GW2 – Writers Fired
772 words.
Given recent unexpected events at ArenaNet, I feel pretty awful about my last post on GW2. I’ve expressed displeasure over ArenaNet’s handling of story and gameplay plenty of times here which is exactly the kind of thing that led to the firing of two ArenaNet writers. So I wanted to say a couple of things.
First of all, I absolutely respect any game writer or developer’s right to tell me that I don’t know what I’m talking about, that I don’t understand the challenges associated with writing for a game, etc., etc. I don’t know what it’s like to write for a game, and I’m quite sure it’s entirely different from writing a book or writing a blog. I try to keep that kind of thing in mind when I’m commenting on games but sometimes I forget.
So if any ArenaNet writer had seen my post and left a comment saying, “You’re a moron,” I would have a) been flattered they even knew about my blog, and b) probably apologized, because I probably was being a moron. If the situation were reversed I sure wouldn’t want anyone trying to tell me how to write for my game, and most likely I wouldn’t even be on social media to read anyone’s opinion about my writing in the first place.
I typically side with developers on most issues. I’m a developer myself so I’m well aware that when you’re developing a product, it’s pretty easy and often impossible not to fall into a defensive mindset. But there’s a reason for it. Software users (and managers) demonstrate repeatedly, over and over, every day, that they don’t understand the software development process. There might be users out there who can speak intelligently to a developer about the process, but it’s maybe 1 in a 1000 people who truly “gets it.” If that. So the odds that you are that one person who really knows what they’re talking about (even if you’re also a developer) are pretty slim.
I guess what I’m saying is that it should be expected that developers aren’t going to respond positively to your comments on their work, regardless of how well you’ve thought them through or how politely you say them. Especially if you do the online equivalent of knocking on their front door to deliver your comments. Even if the developer responds, “Hey that’s a great idea, I’m going to look into that right away, thanks for the feedback!” you should know they are lying right to your face to get rid of you. That influencer should not have expected to have an ongoing, constructive dialog with any game’s writer, and they absolutely abused their position of influence to try to do so. I don’t know who he was, had never heard of him, and I have no interest in looking up his name now or ever. (I know, it’s not fair, but welcome to life. First impressions matter.)
On the flip side, developers have to deal with (usually) well-meaning users trying to explain to them how to do their job every single day. Every. Single. Day. It’s a part of the job that nobody tells you about. Sometimes you can insulate developers from the users, sometimes you can’t. Some days you can handle it fine, some days you can’t. It’s a constant struggle. But I would generally advise against going off on users for any reason, regardless of how much they deserve it. It’s an implicit part of being a successful developer. I’ve had to stop myself from doing it many times, and I’ve had to talk with others to keep them from doing it more than once. I do not envy game developers in 2018 having to deal with “the community.” (Quotes used to emphasize how dysfunctional most game communities are.)
So in a nutshell, mistakes were made on all sides. Nobody won here. I hope those two writers get new jobs quickly, and I kind of hope that influencer goes on the blacklist of every game developer in the industry.
UPDATE 7/8: By the way I closed comments on this post mainly because I don’t particularly want to discuss who was right or who was wrong here. The point of this post was mainly just to say I felt bad about complaining about GW2 right before it all happened (I think I have some legitimate complaints, but I still felt bad about it hehe). Eventually I’ll write more about this, although I do have a bad habit lately of writing a lot of posts that I never get around to publishing.
Archived Comments
Wilhelm Arcturus 2018-07-06T15:32:29Z
Well, I don’t think the influencer in question was necessarily guilty of anything. Blacklisting them doesn’t seem warranted relative to their actions. They made a polite and qualified comment and, when they got push back, apologized. But that wasn’t enough and things went too far and then other people piled on.
I get that when you’re assailed often you stop seeing the nuance and just categorize any questioning as an attack. But I am also a bit salty about both writers who got fired taking the line that these were their private accounts and how dare random people address them and yet they are on very public social media platform flying the Anet flag in their profiles, talking about their game and commenting on things going on in the industry. That is not the way things work on social media. You don’t get to be public when it suits you and private when your words come back to bite you. There are plenty of tales out there before this of people not understanding that Twitter is a fishbowl and everybody can see you.
Being on the dev side of things myself, I have some sympathy for both writers. But I also can’t help thinking, “Well, what did you think was going to happen?”
UltrViolet 2018-07-06T17:18:59Z Blacklisting the influencer is probably a bit unfair of me, and I’m glad he apologized, and I agree Twitter is public and the writers overreacted/mishandled it. But at the very least it seems quite rude to go up to any artist-type at any time under any circumstances and say, “Let’s chat about how you could have done your art better.” It may not be “wrong” per se but no artist is likely to receive that very well if they hadn’t specifically asked for feedback. It’s a matter of basic common courtesy if nothing else.
Wilhelm Arcturus 2018-07-06T18:03:30Z Well, the writer in question was opining on Twitter about how player character interactions need to be developed for MMORPGs vs. RPGs when the influencer asked a question on topic and politely. I find it hard to even define that as rude because the initial thread was in a public forum and addressed to nobody in particular. If responding to statements from people you follow on Twitter is rude, I fear I am rude all the time.
