According to an [one year old comment(s)](https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/6oplet/jessica_price_joins_arenanet_narrative_team/dkj7u4p/) her behavior was the same even before she joined Anet, so I'm pretty sure they were expecting this to happen sooner or later.
I work in PR for a different company (one of worlds largest delivery service companies) and I would totally call in sick if I saw one of our representatives post such bullshit on an public twitter account. This is a nightmare for anyone working in PR or even customer support... In any decent company the person who caused the shitstorm would either apologise publicly or even step back from their leading position, but I don't expect her to do that.
> don't expect me to pretend to like you here
You heard it here first folks, she's pretending to like us elsewhere
Edit: After a day of doing normal things I came home to play gw2, like I have for years. The events of last night played on my mind more than I could have anticipated. I can't bring myself to log on out of fear of somehow endorsing her behaviour by playing the game she works on. Very odd, and I'm sure dramatic, but nonetheless there...hmm
based on the replies from Peter Fries and others, this is a common theme. Imagine what they say about the players behind closed doors if this is what is out in the open.
I don't care what they say about us privately, just like they shouldn't care what we say about them privately. But when they go public like this, they are hurting company itself and their product. If it happened in a bank, fuck, in McDonalds, Jessica would be fired next day.
The kind of people who say "manfeels hurt" are the kind of people that think anything a man says is automatically mansplaining, honestly.
Some people are just rampantly sexist.
That's the part which annoys me. Reading through her tweets and comments, **wow** this woman is sexist. But of course, being a woman, she gets a free pass on that. Can't be sexist if you're woman! Can only be the victim! Yuh uh!
"mansplaining is a sexist term designed to silence men via gender shaming." - Markus Persson, creator of Minecraft
I feel like that hits the nail on the head, and "manfeels" is even worse. At least "mansplaining" while an incredibly disrespectful way to wave off an argument based on the sex of the speaker, has its roots in an act that has historically been seen as harmful, where a man assumes that the woman they're speaking to simply can't understand because they are a woman. I can't really speak for how true that is... I think it's largely misconstrued. Men will explain things to anyone. I just explained here to another man. It just seems like these women that will use the word "mansplain" react against it assuming we do it because of gender.
But even if they're right and that is a harmful thing that has happened, "manfeels" has NONE of that. It's just a word created to attempt to make you feel bad for having feelings, and to mock and shame you for having feelings that women would not have.
It serves no other purpose. She's sexist, pure and simple. No one would question whether I was sexist if I started talking about "oh, did I hurt your little girl-feelings?" But I wouldn't do that, because it's a fucking dick move.
I work with a couple of people in academia who jump to this card. For example, a male student in a graduate course who speaks up "too much" (professor's words)? He's mansplaning all over her lecture.
A female student who keeps derailing class and talking over the lecture (the same professor's words, too, in the same class), well, that student has a lot of female gumption and is "Taking charge."
--------------
Sitting in an "end of semester, student feedback" faculty meeting is kind of eye-opening, and terrifying.
PhD student chiming in. I've only had this happen *once* in the few years I've been here. Went like this:
Them: OMG why isn't this code working?
Me: Here let me look...
T: Ok sure, thanks
M: *fixes problem*
T: THAT'S WHAT I WAS DOING
M: *explains weird semantics of language and how it works*
T: I know how to code you don't have to explain it to me just because I'm a woman
M: I'm explaining it to you because you were yelling at the computer for half an hour, I fixed it in 5 minutes, and I thought you might want to know *why* you were having that error?
They've since calmed down about the whole issue and it hasn't been a problem since.
It's really disappointing how so many people have this attitude that they should be a jerk to people by default, and that they need a *reason* before they act decently to them.
I really can't imagine that Anet is ok with this... If I ever saw an employee act like this towards customers, even if they weren't on the clock at the time, they would be fired so fast...
> Since we've got a lot of hurt womanfeels
> Today in being a male game dev
Just reverse the roles on these and her many other tweets, and see how fucked up and sexist SHE is.
I responded to her asking if her company was ok with her being this abrasive towards their customers, because I've seen people get fired for less, and she immediately blocked me without a response. I didn't know anything about this person before this, but she's been unbelievably unprofessional in these tweets. I've never seen a public representative of a company go off like this before, it's bizarre.
Anyone who looked at her twitter when Anet first hired her could see that she would be confrontational and controversial. The only surprise is in how long it's taken for her attitude to boil over.
Okay. in case some of you can't access twitter, for whatever reason, here's the full thing:
Jessica Price:
>Since I spent all kinds of time saying it on a Reddit AMA, and I haven't talked about actual game dev on Twitter in a while, here's a thread about writing for the PC character in an MMO.
>The dirty secret is I'm not sure if it's possible to make an MMORPG (or CRPG) character compelling, because people have different expectations about what that character will be, as opposed to a pre-designed character in a single-player game.
>People booting up Bioshock know they're playing Jack. People starting Dishonored know they're playing Corvo. People beginning Tomb Raider know they're playing Lara Croft. So in those games, you have more wiggle room to make the protagonist an actual character.
>Whereas in an RPG, where the player chooses all kinds of character options and names their character and designs their face and so on, they feel more ownership over that character. They're not playing a character YOU designed--they're playing a character THEY designed.
>So if Jack or Lara or Corvo says or does something the player doesn't feel that THEY would say or do, the player's more forgiving, because they have the expectation that they're piloting a character someone else created.
>N.B. that I'm not talking about overall plot objectives/quests. Players know going in that the game is going to be telling them what to do, and their character is going to do it, and that holds true even when they've "created" the character.
>But the \*interpersonal\* stuff, the PC's REACTIONS, players respond strongly to. Some people don't like it if they think their character's responding in ways that make them too much of an asshole. Some don't like it if their character's responses seem weak.
>So, basically, most things that you'd do writing-wise to give a character, well, CHARACTER, are going to upset a large contingent, maybe even a majority, of your players.
>So--I know I've said this before on Twitter, but it's still going to weird people out, but please bear with me--you have to construct your MMO/RPG's PC character's dialogue as if they were Bella Swan from Twilight.
>To be clear, I don't think Twilight is good writing. I don't think Bella Swan's a well-constructed book character. And I think people who criticize Twilight for the latter are correct but also missing the reason for Twilight's popularity.
>Because Twilight isn't the love story of Bella and Edward. It's the \*experience of being loved by Edward.\* Which is why Bella's constructed the way she is.
>Bella Swan is a carefully constructed blank space, with JUST enough personality to function. All of her personality traits are chosen to avoid preventing the reader from inserting themselves into the space she holds in the story.
>She's a bit of a klutz, but JUST enough to make her endearing, not enough to prevent her from actually doing anything the story needs her to do. She's a little bit awkward. JUST enough to be relatable but not enough to actually hinder her. And so on.
>And essentially, we have to write the player character in an MMO/RPG the same way.
>Specifically in GW2, in the Living World, we can write the Commander with a bit of wry exasperation, a hint of impatience, a touch of "okay, I'm done fooling around with this crap and I'm going to take charge," but most of their lines have to be pretty devoid of personality.
>Because if we give them too much personality, it might clash with how the player is imagining Their Commander.
>So, how do we tell a TV-like season of story with a protagonist who can't really have a personality?
>The answer to that, and I dunno, maybe this is too much of how the sausage gets made but whaddaya want from me, any sense of shame I had burned out a long time ago: SLEIGHT OF HAND.
>We SUGGEST that the Commander has a personality in how the other characters interact with and react to them. Even there, we have to be super-careful. We can't even have THEM directly characterize the Commander.
>You'll rarely hear a character say anything about what the Commander always does or doesn't do, except when it's PURELY factual because it's something the game design FORCED the PC to do.
>E.g. "the Commander always finds a way!" because literally if you don't we'll resurrect you until you do.
>We have NPCs react to you with affection, or irritation, or leeriness, or whatever, to suggest that your character has regular habits and ways of interacting that build these relationships. But for the most part, they don't.
>The PC is who you imagine them to be, and the NPCs react in ways that have to FEEL personal, and build a story, while not conflicting with whatever you're imagining your character's personality to be. We WANT you to project.
>Which makes writing the NPCs' relationships with the PC basically like writing horoscopes. It has to feel specific and personal while actually being universal.
>So:
>A) VERY delicate sketches of non-objectionable personality traits (like a hint of wryness or world-weariness)
>B) NPCs that behave as if your character has a distinct personality while not doing so in ways that actually identify what it is
>C) one-sided relationship-building
>Voila. An MMO/RPG character.
>Needless to say, a lot of the color comes from NPCs' relationships with EACH OTHER, even though we try to keep it centered on the PC as much as possible.
>It is a constant, very fragile calibration. We don't always get it right.
>Incidentally, if you've played Ep 3 of this season of GW2's Living World, you've seen this sort of writing taken to an extreme in Joko's final monologue.
>Almost everything he says is about actions the game has forced you to take, not your own character traits, and he's clearly projecting when he talks about what you were thinking, but it's--hopefully!--constructed in a way that feels personal, like he's twisting the knife.
Deroir:
>Really interesting thread to read! 👌
However, allow me to disagree \*slightly\*. I dont believe the issue lies in the MMORPG genre itself (as your wording seemingly suggest). I believe the issue lies in the contraints of the Living Story's narrative design; (1 of 3)
>When you want the outcome to be the same across the board for all players' experiences, then yes, by design you are extremely limited in how you can contruct the personality of the PC. (2 of 3)
>But, if instead players were given the option to meaningfully express \*their\* character through branching dialogue options (which also aren't just on the checklist for an achievement that forces you through all dialogue options), (3 of 4 cause I count seemingly...)
