Giant Bombcast 540: Sailor Bruno Mars

@jamjyo: Google will fire you if there is good enough reason.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/07/business/google-women-engineer-fired-memo.html

@merxworx01: Strange, it doesn't say that you'll be fired for replying to a stupid twit with a bad-bad word such as "an asshat".

Also, the example in the article describes how far Google is willing to go to create a welcoming environment for their own employees.

@jamjyo: Are you actually arguing that Google wouldn't fire an engineer that's causing a PR problem, after what happened 6 months ago? Of course he/she would be fired, if the engineer is very publically shitty about it and it becomes a story.

Gamers that play MMOs certainly expect developers to listen to their feedback, because that's how these games work. I mean, that's how all games work to a certain extent, but even more so for online-focused games, which are constantly changed and tuned in reaction to the opinion of the community. Which is why companies like ArenaNet constantly encourage feedback, and also why they're not thrilled when one of their employees goes out and says very publically "Fuck your worthless opinions" to their community.

@jamjyo: You're right, it doesn't.

Ultimately it depends on where you stand on the Arenanet situation. If you feel that Price and Fries were fired due to breaking internal media policy per Arena Net's press release then there isn't much similarities at all.

But... if they were fired because people collectively brought the situation negative attention that the company didn't appreciate and firing an employee was to the employer the easier course of action. A quick and easy means of making the problem will go away, then these situations have a alot in common.

I personally wouldn't have fired Price for her comments if I ran the company but she is not the first, nor will she be the last person to be fired for unprofessional conduct on social media.

Welcome to the new world. Don't tweet angry.

Ironically, nobody could have put the reality of the situation better than Jessica Price herself, well ahead of time:

@mittens:

I should clear-up my position: I do think she was highly unprofessional, and could have handled the situation better, but I don't think she should have been fired.

It depends on the PR problem in question. I personally think the dude fired from Google did something way worse than what Price did, but to each their own, I guess. And Anet was VERY quick in firing her (+him), which suggests (I can only guess) that it was a knee-jerk reaction.

True, and most MMO companies put on this facade that they are always willing to listen to all feedbacks at all times, which I consider is a problem in itself. But do you really expect all employees in the company to be open to feedbacks 24/7 in their personal SNS account?

No matter how studios "claim" that they value feedbacks greatly, not all feedbacks are valuable, and what "the kind dude" sent certainly wasn't (kinda dumb, if you ask me).

And let's not forget, all MMOs have their own forums and PR personnel to direct such feedbacks to.

You shouldn't track down an individual employee to "kindly" send feedbacks and make a huge fuss when you aren't welcomed in his/her space.

This only happens in games and Star Wars.

One hour in and it's been nothing but fighting games, anime, and wrestling

Most of the comments here are sad in the inability to see a spectrum of responses between nothing and “you are fired”. Speaks of a massive lack of imagination and also a speed in which one falls over to the narratives of power.

This is all before you factor in the fact that the president called it an ‘attack’?

Also in the most chickenshit move fire the other developer who was being courteous and sticking up for Price.

It all reads as scummy from top to bottom and it is emboldening a mob Fuck AreaNet and those who support this decision.

Look I can sympathize with what she meant. I'm sure most developers roll their eyes at laymen's suggestion on their work, like all professionals do. And I'm sure she's had to deal with her fair share of assholes and harassers, which is depressing. I just think the way she did it crossed a line. If I'm a waiter, and I say to a coworker in the kitchen "Fuck people who don't tip 10%", that's fine; just work banter. If I yell it in the middle of the restaurant during my shift, even if I'm yelling it at the coworker, I'm probably getting fired. And that's what Twitter is: you're yelling something to the world.

Plus it's not like it was in response to her, say, discussing dinner plans with her SO. It was in response to a long post discussing character development in MMOs. On an account that she clearly associated with her job at ArenaNet. If she wanted it to be "her space", she should simply have made her account private. And if you can't bring yourself to answer politely to someone that says "Really interesting thread! I have to disagree with you *slightly*...", you should probably be kept away from any customer-facing aspect of any job.

