Culture Guild Wars 2 writers fired following heated Twitter exchange with streamer - Gamergate, the gift that keeps on giving.

Guild Wars 2 developer ArenaNet recently parted ways with writers Jessica Price and Peter Fries, who were involved in a contentious Twitter discussion with Guild Wars 2 Twitch streamer and YouTuber Deroir, who is also partnered with ArenaNet through its content creator program.

On Tuesday, July 3, Price wrote a lengthy Twitter thread about writing for MMOs, particularly Guild Wars 2, and why player characters are uniquely difficult to write compared to protagonists in singleplayer games. To put it simply, she discussed how to give characters personality in a way that also leaves room for players to create their own character. In a reply to Price's thread, Deroir argued that branching dialogue options could give players more ways to define their character's personality, overcome the MMO-specific constraints Price discussed, and improve the roleplaying potential of Guild Wars 2.

Yesterday Price highlighted Deroir's reply in a series of tweets suggesting he was uninformed and that his reply was condescending.

Among those tweets, the one that's drawn the most ire, particularly on the Guild Wars 2 subreddit, is Price's remark about "rando asshats" talking down to experienced writers and developers.

Responding to the mounting criticism of these tweets, Peter Fries defended Price's position in a now-deleted tweet which is archived here, saying "she never asked for [Deroir's] feedback".

For his part, Deroir said that he "meant no disrespect" and simply wanted to create "dialogue and discussion" with Price. He also apologized for any offense his argument may have caused.

In a post to the Guild Wars 2 forums, in a thread explicitly about Price and Fries' tweets, ArenaNet president Mike O'Brien characterized the statements as "attacks on the community," saying "two of our employees failed to uphold our standards of communicating with players" and that those employees are "no longer with the company." O'Brien also said "the statements they made do not reflect the views of ArenaNet at all."

It's no grand secret that game developers, especially women, are regularly targeted by fans who want to lash out, condescend or place blame, to say nothing of the insults, threats and other toxicity routinely hurled their way. That being said, this incident was not on the level of the harassment maelstroms we've seen in the past. A developer explained their writing philosophy, a partnered content creator offered feedback, and that developer responded somewhat rudely. Ordinarily that would be the end of it, perhaps followed by a round of apologies or someone stepping away from their role temporarily, but in this case ArenaNet felt the need to immediately fire the employees involved.

And the usual assclowns are out in full force:

https://www.pcgamer.com/amp/guild-w...lowing-heated-twitter-exchange-with-streamer/

 

[mindlessobserver]

Kotaku and Polygon really have no shame. I mean, I knew this already, but to see them not giving any shit about pushing the SJW narrative even in a case where it's obviously unwarranted is breathtaking.

 

[Haramburger]

'Ha look at all of these socially awkward who can't get laid, you nerd virgins!'.

There's something to be said here for players taking turns putting on their most scandalous vanity outfits in-game and cybering each other in the dark corners of their favorite capital cities with alternating /kneel & /lay emotes, but that would not be a convenient part of the narrative

 

[AnOminous]

Remember, who pays these idiots' paychecks? You do. Don't pay to be shit on by these entitled fucks who think they deserve free money for the behavioral equivalent of shitting on the floor. If they act like jackasses, fire them.

Let them get their money from fat fucks like Bob Chimpman and see how long they stay in business.

 

[Fagnacious D]

She really can not figure out why she was fired can she. Like, even after being told why, in plain English, she's still completely clueless as to how this all happened.

It's actually sort of sad that having a vagina is her entire personality and identity.

She just pretends she doesn't know and cries about goober geiger because that will get her more fame and maybe a (better) job.
She wants to act as if she's 100% innocent so some white knights can swoop in and defend her against the mysogonerds who can't stand women in any industry.

 

[Elwood P. Dowd]

Well, its what happened with Ghostbusters, which basically killed Sony Studios. It killed the Star Wars brand. It killed that shit Ocean's 8 remake, if Marvel Comics wasn't supported by Papa Disney, it'd be dead as fuck by now, selling off properties to stay afloat.

Ocean's 8 actually looks like it might have done okay. $237 million worldwide gross on a production budget of $70 million. There might be some shenanigans lurking in that production budget number, since a number that low means Bullock's usual 8 figure payday had to either have not happened or possibly have been deferred to the back end somehow. But somebody somewhere was on top of a movie like this having a relatively limited appeal. The budget was literally half of Ghostbusters2016.

 

[Secret Asshole]

It couldn't have done that well as a lot of articles came out blaming its failure on sexism as well as its poor reviews. So I have a feeling there's more to the story than those numbers. If it did fine, we wouldn't have seen that. We'd have seen dozens of articles praising it and shit.

