GW 2 Devs/Playerbase Twitter Discussion

[Cloud Windfoot Omega.7485]

Alright, so I only really have a few things to say here.

Twitter is not private EVER (even dm's are not truly private)

People get to chose how to reply to others, its ALWAYS possible to give a polite response, if unwilling no response is better than a rude one.

 

When your name is tied to a company, when recognized as such you are representing that company weather you like it or not, this is not the companies choice either! Consumers will always expect someone with ties to a company to represent it, as such the actions of the supposed representative has a real effect on the company weather anyone likes it or not. These effects will always lead to a financial change may it be slight, or massive.

Since companies are in the market for making money, an employee causing a PR disaster with a well known partner makes the employee worth less money and their continued work will only cause more financial loss.

So what can be done with someone who is probably going to cost more to the company than they will bring in?

Companies are not charities, standing by their employees would probably make that money situation worse.

So it makes sense to snip off the bud before it causes real problems for them, it may have only led to a few thousand dollars of loss, but a company would rather have a good reputation and those thousand dollars.

[squallaus.8321]

I really still can't believe some people in this thread tries to make out Deroir was "harassing" Jessica Price on her PUBLIC twitter feed.

 

https://clips.twitch.tv/CrypticMistyStingrayDxCat

And it turns out that Deroir was in fact a big fan of Price as demonstrated in the Twitch clip above recorded 1 day before this whole incident happened.

Just because you are talented at your work does not give you the right to treat others like sh%t.

[Raizel.8175]

What's really sad about this is the political instrumentalization of this affair from some extremist people who can't understand that this was a necessary economical decission. This makes the whole situation even worse for the playerbase, for the company and the allegedly marginalized group of people. It's sad to see that there are so many people who can not develop a differentiated opinion and who can only think in black-or-white-schemes in such a colorful world as ours.

[LPTimme.6173]

I just hope Anet and the devs keep talking to us, because one thing i love(d) about this company was their communication with us (excluding hate and accusations of course^^) and i would be pretty sad if they stop talking to us the way they always did because of this JP incident.

 

Love u all Anet <3

[apharma.3741]

> @"CursedShaitan.9720" said:

> AreanaNet just lost a 13 year customer over their decision to fire her. Disciplinary action is one thing but firing was excessive. I will be deleting all my characters in both Gw2 and GW including my 13 year old Necromancer with FoW armor that has thousands of hours of play time logged. My single most used player character in any game ever. I was honestly so excited to return to my favorite game franchise with path of fire....but first they insult Jeremey Soule, then they screw over their lead dungeon designer, now they expect their female employees to politely tolerate sexism. As a kid I actually used to dream about working for ArenaNet as a developer. The prospect genuinely excited me for years, but now as I approach the end of my education I see we do no share values and I can not associate with your company in anyway.

 

This is a public forum so I am well within my rights to talk to you as this is a discussion, correct?

 

So let me offer you some good advise for after your studies. When you're wearing the company colours even if you're off work, you're still going to be associated with your company to some degree.

If you insult and berate your customers they will stop being your customers and you will lose money, potentially going out of business.

 

So if you took offence to me offering this advise I would like to think you'd be the adult you are and either ignore it, offer counterpoints (though this is based on my experience post masters) or a polite thanks. What happened in the case of JP was she proclaimed sexism, that she's being harassed by men well before the vile tweets from immature fans while publicly showing the company colours by not only putting it proudly on her twitter **but actively posting an insightful article on GW2 character design** which makes her very much on the clock. What she said was at least pressing very close to the terms slander and libel which are quite often taken to courts by companies, her follow up articles with the extremist Kotaku likewise isn't done as an opinion piece and can be seen as slander/libel.

 

https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/slander

https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/libel

[Willllson.1057]

I will not sit here and throw my opinion around or hate on or shame anyone as it will in no way shape or form change what happened, what i will say is in a day and age where more and more gaming companies put business first and customers second thank you for being a positive example and protecting your fans it is a breath of fresh air. I 100% stand by you and will continue to support you in the future

[Greyraven.4258]

Thought to myself I'll just go play GW2....and when I come back this whole sad mess will have blown over.

 

Oh well.....so much for thinking that the internet could do anything but escalate, and yet not much has changed in my mind

 

I still have a tremendous amount of respect for Deroir and I really hope he continues to have success, [as we can see by his tweets and by his own admiration of JP](https://clips.twitch.tv/CrypticMistyStingrayDxCat "as we can see by his tweets and by his own admiration of JP") he did absolutely nothing wrong.