Moongy 2018-07-06T18:33:12Z You probably should have read more, writer in question didn’t just say “Don’t teach me how to do my job”, she played sexist card, then started attacking the guy even after he apologized and left, then told another guy to “get the fuck off her feed” after he asked what was so sexist about that question. And she didn’t stop, she wrote “I don’t have to pretend to like you in my personal time”, she started bragging about “a lot of manfeels getting hurt”, she called Arena.net partners “rando asshats”, second writer wrote something about how he never was criticised for his writing because he’s a man. This whole situation is not about how they do their job, it’s about not treating your customers like shit because you’re off-work, especially since they’ve actually never offended developers.
Bhagpuss 2018-07-06T18:36:37Z
You really should read the initial exchange of tweets. The influencer in question was 100% polite, sensible and entirely ordinary. He said absolutely nothing different to what thousands of players say in thousands of comments across any number of media every day. His suggestion wasn’t even a poor or ignorant suggestion - he basically suggested that GW2 might consider using the exact same system that countless other MMOs use as routine. A less offensive suggestion, less offensively phrased would be hard to imagine.
The developer in question didn’t only react to this in a very unexpected and hard to understand manner but then pursued the issue long after the influencer had very politely withdrawn from the discussion. The influencer in question, far from being unknown, actually has an NPC named after him in the game itself, put there by the team that designs fractals for the sterling work said influencer has done in encouraging people to enjoy that part of the game. The dev, who works alongside these other devs who had done that, chose to refer to the influencer as some “rando asshat”.
On top of that, ANet has a long-standing policy of strict control over developer interaction with players, much stricter than most MMOs would normally insist on. In common with most companies (it’s absolutely the case with the business I work for) employees are entirely responsible for their actions when commenting in any way about their employment, which was 100% what this dev was doing. There is literally no separation between that kind of commentary on social media and commenting as an official representative of the company on an official forum. It is the same thing and any employee who posted those same comments on ANets own forums would expect to be disciplined and probably sacked.
As for your comments on the quality of the writing in GW2 you have absolutely no need to question anything you said. It’s dreadful. Before this current debacle I’d been reading the thread on the official forum where there are a number of really astonishingly self-congratulatory comments by members of the writing team. The disconnect between what that team apparently believes it is producing and what GW2 players like yourself percieve them as producing is immense.
I only hope this current farrago (and the change in personel) leads to an improvement in the standard of writing as well as the way devs conduct themselves in all public spaces. I doubt it will make much difference, unfortunately.
UltrViolet 2018-07-06T20:09:18Z Well, like I said, mistakes were made all around. It wasn’t very difficult for me to see how the influencer’s initial tweets could be perceived as threatening. To me it had a bit of an “overzealous fan runs up to celebrity and starts babbling” vibe to it, which I’d like to think most people would agree is not super cool or comfortable and should not be encouraged. And no, she didn’t respond very well, but to me that’s kind of a fight or flight situation and I doubt very many game studios train their people in dealing with that. They probably should though.
Shintar 2018-07-06T21:25:37Z
What I find the most interesting about this situation is how it shows everyone’s perceptions being biased by their own experiences. As someone who once got in trouble at work for mentioning in a friends-only Facebook post that it was a quiet day at work (which a co-worker whom I had innocently friended felt the need to report to HR!) the idea that someone should get away with talking to a customer like this in public is astounding.
Likewise I have a very different view from those who wonder “why didn’t they give her another chance”. At my place of employ, someone once physically assaulted another co-worker in the office (right in front of HR no less). They still wanted to give him another chance, provided that he apologised for his actions, but he didn’t want to because he hated the guy whom he had assaulted just that much, lol. You never really know what’s going on behind closed doors.
(Obviously I’m only mentioning all of this because this account is in no way tied to my real name. :P)
All that said, I do feel bad for this lady now having had an internet mob descend on her. That hardly seems like an appropriate response.
UltrViolet 2018-07-07T00:20:50Z FYI I let one comment slide that tried to drag this into gender politics, which has no place on this blog, but I won’t allow any more.
UltrViolet 2018-07-07T00:27:24Z Yeah I agree there’s usually more than what we see on the surface, it’s just a bad situation all around. I kind of regret mentioning it now because I didn’t really want to add any fuel to the fire. I should have known better hehe.
saltycleric 2018-07-07T16:39:40Z You didn’t add any more fuel to the fire then maybe the equivalent of a twig on a raging forest fire. This was on all 3 major pc gaming sites and probably many that I don’t visit as well. I am assuming the “gender politics” remark was my comment. In all fairness the only person who introduced gender into the conversation was Ms. Price herself. Reading your reaction to people’s comments here makes me wonder if you have even read the twitter exchanges in their entirety. You seem to be missing a basic understanding of why her tweets were received with the reaction they garnered from both ArenaNet and GW2 players in general.
UltrViolet 2018-07-08T00:12:11Z I said mistakes were made on all sides (I counted 4 sides in this issue). I’m not really interested in doing a Zapruder film analysis on it.
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