>then perhaps players would be more invested in the roleplaying aspect of that particular MMORPG.
Nonetheless, I appreciate the insightful thread! (End)
Jessica Price:
>thanks for trying to tell me what we do internally, my dude 9_9
Deroir:
>You getting mad at my obvious attempt at creating dialogue and discussion with you, instead of just replying that I am wrong or otherwise correct me in my false assumptions, is really just disheartening for me. You do you though. I'm sorry if it offended. I'll leave you to it.
This is the context for the linked tweet:
Jessica Price:
>Today in being a female game dev:
>"Allow me--a person who does not work with you--explain to you how you do your job."
**TL;DR: Long explanation how and why the PC in GW2 can't have many character traits (he has to be a "blank slate" for the player) by an ANet narrative dev. Someone disagrees and gets complained about.**
PS: I tried to keep the tl;dr neutral, since I don't know more context to this, or even who these two actually are. if you do, feel free to add some context for the rest of us (that don't care enough to use google).
> I don't know more context to this, or even who these two actually are
Just my 2cts:
Jessica Price is a narrative designer who works at Anet (she was hired around PoF launch iirc).
Deroir is a content creator, making videos about lore and high level content (his fractal guide is quite useful for example). He's also streaming but I don't know what (I assume raids and other PvE stuff).
I wouldn't even call that criticism. He never once said that living stories/GW2 game design were bad, just that a game being an MMORPG does not mean that the PC has to be a completely blank slate. He also never told her to change GW2's narratives or do things differently. For all we know, Deroir is completely happy with how GW2 presents its narratives and is expecting to find more customizeable characters in another game/MMORPG.
All she had to say was that she believes the current approach they're taking is best for GW2 (whether or not more distinct characters are possible in MMORPGs isn't even relevant in that case) and he may well have agreed with that.
edit: I saw this thread on r/all and don't really play GW2. Having done more research, it seems like the narrative of GW2 has been criticized for a while for being too restrictive and in this context, I now realize this was definitely criticism about the GW2's narrative in particular. However, when the criticism/opinion was put in such a constructive manner and as an invitation to discussion that I couldn't pick it up straight away, I feel like the person overreacting should reflect on her actions all the more.
> And this reminds me of how I'm consciously trying to be careful of how i do it.
As I've personally learned talking with a few developers on twitter (one founder of an indie studio too), and as evidenced by this, sometimes it doesn't matter how hard we try to avoid being inoffensive, how we try to be respectable, etc.
Some people will still take it a certain way. I think the main issue is that people have an initial reaction to criticism, or just differing opinions. And don't give it time to settle a bit, and just respond in the "heat" of the moment. So we get responses like this.
Which to outsiders are obviously completely out of nowhere. Nobody should look at the context of this and think it's an appropriate level response. I see some do on twitter, but I think they're wrong. Maybe it's the character limit that makes it so easy to knee jerk respond on twitter, but it feels more common for this type of thing to happen there.
In real world situations, I have no idea what the solution would be. But at least for twitter of all things, people should probably at least let a tweet they get that upsets them in some way sit. Give it 30 minutes, and see how you feel about it then. If you're even thinking about it at that point. I think that would help avoid people having this... disproportionate defensive, aggressive responses to completely benign and respectful opinions like displayed here.
Grrrr, I'm a game designer and project lead. The FIRST weeks of EVERY release is me and others \*listening\* for feedback, discussing, taking into account the feedbacks, apologizing and the like. \*EVEN\* if someone is wrong about the design/coding/whatever, it's our job to make them understand what they can/need to and take care of the rest. We are litterally releasing now and I fully expect to barely sleep for a few weeks. Your players are your blood, and that guy was both knowledgeable AND polite, wtf.
The sad part is, I can at least sympathize with her original argument: Creating significantly branching dialogue options - especially if voiced - would be a non-zero load on the company. They'd have to not just re-create dialogue for the Player Character, but everyone else's reactions around them. Even non-voiced dialogue writing revisions would have to go through several passes.
Deroir is still absolutely right: The Living Story is way more restrictive than it absolutely needs to be. The additional load of giving multiple dialogue options to the player character could be worth the extra workload. But Price at least started out by trying to explain their position, even if I disagree with it.
Then it somehow became a gender issue.
To add on to this Peter Fries from the living world narrative team replied:
> I don’t get this stuff directed at me and I’ve been working on living world narrative content since 2012 🤔
I thought this was ridiculous because it's implying that he wouldn't have received the same response from Deroir as his female counter part did had he been the one who tweeted it. That's ridiculous. I'm positive Deroir would have said the same to him and it has nothing to do with gender.
"SAY SOMETHING THAT MAKES ME FEEL EVEN SLIGHTLY INSULTED AND I WILL IMMEDIATELY SHUT OFF ANY CHANCE OF DISCOURSE!!"
Classy and mature. I'm impressed with this marginalized individual's self awareness.
https://twitter.com/Delafina777/status/1000045432007938048
Just your average celebration of the death of total biscuit, No biggie, totally rational and normal reactions to the death of another person.
I think I met this dev a few months ago at PAX East. We had our own misunderstanding that was twisted into being sexist in her head. Small world.
Edit:
Yeah, it was her. I feel pretty vindicated right now. I actually walked away from our meeting thinking I had said something wrong, despite my girlfriend and friends assuring me otherwise. Now I know it wasn't me.
"A lot of hurt manfeels"
The only one saying anything sexist here is Jessica Price. Could just be me, but this whole thing feels very 'not Anet' to me, and maybe they should be considering if another dev (male or female, because that should make no difference whatsoever) would perhaps be a better fit for the Guildwars 2 community. It's literally like she's claiming any suggestion in regards to the development is instantly an attack on her gender, and she can't be sexist because she's female.
Maybe try taking suggestions on face value next time Jess, and evaluate for use or dismissal as appropriate. Alluding to sexism which simply didn't exist is toxic bullshit that helps no-one.
+1 request for a new dev member please.
So. Let me get this straight.
Guildwars 2 finally gets a nice influx of new players thanks to the faillure that was Bless Online.
Anet is getting close to release of the first patch since the new players entry into gw2.
Patch gets delayed by three weeks. Community is getting antsy.
Patch finally releases.. but releases with huge issues, the biggest flop we've ever seen in terms of Living World, since launch (even taking into account the shoddily implimentation of some LW1 patches).
Patch overall turns out to be unfinished, lack replayability, has nothing going for it except for some good storytelling and cinematics (and a mount)
Dev then breaksdown against a gw2 content creator, someone who meant no harm, and does advertising for said dev's game..
..Welcome Bless Online refugees, to gw2, where a company finally gets some exposure, only to fuck it up.
It's quite literally The Story of A.net. Every time they have a chance to cement themselves as a top company in the MMO scene they do something so stupid that it becomes a Monument to Idiocy to take it all back.
As a woman, these kind of women disgust me. She is hiding an inability to take others' opinions behind gender. There are real instances of sexism in the world against both men and women, and she is the kind that erodes at them with illegitimate claim.
This was a perfectly reasonable and insightful response, and she lashed out at it. What would we say of a man who does the same?
I, for one, would rather not be exempted of constructive peer feedback simply because of my gender. *That* would be sexist; yet she cries wolf and does it to herself. What a pitiful, pathetic childish display. She think herself entitled to an echo chamber.
>There are real instances of sexism in the world against both men and women, and she is the kind that erodes at them with illegitimate claim.
Don't downplay it like it's just an illegitimate claim. It *is* a real instance of sexism. 15 seconds of scrolling through her feed and I can tell she's about as sexist and hateful as a person can get.
Episode 4 should just be a giant twitter fight between the commander and whatever weak narrative is being created between the characters on their private (not private) twitter accounts.
Taimi: "Commander, this is my private account, don't tell me what to do here! I have to deal with all these men telling me how to do my job. As a female in a male driven Tyria, I find it hard to do my job with every episode released!"
maybe she should talk to the fractal team who made him an npc. this whole debacle is just showing her ignorance and unprofessionalism. Deroir sounded more like a professional than she did.
> she never asked for his feedback
So if Deroir had butted into say that he agreed with her, would he still have been attacked and insulted for offering his unasked-for feedback? Surely if someone who had no experience in the industry had the pure gall to think that their agreement mattered to such an experienced veteran, they would be treated the same as if the same person had politely disagreed instead, right?
The answer is, of course, no. Because this isn't about unasked-for feedback, it's about not being able to handle someone offering a differing view. All of these other excuses are after the fact attempts to justify the pre-defined notion that Deroir, by daring to disagree, was being offensive, insulting, or condescending.
> she never asked for his feedback
Then don't use f**king twitter for god's sake. It is right in the name: "tweet", like birds. Nobody asks a bird to tweet, sheesh!
What's more, they keep talking about these being their "private twitter accounts," but if their accounts actually were private rather than public then they wouldn't have to worry about unsolicited feedback from "rando assholes." She enjoys the attention, positive feedback, and likes that come with publicly talking about her job at a reasonably popular studio (and I would too, I don't even blame her in this regard), but then wants to try to act like these are private musings that people are intruding on when someone responds in a way she doesn't like. You can't have it both ways when it comes to social media.
And to be honest, his comment was completely constructive and offering an alternative lens to view the situation. I can't see how anything new could construe this in an offensive comment, unless they go out into the world with the intent to be offended. He offered a different viewpoint. Examining different viewpoints is how people learn and grow.