 

Arenanet and Mike O still made the right call.

 

Kotaku, Rock Paper Shotgun, and Polygon has learned not one solitary thing from GG, in fact they are tripling down and reinforcing their echo chamber as they continue to lose relevancy despite that their relevancy is already less than zero now.

 

Jessica while being very good at what she does, isn't professional enough to meet fairly basic corporate guidelines of _"Hey lets treat the folks who buy our products with a modicum of respect and not go unhinged **especially** when a fan makes some very innocuous remarks while gushing about how great you are"_ Also she has actually poured gas on what's left of her career by making ridiculous allusions that somehow Arenanet is sexist and not progressive.

 

Look folks, I worked in the industry when people like myself were openly harassed and it was called "office culture" and you met that bigotry by turning out work that was better than every accepted person in the development house. I have met and talked to many people at Arenanet......and I would come out of retirement to work for them.....if say I blew my life savings in Vegas.

 

Anyway the internet is full of horrible people, and GW2 still is a community of tolerance and acceptance of all people and regardless if you are player or employee and aren't down with that.....you will be shown the door.

 

That my friends is equality and a truly progressive authoritative base.

 

Now if you'll excuse me I have an alt Necro to level.

 

 

 

[Dengar.1785]

> @"morrolan.9608" said:

> There's not always 2 sides to everything, there were undoubtedly some who totally believed in the ethics explanation but there people driving the controversy were only interested in harassment.

>

So people like you keep saying but never providing any evidence.

 

[franzi.8513]

> @"Frenzify.6832" said:

> So people are upset that a woman who has proven herself to be human garbage was fired? Even if the community did gang up on her, do you guys not think that outrage against someone twisting a fan's words and using it against them is warranted? Perhaps not to the extreme sense that I'm gathering from these comments, but this woman doesn't get any of my sympathy at all, as she's shown she's just not a pleasant person at all. I'm seeing comments of sexism, but do you know what else is sexist? Thinking that any man who tries to engage you in a discussion, with opposing views, is trying to tell you how to do you job, and "mansplain," even if he's trying to converse with you in the politest manner possible. Yes, sexism exists. It exists for both sides.

 

"Mansplaining" doesn't mean that a man is not polite. That sort of "I'm just trying to help you by explaining you politely how you have to do your job" can be sexist, too. Someone in my family worked in a male-dominated job and experienced polite mansplaining all the time. She is not a feminist at all, but even she was annoyed about this behavior. Even though she had a lot of experience in her business, she was sometimes treated like an idiot by her male colleagues ... no matter how polite they were. It's a really big issue in some jobs. I'm sure that men can experience something similar when they work in female-dominated jobs (for example as kindergarten teachers), but just because "womansplaining" exists, too, it doesn't mean that "mansplaining" is okay and must be tolerated.

 

Jessica Price was part of the narrative TEAM, which means that many people were responsible for the story. But Deroir posted his critique on her personal Twitter account even though she never asked for his critique. This gave Jessica the feeling that Deroir gave her the fault for the (in his opinion) bad story just because she was a woman. Of course it wasn't Deroir's intention to hurt her feelings in any way and I'm sure that he is no sexist ... but I can understand why Jessica had the feeling this was mansplaining. When you experience sexism all the time, you start to feel more sensitive about such things.

 

Peter Fries didn't react stupid or wrong. He tried to defend one of her colleagues who felt treated sexist, bullied and pushed into a corner. He had very good intentions and he did the right thing. I wish there were more people like him on this world who don't look away in such a situation. It was absolutely wrong that he was fired. Now employees of Anet and other companies will surely think twice before they defend their colleagues who are bullied or treated sexist ... great.

[Dengar.1785]

> @"franzi.8513" said:

> > @"Frenzify.6832" said:

> > So people are upset that a woman who has proven herself to be human garbage was fired? Even if the community did gang up on her, do you guys not think that outrage against someone twisting a fan's words and using it against them is warranted? Perhaps not to the extreme sense that I'm gathering from these comments, but this woman doesn't get any of my sympathy at all, as she's shown she's just not a pleasant person at all. I'm seeing comments of sexism, but do you know what else is sexist? Thinking that any man who tries to engage you in a discussion, with opposing views, is trying to tell you how to do you job, and "mansplain," even if he's trying to converse with you in the politest manner possible. Yes, sexism exists. It exists for both sides.