Also fucking lol at this cunt. She's fucking unbelievable. I totally believe that recruiters are coming out of the woodwork to hire her and game devs are angry about this. This dumb bitch is so fucking stupid. If its true that game development professors are steering people away from ArenaNet, then good. Nobody wants those faggots.

There's also no way this was the first time this stupid cunt did something like this. I imagine she was a fucking nightmare to work with. Turning EVERYTHING into a gender issue. Her ass was not professional, she was discussing her work. And this stupid bitch thinks Twitter is a private space.

God, I loathe cunts like these. I really want them to team up and form their own companies. Go woke, go fucking broke, you cunts. Hire all the soyboy feminists out of this industry so we know where all the rapists and stupid cunts are. Nobody likes you. Nobody wants you in this industry and I don't have to buy your fucking shit.

And again, fucking GamerGate. AGAIN. Holy shit, shoot yourself you spastic cunt.

 

[Pubic Enemy #1]

She really can not figure out why she was fired can she. Like, even after being told why, in plain English, she's still completely clueless as to how this all happened.

It's actually sort of sad that having a vagina is her entire personality and identity.

It's kind of hard to look in the mirror and admit that you are kind of a massive festering cunt. People will do all sorts of mental gymnastics to avoid coming to that realisation. I think deep down she knows - she obviously isn't stupid. Lacking any form of common sense, class, social skills, and manners, definitely, which she tries to hide with her overly aggressive #tooreal empowered woman shit, but she's smart enough to understand it on some level. She just doesn't want to do the introspection to deal with it, much easier to sperg about how you're a woman in a man's world etc.

When King of the Normies Yyyyyyyyong is explicitly calling you a fucking liar you know you have issues though. I don't doubt that women do have to deal with shit that men don't in all kinds of industries, which is why it makes me Mad On The Internet when someone hijacks that stuff to cover for their own shit behaviour.

 

[Munchingonfish]

Remember the time the Star Wars Galaxies fans bullied one of the game-breaking NGE developers to suicide? That was a really bad update for the game tbh, it really killed it.

While his brother does say that SWG had nothing to do with his death, it can be said with much certainty that the abuse thrown out him played at least some part.

Clearly, the author of GamePolitics.com knew more about his mental state than the guy's own brother.

 

[Oh Shit I'm Sorry]

View attachment 492368


https://gamasutra.com/view/news/321...have_chosen_not_to_engage_on_social_media.php (https://archive.fo/rhxiC)

I love the leaps of idiot logic these people use to try and convince themselves that Jessica is somehow the victim after it was her own actions that got her shitcanned. Like there was no way Jessica COULDN'T act like a cunt to one of her game's biggest streamers. She simply HAD to do it. It was all the "harassment campaign"'s (that only started after she flipped out) fault.

Truly, nothing shows how much you respect women like treating them as emotionally fragile children who possess no agency of their own and need to be exempt from the same laws and rules the other gender is subject to.

Spoiler

On a side-note it's funny seeing Blob defending her because she was shitcanned for the exact same reason he was: refusing to act in a mature manner on social media.
Only difference is there was no huge shitfit thrown after he was fired. I wonder why.

 

[RodgerDodger]

Ocean's 8 actually looks like it might have done okay. $237 million worldwide gross on a production budget of $70 million. There might be some shenanigans lurking in that production budget number, since a number that low means Bullock's usual 8 figure payday had to either have not happened or possibly have been deferred to the back end somehow. But somebody somewhere was on top of a movie like this having a relatively limited appeal. The budget was literally half of Ghostbusters2016.

It couldn't have done that well as a lot of articles came out blaming its failure on sexism as well as its poor reviews. So I have a feeling there's more to the story than those numbers. If it did fine, we wouldn't have seen that. We'd have seen dozens of articles praising it and shit.

Also fucking lol at this cunt. She's fucking unbelievable. I totally believe that recruiters are coming out of the woodwork to hire her and game devs are angry about this. This dumb bitch is so fucking stupid. If its true that game development professors are steering people away from ArenaNet, then good. Nobody wants those faggots.

There's also no way this was the first time this stupid cunt did something like this. I imagine she was a fucking nightmare to work with. Turning EVERYTHING into a gender issue. Her ass was not professional, she was discussing her work. And this stupid bitch thinks Twitter is a private space.

God, I loathe cunts like these. I really want them to team up and form their own companies. Go woke, go fucking broke, you cunts. Hire all the soyboy feminists out of this industry so we know where all the rapists and stupid cunts are. Nobody likes you. Nobody wants you in this industry and I don't have to buy your fucking shit.