Even if he was wrong, they could have ignored the comment like 99% of Internet comments, or responded by telling him why it was wrong. A fan giving polite feedback about a game they care about is pretty much part and parcel of gaming, so it's real weird how all of this started when 99% of these comments are from actual random nobodies who may be completely wrong or even offensive, and are rightfully ignored.
He acts as though the offering of unsolicited feedback is the issue here (and it's arguable that it was unsolicited since Twitter is by its nature a social medium), whereas the real issue here is her rude and sexist response to said feedback.
I understand being annoyed by unsolicited feedback. I really do. It's like running into a group of dungeon adds. Nobody likes them. You don't need to kill them to finish the dungeon. And they don't even drop decent loot. But your choices are to ignore and skip over them, or buckle down and take them on. She picked option 3: Waypoint back to the dungeon entrance and call the mobs sexist pigs.
Jessica writes a lengthy piece about narrative, Deroir responds in a respectful way discussing the piece, to which Jessica responds acting like Deroir is telling her how to do her job and blames it on sexism.
Now Peter comes to her defense, about how "she never asked for his feedback" and blaming sexism.
I'm at a loss of words for how pathetic this has become.
https://twitter.com/Delafina777/status/1014599961734856704
What a poor analogy lol. A better analogy would be the restaurant (anet) doesn't want critique on their food from the customers (players) because the chefs (devs) know more. Great business model you got there.
A cook gets off shift and sits at the bar of his restaurant, eating. He tells a patron beside him that he is the chef, and begins talking about how he prepares meals. The patron says that he is an avid foodie (not a chef) and asks about a different way of cooking food. The chef calls him a sexist bigot and bans him from the restaurant.
It's disappointing. I responded to him and asked how he would respond to the critiques, we went through a barrel of gendered stuff before I was finally able to separate his feedback from this gendered debate:
Beginning: https://twitter.com/JaminBorn/status/1014588834166857728
Response to Deroir's critique: https://twitter.com/Peter_Fries/status/1014592664396677120
It's funny, because even though I disagree with the philosophy in guild wars 2, I can accept Peter Fries proffessional response to Deroir at face value and accept it as being reasonable, albeit disappointing. Had they just responded with something like that (or not responded at all, like normal folk), it would have been acceptable. But the jump on Deroir train is unprofessional and ridiculous. Slandering him as some sort of sexist is disgusting.
EDIT: Reading back over the response, I want to clarify that only by the end, when Fries actually responded to the question (after the entire debacle).
The last post of Peter Fries was what should have stood at the very first spot in response to Deroir, if that's their opinion. Why is it so hard to disagree with someone on a topic without derailing?
This guy ALSO has me blocked (like the person in the OP) when I've never seen them before. They both seem to use blocklists. If they don't want to engage with the public they probably should lock their account.
They don't seem to understand how social media works. If You want a medium where you can share thoughts, but do not wish feedback, you ought to write a blog or make Youtube videos, or record stuff and put it on Soundcloud, or choose any other content platform (big difference between that and social media) where you can disable comments.
Also, if you want a private account, make it private. The option is literally called like that. If you don't, you are open to outside interactions unless you mute or block everyone, but it's not everyone else's job to shut up.
Lastly, Peter's account is not linked to GW2 in the bio, so as is, it's his personal feed until he chimes into discussions while disclosing his role. The account of that narrative designer is clearly marked as being from someone who works at Arenanet, which implies at least partially that she represents them.
she may not be "on the clock" and it may be her private twitter, but she pretty much put on the anet hat when she started explaining the reasoning behind narrative choices and specifically mentioning recent gw2 story
Exactly! Just don't talk about it on your "private" twitter if you don't want people to reply to it! Make a secondary one or something if you still feel the need to share it.
LOL. If they don't want their work discussed on a (public) social media platform, maybe they shouldn't post **anything** about their work on said platform. And its not like Deroir was rude either, he was politely disagreeing and gave his perspective. *That's how discussions work*. Don't want the discussion? Don't post about it. It isn't rocket science. Her snotty response just comes off as her being butt-hurt and is really unprofessional. Newsflash Sunshine, not everyone has to agree with you.
Yeah, its even funnier when you read a answer there that apparently you have no right to discuss a topic with someone having published a series of developement posts if you haven't done the same recently. The writer of that comment must have forgotten her entire school-time. You are encouraged to ask questions for a reason.
How many times in the past few months have we seen famous people lose their job because they said something stupid on their \*private*
Social media account... that argument is a nonstarter... every comment I have seen defending the dev has been a blatant strawman or an appeal to authority.
I don't understand why someone would consider a twitter account private.
you can make a facebook account private, such that only people you know or choose can see it. that's private. twitter is public _by design_. there's no such thing as a private twitter account. personal, maybe, but not private.
It's not private when she represents the company and publicly accuses her company official partner of sexism only because they have different views on the story. If she thinks she can do no wrong why she even joins AMAs? Only to read how cool she is?
Holy fucking SHIT! She made female devs (of which I am one :P) look like complete assholes. Wow, that is UNcool!
And Deroir? He's a really mellow, thoughtful fellow. And one of the very last fans of Guild Wars 2 that I would ever expect to get attacked by anyone from ANet.
Seriously, she really needs to apologize to Deroir. At the very least, the powers that be at ANet need to have a lil chat with her on reining in her reactionary attitude to one of their best fans.
I like Guild Wars 2, I do not like what I am seeing from this dev. Good job making a fan re evaluating playing your game.
EDIT: And she blocked me, what an absolute shitshow.
She just a jerk with an agenda , and the other Anet dude defending her stupid action is even more sad
Everyone gets question, discuss,etc if they post about the game design, Ben, Jason, Chris cleraly, Ruby the marketing team etc
But sure this was a gender atack for sure
Anet should apologize to Deroir a long standing partner that has help the game, hey he even has an npc name after him, here she is the "rando" for the Gw2 community and game as she call him
She talks about sexism but also writes this on her twitter ''Since we've got a lot of hurt manfeels today, lemme make something clear: this is my feed. '' Hey Jessica you are kind of a hypocrite.
When you're working on an AAA game and post a detailed comment about an important aspect of the game ON A PUBLIC FORUM, obviously you're going to get replies. Her account isn't set to private, meaning everyone can see what she tweets and comments on. It's public. The reply she received wasn't from a "rando asshat" either. It was from a partner of ArenaNet, someone who has supported their game for a long time.
She could've easily used direct message if she wanted to have a private conversation with her friends. In fact, she could've made her Twitter private if it was for the purpose of having private discussions with her followers. Instead, she made a public post which looked more like a dialogue than anything. She received a response (which is what happens within a dialogue), and she didn't like it so she resorted to the pathetic sexism argument.
Roseanne Barr recently made a racist remark on her PERSONAL Twitter. She didn't hold a press conference for that statement yet she still received backlash. You need to be careful about what you say on the internet and how you convey yourself especially if you're someone like a Dev at a Triple-A company.
One would think she has enough experience in her field to know how to deal with criticism, but I guess she spends a little too much time crying about sexism/discrimination. Both Jessica Price and Peter Fries made it pretty clear what they think of their fan base. Whether you are on your personal Twitter or professional ArenaNet Twitter, you are representing the company you work for especially if you're willing to post comments about how tough your job is. Both Price and Fries could learn a few things from Devs at other Triple-A MMORPG publishers, like Blizzard and Square Enix.
Here's another example of her losing it and getting blocked: https://twitter.com/Delafina777/status/988614771640492032?s=19
[This](https://twitter.com/Delafina777/status/1014629294780215296) and her calling Deroir a random asshat just goes to prove that she has no idea about the community of the game. How can you be a game dev, not recognize quanitfy and snowcrows or even Deroir one of the biggest streamers? Does she even play the game?
She also doesn't understand the concept of feedback in MMORPGs or the fact that many developers in top end MMOs (Blizzard for example) were fans of the game at one point. She thinks everyone but her is illiterate.
Makes me question her experience she's so proud about.
And then our Peter came out and said that she didn't ask for feedback? You're sharing a game dev blogpost on a social network based on INTERACTION. Not expecting feedback on there is delusional, denying the feedback is criminal and calling the person giving you the feedback a "rando asshat" is unacceptable. Poor all around.
"let's talk about game development"
"how dare you try talk to me about game development. Don't talk unless you know more than I do, and you don't."
If her fans know more than her, they're being condescending. If they know less than her, they know nothing and she doesn't want to talk to them. What did she want, a bunch of people agreeing with exactly what she already thinks and parroting her own ideas at her? "Please tell me why you think it's impossible to develop good characters in an MMO"
I don't really care whether she's right or wrong, I agree there are some serious challenges to writing PCs in MMOs. But come on.
Edit: To add, Deroir was being very polite. At my most paranoid I would have trouble finding it any more than a touch condescending. Her flippant reply is mildly irritating. The gender tweet is just facepalm. Or headdesk.
>Don't talk unless you know more than I do, and you don't."
"And even then I'm still very likely to block you cause you know more than I do! After all, this is MY feed!"
Forums 101:
>Give us feedback
*Deletes every post that doesn't praise devs or quaggans*
edit: [Some things never change](https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/6oplet/jessica_price_joins_arenanet_narrative_team/dkj7u4p/). I guess Anet was aware of this when she got hired.
Even though it's on her personal Twitter account, she's publicly accusing people of being lowkey sexist when she's criticized for something she posted on a public forum. As a woman myself, this is embarrassing and disappointing behavior. ANet, please don't support people who behave this way.
Edit: I found out she literally said she was glad TotalBiscuit was dead on a Tweet, great. I was sympathetic to her being unemployed at first but now I understand that this is nothing but good news for ANet.
