GW 2 Devs/Playerbase Twitter Discussion

[Phosphorite.6192]

@muffi.3964 said:I hope you know that your opinion isn't respected outside of academics? Common people would laugh at you for saying that.

I most definitely do not care about that tyvm

[muffi.3964]

@Phosphorite.6192 said:

@muffi.3964 said:I hope you know that your opinion isn't respected outside of academics? Common people would laugh at you for saying that.

I most definitely do not care about that tyvm

You also do not care about the dictionary but that's okay.

Maybe better keep those opinions to yourself in the real world if you want to be taken seriously, just a hint.

And no I'm not white btw

[Scud.5067]

Ding dong and all that.

A good strong message from Anet.

Prejudice and bullying should never be condoned.

[Phosphorite.6192]

@"muffi.3964" said:You also do not care about the dictionary but that's okay.

Maybe better keep those opinions to yourself in the real world if you want to be taken seriously, just a hint.

And no I'm not white btw

Thank you so much for your unwanted "hints". I'll keep being vocal, will refuse to be complacent and continue to not care about the dictionary, tyvm

[Itzena.8452]

I feel that effectively handing over the control of GW2 to a bunch of brigading Gamergaters is not the smartest move ever, but hey - it's going to be pretty funny to watch. From a distance.

[Koen.1327]

@muffi.3964 said:

@Phosphorite.6192 said:

@rockshock.6378 said:So, You belive racism against white doesnt exist? Cause it does. Just saying. Maybe you havent experienced it, but it's a thing. Just like men being kitten which is a taboo and high in hidden numbers cause so few report it. White men are in fact abused also if you research into the facts of this world rather than going by an idelogy that uses made up words and other tactics to further their agenda.

This is absolutely going off-topic, nothing is to be gained from discussing this here. But no, it does not exist.

I hope you know that your opinion isn't respected outside of academics? Common people would laugh at you for saying that.

absolutely not true, despite the inaccessibility of academic works to the common people they know class-struggle and their oppression is not because they are white men

[melodyca.8921]

@Itzena.8452 said:I feel that effectively handing over the control of GW2 to a bunch of brigading Gamergaters is not the smartest move ever, but hey - it's going to be pretty funny to watch. From a distance.

I don't think people realize how this is a dangerous precedent and how its going to embolden a certain segment of gamers to openly harass and threaten people.

[Lincolnbeard.1735]

This reminds me of a situation that happen with the Football Club (soccer for NA) I'm a fan of.So we had one of the best presidents if not the best president in the history of the club, we had the best year in the history of the club in which we won out every single championship in sports except in football.

That president wrote something on facebook criticizing the football team, saying they could have done much better in one particular match.Media blown out that statement, some unfortunate events unfolded, president got fired by the members (don't know the word in english, fans that pay monthly to the club).

This is the exact same ridiculous kitten.Dev said something, reddit blow kitten out of proportion, dev got fired.

And now some people are celebrating this as some kind of victory?! Two people that got (even if temporary) their life ruined...Grow the kitten up!

[Rococo.8347]

@Just a flesh wound.3589 said:He might have made a mistake but she continued to pursue the subject after he apologized with anger and insults. That’s what got her fired.

Ive given up trying to piece together the entire conversation as the vast majority of comments across the web only show certain sections, however, I think it much more likely that she was fired because of the rabid organised campaign on social media, which unfortunately ( and ironically) had some real shades of GG, with all the MRA/alt right band-waggoning. After all, legally that's a dodgy position for them - 'we are ok with your initial tongue lashing, but we are sacking you because you did another couple later'? ive seen dismissals at close quarters that isn't how it works.

People on reddit were bragging about how it was the second most vitriolic response form the community eevvvaaaah yay us! At the end of the day that's a massively out of proportion response to a dev talking shit at a partner, I felt as a woman a clear blood in the water response and a lot of really crappy sexist comments were floated around in reddit and upvoted, she was called everything under the sun, I wouldn't be surprised if there were violent threats via PM's if GG is anything to go on. And once they got a taste they couldn't stop, there was brief faux remorse for Peter Fries, then another round of 'who can we take down now' with people trawling social media accounts.

Sacking was totally the wrong decision for both of them ( but especially PF) because of this massive negative press campaign. There was a middle path, but Anet didn't want to invest the time and effort so chose the quick option. I would have put her straight on a final warning, enforced media training, a TOTAL block on her using social media atall to decompress for 4 weeks.

