Giant Bombcast 540: Sailor Bruno Mars

That's the thing with sympathy and empathy: it doesn't necessarily make the person you're understanding correct. I'm not saying we shouldn't engage in those things, because we unequivocally should, and I'm not saying you or anyone else is wrong for bringing it up, because you're not, but some people seem to have taken (for years now) to using empathy as a buzzword to dehumanize detractors, all while implying that a) they're the arbiters and owners of the process, which they aren't, b) they engage in empathy themselves, which is often plainly suspect (they tend to be assholes), and c) being empathetic really just means agreeing with their perspective. So ya, this isn't really directed at you personally; your post just made me think about these things.

It's super fucked that they both got fired, but I'd be more incensed about it if she hadn't doubled, tripled, and quadrupled down. It's fuckin rough to see how she ran away with it and went off on exactly the sort of exchange that has her wholly in the wrong, but she did, and it had consequences.

The more I've seen of her comments though, I'm not so sure of how deserving she is of the benefit of the doubt (in this case meaning believing that she had simply snapped, and that her behaviour really isn't indicative of who she is).

And it's a bummer that her words had such severe consequence, but that's the social atmosphere we all find ourselves subject to. A situation that she herself evidently acknowledged in the past. I dunno the context of that tweet, but it sure didn't seem like she was lamenting the fact that people can get fired for little shit like literally this thing she got fired for. Like, a company shouldn't be forced to keep on someone who's behaviour they don't agree with, but she shouldn't have immediately been fired (the guy too), even if in whatever meeting they had where they talked to her about it made it clear that she saw her behaviour as normal and fair (hypothetically). Warn em, suspend em, whatever. Then if they fuck up again, godspeed.

That's all to say that my sympathy for them and my empathizing with them does not clear them of being wrong.

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Harassment shouldn't be used as a whataboutism. Her responses were atrocious, her and her co-worker being fired was heavy-handed, and the harassment that tagged on to the justified anger from the community was shitty.

That all said, some of the hot takes about this gave me a serious case of whiplash, considering it's been years of "freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences" and "muh free speech," and now it's like "muh customer feels" and "things said in public are private." Fuck's sake.

And lastly, fuck, the exchange was not at all like saying "did you try unplugging it and plugging it back in." The GB conversation about this was okay, but those tweets are just fuckin out there. It ain't some crazy technical thing. Yo a compelling MMORPG player-character might not be possible because of subjective player expectations so we make them inoffensive nothing-people and draw you into the world by completely side-stepping individual personality and employing generic "Hero of Kvatch" type shit; what about having dialogue choices that are purely for role-playing purposes; sexism.

A literal nightmare scenario where an innocuous engagement with a dev you respect makes them lose their shit and that makes them lose their job. It's almost comical in that light. What a shitshow.

Sidenote: I really didn't like the way GW2 tried to do player-characters (not a slight on Price as afaik I only played the game before she came on board). Contrary to FFXIV which has waaaay less player dialogue but was waaaaay more engaging, and where my characters are all compelling to me, even though the Hero of Light as is (i.e. without what I brought to it via the few dialogue choices, outfits, and other means of character customization and straight-up imagination) is empty as fuck. But it's a good kind of empty, like a blank sheet of paper. And when you fill it with whatever you want, the times that the game's cutscenes actively focus on the hero (which happens quite often) all start to take on meaning.

The very nature of long strings of voiced canned dialogue turned me away from connecting to my character in GW2 and finding/shaping a compelling character (especially when all the writing and voice acting was so terribly bland)-- and it also didn't help that at launch the gear (and there wudn't much) was all pretty bleh. Whereas the absence of player-character dialogue in XIV allowed me to fill the void with my own imagination, and those later unvoiced dialogue choices allowed me more opportunities to express their characterizations without clashing with how I'd imagined them. It's not about creating a compelling individual character with full dialogue and shit that's essentially just another expression of the writer, because she's spot-on in saying that shit won't fly with the personalization side of things--I wanna feel like I'm playing my character, not someone else's. But it's about providing the tools and space for players to build out and roll with whatever they have in their head (within reason). You can have player dialogue, but the way GW2 did it wasn't especially conducive to controlling and shaping your character. GW2's generic protagonist actively felt generic because every fucking utterance was generic, whereas my silent heroes in FFXIV all feel like unique individuals vital to and existing within the narrative despite that silence, so I end up closer to my characters and the whole damn story overall. I get way more out of it because I put way more into it. I totally get that some people won't want to put anything into it, but just because some people like to skip story stuff don't mean you should just fuckin forget about having a story, if you know what I mean.

