Giant Bombcast 540: Sailor Bruno Mars

I don't debate things with people acting from bad faith in both the reality of what has happened in many situations and the equivocat of things that are not equal.

I was expecting something of a train wreck going in, after all these comments, but the crew did a pretty decent job of discussing the Guild Wars 2 drama without immediately going to extremes in either direction.

Giant Bomb's news section is mostly based off quick skims through Kotaku (et al), which is unfortunate in this case, as Schrier's article - among others - tried to spice things up by excluding Price's history of toxic behavior in order to punch up the 'angry mob' angle. It makes for a more exciting, but less accurate, story if you focus almost exclusively on the anger that the community felt at seeing one of their favorite content creators belittled and baselessly accused of sexism.

But the truth of the matter was that, as boring as it may sound, this was not ArenaNet being pushed to capitulate to an angry misogynist fanbase. Price has a history of unwarranted hostility and disturbing behavior. Through omission, various news sites have crafted a more incendiary and socially relevant tale, but it doesn't reflect the reality of the situation.

I have some issues with the way Kotaku (and others) like to spice up their stories, and I wish the Bombcast would lean a little less heavily on their articles for their news segments in light of that, but in the end it's just a small qualm that affects me a bit more than most as someone who actually plays Guild Wars 2. That's my two cents!

@therealseaman: We are all criticising Arenanet for firing two people. Two. Fries was fired for defending Price from the hate mob and standing up for her as a professional colleague. You can't defend him without implicitly supporting Price - because that's what he was doing.

That statement makes it clear they were both axed with a single stroke. Instead of defending Arenanet for successfully hitting one person you dislike with that stroke, why can't we all agree that the president Mark O'brien messed up in the biggest way by simply acting hastily and fully deserves this PR nightmare he wrought upon himself.

@nietzschecookie: the problem with your claim, he didn't mess up, standard procedure in the vast majority of public facing companies, except outside the gaming industry there would be no polygon articles trying to protect the person.He has a responsibility to his company , he did the right thing. To think CBS wouldn't do the same is comical.

Yes well. Firstly I want to make it clear that I love this community and people in general and that includes all of the people in the comment section here. And the last thing I want is to see us get too angry at each other. Because I think that, reading through these comments, all of us actually agree on the most important point: That we want the world to be fair. I think we have all spoken our mind pretty clearly and that is valuable to me. I hope to you too. And to be honest with such a controversial topic (and the impulsive nature of the internet) I would have expected much more hostility. Because you know, we are all emotion-driven beings and strong disagreements can lead to strong emotional responses.

I guess I'll carefully add that I can see the logic in the position that women are being oppressed and therefore people should have privileges when it comes to what can be said and done against men in a discriminatory fashion, to make things more fair. (I assume that is the position you take @rvancetal ?)

However I do believe quite wholeheartedly that if our goal is a more fair world in which it does not matter what gender or race you have been born as, free of discrimination, it is counterproductive in my mind for people to discriminate on one sex freely. That doesn't sound very fair to me either. It's like saying two wrongs make a right. Or that to make the world more fair it would be a good idea to try and hurt men to the point that everybody is equally miserable. In fact I would say that to stand against sexism one way but to say that it's OK to hurt people equally (or kind of like it) in the other direction sounds like something that especially people who have experienced oppression or discrimination would be very much against. You don't want to put other people through that on any level, be it systemic or individual basis.

Now I understand that something needs to be done to make the world a more fair place and that in passionately striving for such an improvement it's tempting to use anything in our power to try and push things in that direction. But yes my concern is that it is counterproductive because we are keeping these types of actions (if you don't want to call them sexist I don't know what word you prefer to use) alive and in the minds of people, and not to forget we're turning huge groups of people into our enemies by saying they can be ridiculed and harassed without repercussion. And among those people, are people who also want a world free of discrimination. I would very much prefer if we don't do any of that and move past judging people based on their gender as a whole. Wouldn't you at least agree that that would be a more preferable path?

@catladon:While he could not have known prior, the negative PR storm alone makes this, by definition, a mistake for the company. Companies care about their image.

@moregrammarplz:

I just want you to know that I appreciate that people like you exist.

I just feel totally overwhelmed by today's political climate. I feel torn in every direction by everyone's increasingly radical ideologies and agendas. It really makes me just want to not engage with anyone, which is sad. It's nice to know there are still level-headed folks out there.

I think the important thing to take away here is Ben's laugh is wonderful and infectious. He's kinda got the anime oh-ho-ho thing going too!

@catladon: I was thinking more about the game dev community. I'm pretty sure everyone who works in making games is in the loop on this story. And that's the same community that's 100% of Arenanet's future employee space.

I don't see how people could possibly empathize with Price on this one. Under no circumstances is it ever ok to call a customer, yet alone a Youtube partner, a "rando asshat." Even when the GB crew try to spin it by saying you get all sorts suggestions and such from people, and that can lead up to something like this. Well, that's where that thing we call professionalism kicks in. She chose a profession where she is likely to get all sorts of feedback from fans of the series. That's a reality she has to live with if she wants to continue doing the same work. She could've either responded politely and even continued the dialogue, or just not say anything at all. Instead, she took a 3rd option and was fired for doing so.

And it's disappointing to see the GB crew even take a stance on this that only perpetuates bad behavior from the employees. When Jeff said that if he wanted to, he could explain to someone why someone's suggestion wouldn't work but instead just ignores them because it would take "hours to explain," that only keeps the cycle going. If you want a certain suggestion to stop, nip it in the bud by telling them how it can't be done. You can't complain about people not knowing how things work while simultaneously avoiding any opportunity to bridge that gap and help people learn about the ins-and-outs of what you do.