This isn't 2005. Tons of company contracts have clauses that state that social media behavior that leads to bad PR can get you fired. And many people have been sacked for Twitter comments that look tame in comparison to this one.

@mittens:

I actually agree with most things you said.

Yes, she was acting unprofessionally.

Yes, although it was a personal space, the concept of Twitter itself blurs the line.

Yes, her original post lead people to falsely believe that she was welcoming discussions.

I agree with all of that. I'm not trying to call you out, because I do see your point of view.

But the most important part of me and GB crews' (also guessing here) opinion on this matter is:

She shouldn't have been fired like this.

This writer was posting publicly on twitter about something related to her job, after a AMA and the person she was responding to was a business partner of her employer, no one was tracked down. At no point was she obligated to respond to anyone. She could have stopped flinging shit around at any point after this thing blew up but she chose not to. If she didn't want feedback she should have posted her thoughts on a blog without a comments section, if she only wanted feedback from professional writers she shouldn't have made the posts on twitter.

The purpose of social media is for people to post in order to share their thoughts so that strangers can comment on them.

In regards to the Jan & NJPW segment, AXS TV airs a weekly NJPW show although its more of a recap style show than a weekly live show like WWE's RAW.

I don't have a whole lot of sympathy for Price. Her responses in that thread were completely awful. Yeah it might be a bit extreme to fire her, but I am sure many of us would get canned too if we went on twitter and started arguing with or accusing, well-meaning, polite customers of the companies we work for as being sexist. On top of that arenanet prides themselves on being very close and open with their community, so obviously this shit is not going to fly.

Did anyone read what the fan was posting further than the post she quote tweeted? It was a lot of basic stuff that her thread had already touched on prior to him chiming in.

People should listen to the Waypoint episode that is much more focused about this.

i'm hearing very low but noticeable intermittent audio pops. the audio only version seems fine. also, i really wish they would boost the volume to regular levels just like the audio only version has.

I disagree but that's fine. There are certainly other ways the company could have handled it. And I certainly don't feel great being on the same side of the argument as some pretty gross people. But to me this behavior is a fireable offence in most industries. Especially in the games industry, which too often sees its skilled workers as replaceable, regardless of gender (but that's a whole other problem).

I do agree that firing her coworker, someone who had been at the company for 10 years, just for defending her online was too harsh. Makes me wonder if they saw it blowing up into a gender issue and felt pressured to punish him harshly to avoid accusations of sexism. Either way it was unfair.

Shitty situation all-around

Like clockwork, the lack of empathy Brad lamented in this podcast appears in the comments on the podcast. Its extremely telling how many people here just flat out ignore Fries' firing in attempting to explain the absurdity of Arenanet's actions. I think Price's firing is unconscionable as well, but don't have the energy to explain the dozen reasons why. I'll just echo the above that Waypoint Radio's latest can break this down in simple steps better than me.

Ben was actually right about Triple H once being involved in a dog angle, as Chris Jericho ran over his bulldog in a last minute angle to their Wrestlemania clash (from what I remember) due to Hunter not getting as strong of a baby face reaction as they hoped for coming back from his quad injury.

Also, regarding the folks pimping their podcasts and YouTube channels at the G1 Special, I think that's a thing they allow? There's gonna be a podcast alley at the All In show in September, so this might've been a similar deal?

Wow, Jeff just promoted Ben to head of marketing. Office on the corner! What an announcement! Congrats Ben!

Thought the arenanet conversation went pretty well. Only thing they missed to convey was that this was not a random twitter user but quite a community figure in that scene that's focused on the lore of the game. And it would've probably made more sense to listeners if they heard that this was an extension on an AMA about the game. Think a HR talk would've sufficed, personally.

If you're writing a multi-parted tweetchain about the struggles you encounter in your job to people as an extension of the AMA you did, people will respond to that. Not all those comments will be worthwhile. Ignoring those is always an option. No one demands a follow up tweet.

Ben Pack go on Chapo.

If you're talking about your work, and attacking customers, it doesn't really matter where you do it. If you're talking about your work in a public space, the company are going to have a say.