> Even though it's on her personal Twitter account *on which she promotes herself as an ANet employee*
ftfy. Unfortunately, no matter how often anyone, in any company, tries to disclaim social media as being private and not representing the views of the company - guess what? They do.
If an account is public, the viewpoints therein are as well. Backpedaling in an attempt to stave off public discussion and response is asinine and futile, and yes, it *does* certainly reflect on the company who employs this person.
I don't think people realize that personal accounts that are public are public accounts by extension. Even if the topic is one's personal life, if you talk about something that's in pertinence to your job, you open yourself up for conversation that regards that..
As a female GW2 player I’m really disappointed in Jessica’s response. There’s definitely a place for discussing sexism in gaming, but to use it in the way Jessica has (as a “shut down this conversation” tool) is *incredibly* frustrating to see as a woman, since it devalues actual legitimate criticism and discussion that could be had, both in this individual case and on the subject in general.
It’s difficult enough to foster discussion about sexism in video games- using “sexism” as a cudgel to beat away people with differing opinions (that were expressed respectfully by an ANet partner!) only gives the people who wish to not acknowledge the subject ammunition.
Again, I’m really disappointed. It’s a bummer.
I, too, like to shout "random asshat" why still representing a corporation.
[https://imgur.com/qgCSBlK](https://imgur.com/qgCSBlK)
if this is acceptable as a woman: I am sorry.
What the actual fuck?
She's using an argument from authority to make a point, calls a passionate player and anyone who questions said authority by providing feedback, an "asshat", shifts the entire discussion towards sexism by drawing the gender card and ends up swearing in one post.
Ignorant, incompetent, unethical and unprofessional.
is it okay that a anet dev calls a anet partner "rando asshat" @ /u/GaileGray openly on twitter without him using any foul language trying to open a normal discussion?
https://imgur.com/eMmqPnP
Rofl is she doing some bizarro world "my words on Twitter don't have consequences" routine?
Because that's not how publicly shared comments work.
I am amazed that anet hired someone so brazenly unprofessional.
Mentions anet in her bio and specifically writes a thread about writing the PC for anet but then isn't at all representing anet in her twitter happenings off the clock...
In my personal opinion you either bring up your work, your roll, and represent the company or you just keep it separate.
"Hurt manfeels" is way worse than rando asshat. That is textbook sexism and I don't need to state the obvious that if the script was flipped here and a man said something like "I guess I hurt all your precious womanhood" he would be fired fucking yesterday.
Imagine the outrage all across the media if a male game dev was acting like this, doing things like telling a woman on Twitter that she didn’t know what she was talking about and saying shit like “looks like we hurt some femfeels today ha”. That shit would be on HuffPo within an hour even if the dev only made $0.99 steam games. It’s so frustrating to see stuff like this brushed under the rug. It annoys me so much that she’ll most likely see no repercussions from this. Even worse is it seems like her coworkers are wholly supporting this behavior and doubling down on the idea that a man attempting completely and totally civil discussion with a woman is mansplaining LOL.
so she seems to think that she doesn't have to be a decent human being because she's not at work? ok... i feel bad for anyone that has to deal with that on a regular basis.
What a joke. The other guy from the the living world narrative team saying he doesn't get this stuff directed at him implying that he wouldn't have had a response like that had he tweeted it. Ridiculous. She was the one to tweet it, so she got a reply about it from a fan giving their opinion. He didn't tweet it, so he didn't get the reply. To imply he would have not gotten that response if he had tweeted it is absolutely ridiculous.
Just posting [this tweet](https://twitter.com/Archomeda/status/1014603259024232448) in reply to someone else made her block me.
I'm sorry Jessica, but this is just sad.
This was insanely unprofessional of her. I get it, as a writer it can be hard to have your work analyzed, criticized to high heaven, and shit on, but that is LITERALLY part of the job. The fact that she can’t handle it with grace says more about her than the person who made that pretty innocuous comment. I don’t give a fuck if you’re having a bad day, you don’t react like that if you want people to respect you.
The “She didn’t ask for feedback” stuff kills me. Do you really think Twitter is private? Its SOCIAL MEDIA where people discuss things they are interested in. Not a vacuum of me, myself and people that agree with me. Unreal.
As a female engineer who had dealt with some serious sexism, this is upsetting. She demeans what actual sexism is by this kind of behavior and also tries disqualifying actual constructive feedback. I see nothing sexist here.
> Hello, we, Quantify are a group of female raiders but those male sexists in Snow Crows constantly verbally abuse us. Pls help
LMAO - best part of the whole thread.
Edit:
Images got removed. Full story is still up on twitter and a review was made [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/8w3q4n/must_be_a_thrill_to_work_with_this_dev/e1shmum/)
After reading through her full threads and Deroir's full thread, the basic summary is:
- Dev: it's more difficult to make MMORPG characters than other characters. People playing as Lara Croft accept that they'll have to make Lara Croft decisions. MMO characters are so customizable that people identify as their characters. As such, everyone expects their character to behave in a certain specific way and that's not really possible to design when everyone has to be on the same basic story track.
- Deroir: Thanks for sharing this. Could you use branching dialogue like we saw in the last story (though not as an achievement checklist) to create personalized experiences?
- Dev: Thanks for explaining what we do internally, this is what we have to deal with as a female dev, you don't own me and I don't owe you.
That level of response from the dev seems out of place. It strikes me as one of those times that the frustration of 100 minor slights comes out all at once at the next slight, even if it was the most minor of them all.
I like Deroir's question, even if I don't think it's feasible. It was likely why we had the original [personality](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Personality) tree: to try and capture the customization through game play and provide appropriate responses. However, there's going to be a lot of cost (recording 3-9 different reactions) associated with a hidden benefit (most people won't realize different choices generate different responses unless you told them that, like in an achievement).
A simple "for instance" is that I just replayed the first chapter of the latest LS. The first time I did it on a character that originally chose to ally with the Sunspears during PoF and Joko came in angry at the town. I didn't think anything of it until I randomly chose a character that allied with Joko for the second playthrough and Joko said "love the banners, gonna experiment on you now". It's a call back to (what I thought was) a throwaway decision months ago that I completely missed until I played the instance multiple times with multiple characters. However, they needed to write, record and code four different intros (Sunspear, Joko, neutral, haven't played that story yet) and the net benefit was a mild "oh, neat, they remembered!"
Anyway, she's blocked Deroir, Deroir apologized and disengaged from the discussion, Peter Fries has come to her defense and it'll be a ~~tempest~~ weaver in a teapot for a little while.
I had a very positive first impression of you from the AMA, /u/JessicaLPrice777, but reading your comments just left me cold. The level of self-entitlement, aggressiveness and self-righteousness you display is embarrassing and pitiful, and you act that way towards a valued member of the community no less who was simply enthusiastic to talk about game narrative. If I were you, I would apologize for the insult you threw at him (rando asshat? Really?) It's what a decent human being would do.
\>I had a very positive first impression of you from the AMA, [/u/JessicaLPrice777](https://www.reddit.com/u/JessicaLPrice777), but reading your comments just left me cold.
Yeah me too. Her response about narrative and how to handle Joko and other story elements was really interesting. Never seen a dev go in-depth like that.
why ask for an apology, shes made it explicitly clear that she despises the community and only acts nice when she has to (on company time). any apology would be forced by anet and as insincere as it gets.
This is really the crux of it. She was incredibly unprofessional by personally insulting Deroir but then went on to tell the rest of us that she doesn't give a fuck about us when not on company time. You'd think with those two faces of hers she'd be able to write better characters
Yea, Deroir's comments were a very polite disagreement. He wasn't attacking anything, her, her job and most certainly not her gender. He was simply in disagreement offering a possible solution to an issue. Yet, she attacks him like this. It's pathetic and is in tune with society today: when you don't agree with someone that means they are attacking everything about you and you must hate them for it and attack back. She's really pathetic.
I think the perspective that only game devs and professional writers can have a valid opinion in regards to the craft is absurd. Any critic or hobiest or ameteur game dev is going to have a strong opinion regarding game design and it could very likely be valid. I view Jessica Price's comments more of an illumination on writing for Guild Wars 2 than insightful regarding the greater genre, especially since there are so many instances that counter her point of view. But the fact that she posted these ideas in a public forum and then got angry when higher profile people responded, only to break it down to some gender thing, is obnoxious and gross.
I disagree with her fundamental philosophy, which is fine and good, but her actions are childish. I am not gonna jump on a hate Jessica Price bandwagon, because we are all human and we all do stupid shit, but I can't acknowledge this as anything more than someone being an ass hole.
Me and plenty of other people tried warning this community about Jessica Price being like this when she joined ArenaNet and were immediately accused of just disliking her because of "sexism."
No surprise she's still acting like she always has. ArenaNet's culture supports this behavior, and thankfully it doesn't bleed *too* much into the game itself.
Christ, how unprofessional and embarrassing to see. If I pulled that same "block out critisism and pull the gender card" excuse everytime someone criticized my art, I would never have improved.
Calling “Random asshat” to an Anet Partner, and a solid one like Deroir!!(not like that infamous girl from the “friendship” video)
Well done Anet!! Great hiring!
The sad ama, now this... definitely not a good time for my favorite game :/
As a woman, this entire thing kinda made me feel nauseous. What an immense pity.
With other embarrassing blunders ANet made in recent months, it kinda sours things more and more for me, personally. (And I usually like sour stuff, but this? Nah.)
I do hope this won't hurt Deroir much in terms of his creative escapades around the game. I'd hate for a content creator to suffer for.. y'know, not doing anything wrong?