My own two cents is that both sides are in the wrong here. Price did screw up big time and shouldn't have done what she did, but ArenaNet had a massive overreaction to what she did and many (though not all) of the arguments against Price are being made in bad faith (GGers will latch on to anything, those assholes). At the same time, many of the arguments made against the anti-Price folks are also being made in bad faith; someone can (and I do) believe that she screwed up and should be punished without sexism coming into things. Though I also believe firing her was too much.

For instance, at ESPN the standard punishment for commentators going too far in attacking official ESPN partners is suspension from personal social media accounts (under threat of firing) for X period of time. With repeat offenders sometimes being suspended without pay as well. It doesn’t always work (see, Bill Simmons) but it often does, and shows that firing is often not a necessary step.

@catladon: You support Fries dismissal as well?

@nietzschecookie: i have been personally in a similar situation in my past, i had a disagreement with my boss, my superior stepped in protecting me, problem is he didn't know when to stop,i did.Result is he got sacked, i got his job , which may sound harsh, i didn't plan or want that to happen, i in time thought where this argument was going and for once trapped my lid.

While the other guy didn't do anything to wrong, at the end of the day he shouldn't off got involved.Fine represent her at a tribunal or send an official letter/email of disagreement to management, but he kind of went public and he shouldn't off done that,

The number of people here who think these ArenaNet firings are anything but a result of toxic fans pushing to get an employee fired for daring to say something against men constantly questioning her competence in a particular field is ludicrous. This is setting an awful precedent and it only requires the slightest of empathy to understand the issue here, something that a lot of people in this comments section seem to lack.

Ultimately, she was fired for getting upset on Twitter faster than any man in the industry has ever been fired for claims of sexual harassment. If that doesn't set off any alarm bells for you, you might want to stop and think about why.

@catladon: You're right - that did sound harsh. Your superior deserved better from you.

It's rather funny hearing them excusing her behaviour and how she didn't deserve it, but have immediately dismissed other people in similar cases, when the "good guys" were on the mob side and not the harassed side. "Yeah, fuck that guy" or some such...

You realize that the person "attacked" also probably felt a sense of obligation to deescalate the situation in order to maintain good relations with someone representing their business partner. I don't look at his response and think Price is vindicated. If anything, I see it and wonder why Price didn't understand that form of diplomatic tact is how you're suppose to behave in this situation.

The fact that Price got fired over this is questionable, even when you factor in her previous offenses, and the fact that Fries got fired is a damn travesty, but I won't pretend Price is blameless. Her comments were examples of "people suddenly forgetting basic business etiquette" and deserving of some disciplinary action.

I would employ occam's razor here. What's more believable. The game industry and their fans are in large part sexist, or this employee was genuinely a problem.

Clickbait is a problem. And GB keeps buying into it. Using big words is not intelligence, doubting yourself is.

@nietzschecookie: in what aspect, the problem was i was arguing the technicalities off the problem, my superior started 'arguing' going off topic, and probably slightly verbally aggressive.I had made my point and could see that we where getting nowhere. In truth i stayed at that company another 5 years, had many a disagreement with my boss but didn't cross the line , argue the point's , stand your ground as an employee but don't get personal, I did the right thing.

@sicamore: Oh good I was afraid I was either losing my mind or my PC was slowly combusting. There's something they use that causes it, I hear it on some other streams, too. I remember it being bad on a lot of their Murder Island streams.

@worlddude: Unforunately, we can't debate or reason someone into kindness. They're comfortable with the results of a hateful mob and that's really troubling honestly.

I feel like sexy hamburglar has been the image for the podcast before...

They targeted gamers.

Gamers.

@eribuster: Apparently she's been fired before. I'm going to go out on a limb and assume she's not a great employee and this wasn't the only thing that led to her firing. Also, Washington is an at will employment, meaning someone can be fired at any time for any reason. If you ran your own company (I do) and had to deal with an employee attacking customers on twitter with sexist remarks you'd understand.

Given the last 10 or so years of evidence? The former, without a doubt.

Plus, there's the whole thing that we live in a sexist society, so it'd actually be way, way, way more surprising if the game industry and their fans are in fact somehow unlike the rest of society and not sexist.

@thefncrow: Wow most people in the WORLD are sexist? This is big news. We should tell the world about this.

@catladon: So the thing is, I don't necessarily think she would be fired in any other industry (hence my ESPN example). But I do think that in basically in any other industry there would be no online debate no matter what the punishment was (e.g. if a Coca-Cola employee was fired over a social media problem I doubt anyone would ever here about it). There is a different level of scrutiny in the games industry (and to some extent the tech industry in general); which isn't even necessarily a bad thing, the games industry has had a level of problems that other industries haven't in a long time (not to say things are all perfect in other fields, but they mostly aren't nearly as bad). But sometimes that scrutiny ends up mis-targeted, like I think it is here. Though I also think that people who do think Price was in the wrong should also stand up to the assholes who want to leverage this into threatening devs anytime they disagree with them.

The bigger problem is Fries being fired for defending Price.

I don't feel it honest to view Price as being an innocent victim given her exchange with Deroir before the mob took over, but looking at the comments Fries was fired for, that's actually what he was, and that's really shitty.

GG was only a few years ago and this mixed with the Star Wars freakout and comicsgate, it feels like part two just brewing under the surface. Judging by the comments a vocal (hopefully small) portion of this community is sprinting headlong into it.