[Raizel.8175]

I'm feeling sorry for all the women in the world that the cause they're living each day - equality - is being tarnished by some radical pseudo-feminists who are so very paranoid to think that every form of disagreement instantly is sexism targeted against them, thus belittling and being sexists themselves.

I'm feeling sorry for Peter that he got fired for being stupid.

I'm feeling sorry for the community at large since - apparently - you can't have a diverse discussion with different and facetted opinions anymore 'cause there are people that are only able to think in black-or-white-schemes.

I'm feeling sorry for Mike that he's the target of some hateful pseudo-feminists now even though he only did the only possible thing he could do to minimize the damage which was already done.

I'm feeling sorry for all the constructive people in this forum and on reddit for now being target of some pseudo-feministic hatred.

[seinka.4823]

@Faowri.4159 said:

• Yes, women in male-dominated fields face genuine issues relating specifically to their gender. This is not up for argument. Women deserve to be believed about their experiences. I don't care if you don't agree. I am a woman, I work with women, and we all know what we've seen.

I work in male-dominated field for several years already and I have yet to see those 'genuine issues relating specifically to gender'. Except that it gets lonely sometimes... Or maybe it's a USA thing?

[Itzena.8452]

@melodyca.8921 said:

@"Itzena.8452" said:I feel that effectively handing over the control of GW2 to a bunch of brigading Gamergaters is not the smartest move ever, but hey - it's going to be pretty funny to watch. From a distance.

I don't think people realize how this is a dangerous precedent and how its going to embolden a certain segment of gamers to openly harass and threaten people.

They do, but they think they're on the "winning side" so they're happy with it. Like I said, this isn't going to end well for anyone.

[Runaway.7236]

I am disappointed and angry in the way Arena-net have handled this. You cannot ignore the wider context here and act like the systemic harassment and belittlement of female developers has never happened and is not ongoing still. You cannot ignore the death by a thousand cuts they have to endure just to get through the day and you cannot look at one of those cuts in isolation and say "It wasn't that bad, get over it" while ignoring the other 999. I cannot respect or support a company that does not have their employees backs when they are under pressure.

By this action you have said that any of your staff who are abused or denigrated or harassed just have to put up with it. By this action you have told your community that you will capitulate to the most toxic elements among us and by doing so you have indicated that this game is not a space where the rest of us can feel safe or respected.

Guild Wars is a game about being heroes but these are the actions of cowards and collaborators.

I expected better from you.

[Mrs Lana.2506]

@Faowri.4159 said:Women deserve to be believed about their experiences.

This opens up a massive can of worms for other discussions. Should we be trusted purely because we are women? Should we be trusted if we have no evidence and the other party does? Does being a woman give more points for validity over evidence? Personally I don't think so, but recently I've been seeing a lot of people thinking that way.

I think there's a bit of give and take here, but considering JP's history with overreacting I certainly wouldn't just blindly believe her about anything she has to say.

[Loukious.7346]

@"Lincolnbeard.1735" said:

This is the exact same ridiculous kitten.Dev said something, reddit blow kitten out of proportion, dev got fired.

And now some people are celebrating this as some kind of victory?! Two people that got (even if temporary) their life ruined...Grow the kitten up!

She took criticism that a community member had at a full post she made on an AMA and re-posted it to twitter. He made a long well thought out post in response. It was not even a full criticism. He agreed with some points and disagreed with others. Instead of sitting down and saying "Hey your response to me is full of things I don't think are valid and here's why" She went straight to "I'm a female game Dev and this man is being sexist to me". And when others pointed out that his criticism was valid (both male and female gamers). She doubled down and attacked others saying they were attacking her for no reason. Now if this was her FIRST foray into being center stage of a sh*t show I would be in agreement firing was a bit harsh (Think in the case of PF it is). But in the case of JP she deserved it, not only for this but also her cheering of the death of Total Biscuit. A man that may have ruffled feathers but he called out shady practices.

[hugo.4705]

.............

[Alfador.7649]

@melodyca.8921 said:

@Itzena.8452 said:I feel that effectively handing over the control of GW2 to a bunch of brigading Gamergaters is not the smartest move ever, but hey - it's going to be pretty funny to watch. From a distance.

I don't think people realize how this is a dangerous precedent and how its going to embolden a certain segment of gamers to openly harass and threaten people.

literally the only precedent set here is that employees identifying themselves as such can't go off and attack random customers and business partners and expect to be immune from blowback.

It's readily apparent from the public announcement that this was done because they violated the core values of the company (and since 2+2 still generally equals 4, you can see that if you look at what they said and look at Arenanet's history of interacting with its community).