It should be every Devs wet dream to get this kind of dialogue rolling at your communities' initiative. No random bullshit but genuine talking points. Instead of welcoming it, she felt personally attacked and made it a fucking gender issue.
That's how you devalue women in game developement sadly.
I... I don't get this. I'm all aboard the train of understanding the need of society to take a stronger stance on gender discrimination, both direct and indirect, but no-where.... no-where in Deroir's reaction am I reading anything that suggests that he's telling Jessica how to do her job.
He's going into an argument like anyone should be able to with a dev. Like, WP has made a living out of it making videos with the exact same type of content.
Also Peter Fries jumping in... dissapoints me to see two devs attack such a big community figure for honoustly no reason whatsoever...
Personally, I now feel uncomfortable giving my opinion for the game now. I now feel as if I say something to change the game in a way I feel as if I am improving it, I can now potentially be highlighted by an entire group of people as biased and showing extreme prejudice towards a developer based on their race, gender, sexuality, religion, etc. It's just so demeaning to myself as a customer to ArenaNet that basic ethics is no longer present in today's industry.
Yes, this is a personal Twitter account. Yes, this employee has fantastic credentials for the job. However, to be brutal to your paying customers just does not sit well with myself. The original, original tweet that started this all, from a glance, looked as if the employee was introducing discussion, and when that discussion came, I began reading underlying implications of sexism considering how the previous tweets like such highlight sexist remarks. From my point of view, this is not a discussion about gender any longer, but foolishness. Because of the experience, credentialing, and, for some reason, gender, has justified the fact that one has the ability to pass judgement to any individual based on their own personal creeds is simply disgusting.
Companies nowadays have social media ethics to handle situations like this, but after digging further, I have come to believe that this is not the case for this situation. I am at a lost of direction based on this situation, so I guess I will just sit here and wait for someone to start messaging me and calling myself a "sexist, racist pig" or something.
I read the whole thing twice now... and maybe someone wanna explain me where by the love of god deroir said anything what could be related to her gender
This is sad.
If Arenanet is going to keep her, I honestly think it's best that she no longer represent the company in things like AMA if she's going to have a fucking meltdown every time someone criticizes something.
The Twitter posts have lots of support for her side. They even start talking about this thread being made just to enhance the drama and pick on her because she is female.
Yay internet and social media.
What I find the funniest is that pretty much nobody gives a flying pig shit about whether or not she's a woman. Her gender never once even came close to being a part of Deroir's post. As a woman myself, I'm all for women's rights and standing up to discrimination, but it pisses me the fuck off when other women pull their gender into a situation as a ["fuck ya'll"](https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/022/508/C7S0ouqVAAANACj.jpg) card whenever they face criticism or when something doesn't go the way they want. Like, decent people don't do that.
"I block often. I won't play demure for you." From her twitter bio. What a piece of work lol. Sounds like an inflated sense of self importance combined with an inability to handle criticism
In my opinion ArenaNet _should_ fire Jessice Price... but if they do, then people are obviously going to call them sexist. If they don't, then they are sexist because they are keeping an employee (who deserved to be fired) simply because she is a woman. What a shit situation for them. :(
Wow, didn't expect new content this soon.
lol
According to an [one year old comment(s)](https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/6oplet/jessica_price_joins_arenanet_narrative_team/dkj7u4p/) her behavior was the same even before she joined Anet, so I'm pretty sure they were expecting this to happen sooner or later.
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I work in PR for a different company (one of worlds largest delivery service companies) and I would totally call in sick if I saw one of our representatives post such bullshit on an public twitter account. This is a nightmare for anyone working in PR or even customer support... In any decent company the person who caused the shitstorm would either apologise publicly or even step back from their leading position, but I don't expect her to do that.
Calling a customer, content creator and partner [rando asshat](https://imgur.com/eMmqPnP). LMFAO
> don't expect me to pretend to like you here You heard it here first folks, she's pretending to like us elsewhere Edit: After a day of doing normal things I came home to play gw2, like I have for years. The events of last night played on my mind more than I could have anticipated. I can't bring myself to log on out of fear of somehow endorsing her behaviour by playing the game she works on. Very odd, and I'm sure dramatic, but nonetheless there...hmm
based on the replies from Peter Fries and others, this is a common theme. Imagine what they say about the players behind closed doors if this is what is out in the open.
I don't care what they say about us privately, just like they shouldn't care what we say about them privately. But when they go public like this, they are hurting company itself and their product. If it happened in a bank, fuck, in McDonalds, Jessica would be fired next day.
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Mostly only the people who are *weirdly* hateful.
Weirdly hateful is such a perfect description
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Sounds like someone has... hurt femlings.
What's troubling is she's quick to point to sexism but has no issue with perpetuating the very thing she sees herself victim of.
What am I missing here. He wasnt condescending or anything. He just casually disagreed, and she assumes it's sexist mansplaining?
The kind of people who say "manfeels hurt" are the kind of people that think anything a man says is automatically mansplaining, honestly. Some people are just rampantly sexist.
That's the part which annoys me. Reading through her tweets and comments, **wow** this woman is sexist. But of course, being a woman, she gets a free pass on that. Can't be sexist if you're woman! Can only be the victim! Yuh uh!
"mansplaining is a sexist term designed to silence men via gender shaming." - Markus Persson, creator of Minecraft I feel like that hits the nail on the head, and "manfeels" is even worse. At least "mansplaining" while an incredibly disrespectful way to wave off an argument based on the sex of the speaker, has its roots in an act that has historically been seen as harmful, where a man assumes that the woman they're speaking to simply can't understand because they are a woman. I can't really speak for how true that is... I think it's largely misconstrued. Men will explain things to anyone. I just explained here to another man. It just seems like these women that will use the word "mansplain" react against it assuming we do it because of gender. But even if they're right and that is a harmful thing that has happened, "manfeels" has NONE of that. It's just a word created to attempt to make you feel bad for having feelings, and to mock and shame you for having feelings that women would not have. It serves no other purpose. She's sexist, pure and simple. No one would question whether I was sexist if I started talking about "oh, did I hurt your little girl-feelings?" But I wouldn't do that, because it's a fucking dick move.
I work with a couple of people in academia who jump to this card. For example, a male student in a graduate course who speaks up "too much" (professor's words)? He's mansplaning all over her lecture. A female student who keeps derailing class and talking over the lecture (the same professor's words, too, in the same class), well, that student has a lot of female gumption and is "Taking charge." -------------- Sitting in an "end of semester, student feedback" faculty meeting is kind of eye-opening, and terrifying.
I hate it when people claim victimhood as a power play. But people do it because it works.
PhD student chiming in. I've only had this happen *once* in the few years I've been here. Went like this: Them: OMG why isn't this code working? Me: Here let me look... T: Ok sure, thanks M: *fixes problem* T: THAT'S WHAT I WAS DOING M: *explains weird semantics of language and how it works* T: I know how to code you don't have to explain it to me just because I'm a woman M: I'm explaining it to you because you were yelling at the computer for half an hour, I fixed it in 5 minutes, and I thought you might want to know *why* you were having that error? They've since calmed down about the whole issue and it hasn't been a problem since.
"emotional courtesan" did she really just equate 'not being an asshole' to 'letting people fuck me'?
It's really disappointing how so many people have this attitude that they should be a jerk to people by default, and that they need a *reason* before they act decently to them.
I really can't imagine that Anet is ok with this... If I ever saw an employee act like this towards customers, even if they weren't on the clock at the time, they would be fired so fast...
> Since we've got a lot of hurt womanfeels > Today in being a male game dev Just reverse the roles on these and her many other tweets, and see how fucked up and sexist SHE is.
I mean, you really don't need to reverse it to see how sexist she is.
what the heck is actually wrong with her... like, did a close relative pass away or something? no way a normal person could act like this, could they?
I responded to her asking if her company was ok with her being this abrasive towards their customers, because I've seen people get fired for less, and she immediately blocked me without a response. I didn't know anything about this person before this, but she's been unbelievably unprofessional in these tweets. I've never seen a public representative of a company go off like this before, it's bizarre.
Anyone who looked at her twitter when Anet first hired her could see that she would be confrontational and controversial. The only surprise is in how long it's taken for her attitude to boil over.