>

> "Mansplaining" doesn't mean that a man is not polite. That sort of "I'm just trying to help you by explaining you politely how you have to do your job" can be sexist, too. Someone in my family worked in a male-dominated job and experienced polite mansplaining all the time. She is not a feminist at all, but even she was annoyed about this behavior. Even though she had a lot of experience in her business, she was sometimes treated like an idiot by her male colleagues ... no matter how polite they were. It's a really big issue in some jobs. I'm sure that men can experience something similar when they work in female-dominated jobs (for example as kindergarten teachers), but just because "womansplaining" exists, too, it doesn't mean that "mansplaining" is okay and must be tolerated.

>

> Jessica Price was part of the narrative TEAM, which means that many people were responsible for the story. But Deroir posted his critique on her personal Twitter account even though she never asked for his critique. This gave Jessica the feeling that Deroir gave her the fault for the (in his opinion) bad story just because she was a woman. Of course it wasn't Deroir's intention to hurt her feelings in any way and I'm sure that he is no sexist ... but I can understand why Jessica thought that and hat the feeling this was mansplaining.

>

> Peter Fries didn't react stupid or wrong. He tried to defend one of her colleagues who felt treated sexist, bullied and pushed into a corner. He had very good intentions and he did the right thing. I wish there were more people like him on this world who don't look away in such a situation. It was absolutely wrong that he was fired. Now employees of Anet and other companies will surely think twice before they defend their colleagues who are bullied or treated sexist ... great.

 

Let me tell you a little secret: It's not just women who get things explained to them that they by all rights should already know. Men get that too. All the time. You know the main difference? They don't complain about it. Except me, because I have ludicrously thin skin. I complain about it. Then I am made the fool. That's how it works. You act the fool, you get made the fool.

 

Also, whether she felt bullied or not is irrelevant. Don't care about how she *feels*, what matters is that nobody was bullying her, and no one was being sexist to her.

 

 

 

Also, can somebody **please** provide to me some kind of quote where she is actually 'being told how to do her job'? This part has been puzzling me for days now.

[Magnus Godrik.5841]

Wow.... now we will probably get even less communication from anet. And for good reason your job may be on the line. What effect will this have? Will the next episode get postponed? Will the playerbase eventually just kill the game? Why was the sexism card even pulled? I have no idea why she just went ape shit for comments that were far from offensive. And i also have no idea why some community members blew it up to a ridiculous level with threats. The game did recieve a huge amount of publicity of the ordeal. But was it for the good. Regardless i understand why anet had to let them go. Even when your offwork you still represent the company. I just hope the letting them go was part of the company policy and not for the reddit users.

[franzi.8513]

> @"Dengar.1785" said:

> > @"franzi.8513" said:

> >It's a really big issue in some jobs. I'm sure that men can experience something similar when they work in female-dominated jobs (for example as kindergarten teachers), but just because "womansplaining" exists, too, it doesn't mean that "mansplaining" is okay and must be tolerated.

> >

> Let me tell you a little secret: It's not just women who get things explained to them that they by all rights should already know. Men get that too. All the time. You know the main difference? They don't complain about it. Except me, because I have ludicrously thin skin. I complain about it. Then I am made the fool. That's how it works. You act the fool, you get made the fool.

>

 

Have you even read my comment?

[Dengar.1785]

@"Magnus Godrik.5841", there is no reason for employees to fear for their jobs. The only people who get fired are those who treat their customers like trash.

[morrolan.9608]

> @"Greyraven.4258" said:

> Arenanet and Mike O still made the right call.

 

I don't think so at least not in terms of the overall health of the game and its PR. By their actions they have completely lost control of the narrative. JP is free to spin her story, they've allowed extremist elements to associate themselves with the game and left themselves open to negative stories from the gaming media. You may say the media is in the wrong but it doesn't really matter they will spin a story the way they want.

[Dengar.1785]

> @"franzi.8513" said:

> > @"Dengar.1785" said:

> > > @"franzi.8513" said:

> > >It's a really big issue in some jobs. I'm sure that men can experience something similar when they work in female-dominated jobs (for example as kindergarten teachers), but just because "womansplaining" exists, too, it doesn't mean that "mansplaining" is okay and must be tolerated.

> > >

> > Let me tell you a little secret: It's not just women who get things explained to them that they by all rights should already know. Men get that too. All the time. You know the main difference? They don't complain about it. Except me, because I have ludicrously thin skin. I complain about it. Then I am made the fool. That's how it works. You act the fool, you get made the fool.