Maybe the storytelling's a lot better since, fuckin, 2012, but I just did not care at all by the end of vanilla GW2 about the story or my characters. FFXIV on the other hand had me on the edge of my seat many a times, often with my character being a surprisingly exciting bridge between me "the player" and the narrative. But it's absolutely not the same kind of process as sitting down and fully writing a character out. You give the player the tools and let them work that shit out on their own. I'm not saying mostly silent protagonists is always the way to go, or that it's the secret key to a compelling character, or that simply giving players the tools guarantees they won't make a messy character (but if they want to, cool), but creating allowing for a compelling MMORPG player-character is not a hopeless problem.

And this is all shit we can all talk about. Talk about as devs, critics, audiences, whatever. Fuck off with this "silence pleb" shit. Talking about game design this way isn't telling people how to do their job, it's fuckin philosophizing and theorizing and conversatin and all those fun, insightful, and occasionally useful ways to spend time talking about the thing you love with other people who love it too. God, fuck all this bullshit. Some people are such assholes.

@theht: That was a really great comment. Thanks for taking the time to type it out.

You'd think that but...this was written today.

Well, I guess it's only human to want something bad to happen to people you don't like.

@smash_420: yeah but she wasn't fired for that... that's just a thing she said months ago.

I just got to that part of the podcast today and I'm surprised more people aren't commenting on it. When Ben started saying that and others agreeing with him, I was sure it was a sarcastic self aware joke, but they were totally serious. The hypocrisy is astounding.

I just.. wanted to say I enjoyed this episode and Jason's MST3K story is especially adorable.

Probably going to get flak for this - but I feel that Price's firing was totally justified. If you label all of your social media accounts as being a part of a certain company then when you misstep and go against whatever vision the company has then you're out. If I wanted to lash out at community members I'd take it to my personal account that doesn't have anything to do with the company.

But hey, she still has her blue checkmark on Twitter, so she'll be fine.

@tastypotato: i agree with the caveat that if the proper policies weren’t in place within the company, perhaps a less severe course of action and more deliberation on the part of management would have been appropriate. however, i don’t like this notion of “just because it’s on the internet it’s ok to lash out” though. how many people in customer service every day want to lash out at customers but don’t? and how many do and are immediately fired? it just seems like the same common sense should apply: don’t antagonize customers. i think most of us have experienced or can at least understand the concept of people with minimal knowlegde of your job offering useless advice building frustration, but i think it’s generally understood that there are outlets for those frustrations and in most lines of work there are severe consequences for bashing your employer’s customers. for reference, i’m a teacher, so from time to time i’ll get feedback and suggestions from parents that isn’t useful or just outright wrong. if i were to lose it one day and publically ridicule a parent i would not have my position anymore after a day either.

that said, i also agree with GB that management not standing up for their their employees is a bad look. most companies it seems need to do a considerably better job at shielding their employees from angry internet mobs.

There really isn't that much to the Jessica Price/ArenaNet story. I am starting to wonder if people (including GB) are maybe getting the course of actions wrong and therefore side with her entirely?

I am tempted to create an accurate timeline of what actually happened when, but it looks a bit like the people who could benefit from it have already made up their minds.