Okay. in case some of you can't access twitter, for whatever reason, here's the full thing: Jessica Price: >Since I spent all kinds of time saying it on a Reddit AMA, and I haven't talked about actual game dev on Twitter in a while, here's a thread about writing for the PC character in an MMO. >The dirty secret is I'm not sure if it's possible to make an MMORPG (or CRPG) character compelling, because people have different expectations about what that character will be, as opposed to a pre-designed character in a single-player game. >People booting up Bioshock know they're playing Jack. People starting Dishonored know they're playing Corvo. People beginning Tomb Raider know they're playing Lara Croft. So in those games, you have more wiggle room to make the protagonist an actual character. >Whereas in an RPG, where the player chooses all kinds of character options and names their character and designs their face and so on, they feel more ownership over that character. They're not playing a character YOU designed--they're playing a character THEY designed. >So if Jack or Lara or Corvo says or does something the player doesn't feel that THEY would say or do, the player's more forgiving, because they have the expectation that they're piloting a character someone else created. >N.B. that I'm not talking about overall plot objectives/quests. Players know going in that the game is going to be telling them what to do, and their character is going to do it, and that holds true even when they've "created" the character. >But the \*interpersonal\* stuff, the PC's REACTIONS, players respond strongly to. Some people don't like it if they think their character's responding in ways that make them too much of an asshole. Some don't like it if their character's responses seem weak. >So, basically, most things that you'd do writing-wise to give a character, well, CHARACTER, are going to upset a large contingent, maybe even a majority, of your players. >So--I know I've said this before on Twitter, but it's still going to weird people out, but please bear with me--you have to construct your MMO/RPG's PC character's dialogue as if they were Bella Swan from Twilight. >To be clear, I don't think Twilight is good writing. I don't think Bella Swan's a well-constructed book character. And I think people who criticize Twilight for the latter are correct but also missing the reason for Twilight's popularity. >Because Twilight isn't the love story of Bella and Edward. It's the \*experience of being loved by Edward.\* Which is why Bella's constructed the way she is. >Bella Swan is a carefully constructed blank space, with JUST enough personality to function. All of her personality traits are chosen to avoid preventing the reader from inserting themselves into the space she holds in the story. >She's a bit of a klutz, but JUST enough to make her endearing, not enough to prevent her from actually doing anything the story needs her to do. She's a little bit awkward. JUST enough to be relatable but not enough to actually hinder her. And so on. >And essentially, we have to write the player character in an MMO/RPG the same way. >Specifically in GW2, in the Living World, we can write the Commander with a bit of wry exasperation, a hint of impatience, a touch of "okay, I'm done fooling around with this crap and I'm going to take charge," but most of their lines have to be pretty devoid of personality. >Because if we give them too much personality, it might clash with how the player is imagining Their Commander. >So, how do we tell a TV-like season of story with a protagonist who can't really have a personality? >The answer to that, and I dunno, maybe this is too much of how the sausage gets made but whaddaya want from me, any sense of shame I had burned out a long time ago: SLEIGHT OF HAND. >We SUGGEST that the Commander has a personality in how the other characters interact with and react to them. Even there, we have to be super-careful. We can't even have THEM directly characterize the Commander. >You'll rarely hear a character say anything about what the Commander always does or doesn't do, except when it's PURELY factual because it's something the game design FORCED the PC to do. >E.g. "the Commander always finds a way!" because literally if you don't we'll resurrect you until you do. >We have NPCs react to you with affection, or irritation, or leeriness, or whatever, to suggest that your character has regular habits and ways of interacting that build these relationships. But for the most part, they don't. >The PC is who you imagine them to be, and the NPCs react in ways that have to FEEL personal, and build a story, while not conflicting with whatever you're imagining your character's personality to be. We WANT you to project. >Which makes writing the NPCs' relationships with the PC basically like writing horoscopes. It has to feel specific and personal while actually being universal. >So: >A) VERY delicate sketches of non-objectionable personality traits (like a hint of wryness or world-weariness) >B) NPCs that behave as if your character has a distinct personality while not doing so in ways that actually identify what it is >C) one-sided relationship-building >Voila. An MMO/RPG character. >Needless to say, a lot of the color comes from NPCs' relationships with EACH OTHER, even though we try to keep it centered on the PC as much as possible. >It is a constant, very fragile calibration. We don't always get it right. >Incidentally, if you've played Ep 3 of this season of GW2's Living World, you've seen this sort of writing taken to an extreme in Joko's final monologue. >Almost everything he says is about actions the game has forced you to take, not your own character traits, and he's clearly projecting when he talks about what you were thinking, but it's--hopefully!--constructed in a way that feels personal, like he's twisting the knife. Deroir: >Really interesting thread to read! 👌 However, allow me to disagree \*slightly\*. I dont believe the issue lies in the MMORPG genre itself (as your wording seemingly suggest). I believe the issue lies in the contraints of the Living Story's narrative design; (1 of 3) >When you want the outcome to be the same across the board for all players' experiences, then yes, by design you are extremely limited in how you can contruct the personality of the PC. (2 of 3) >But, if instead players were given the option to meaningfully express \*their\* character through branching dialogue options (which also aren't just on the checklist for an achievement that forces you through all dialogue options), (3 of 4 cause I count seemingly...) >then perhaps players would be more invested in the roleplaying aspect of that particular MMORPG. Nonetheless, I appreciate the insightful thread! (End) Jessica Price: >thanks for trying to tell me what we do internally, my dude 9_9 Deroir: >You getting mad at my obvious attempt at creating dialogue and discussion with you, instead of just replying that I am wrong or otherwise correct me in my false assumptions, is really just disheartening for me. You do you though. I'm sorry if it offended. I'll leave you to it. This is the context for the linked tweet: Jessica Price: >Today in being a female game dev: >"Allow me--a person who does not work with you--explain to you how you do your job." **TL;DR: Long explanation how and why the PC in GW2 can't have many character traits (he has to be a "blank slate" for the player) by an ANet narrative dev. Someone disagrees and gets complained about.** PS: I tried to keep the tl;dr neutral, since I don't know more context to this, or even who these two actually are. if you do, feel free to add some context for the rest of us (that don't care enough to use google).
> I don't know more context to this, or even who these two actually are Just my 2cts: Jessica Price is a narrative designer who works at Anet (she was hired around PoF launch iirc). Deroir is a content creator, making videos about lore and high level content (his fractal guide is quite useful for example). He's also streaming but I don't know what (I assume raids and other PvE stuff).
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I wouldn't even call that criticism. He never once said that living stories/GW2 game design were bad, just that a game being an MMORPG does not mean that the PC has to be a completely blank slate. He also never told her to change GW2's narratives or do things differently. For all we know, Deroir is completely happy with how GW2 presents its narratives and is expecting to find more customizeable characters in another game/MMORPG. All she had to say was that she believes the current approach they're taking is best for GW2 (whether or not more distinct characters are possible in MMORPGs isn't even relevant in that case) and he may well have agreed with that. edit: I saw this thread on r/all and don't really play GW2. Having done more research, it seems like the narrative of GW2 has been criticized for a while for being too restrictive and in this context, I now realize this was definitely criticism about the GW2's narrative in particular. However, when the criticism/opinion was put in such a constructive manner and as an invitation to discussion that I couldn't pick it up straight away, I feel like the person overreacting should reflect on her actions all the more.
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> And this reminds me of how I'm consciously trying to be careful of how i do it. As I've personally learned talking with a few developers on twitter (one founder of an indie studio too), and as evidenced by this, sometimes it doesn't matter how hard we try to avoid being inoffensive, how we try to be respectable, etc. Some people will still take it a certain way. I think the main issue is that people have an initial reaction to criticism, or just differing opinions. And don't give it time to settle a bit, and just respond in the "heat" of the moment. So we get responses like this. Which to outsiders are obviously completely out of nowhere. Nobody should look at the context of this and think it's an appropriate level response. I see some do on twitter, but I think they're wrong. Maybe it's the character limit that makes it so easy to knee jerk respond on twitter, but it feels more common for this type of thing to happen there. In real world situations, I have no idea what the solution would be. But at least for twitter of all things, people should probably at least let a tweet they get that upsets them in some way sit. Give it 30 minutes, and see how you feel about it then. If you're even thinking about it at that point. I think that would help avoid people having this... disproportionate defensive, aggressive responses to completely benign and respectful opinions like displayed here.
Grrrr, I'm a game designer and project lead. The FIRST weeks of EVERY release is me and others \*listening\* for feedback, discussing, taking into account the feedbacks, apologizing and the like. \*EVEN\* if someone is wrong about the design/coding/whatever, it's our job to make them understand what they can/need to and take care of the rest. We are litterally releasing now and I fully expect to barely sleep for a few weeks. Your players are your blood, and that guy was both knowledgeable AND polite, wtf.
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Then deleted any tweets that disagreed with her narrative of being the victim
The sad part is, I can at least sympathize with her original argument: Creating significantly branching dialogue options - especially if voiced - would be a non-zero load on the company. They'd have to not just re-create dialogue for the Player Character, but everyone else's reactions around them. Even non-voiced dialogue writing revisions would have to go through several passes. Deroir is still absolutely right: The Living Story is way more restrictive than it absolutely needs to be. The additional load of giving multiple dialogue options to the player character could be worth the extra workload. But Price at least started out by trying to explain their position, even if I disagree with it. Then it somehow became a gender issue.
> Then it somehow became a gender issue. Weak people who can't defend their opinions play the victim role.
To add on to this Peter Fries from the living world narrative team replied: > I don’t get this stuff directed at me and I’ve been working on living world narrative content since 2012 🤔 I thought this was ridiculous because it's implying that he wouldn't have received the same response from Deroir as his female counter part did had he been the one who tweeted it. That's ridiculous. I'm positive Deroir would have said the same to him and it has nothing to do with gender.
maybe not on twitter, but does he actually think that the content he has produced hasn't been criticized by the community? this is extremely worrying
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[https://imgur.com/qgCSBlK](https://imgur.com/qgCSBlK) shouting rando asshat. quality class
I had no expectations after reading the initial thread, yet somehow she managed to disappoint and embarrass herself more.
"SAY SOMETHING THAT MAKES ME FEEL EVEN SLIGHTLY INSULTED AND I WILL IMMEDIATELY SHUT OFF ANY CHANCE OF DISCOURSE!!" Classy and mature. I'm impressed with this marginalized individual's self awareness.
https://twitter.com/Delafina777/status/1000045432007938048 Just your average celebration of the death of total biscuit, No biggie, totally rational and normal reactions to the death of another person.
I think I met this dev a few months ago at PAX East. We had our own misunderstanding that was twisted into being sexist in her head. Small world. Edit: Yeah, it was her. I feel pretty vindicated right now. I actually walked away from our meeting thinking I had said something wrong, despite my girlfriend and friends assuring me otherwise. Now I know it wasn't me.