We don't know her disciplinary history, so I'm going to refrain from saying if she should have been fired. If it was a one-off event, maybe her being fired was excessive (though I can see it being construed as gross misconduct). If she has been warned about it before, maybe it was entirely justified.

Something else lost in a lot of this discussion is the youtuber in question didn't see this like the community did and apologized for what he did. It was the mob who them spun it and whistled the interaction to an out of control point.

@stordoff said:

"attacking customers"?!

So quick to take the corporate line on this one.

The only resson Mike O’Brien fired Price and Fries is because he’s a chickenshit and was afraid of the hate mob of sexist entitled man babies who were ”furious” over one rude comment and more importantly saw it as a golden opportunity to get a woman fired from the games industry.

Him and his company spinelessly caved in a matter of hours. Pretty pathetic honestly.

"the next rando asshat", "Since we've got a lot of hurt manfeels today [...] Don't expect me to pretend to like you here." - how else would you describe it? You can say she had a reason to justify what she did, and that the ArenaNet response was disproportionate, but attacking customers is what she did. Taking the corporate line would be saying that ArenaNet were right to do what they did

Great episode but really disappointed in the few low empathy replies here of all places in the comments about the Arenanet situation (though plenty of ya'll still rule). Even if you feel Jessica Price went over the line far enough to lose her job (which is a heartless and bootlicking take, to be frank, this could have been smoothed over), Peter Fries did not do anything that could be construed as unprofessional and no GW2 player should feel comfortable about the sacrifice or being represented by a hate mob of GGs. Skip me with any replies suggesting companies should fire anyone due to appease their fans instead of clearly outlined policy. I hope GW2 enjoys its reputation in the future.

@rubley: I think we would both rather be in a world that would take it slower, go through a disciplinary review, and issue an apology and an explanation if warranted. If we want to have game developers be candid with us, the audience, then we should exercise a certain amount of patience, understanding, and responsibility with the power that comes from that increased access to the artists. But, hey, you do you if that's how you want to go at it.

It was really cool to see Jeff and Dan at AX 2018! Judging from the convention map, Jeff and Dan entered on the west side of the South Hall where it was very easy to go past the CyGames and Marvelous booths to the ramshackle dealer shops. All the big anime industry booths are lined up at the front of the South Hall, so that's where all the nice Aniplex, Bandai Namco, Good Smile, and other booths are.

As for other things to do at an anime con other than shop, Jeff is correct in that there are all sorts of industry and fan panels to go in to. Also, AX has all the big premieres of series and movies where you get to watch stuff first. Lastly, anime song concerts!

Except that the only people who have framed it as an attack have been the President of AreaNet and the mob that formed, the person involved sure doesn't see it that way. So yes seeing that way is taking the company line on the events even if not agreeing with their outcome.

Also I don't know about anyone else but I read that line in relation to my favorite quote from Dune personally. "My son displays a general garment and you claim it's cut to your fit?" And not as an attack on anyone.

@hassun: yeah I was thinking the exact same thing

The company never has your back in your socials!

We, the company, want our developers to be candid and personal with our passionate audience... until we don't.

This would be one extreme solution to this situation that would make things a lot more boring but...

I can totally see why a lot of Japanese video game, anime, and other entertainment companies keep their public relations incredibly cagey, scripted, and restrained.

Just me throwing in another coin in the "Social media was a mistake" pot.

Now, back to looking at my Twitter and Discord!

Also, I really hope Jeff goes to another anime convention, this time properly. The next one I can think of the in the area is the Crunchyroll Expo taking place in San Jose on Labor Day weekend, 2018 September 1-3.

I hate when they do that. Mr. Muscle used to be a nerd. Now he's a ripped CG man. Captain Birdseye used to be an salty old man who lured children on to his boat. Now he's a ripped man who lures children on to his boat.

This doesn't solve the image problem Findus was having.

It is absolutely blowing my mind that anyone can defend Price with what she did and argue semantics about her attacking customers. When she's cussing out customers, insulting them, accusing them of sexism, and calling them names, yes she is definitely attacking them. And then in later tweets and interviews, she's quadrupling down and acting like she did nothing wrong and like she's just a victim.