My 2 cents on some of the more important points: Was Deroir acting inappropriately in any way? No. Was Price acting inappropriately? Yes. Was Fries acting inappropriately? Hard to say, but he backed Price's bad behavior and accusations of 'mansplaining' and sexism publicly, while also representing ArenaNet. Did a Reddit/social media mob get her fired? No (according to ArenaNet). The timing simply does not seem to add up. Did she get harassed after the decision to fire her (according to ArenaNet) was already made? Yes. Should people not get fired because they have been harassed in the past and could potentially be harassed in the future? No. Did ArenaNet handle the public firing on the GW forums poorly? I would say "yes", but it is at the very least a questionable way of doing it.

Anyway, I think overall it is arguable whether Price (and the guy almost nobody is talking about) should immediately have been fired - in this particular situation. But my understanding is that pretty much every HR person, in a bigger company, will tell you that her behaviour usually gets you fired. Looking at some of her prior Twitter 'mishaps' I am actually surprised that she was able to keep her job for that long.

@auron1014: You really don't see the difference between being told what to do and listening to suggestions? That wasn't some momentous example of hypocrisy. Some people in these comments really need to take their foot off of the gas and take a breath.

It's an essential networking tool for anyone who wants to work in almost any type of media these days.

@sethmode: I really did wait and think a while before using that language because it sounds harsh and I love the GB crew and don't like saying that kind of thing about them, but I do feel strongly about it and think it's warranted in this case. How was Deroir telling them what to do? He wasn't making any demands. He framed his suggestion in as nice a way as possible

Why do they bring up these news stories and try to discuss them if they can not even be bothered to research at least SOME facts?

No wonder GB is dying.

Deroir expressed a difference of opinion, he didn't "tell her what to do."

If you say "x is probably impossible" and I say "I disagree, here's why," then in no way am I telling you what to do.

This situation has been so dishonestly conveyed and framed in so many different ways, it's insane. Not that you're intentionally doing that, but you may be operating on some bad information, unless you weren't reinforcing the idea that what he did was telling her what to do, in which case none of this applies to you.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with the content of his response. If someone wants to make the argument that audiences (which is technically everyone) shouldn't engage with devs on Twitter and should bow their heads or whatever the fuck, then fine, I guess. Someone can make that argument if they want. It's a pretty shitty position to take, especially with regards to this situation, but okay.

When it comes to what he actually said though? He ain't in the wrong.

@theht: Huh? I'm just saying there's a difference between being told what to do and taking suggestions, and I don't think the GB crew was leveling criticism at Deroir unless I missed something, so much as the unsavory people in the community that raised a stink and arguably got (or at least contributed to) Price fired.

Fair enough! Like I said: "unless you weren't reinforcing the idea that what he did was telling her what to do, in which case none of this applies to you."

@theht: holy shit this is dead on.

The overall effect I guess we can all expect from this whole situation is that people will be less apt to have civil conversations or discourse for fear of repercussions from our employer or of being labelled unfairly.

So in other words, we all lose :(

@jadegl: I get what you are saying. It's kind of a bummer the turn of the events, but at the end of the day she just said a reply back that wasn't needed and the weight of having followers on twitter makes it a bad platform for this. If this was said on a forum like the oldschool phpBB, style forums, it probably wouldn't have blown up like it did.

Also not sure if she should have gotten fired for this, I don't know if we know the whole situation, many states are a "at-will" state, and they don't need to even give warnings or reasons as to why to fire. Her public comments could make the company look bad and that could be all. I think warnings and like 3 strikes your out rules should be in place at most jobs, at least give the person the chance to understand how to change. Many company's these days have it in their legal thing you sign when you get the job that you can't post on twitter as a representative of the company as say rude things.

@nietzschecookie: I'm just going to throw a comment at you on this "customer" word. the customer is anyone who uses your product. you don't have to be in customer support for them to be a customer, if you are not in customer relations, the PR department would help a non customer relations worker know what to say or what they can not say. I'm not positive of the situation but it sounds like these writer's might have been contractors, where they would have no rights in the company, as they are working on a contract basis. She still should have consulted PR about the AMA, they actually might never of known that it was going on at all, procedures are put in place for dealing with the public. It is possible that these were not followed.