Quite frankly it is the same standard that exists in almost every profession, the world over. If you recklessly create a costly PR nightmare for your employer, you can expect punishment up to and potentially including termination. It's not a new concept to anyone who's has a professional, corporate job for more than 2 weeks.

Going from what happened here, a person who was not attacked AT ALL until they launched unprovoked attacks on people literally just trying to have a conversation, to the notion of emboldening mob retribution is demonstrative of a complete detachment from the reality of the situation.

[Oneiroid.9245]

Chiming in again to say I hope that anet considers what these situations symbolize more in the future. As a GW2 player who belongs to multiple marginalized groups, this situation has admittedly left a bit of a sour taste in my mouth. I have my own opinions on JP and I wish there could be more of a nuanced, peaceful discussion on it. However, sadly, the issues of politics and bigotry have been dragged into it, which means it's hard to have a nuanced discussion when the other side is screaming really bigoted things. Do I think JP was being a professional and giving off a good image for the company and representing arenanet well? No, I do not. However, the side that is arguing from a place of deep bigotry is more alarming to me than the issue with JP itself. It frankly saddens and disheartens me to feel like arenanet has not made their stance clear enough that they do not tolerate this bigotry, and that they will not buckle to the people on other websites who are now literally saying they feel empowered to fire any dev they want by making a stink of it. It is only a short amount of time until that turns into sentiments of "oh, this dev is transgender, we don't like it, let's invent/create reasons they need to be fired and pressure arenanet for it" and so forth, until bigoted aggressive voices have stripped your company of talented employees who bring so much to the table both as creators and as people of diverse life experiences.

I'm really not interested in arguing with people on the forums about this. I'm not going to get into debates with other players. I'm posting this message solely for whichever dev is combing this and providing feedback to arenanet. I just want to say that historically, you have a company that, as a marginalized person, I've always felt protected and empowered by. I've been heartened by seeing devs who belong to different marginalized groups being out and proud about that, and by the level of inclusion and representation you have in your game. I was super happy when your social media had pride icons! It's great! I've finally felt "whoa, a game that cares about me"! But after this instance, I do feel like that has been a bit shaken. It makes me nervous-- is arenanet going to cave to aggression and bigotry in the future? Is this going to set a new standard that will be followed, and, in my opinion, drag down the quality of the game and arenanet's reputation as an empathetic company?

So for whoever at arenanet is collecting feedback I just want to suggest that in the future you heavily consider from what positions criticism or calls for devs to be fired is coming from. When you make your statements, what messages will they send? Who will feel empowered by them? Who will feel endangered? In 2018 it never hurts to be extra careful and to make sure your company is acting with empathy. Get some diverse voices at your tables when you discuss these things, let them speak about how these issues make them feel and what they think a reasonable solution would be. If you're someone in a position of power who may not be personally affected by the bigotry in question (for example, if you are a man and listening to a woman speak), please do try to consider their struggles. You don't have to get too overly political in your public statements, but sending off a clear message that you won't cave to baseless bullying-- if and when it does pop up-- and bigotry, and that you care about your players who might feel endangered, would be good. Thank you, and I'm sorry to Gaile Gray and the other devs and moderators reading this all who have had to deal with this nightmare of a situation, but we appreciate you facilitating this discussion and I hope that something good can be salvaged from this. Please continue to try your best to make GW2 a rare and important haven for people often battered by the viciousness of the gaming community.

[Eponet.4829]

@thruine.8510 said:Take racism. I can't really know what its like which is why so many white males have trouble with it. But I can listen to those who have experienced and model my behavior accordingly.

Well, if you'll listen to the experiences of a half caucasian/half pacific islander (With mixed race people historically experiencing the greatest degree of racism per person) who had a grandfather that straight up told my mother not to marry my father because he was 'black'.

From my experiences, racism towards me is a major rarity in my generation. The most I get is the occasional question of what my ethnicity is because pacific islanders are a major minority that a bunch of people don't know the typical physical traits of, which is a little annoying in that I have to go into detail about my ancestry (Not helped at all by the fact that the caucasian half is itself made up of at least 6 different countries and probably more from way back) in order to give an accurate answer. No one's ever singled me out in a negative light because of it in any way that I've noticed, and in fact, it worked to my advantage when it came to applying for university to apply as a pacific islander rather than just ticking other and putting my nationality (Let us tick multiple boxes please).

