In the wake of the contentious firings of Jessica Price and Peter Fries, over their Twitter tirade, which can be found in endless articles across the internet (googling "ArenaNet-firing-Twitter" seems to produce favorable results), I have shared many thoughts with some friends and industry professionals. Here are my thoughts no one asked for:
-Jessica was ultimately wrong in addressing a member of her community for her game the way she did. Sure, some people are saying it was a condescending tweet that Deroir made to her, but those people didn't read what he wrote. I take feedback from players all of the time and sometimes the feedback doesn't make any sense, at all. That said, if it's delivered politely and with only the best of intentions in mind, I never in my mind think about getting angry or spiteful at the person, like Jessica did repeatedly.
-Jessica making this a gender or sexism issue is, frankly, disgusting. No one addressed her gender in any capacity accept herself. Even in post-interviews she thought the CEO was "exerting power over her" because he was a man. That's just ridiculous, and the fact the CEO himself addressed the firing personally is to be commended.
-Besides trying defend Jessica, I honestly do not understand why Peter Fries was fired. I feel that's the bigger story no one is talking about, since even in his wrongful defense of her he was still being respectful.
-It was very clear from her Polygon interview that she was not going to apologize in any capacity for her attitude, which is very telling to me. It tells me that no amount of coaching was going to change her ways.
-Polygon in the same interview had enough journalistic integrity to show the CEO's comments on the issue, but did not provide any editorial comment or author comment on it, at all. Everything in the article was in the defense of Jessica. The bias is clear.
-Though I 100% agree that disciplinary action was needed against Price and maybe Fries, whether or not a firing was warranted is an interesting debate point. I can agree that a firing "might" have been too harsh, but her clear unwillingness to want to make this right and her very clear and present lack of remorse for how she handled herself makes me think that ultimately it was warranted.
-I stress again, not sure why Fries got the axe. If anything, it removes the notion that "sexism" is at play since both a male and female were fired, but his conduct was mostly harmless. Except for his defense of her while she was making an ass of herself and the company she was representing at the time, he was quite respectful. I hope he lands on his feet quickly.
To note how much I agree with the CEO of ArenaNet, I want to end this post with his comments, in full:
" Jessica had identified herself as an ArenaNet employee on Reddit and Twitter, had been discussing Episode 3 storytelling with fans on Reddit, then had written a 25-part tweet about how we tell stories in MMOs, relating it back to Episode 3. She was representing the company. The expectation was to behave professionally and respectfully, or at least walk away. Instead, she attacked.
Concerns have been publicly raised that she was responding to harassment. It’s not my place to tell employees when they should or shouldn’t feel harassed. In this case, however, our employees could have chosen not to engage, and they could have brought the issue to the company, whereby we would have done everything we could to protect them.
We won’t tolerate harassment. When an employee feels harassed, we want them to bring the issue to us, so that we can protect the employee, deal with the issue, and use it to speak to the larger issue of harassment.
Whatever Jessica and Peter felt internally about the situation, this was objectively a customer engaging us respectfully and professionally, presenting a suggestion for our game. Any response from our company needed to be respectful and professional. A perceived slight doesn’t give us license to attack.
We’ve all dedicated our careers to entertaining people, to making games for the purpose of delighting those who play them. We generally have a wonderful relationship with our community, and that’s a point of pride for us. We want to hear from our players. It’s not acceptable that an attempted interaction with our company — in this case a polite game suggestion — would be met with open hostility and derision from us. That sets a chilling precedent.
The tweets were made on July 4, when the studio was closed for the holiday. We were aware of them that day, and decided we’d need to take action in the morning. The fact that the community’s anger was escalating on July 5 could make it look like our action was a response to the community’s anger. But that wasn’t the case. We took action as soon as we practicably could.
I hate to let an employee go, and I wish the best for Jessica and Peter, as for any former employee, in whatever they choose to do next.
Whatever you thought of the tweets, Jessica and Peter were also part of the team that brought you the kidnapping scene in Episode 1, which was a wonderfully well-executed scene. That’s how I want to remember their time at ArenaNet."
Comments