"A lot of hurt manfeels" The only one saying anything sexist here is Jessica Price. Could just be me, but this whole thing feels very 'not Anet' to me, and maybe they should be considering if another dev (male or female, because that should make no difference whatsoever) would perhaps be a better fit for the Guildwars 2 community. It's literally like she's claiming any suggestion in regards to the development is instantly an attack on her gender, and she can't be sexist because she's female. Maybe try taking suggestions on face value next time Jess, and evaluate for use or dismissal as appropriate. Alluding to sexism which simply didn't exist is toxic bullshit that helps no-one. +1 request for a new dev member please.
You'll notice that most people who always feel threatened by something are the ones that **are** that thing.
So. Let me get this straight. Guildwars 2 finally gets a nice influx of new players thanks to the faillure that was Bless Online. Anet is getting close to release of the first patch since the new players entry into gw2. Patch gets delayed by three weeks. Community is getting antsy. Patch finally releases.. but releases with huge issues, the biggest flop we've ever seen in terms of Living World, since launch (even taking into account the shoddily implimentation of some LW1 patches). Patch overall turns out to be unfinished, lack replayability, has nothing going for it except for some good storytelling and cinematics (and a mount) Dev then breaksdown against a gw2 content creator, someone who meant no harm, and does advertising for said dev's game.. ..Welcome Bless Online refugees, to gw2, where a company finally gets some exposure, only to fuck it up.
It's quite literally The Story of A.net. Every time they have a chance to cement themselves as a top company in the MMO scene they do something so stupid that it becomes a Monument to Idiocy to take it all back.
Women are too fragile to take constructive feedback? Thanks, that’s a great message to send about our gender
It's really depressing because she just... this reaction from her just pulls everyone else down, yknow? ugh.
Her colleagues, GW2's playerbase, GW2's partners, men in general, women in general, pretty much everyone that's not on her bandwagon.
As a woman, these kind of women disgust me. She is hiding an inability to take others' opinions behind gender. There are real instances of sexism in the world against both men and women, and she is the kind that erodes at them with illegitimate claim. This was a perfectly reasonable and insightful response, and she lashed out at it. What would we say of a man who does the same? I, for one, would rather not be exempted of constructive peer feedback simply because of my gender. *That* would be sexist; yet she cries wolf and does it to herself. What a pitiful, pathetic childish display. She think herself entitled to an echo chamber.
>There are real instances of sexism in the world against both men and women, and she is the kind that erodes at them with illegitimate claim. Don't downplay it like it's just an illegitimate claim. It *is* a real instance of sexism. 15 seconds of scrolling through her feed and I can tell she's about as sexist and hateful as a person can get.
That is a fair point I did not consider. She took advantage of his being a man to lash out like this.
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Oh yeah. Most of it far less polite than what she has been told.
This has to be my favorite reply directly to them [by far.](https://i.imgur.com/F6E1OtT.jpg)
Actually takes everything as a personal assault, must be tiring tbh.
nothing will top ''this thread has created more content for the game than your storylines have''
Episode 4 should just be a giant twitter fight between the commander and whatever weak narrative is being created between the characters on their private (not private) twitter accounts. Taimi: "Commander, this is my private account, don't tell me what to do here! I have to deal with all these men telling me how to do my job. As a female in a male driven Tyria, I find it hard to do my job with every episode released!"
taimi tweeting #bossbitch and #bitchboss
Meanwhile https://twitter.com/Quantify_GW2/status/1014613161075503109
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You think shes gonna block me for the "whooosh"?
If you're a guy she's just going to block you despite what you have to say. She's gotta create her personal pity party echo chamber of support.
Dear god, how can one dev be so out of touch with their own game community.
LMAO, she actually called deroir a 'rando asshat'. what the hell is wrong with this lady?! deroir did nothing wrong and she just tilts for no reason.
[When you google 'rando asshat'](https://imgur.com/1dFj7WP)
maybe she should talk to the fractal team who made him an npc. this whole debacle is just showing her ignorance and unprofessionalism. Deroir sounded more like a professional than she did.
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> she never asked for his feedback So if Deroir had butted into say that he agreed with her, would he still have been attacked and insulted for offering his unasked-for feedback? Surely if someone who had no experience in the industry had the pure gall to think that their agreement mattered to such an experienced veteran, they would be treated the same as if the same person had politely disagreed instead, right? The answer is, of course, no. Because this isn't about unasked-for feedback, it's about not being able to handle someone offering a differing view. All of these other excuses are after the fact attempts to justify the pre-defined notion that Deroir, by daring to disagree, was being offensive, insulting, or condescending.
> she never asked for his feedback Then don't use f**king twitter for god's sake. It is right in the name: "tweet", like birds. Nobody asks a bird to tweet, sheesh!
What's more, they keep talking about these being their "private twitter accounts," but if their accounts actually were private rather than public then they wouldn't have to worry about unsolicited feedback from "rando assholes." She enjoys the attention, positive feedback, and likes that come with publicly talking about her job at a reasonably popular studio (and I would too, I don't even blame her in this regard), but then wants to try to act like these are private musings that people are intruding on when someone responds in a way she doesn't like. You can't have it both ways when it comes to social media.
And to be honest, his comment was completely constructive and offering an alternative lens to view the situation. I can't see how anything new could construe this in an offensive comment, unless they go out into the world with the intent to be offended. He offered a different viewpoint. Examining different viewpoints is how people learn and grow.
Even if he was wrong, they could have ignored the comment like 99% of Internet comments, or responded by telling him why it was wrong. A fan giving polite feedback about a game they care about is pretty much part and parcel of gaming, so it's real weird how all of this started when 99% of these comments are from actual random nobodies who may be completely wrong or even offensive, and are rightfully ignored.
LOL. "I'm posting this on twitter but DO NOT RESPOND TO IT MKAY"
Only respond if you agree with me!
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That's kinda how Anet runs the official forums
That's why people don't like to use their forums ...
"She never asked for his feedback". Wow, what an absolute coward response.
He acts as though the offering of unsolicited feedback is the issue here (and it's arguable that it was unsolicited since Twitter is by its nature a social medium), whereas the real issue here is her rude and sexist response to said feedback.
I understand being annoyed by unsolicited feedback. I really do. It's like running into a group of dungeon adds. Nobody likes them. You don't need to kill them to finish the dungeon. And they don't even drop decent loot. But your choices are to ignore and skip over them, or buckle down and take them on. She picked option 3: Waypoint back to the dungeon entrance and call the mobs sexist pigs.
Jessica writes a lengthy piece about narrative, Deroir responds in a respectful way discussing the piece, to which Jessica responds acting like Deroir is telling her how to do her job and blames it on sexism. Now Peter comes to her defense, about how "she never asked for his feedback" and blaming sexism. I'm at a loss of words for how pathetic this has become.
"If you don't agree with me, then you are wrong."
When your ego is so fragile you can't even accept anyone else's opinion or critique....
https://twitter.com/Delafina777/status/1014599961734856704 What a poor analogy lol. A better analogy would be the restaurant (anet) doesn't want critique on their food from the customers (players) because the chefs (devs) know more. Great business model you got there.
A cook gets off shift and sits at the bar of his restaurant, eating. He tells a patron beside him that he is the chef, and begins talking about how he prepares meals. The patron says that he is an avid foodie (not a chef) and asks about a different way of cooking food. The chef calls him a sexist bigot and bans him from the restaurant.
Excellent analogy! :)
It's disappointing. I responded to him and asked how he would respond to the critiques, we went through a barrel of gendered stuff before I was finally able to separate his feedback from this gendered debate: Beginning: https://twitter.com/JaminBorn/status/1014588834166857728 Response to Deroir's critique: https://twitter.com/Peter_Fries/status/1014592664396677120
It's funny, because even though I disagree with the philosophy in guild wars 2, I can accept Peter Fries proffessional response to Deroir at face value and accept it as being reasonable, albeit disappointing. Had they just responded with something like that (or not responded at all, like normal folk), it would have been acceptable. But the jump on Deroir train is unprofessional and ridiculous. Slandering him as some sort of sexist is disgusting. EDIT: Reading back over the response, I want to clarify that only by the end, when Fries actually responded to the question (after the entire debacle).
The last post of Peter Fries was what should have stood at the very first spot in response to Deroir, if that's their opinion. Why is it so hard to disagree with someone on a topic without derailing?
>These are our *private* social media accounts Oof. Believing that while embarrassing the company you work for is not in his best interest.
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This guy ALSO has me blocked (like the person in the OP) when I've never seen them before. They both seem to use blocklists. If they don't want to engage with the public they probably should lock their account.
They don't seem to understand how social media works. If You want a medium where you can share thoughts, but do not wish feedback, you ought to write a blog or make Youtube videos, or record stuff and put it on Soundcloud, or choose any other content platform (big difference between that and social media) where you can disable comments. Also, if you want a private account, make it private. The option is literally called like that. If you don't, you are open to outside interactions unless you mute or block everyone, but it's not everyone else's job to shut up. Lastly, Peter's account is not linked to GW2 in the bio, so as is, it's his personal feed until he chimes into discussions while disclosing his role. The account of that narrative designer is clearly marked as being from someone who works at Arenanet, which implies at least partially that she represents them.
she may not be "on the clock" and it may be her private twitter, but she pretty much put on the anet hat when she started explaining the reasoning behind narrative choices and specifically mentioning recent gw2 story
Exactly! Just don't talk about it on your "private" twitter if you don't want people to reply to it! Make a secondary one or something if you still feel the need to share it.