[Just a flesh wound.3589]

@Rococo.8347 said:

@"Just a flesh wound.3589" said:He might have made a mistake but she continued to pursue the subject after he apologized with anger and insults. That’s what got her fired.

Ive given up trying to piece together the entire conversation as the vast majority of comments across the web only show certain sections, however, I think it much more likely that she was fired because of the rabid organised campaign on social media, which unfortunately ( and ironically) had some real shades of GG, with all the MRA/alt right band-waggoning. After all, legally that's a dodgy position for them - 'we are ok with your initial tongue lashing, but we are sacking you because you did another couple later'? ive seen dismissals at close quarters that isn't how it works.

People on reddit were bragging about how it was the second most vitriolic response form the community eevvvaaaah yay us! At the end of the day that's a massively out of proportion response to a dev talking kitten at a partner, I felt as a woman a clear blood in the water response and a lot of really crappy sexist comments were floated around in reddit and upvoted, she was called everything under the sun, I wouldn't be surprised if there were violent threats via PM's if GG is anything to go on. And once they got a taste they couldn't stop, there was brief faux remorse for Peter Fries, then another round of 'who can we take down now' with people trawling social media accounts.

Sacking was totally the wrong decision for both of them ( but especially PF) because of this massive negative press campaign. There was a middle path, but Anet didn't want to invest the time and effort so chose the quick option. I would have put her straight on a final warning, enforced media training, a TOTAL block on her using social media atall to decompress for 4 weeks.

Since you have trouble piecing together the entire conversation here’s a

to watch. It has the guy’s opinion on the matter as commentary but he also has the relevant posts. Reading them will give you an idea as to what the kerflunkle is about.

[Rococo.8347]

Another thing that makes me uncomfortable about this is everyone rushing to Deroir's defence as if he cant as a fully grown adult handle someone on social media being an arse to him, I mean honestly ive had similar levels of vitriol thrown at me in a low level pvp match - it was a crappy experience but he was ok!

more than ok as it turns out because he was struggling to get enough people watching on twitch to get/maintain some sort of partnership status and its all sorted now. I don't for one second think his part in all this was a ratings grab, I like his work but he did point out he wasn't going to comment and shoot himself in the foot. Clearly he was aware he needed to protect his 'brand' and not call out any blood circling 'fans'

And I honestly think if he had told everyone to STFU early on it would have taken the heat out.

[Alfador.7649]

@Lincolnbeard.1735 said:This reminds me of a situation that happen with the Football Club (soccer for NA) I'm a fan of.So we had one of the best presidents if not the best president in the history of the club, we had the best year in the history of the club in which we won out every single championship in sports except in football.

That president wrote something on facebook criticizing the football team, saying they could have done much better in one particular match.Media blown out that statement, some unfortunate events unfolded, president got fired by the members (don't know the word in english, fans that pay monthly to the club).

This is the exact same ridiculous kitten.Dev said something, reddit blow kitten out of proportion, dev got fired.

And now some people are celebrating this as some kind of victory?! Two people that got (even if temporary) their life ruined...Grow the kitten up!

So that football coach swore at people, accused them of being bigots and personally attacked everyone who tried to be a part of a conversation on the internet? No? Ok so they're not similar at all and you just brought it up because you're a huge fan of false equivalences. got it.

[Itzena.8452]

@hugo.4705 said:Every thread like this one should be closed, they are no more constructive posts, let's return to the real things: the game himself, not the company, we were all a jerk someday, if the company can't talk properly to players anymore, let's shut down the reddit and twitters, whereas the community is awesome in game, on internet she is toxic.So feedback is only good if you agree with it, and if you don't it should go away? Interesting take

[Alfador.7649]

@"hugo.4705" said:Every thread like this one should be closed, they are no more constructive posts, let's return to the real things: the game himself, not the company, we were all a jerk someday, if the company can't talk properly to players anymore, let's shut down the reddit and twitters, whereas the community is awesome in game, on internet she is toxic.

So now that you no longer like the direction the conversation has done you want it shut down? Sorry, you don't get to unilaterally decide what is a "constructive" post based on whether or not you agree with it. This event hit its apex less than 24 hours ago. People are still finding out about it and processing it. It's still being reported as new news in various outlets. There's no reason to shut down discussion just because you don't like it.

PS/Edit: I for one have actually seen far more productive and well-argued viewpoints, even those I fundamentally disagree with, now, than I did say... 12 or so hours ago. If anyone is truly out of hand the moderators have the power to deal with them as they would any other malicious poster.

[hugo.4705]

..........