And again, fucking GamerGate. AGAIN. Holy shit, shoot yourself you spastic cunt.

It didn’t do bad for its budget. But it substantially underperformed what they promised, and only made a fraction of what the male led movies did. When the entire point was to prove how much better movies staring women in testosterone charged male roles will do. The problem wasn’t that the movie lost money. It is that it proved the narrative wrong, again.

And that’s the heart of it. The core consumer for these types of properties isn’t buying what these ideologically compromised merchants are attempting to force sell them. The customer knows what the customer wants, and these sorts of things are not it. The customer has grown sick of paying for nonstop abuse and is taking HIS money elsewhere. There is no magical Woke customer base willing to pay for shit like Jessica Price. Cudos to Arenanet’s execs for realizing that right away and dealing with the problem quickly and to their customers benefit.

 

[Munchingonfish]

https://twitter.com/Delafina777/status/894937732174159873

 

[Gordon Cole]

Yeah, this sounds like an overreaction.

Also one of the most asskissing articles I've ever read:

Last week, ArenaNet management fired two workers: one for responding defensively on Twitter to a non-industry community member who she perceived as explaining her job to her, and the other for defending her response.

It is important to understand the context in which women, people of color, and queer folks regularly exist while online, which is often a seemingly endless deluge of people commenting on, critiquing, and offering unsolicited advice on their craft. The game industry also has a well-documented history of predominantly women and marginalized workers being tormented into abandoning social media, driven out of their workplaces, and sometimes even forced to leave the industry altogether. Within this context it is grossly unfair to expect a veteran narrative designer like Jessica to be anything but defensive about these kinds of player and developer interactions.

Regardless of how one feels about Price's actions and regardless of where one draws the line between rudeness and exasperation in Price's tweets, the fact of the matter is that there is an entire spectrum of responses ArenaNet could have taken, but chose not to. The company could have done anything from pulling their employee aside and discussing their behavior, to giving them an internal reprimand and offered them additional training. Instead, ArenaNet, under the clearly inadequate leadership of Mike O'Brien, made the knee-jerk reaction to fire a member of their team. No dialogue, no nuance, no empathy.

Even more startling was the firing of Peter Fries, who simply offered a polite, measured, and well-reasoned defense of his coworker. ArenaNet management's firing of Fries was not for the benefit of company culture or Guild Wars 2, their goal was to send a message to a vocal minority of players and to make a public example out of an employee.

ArenaNet’s actions contribute to normalizing a work environment in which employees’ personal social media accounts are monitored, where they are expected to perform PR for their company outside of working hours (with no compensation whatsoever, regardless of whether or not it is part of their job description) and where they can be arbitrarily fired with no warning.

Game Workers Unite stands with Jessica Price and Peter Fries, and emphatically denounces the actions of ArenaNet management.

The unethical firings of Price and Fries, together with the reactions of toxic individuals inside and outside of the Guild Wars player community, have had a chilling effect across the industry. Countless workers have been harassed over social media and many are concerned about the implications of this event, some going so far as to delete their personal social media accounts in fear of similar retaliation from hostile players and bosses. ArenaNet has signaled to the entire industry that our job security can be, and almost certainly will be, imperiled by the most vitriolic and volatile players. This event carries echoes of Gamergate, and will only embolden harassers further.

If you are considering your online security in the aftermath of these events, we recommend consulting Crash Override’s resource center for information on how to protect your social media activity.

We suggest everyone read this excellent Polygon interview with Jessica Price that goes into a great deal of depth on the situation from Jessica’s perspective.

Game Workers Unite was founded out of a need to address the widespread unethical and unlawful workplace conditions in our industry. We are dedicated to building a better, safer industry for all of us. If you share our vision as well, consider joining Game Workers Unite.

In solidarity,
Game Workers Unite International

https://www.gameworkersunite.org/blog/statement-on-the-arenanet-firings (https://archive.fo/qUITt)

 

[Lensherr]

So let me get this straight:

> Video game developer details the difficulties she's had writing games on a public forum
> Being a public forum, naturally someone responds and offers some advice on how said developer can hone her craft
> Developer then rudely responds to this person who merely tried to offer some constructive advice
> Developer's boss realizes that this could engender a bad image for their company, proceed to fire her
> Soyboys and dangerhairs start screeching about soggy knees and GlomerGoot just because this developer happened to be part of the SJW clique

Anyone who's worked a day in their life should know that you need to hold your tongue and/or turn the other cheek when dealing with customers, and prioritize satisfying their needs. :powerlevel:I learned this the hard way at my first job when I got fired for simply ignoring the customers at the place I was working:powerlevel:. But since most of these chucklefucks probably subsist on Hipster Welfare and/or Mommy and Daddy's trust fund, and thus have likely never worked an actual job in their life, they fail to understand this fundamental principle: that the customer is always right.