If she's going to play the sexism card, I'll take a stab at it too. If Price was a man spewing vile shit at customers on Twitter and got fired for it and an angry internet mob celebrated the company for firing him, would we be seeing this as a controversy and still be having this discussion several days later? I really don't think so, but it's hard to say.

@jamjyo:Except he didn't tell her how to do her job better. And she attacked him on his gender. And the problem isn't that developers have to be open to feedback. She could have, for instance, not read his reply if she didn't want feedback. Or perhaps she could have responded kindly, like a normal person. It would have taken her just as much time. If I heard correctly she used her job to get a verified Twitter account and talked about her job on Twitter. As such the lines between personal and professional have very much blurred indeed.

@boonsong: You would have been fired too for using sexist statements, just like she did.

@rvancetal: Waypoint is, like Polygon and Kotaku, historically one-sided when it comes to these controversies. Not exactly a great place to look for discussion. In fact they ban people for bringing up the 'wrong' arguments. And are all too happy to let racist or sexist solutions to problems on their forums stand IF they are anti-men or anti-white people. Which is something I am personally against, because unlike them I am actually anti-racist and anti-sexist, which in my mind and according to my dictionary encompasses all gender and race. So including all forms of 'reverse racism' and 'reverse sexism' too. I want a fairer world in which people are not excluded or picked on for having a certain skin color, or gender and that is exactly what Price was doing: attacking Deroir for being a man talking to a woman, as if he needed to have a woman to speak for him before she could/would take him seriously. All supported by the rather arrogant assumption that Deroir is not a more experienced writer than Price is or some dumb individual not worthy of her 2 minutes to respond.

I also find it tasteless that there is now a lot of talk around Price being fired as if it was about her being a woman (to the extend of them stating that women at ArenaNet should now worry about their position) but very little about Fries being fired. The mentioning of which would of course hurt their one-sided propaganda.

Jason make the video BIGGER

That whole Arenanet situation seems really bizarre. Yeah, the lady really overreacted to a pretty benign if stupid suggestion, but that hardly is grounds for firing her. It's almost comical that her colleague lost his job as well. I don't agree with people implying she was completely in the right either though. She was straight up rude to the guy and at the drop of a hat. She still didn't deserve to lose her job for it. Not even close. A proverbial slap on the wrist at most. I really hate that we've devolved to the point of weaponizing people's employment over the littlest transgressions.

You are either naive to how power influences and plays with the things you are talking about or are posting in bad faith and it is very hard to tell the difference if I am being honest.

Have fun been a mouthpiece and stooge for some real terrible people if it is former.

Well why don't you explain it to me? Because I honestly don't know what you're talking about. Are you accusing me of... representing other people? I am not. I am sure they could come here themselves if they want to be heard. But I don't see how that would be an accusation. Why don't you reason with me instead?

I think we both want the same thing in the end.

This backlash against her being fired makes me feel like we're measuring with two different sizes. When Damore got fired from Google for sending an internal memo (not even public) about what he said were factual things about women and why they would be less successful in the field of engineering (I don't know that they are factual), it felt like the media was pretty OK with him being fired for that. Then when people got fired subsequently from Google for saying bad things about white men - which again in my opinion is just as bad - it was a problem. Gizmondo even wrote: "Google’s practice of formally reprimanding—and in at least one case, firing—employees for comments the company deemed discriminatory toward white men suggests that Google made an effort to moderate speech by its liberal employees as well as its conservative ones."

Well that's not true. If they are reprimanding people from being sexist to who-ever, that's leftist. I'm leftist myself. Both cases are more conservative than liberal in the sense that they restrict the ability of a person to express him/herself. Or you could argue both are more liberal in the sense that they are less traditionalist. In no way did they flip-flop between political stances there. In both cases they were privy to condone sexism. You see? That is the concern I have with this backlash. It's like we are supposed to allow people to be sexist one way but not the other and I disagree with that.

I think it's good that if an employee attacks the community at large or a customer based on their gender or race, that it is something that should be frowned upon and internally talked about at the very least. Whether the person should be fired is I think a question I can't answer because I don't know exactly what was said internally and I hear she has a history of attacking people on social media.

