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Jessica Price has been a writer and video game designer for more than a decade. She recently worked as a narrative designer on Guild Wars 2 of ArenaNet. She also has an important Twitter presence with nearly 12,000 followers. If you're following a significant number of people in the Twitter gaming industry, chances are you've seen Price's tweets before, or even followed them yourself.
Earlier this week, Price tweeted a long thread on the unique challenges of character writing for massively multiplayer online role-playing games like Guild Wars 2 . He is full of good ideas about the differences between games with a defined main character (think Lara Croft or Nathan Drake) and games where players can create their own characters, and if you have not yet you should probably read it .
If you read Price's thread until the end, you will notice that the first response on Twitter is from @DeroirGaming a YouTuber that is part of the official ArenaNet partner program for the Guild . Wars 2 . Deroir tried to remain respectful and did not have the hostility that we found so often on social networks, but at the same time there is something about it. Disrespectful to speak to an experienced professional about his work. they've never considered the basic, entry-level ideas you lift. Deroir also does not say interaction as a dialogue or a conversation, basically giving up conflicting amateur opinions on a professional's feed and then cutting it off with a final sound "Nevertheless, I'm 39, appreciates the insightful thread! (End) "We are not saying that Price would want to discuss her line of work with a Twitter user that she does not know, or that everyone should be safe." Wait there, but if it was deroir purpose, you would not guess the way he wrote and finished his tweeter thread.
This kind of unsolicited advice is happening all the time to women on social media, especially those who work in games and technology space. It's a form of sexism because it's based on the belief that a man with experience as a consumer of a media knows more than one. woman who works in this environment. Even though it's not the conscious intent of tweets like the ones Deroir has written, it's hard for women to read it otherwise, since it happens to them, again, all the time . If you have friends in games or technologies that are women, ask them questions, and you are almost sure to hear the same story of random dudes who think they can tell them how to do their job. That's what Deroir did here, and it's disrespectful, and Price has responded in the proper manner.
Today, being a checkers game: "Let me – a person who does not work with you – explain to you how you do your job." Https://t.co/lmK0yJWqGB
– Jessica Price (@ Delafina777) July 4, 2018
like, the next asshat hike who tries to explain me the concept of branching dialogue As if, you know, having worked in the narrative game for a damn DECADE, I've never heard of it, it's installed. PSA
– Jessica Price (@Delfina777) July 4, 2018
Well, a vocal group of Guild Wars 2 fans challenged Price's answer, and almost immediately began to call her to be fired. As Nathan Grayson reports to Kotaku the official game Guild Wars 2 Reddit quickly sees messages from users refusing to support the game. Kotaku In Action, a subreddit for GamerGaters ( yes, it's about as thoughtful and reasonable as it does), added this incident to his stack of discussions on Price, which totals 14 in the last year.
Peter Fries, another author on Guild Wars 2 defended Price on his Twitter feed, in a series of tweets that have since been deleted. To show you how often women in this industry have questioned their knowledge, their expertise and even their right to work there, when a Twitter user mentions that a Reddit thread had been launched to claim Price, Fries countered sarcastically C & rsquo; is a SHOCK DEVELOPMENT that I have never seen happen to every colleague over and over again. "
ArenaNet president, Mike O. Brien, acted quickly, decisively and misguidedly, pulling both Price and Fries." July 5. In a post on a forum topic Guild Wars 2 on the situation, O & # 39; Brien wrote:
Recently, two of our employees failed to meet our standards of communication with players.Their attacks on the community were unacceptable. As a result, they are no longer with the company.
I want to be clear that the statements they 've made do not reflect at all the opinions of ArenaNet. As a company, we We always strive to have a collaborative relationship with the Guild Wars community.We appreciate your contribution.We make this game for you.
So, Price is shown determined to defend itself against the sexism of A Twitter user (no matter how unintentional), e Fries supported him vocally, and as a result, both lost their jobs. Of course, it's ArenaNet's decision to do it, but it's really a bad thing, for a number of reasons. Not only does she punish Price for defending herself, and Fries for defending a colleague, telling women that they need to worry about speaking out against sexism when they meet him. This also emboldens the most vocal critics of ArenaNet, players who threatened to stop supporting the game if the company did not yield to their demands and fired two employees for something that should not even not to be considered an offense, let alone one. These critics now have the impression of having power over the developer, as has expressed a deleted message since Reddit:
Where does ArenaNet draw the line "the customer is always right"? The specific tweets that Price has responded to may not have been intentional harassment, but as a vocal woman in game development she has already been targeted by Kotaku in Action, she is clearly aware that the threat of constant harassment in his career. Had she reacted to more overtly critical or threatening tweets, would ArenaNet have found its appropriate answer, even though Reddit, social media, and Guild Wars 2 were always full of complaints about it? Or does ArenaNet have a zero tolerance policy to defend you (or your colleagues)? This is another result of the company's bad call: not only will discontented players feel encouraged to demand change and wait for their demands, but now ArenaNet employees know that their employer will not have lost their backs. As Price tells Grayson in this Kotaku play, "The message is very clear, especially for women in the business: if Reddit wants you fired, we'll fire you."
Paste contacted ArenaNet for a comment, and his representative referred us to the article in the forum of O 'Brien. We followed by asking what they think of these endings emboldening critical fans, and specifically for their opinion on this deleted Reddit screencapped post above; we have not received an answer yet, but we will update this post if we arrive.
Garrett Martin publishes The sections comedy and games of Paste . He is on Twitter @grmartin .
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