defending it, but attempting to justify it in any future interactions, purely based on what the developer might be doing in real life at the moment. As though anyone was demanding their responses, sometimes people comment online just to share their feedback, I highly doubt the vast majority of comments are made with the expectation of a response, let alone feeling entitled to one. Most people are just putting their thoughts out there, and if they get a response, great, but I highly doubt he even expected one, let alone felt entitled to one.
Besides I don't even see what he said as criticism, it was just offering a different way of looking at the problem she was discussing, he wasn't criticizing her belief that "A" is the problem, only suggesting that the problem might be caused by "B" instead.
I would like to find some points to defend the devs because i don't think these stupid social media posts were worth losing 2 jobs but JP is making it really hard. In the kotaku article she didn't even consider that the things she said went a bit too far.
Why? Because they were good devs and fries had been working on the series for almost 13 years so the amount of lost knowledge is huge, there aren't many other people in arenanet who has worked for so long. It's bad for the game, nothing strange about that. But looking at your likes you're here only to jerk of on the "evil sjws getting fired" and don't give a fuck about the game.
She should have been fired when she danced on someone who died of cancer grave. I live in Wa it is a fire at will state they can fire her for any reason.
Also I am usually not glad of people being fired but I drinked to her being fired and I am happy.
When you add that you work in your twitter then its no longer your "personal twitter". You don't get to acrue people who are fans of gw2 then say this is a personal account and procedded to be rude to them for giving polite critisim. And for the record I have played gw2.
Maybe she should have bought a diary if she wanted it remain personal.
That was rich and beautiful, thank you. I was focused the entire video, and I didn't find it boring at all (to the point I felt like if you took it to another 2 hours, I'd probably stay tuned and listened), while reading the facts, pointing your opinions, yet leaving it open for all sides of view, I think you are doing wonderful job there.
Thanks for going in-depth on this. As someone who is on break from GW2 and only heard of this due to the Kotaku article, I appreciate the deep dive so I can understand what happened. Still doesn't lessen the sting of losing Fries though...