> >

>

> Have you even read my comment?

 

Have you read mine?

 

By which I mean to say, I have no idea what you're referring to. I most certainly have read your comment, I have no idea why you would think that I didn't.

[Dengar.1785]

> @"morrolan.9608" said:

> > @"Greyraven.4258" said:

> > Arenanet and Mike O still made the right call.

>

> I don't think so at least not in terms of the overall health of the game and its PR. By their actions they have completely lost control of the narrative. JP is free to spin her story, they've allowed extremist elements to associate themselves with the game and left themselves open to negative stories from the gaming media. You may say the media is in the wrong but it doesn't really matter they will spin a story the way they want.

 

This will all blow over in less than a month.

[Cyto.9401]

> @"Dengar.1785" said:

> > @"franzi.8513" said:

> > > @"Frenzify.6832" said:

> > > So people are upset that a woman who has proven herself to be human garbage was fired? Even if the community did gang up on her, do you guys not think that outrage against someone twisting a fan's words and using it against them is warranted? Perhaps not to the extreme sense that I'm gathering from these comments, but this woman doesn't get any of my sympathy at all, as she's shown she's just not a pleasant person at all. I'm seeing comments of sexism, but do you know what else is sexist? Thinking that any man who tries to engage you in a discussion, with opposing views, is trying to tell you how to do you job, and "mansplain," even if he's trying to converse with you in the politest manner possible. Yes, sexism exists. It exists for both sides.

> >

> > "Mansplaining" doesn't mean that a man is not polite. That sort of "I'm just trying to help you by explaining you politely how you have to do your job" can be sexist, too. Someone in my family worked in a male-dominated job and experienced polite mansplaining all the time. She is not a feminist at all, but even she was annoyed about this behavior. Even though she had a lot of experience in her business, she was sometimes treated like an idiot by her male colleagues ... no matter how polite they were. It's a really big issue in some jobs. I'm sure that men can experience something similar when they work in female-dominated jobs (for example as kindergarten teachers), but just because "womansplaining" exists, too, it doesn't mean that "mansplaining" is okay and must be tolerated.

> >

> > Jessica Price was part of the narrative TEAM, which means that many people were responsible for the story. But Deroir posted his critique on her personal Twitter account even though she never asked for his critique. This gave Jessica the feeling that Deroir gave her the fault for the (in his opinion) bad story just because she was a woman. Of course it wasn't Deroir's intention to hurt her feelings in any way and I'm sure that he is no sexist ... but I can understand why Jessica thought that and hat the feeling this was mansplaining.

> >

> > Peter Fries didn't react stupid or wrong. He tried to defend one of her colleagues who felt treated sexist, bullied and pushed into a corner. He had very good intentions and he did the right thing. I wish there were more people like him on this world who don't look away in such a situation. It was absolutely wrong that he was fired. Now employees of Anet and other companies will surely think twice before they defend their colleagues who are bullied or treated sexist ... great.

>

> Let me tell you a little secret: It's not just women who get things explained to them that they by all rights should already know. Men get that too. All the time. You know the main difference? They don't complain about it. Except me, because I have ludicrously thin skin. I complain about it. Then I am made the fool. That's how it works. You act the fool, you get made the fool.

>

> Also, whether she felt bullied or not is irrelevant. Don't care about how she *feels*, what matters is that nobody was bullying her, and no one was being sexist to her.

>

>

>

> Also, can somebody **please** provide to me some kind of quote where she is actually 'being told how to do her job'? This part has been puzzling me for days now.

 

this. i call this complain privilege.

 

[seinka.4823]

> @"franzi.8513" said:

> just because "womansplaining" exists, too, it doesn't mean that "mansplaining" is okay and must be tolerated.

 

Neither of those exists.

[muffi.3964]

LOL@People citing KOTAKU. Those are not even real journalists, their writing style is horrible and they have less viewers than people like pewdiepie. Gaming journalism is dead for a reason.

[morrolan.9608]

> @"Dengar.1785" said:

> > @"morrolan.9608" said:

> > > @"Greyraven.4258" said:

> > > Arenanet and Mike O still made the right call.

> >

> > I don't think so at least not in terms of the overall health of the game and its PR. By their actions they have completely lost control of the narrative. JP is free to spin her story, they've allowed extremist elements to associate themselves with the game and left themselves open to negative stories from the gaming media. You may say the media is in the wrong but it doesn't really matter they will spin a story the way they want.