If it's Reddit you're concerned about and my connection to it I can put your mind at ease by saying that no, I don't think that getting people fired or not over a mob mentality is a good thing. I don't have any reason to assume that is what happened here, however. It's something that I've been concerned about a lot with recent movements.

Sexism exists because of the power dynamics created from Men having control over things for so long, it is impossible for it to exist in the other direction, see also racism. To look at these things empty without power is to not look at them at all. The idea that these things can work in both directions is an idea formed and spawned from very terrible people on the right who want to obfuscate the power they hold in society already.

You can't be on the left and believe that bullshit.

So you believe that sexism only exists because of men? You believe that men have control over the things that allow them to be sexist, and women did not? I don't think that is true at all. How does it help a man who is discriminated against to know that there are other men who have it well, who are in a position of power? But there we have it. I suppose that is the cause of friction between us both. I don't condone sexist behavior from anyone in any group, and you tolerate it if it's coming from a member of one group. We could either argue about it here, or not. Either way is fine with me but I don't know what GiantBomb thinks of it.

Glad the discussion has veered into fucking ”anti-white” and ”anti-men” territory already. Christ.

@Boonsong: that’s not a huge surprise. Gamergate is like Hydra, cut off one head and two take its place.

They may say their not affiliated with Gamergate, but if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck...

If Gamergate does not tolerate sexist acts (or whatever you do want to call them) from anyone, then I am on board with that (bit).

But I believe that is not the case? If they do tolerate sexist acts in any way then I am not for Gamergate. So you don't have to worry about that, at least coming from me. (Just in case you were lobbing me in there too, since our talk did veer to the "anti-white" and "anti-men" territory.)

@boonsong Also you're the one who started spouting "anti-men" things in this comment section, so that makes it a little ironic to have you complain that the discussion has veered into that territory.

@finiteglory: I don't think anyone affiliates themselves with GG in 2018. It's more of a shorthand for the rest of us to understand where a certain subset of gamer is coming from.

I realize in the current social climate, Price's communication strategy might actually work in her favor, at least in the short term. Creating elaborate alternative narratives and throwing dirt in all directions seems to be working splendidly for the current US government, so why wouldn't it work for her. But in a sane world, it seems like someone should try to tell her she's really not doing herself any favors with the whole follow-up on this and give her a chance to stop digging in a spiral, take a breath, think it over and move forward.

I don't know Price, I'm sure she can be a nice person offline and wish her all the best getting a fresh start, but everything she's said on twitter and in the following interviews gives off the impression of someone who is completely incapable of engaging in some self-reflection, realizing when she screwed up, taking responsibility for it and have the decency to apologize. It's ok, we all screw up sometimes (the way american corporate culture is so quick to fire people when mistakes happen is quite ugly). But when you then go on to explain how you were only doing The Right Thing, try to portray being mean and sexist as heroics and suggest every man's interaction with her is secretly motivated by sexism, it just becomes sad and hurts the feminism that she's abusing as a tool to cover for her apparently deficient social skills.

I'm pessimistic anything good will come of the way this is being handled. There were some opinions about how ArenaNet was sending a fatal signal to the troll brigades and emboldening them. I would agree that those guys are going to come out of this all emboldened, but it will have been the subpar reporting on the issue that actually will have sent the most fatal signal to those people and, more importantly, to decent people.

That signal is: "We're all in tribes now, and protecting our tribe matters more than having a good hard look at facts, employing some critical thinking and accepting the possibility one of our own may have screwed up."

@fear_the_booboo: there is a difference TB was his own boss, he could say anything he wants if people don't like it they don't watch his videos.Jessica Price was an employee of a company and if i had said the same exact thing i would expect at least getting disciplined or fired.

i've never understood the the Fallout 4 hate, i think it's a better game then the already great Fallout 3.Then again i love the Crew and Crew 2 which GB is fundamentally wrong about regarding Car Handling , Progression (i.e it does'nt take a couple of hours) which is vastly superior to FH.

@catladon: I’m saying the hate mob wanted to get her fired because they are sexist GG pricks.

@therealseaman: Nick Robinson was grooming underage fans on Twitter. If that is flirting to you, boy.