 

[Pubic Enemy #1]

All this is part of the ridiculous oversimplification that both sides of the political debate are engaged in. It's an easy narrative to spin that a woman got fired for being a woman, and I don't doubt that it does happen regularly and that women who do speak out about workplace issues get labelled as "uppity" or whatever. However I just don't see how anyone can honestly look at this and say she wasn't fired for being a dickhead. The constant passive-aggressive sniping in that Polygon interview (the whole bit about how she has recruiters, game devs, ArenaNet staff contacting her) shows she's just doubling down.

 

[TheMonkeyMan]

This is the only article that I could find that mentioned Price's response to TotalBiscuit's death:

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/...2-writers-over-twitter-exchange-with-youtuber

 

[Pubic Enemy #1]

Maybe :late::late::late: but holy shit, fucking destroyed

https://archive.fo/RePAE

 

[Haramburger]

Clearly, the author of GamePolitics.com knew more about his mental state than the guy's own brother.

It's an interesting story with a lot of angles. John Smedley should've taken the heat. That smug asshole should be banned from the entire industry, but he keeps finding work and ruining games. He shifted the blame on to folks like this suicide dev who mistakenly chimed in on the forums despite not having any creative control, and even the game director should have been a better target(Raph Koster) but honestly the stress of massively disappointing SW fans, and ruining an otherwise modestly performing product with unnecessary changes probably contributed to his depression & suicidal feelings.

 

[knightlautrec]

There are a bunch of 'r/thathappened' stories popping up now on Twitter about studios getting letters from fans asking for them to be fired as if the AreaNet thing basically gave carte blanche to fire women via upset gamers. So now the argument is basically 'you can't fire women EVER not even for good reason because sexism and trolls'

I can't. This thing just won't DIE. If anything this should have been a reflection on not being rude to customers on social media but has literally turned into 'poor women harassed into loosing her job'. Journalists can suck hobo dicks. All this does is red pill another huge amount of gamers to their bullshit.

 

[Corbin Dallas Multipass]

Man... "Guild Wars 2 Writer" is a really pathetic title. I've played that game, and... writing? MMO writing is taking the biggest cliches in the world and writing them over and over in slightly different ways. The average TVTropes user is as qualified as anyone else to write that tripe.

 

[ZehnBoat]

So let me get this straight:

> Video game developer details the difficulties she's had writing games on a public forum
> Being a public forum, naturally someone responds and offers some advice on how said developer can hone her craft
> Developer then rudely responds to this person who merely tried to offer some constructive advice
> Developer's boss realizes that this could engender a bad image for their company, proceed to fire her
> Soyboys and dangerhairs start screeching about soggy knees and GlomerGoot just because this developer happened to be part of the SJW clique

Anyone who's worked a day in their life should know that you need to hold your tongue and/or turn the other cheek when dealing with customers, and prioritize satisfying their needs. :powerlevel:I learned this the hard way at my first job when I got fired for simply ignoring the customers at the place I was working:powerlevel:. But since most of these chucklefucks probably subsist on Hipster Welfare and/or Mommy and Daddy's trust fund, and thus have likely never worked an actual job in their life, they fail to understand this fundamental principle: that the customer is always right.

all she had to fucking do was say "i'll take that into consideration" or "tried it, but it doesn't work, thanks anyway" or just ignored it
but she didn't
she flew off the handle screaming about MANSPLAINING and shit (she literally thinks by being a woman she has the right to be a snotty cunt)
and now she pays the price

and the soyboys are desperately pushing the narrative that she was verbally assaulted and shit, even though they never pony up to what she was verbally assaulted with. and the dangerhairs are crying en masse about how tough it is to have a china. if they want to go back to the 1900s they can go ahead without the rest of us.

There are a bunch of 'r/thathappened' stories popping up now on Twitter about studios getting letters from fans asking for them to be fired as if the AreaNet thing basically gave carte blanche to fire women via upset gamers. So now the argument is basically 'you can't fire women EVER not even for good reason because sexism and trolls'

I can't. This thing just won't DIE. If anything this should have been a reflection on not being rude to customers on social media but has literally turned into 'poor women harassed into loosing her job'. Journalists can suck hobo dicks. All this does is red pill another huge amount of gamers to their bullshit.

i wish this progressive sexism would die, i'm tired of wave after wave of MUH SENSITIVE WAMINZ