>

> This will all blow over in less than a month.

 

Maybe but I'm fairly sure there will be ongoing damage in terms of industry perception.

[Dengar.1785]

> @"morrolan.9608" said:

> > @"Dengar.1785" said:

> > > @"morrolan.9608" said:

> > > > @"Greyraven.4258" said:

> > > > Arenanet and Mike O still made the right call.

> > >

> > > I don't think so at least not in terms of the overall health of the game and its PR. By their actions they have completely lost control of the narrative. JP is free to spin her story, they've allowed extremist elements to associate themselves with the game and left themselves open to negative stories from the gaming media. You may say the media is in the wrong but it doesn't really matter they will spin a story the way they want.

> >

> > This will all blow over in less than a month.

>

> Maybe but I'm fairly sure there will be ongoing damage in terms of industry perception.

 

Doubt it. People forget. Especially things that don't make any sense. What happened is employees expressed non-employee-like behavior, which got them canned. (or something like that, we don't know what really happened) Stuff like this never makes the history books.

 

 

Not to mention the vast majority of the playerbase either does not know, care, or simply support Anet in their decision.

[Greyraven.4258]

> @"morrolan.9608" said:

> > @"Greyraven.4258" said:

> > Arenanet and Mike O still made the right call.

>

> I don't think so at least not in terms of the overall health of the game and its PR. By their actions they have completely lost control of the narrative. JP is free to spin her story, they've allowed extremist elements to associate themselves with the game and left themselves open to negative stories from the gaming media. You may say the media is in the wrong but it doesn't really matter they will spin a story the way they want.

 

Maybe, but relevance of said media is in question by their own sketchy past........ Deroir has already moved on and is having a blast with Beatle races, Mike O has made his statement and has gone back to steering GW2, the game is still packed....the only folks who haven't moved on are the perpetually outraged and the victim who always plays the victim card.

[Deihnyx.6318]

> @"morrolan.9608" said:

> > @"Greyraven.4258" said:

> > Arenanet and Mike O still made the right call.

>

> I don't think so at least not in terms of the overall health of the game and its PR. By their actions they have completely lost control of the narrative. JP is free to spin her story, they've allowed extremist elements to associate themselves with the game and left themselves open to negative stories from the gaming media. You may say the media is in the wrong but it doesn't really matter they will spin a story the way they want.

 

The medias are one sided. They only got the story of the fired dev. She says she was harassed, so they report she was harassed, and so people get shocked and immediately call "the community" out for being a bunch of alt rights and I dont know what else.

Its like... to make an analogy with a now famous tweet... they know a lot less about a situation, but somehow they know better what happened and are harassing the whole community by calling us alt rights, sexists and I dont know what else. Is "newsplaining" a new word now?

Im sick in my stomach to be called out right because I happen to support a decision made by a game.

[Solace.1934]

Is this thread literally all speculation or is there some official and DETAILED post on -why- these two employees were fired? You people realize there could be more than just tweets if an official statement was not made -- like how they affect the company and not only what was posted on twitter, right? Like I'm reading PR, politics, etc but does no one actually care what is going on inside the actual company rather than how it affects YOU?

 

For all anyone knows this issue could have been building for a while and this was the last offense. Like, there are so many assumptions being made that it blows my mind how confident some of these posts are lol. Am I missing information? Because I've been looking for sources for all these posts and I can't find anything that supports these claims other than pure conjecture.

[Dengar.1785]

Personally I'm just here to observe the conversation, and join in on it when there's a conversation to be had. I'm not worried about GW2's future in the slightest.

 

> @"Solace.1934" said:

> Is this thread literally all speculation or is there some official and DETAILED post on -why- these two employees were fired? You people realize there could be more than just tweets if an official statement was not made -- like how they affect the company and not only what was posted on twitter, right? Like I'm reading PR, politics, etc but does no one actually care what is going on inside the actual company rather than how it affects YOU?

>

> For all anyone knows this issue could have been building for a while and this was the last offense. Like, there are so many assumptions being made that it blows my mind how confident some of these posts are lol. Am I missing information? Because I've been looking for sources for all these posts and I can't find anything that supports these claims other than pure conjecture.

 

Well, we know that MO, while representing Anet, has expressed disapproval of their behavior, followed by confirmation that they are no longer with the company. So obviously this has had something to do with it. Whether there are other factors at play, we don't know, and isn't any of anyone's business.