@sharkman: It can be tough to get up to speed on this story, given the speed at which news outlets are publishing new stories. They were not contractors, they were full time employees. And its already been established in every publication that no discussion whatsoever was given at the company at any point in history about limits on personal social media accounts. If this had happened as part of a reddit AMA, I could understand your perspective. But tracking an MMO writer down on twitter, on a public holiday no less, is so far outside the bounds of a workplace situation that unless they are explicitly financially compensated for their use of social media outside of work hours, using customer is a sadistic abuse of the english language.

@jasperkazai: I’ve never heard of meeting people online as a reason to go to an anime convention. I’ve been going to AX for years and the draw would be the concerts, the anime premieres, the guest panels, the industry panels, the exhibit hall merch, artist alley, the cosplay and taking photos. They obviously have video game demos (kh3 and Fate VR was fun) and board games, but I was surprised Jeff couldn’t imagine the reasons.

I heard that this year’s E3 had 60,000 people while AX 2018 had close to half a million unique people attend. If Jeff wants to attend more days to see what AX is all about I would caution to be prepared for massive crowds.

EDIT: numbers mixed the unique was over 100,000 and the turnstile attendance was over 300,000.

@golguin *shrug* To each their own. I follow a large variety of anime fans. It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say upwards of 20 people I follow went to AX, and almost all of them were talking about meeting up and doing things together. One guy I know pretty well even said (before the con) that he wasn't particularly interested in any of the panels; he was just excited to see people he knows from Twitter. This has been a trend I notice among people over the years I've followed them. Seems pretty standard.

@nietzschecookie: So we aren't customers when we buy their games? this make no sense! listen to yourself.

@hollitz: fully agree!

@sharkman: I'll break it down. What do you mean by "their"? Fries and Price are writers. They write stories under deadlines for a salary. That's their job. They don't sell things. Arenanet makes games, a publisher publishes it, selling to wholesalers and distributors who in turn sell it to retailers who in turn sell it to 'their' customer, you. 'Their' in this case referring to the retail outlet. By the transitive flow of money, you could colloquially say "I'm a customer of Arenanet's games". But "I'm a customer of Arenanet's janitorial staff" would be false. Again, the janitors don't sell things. Dystopian corporate "we're all in this together" rhetoric, does't actually make the proficient wage workers of a company answerable to civil disputes over goods and services. So any and all legal rights or commercial expectations associated with the word customer only apply to those in charge of the company, or those specifically employed with the job of representing the company in correspondence with it's customers. Again, the two writers in this situation don't fit that bill. Not even close.

@nietzschecookie: Oh I see, so that's why they put janitorial staff in the credits of a game. If you worked on it you are part of the company. They don't write their stories on a something that someone doesn't ultimately pay for. They aren't blogging these stories, or putting them on a journal for free on-line.

I work in tech support, the company I work for makes things I don't even know what they are, they do not buy things from me, they buy them from the company, what do I call them... "customers"

It isn't a writer's job to sell things, but that doesn't mean that the people that buy products from the company you work for are not your customers. People working for a company represent that company, so anyone that buys products from your company, are your customers.

The idea that we aren't "all in this together" is inherently flawed. What are they hired for... making a piece of a product, working together on a product is called a team, when many teams work together on something you get a division, when the divisions take the pieces and put to them together you make a company... do you understand? The only dystopia about it would be when it doesn't work right, otherwise it is a utopia if working perfectly.

Also I'm done discussing this. The very idea that in my mind had to make an analogy about working at a company a utopia has me sick.

I think we agree 100% on that. I'll leave it at that.

there was a meta ps1 jrpg called Moon: Remix RPG Adventure japan exclusive about that

minute 22

The coverage of the Jessica Price story was embarrassing. Quick research would tell you guys that she cries sexism when she's told she's wrong, and that this isn't the first time she got fired for social media stupidity. It's also not the first time she blamed something that had nothing to do with sexism on sexism.