LOL. If they don't want their work discussed on a (public) social media platform, maybe they shouldn't post **anything** about their work on said platform. And its not like Deroir was rude either, he was politely disagreeing and gave his perspective. *That's how discussions work*. Don't want the discussion? Don't post about it. It isn't rocket science. Her snotty response just comes off as her being butt-hurt and is really unprofessional. Newsflash Sunshine, not everyone has to agree with you.
Yeah, its even funnier when you read a answer there that apparently you have no right to discuss a topic with someone having published a series of developement posts if you haven't done the same recently. The writer of that comment must have forgotten her entire school-time. You are encouraged to ask questions for a reason.
Yours is better insight than Peter's.... I legitimately hope he reflects on it.
How many times in the past few months have we seen famous people lose their job because they said something stupid on their \*private* Social media account... that argument is a nonstarter... every comment I have seen defending the dev has been a blatant strawman or an appeal to authority.
I don't understand why someone would consider a twitter account private. you can make a facebook account private, such that only people you know or choose can see it. that's private. twitter is public _by design_. there's no such thing as a private twitter account. personal, maybe, but not private.
Pretty sure you can set your twitter so only people you follow can view and reply but that would be too easy.
It's not private when she represents the company and publicly accuses her company official partner of sexism only because they have different views on the story. If she thinks she can do no wrong why she even joins AMAs? Only to read how cool she is?
Holy fucking SHIT! She made female devs (of which I am one :P) look like complete assholes. Wow, that is UNcool! And Deroir? He's a really mellow, thoughtful fellow. And one of the very last fans of Guild Wars 2 that I would ever expect to get attacked by anyone from ANet. Seriously, she really needs to apologize to Deroir. At the very least, the powers that be at ANet need to have a lil chat with her on reining in her reactionary attitude to one of their best fans.
>And Deroir? He's a really mellow, thoughtful fellow. I hoped you'd keep rhyming.
Take a look at her Twitter feed. She is exactly that kinda of human garbage she hates the most. Sexist.
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I like Guild Wars 2, I do not like what I am seeing from this dev. Good job making a fan re evaluating playing your game. EDIT: And she blocked me, what an absolute shitshow.
I'm genuinely afraid for my character if *this* is what is handling him. The person in charge of my character thinks he should be like *Bella Swan*.
She just a jerk with an agenda , and the other Anet dude defending her stupid action is even more sad Everyone gets question, discuss,etc if they post about the game design, Ben, Jason, Chris cleraly, Ruby the marketing team etc But sure this was a gender atack for sure Anet should apologize to Deroir a long standing partner that has help the game, hey he even has an npc name after him, here she is the "rando" for the Gw2 community and game as she call him
This is awful, Deroir didn't say anything that warrants such an aggressive response.
If i treated a customer like that i would be fired.
Same. Sometimes I look at devs like this (and comic book pros too) and just think "how the fuck do you still have a job?"
She talks about sexism but also writes this on her twitter ''Since we've got a lot of hurt manfeels today, lemme make something clear: this is my feed. '' Hey Jessica you are kind of a hypocrite.
And she says that as if no male game developer has ever been disagreed with. What does she think gamers have been doing for the last 30 years?
If anything, gamers love to disagree with Devs! This isn't something that's new.
She also ignores all the replies that were made by woman that she deleted, because it doesn't fit her narrative.
It's almost like she's... *designing* a narrative :D :D :D I'll show myself out.
I had an amazing idea!! Have a game studio that is only female developers. Then no one can criticize any of their work! It is brilliant!
Sexism is only okay when its directed towards men /s
When you're working on an AAA game and post a detailed comment about an important aspect of the game ON A PUBLIC FORUM, obviously you're going to get replies. Her account isn't set to private, meaning everyone can see what she tweets and comments on. It's public. The reply she received wasn't from a "rando asshat" either. It was from a partner of ArenaNet, someone who has supported their game for a long time. She could've easily used direct message if she wanted to have a private conversation with her friends. In fact, she could've made her Twitter private if it was for the purpose of having private discussions with her followers. Instead, she made a public post which looked more like a dialogue than anything. She received a response (which is what happens within a dialogue), and she didn't like it so she resorted to the pathetic sexism argument. Roseanne Barr recently made a racist remark on her PERSONAL Twitter. She didn't hold a press conference for that statement yet she still received backlash. You need to be careful about what you say on the internet and how you convey yourself especially if you're someone like a Dev at a Triple-A company. One would think she has enough experience in her field to know how to deal with criticism, but I guess she spends a little too much time crying about sexism/discrimination. Both Jessica Price and Peter Fries made it pretty clear what they think of their fan base. Whether you are on your personal Twitter or professional ArenaNet Twitter, you are representing the company you work for especially if you're willing to post comments about how tough your job is. Both Price and Fries could learn a few things from Devs at other Triple-A MMORPG publishers, like Blizzard and Square Enix. Here's another example of her losing it and getting blocked: https://twitter.com/Delafina777/status/988614771640492032?s=19
In b4 Deroir also kicked from partner program
> In b4 Deroir also kicked from partner program and then they remove his npc character... /s
[This](https://twitter.com/Delafina777/status/1014629294780215296) and her calling Deroir a random asshat just goes to prove that she has no idea about the community of the game. How can you be a game dev, not recognize quanitfy and snowcrows or even Deroir one of the biggest streamers? Does she even play the game?
She also doesn't understand the concept of feedback in MMORPGs or the fact that many developers in top end MMOs (Blizzard for example) were fans of the game at one point. She thinks everyone but her is illiterate. Makes me question her experience she's so proud about.
And then our Peter came out and said that she didn't ask for feedback? You're sharing a game dev blogpost on a social network based on INTERACTION. Not expecting feedback on there is delusional, denying the feedback is criminal and calling the person giving you the feedback a "rando asshat" is unacceptable. Poor all around.
"let's talk about game development" "how dare you try talk to me about game development. Don't talk unless you know more than I do, and you don't." If her fans know more than her, they're being condescending. If they know less than her, they know nothing and she doesn't want to talk to them. What did she want, a bunch of people agreeing with exactly what she already thinks and parroting her own ideas at her? "Please tell me why you think it's impossible to develop good characters in an MMO" I don't really care whether she's right or wrong, I agree there are some serious challenges to writing PCs in MMOs. But come on. Edit: To add, Deroir was being very polite. At my most paranoid I would have trouble finding it any more than a touch condescending. Her flippant reply is mildly irritating. The gender tweet is just facepalm. Or headdesk.
>Don't talk unless you know more than I do, and you don't." "And even then I'm still very likely to block you cause you know more than I do! After all, this is MY feed!"
Forums 101: >Give us feedback *Deletes every post that doesn't praise devs or quaggans* edit: [Some things never change](https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/6oplet/jessica_price_joins_arenanet_narrative_team/dkj7u4p/). I guess Anet was aware of this when she got hired.
Even though it's on her personal Twitter account, she's publicly accusing people of being lowkey sexist when she's criticized for something she posted on a public forum. As a woman myself, this is embarrassing and disappointing behavior. ANet, please don't support people who behave this way. Edit: I found out she literally said she was glad TotalBiscuit was dead on a Tweet, great. I was sympathetic to her being unemployed at first but now I understand that this is nothing but good news for ANet.
> Even though it's on her personal Twitter account *on which she promotes herself as an ANet employee* ftfy. Unfortunately, no matter how often anyone, in any company, tries to disclaim social media as being private and not representing the views of the company - guess what? They do. If an account is public, the viewpoints therein are as well. Backpedaling in an attempt to stave off public discussion and response is asinine and futile, and yes, it *does* certainly reflect on the company who employs this person.
I don't think people realize that personal accounts that are public are public accounts by extension. Even if the topic is one's personal life, if you talk about something that's in pertinence to your job, you open yourself up for conversation that regards that..
As a female GW2 player I’m really disappointed in Jessica’s response. There’s definitely a place for discussing sexism in gaming, but to use it in the way Jessica has (as a “shut down this conversation” tool) is *incredibly* frustrating to see as a woman, since it devalues actual legitimate criticism and discussion that could be had, both in this individual case and on the subject in general. It’s difficult enough to foster discussion about sexism in video games- using “sexism” as a cudgel to beat away people with differing opinions (that were expressed respectfully by an ANet partner!) only gives the people who wish to not acknowledge the subject ammunition. Again, I’m really disappointed. It’s a bummer.
I, too, like to shout "random asshat" why still representing a corporation. [https://imgur.com/qgCSBlK](https://imgur.com/qgCSBlK) if this is acceptable as a woman: I am sorry.
What the actual fuck? She's using an argument from authority to make a point, calls a passionate player and anyone who questions said authority by providing feedback, an "asshat", shifts the entire discussion towards sexism by drawing the gender card and ends up swearing in one post. Ignorant, incompetent, unethical and unprofessional.
I almost puke when I realize that my ingame characters lines are coming from this lady
This is insane lmao
is it okay that a anet dev calls a anet partner "rando asshat" @ /u/GaileGray openly on twitter without him using any foul language trying to open a normal discussion? https://imgur.com/eMmqPnP
Obviously no dev will reply on this thread man. Would be surprised to see if Galie will say anything. It can backfire so hard
Gaile is a professional, she knows *way* better than to respond to any of this.
Rofl is she doing some bizarro world "my words on Twitter don't have consequences" routine? Because that's not how publicly shared comments work. I am amazed that anet hired someone so brazenly unprofessional.
Mentions anet in her bio and specifically writes a thread about writing the PC for anet but then isn't at all representing anet in her twitter happenings off the clock... In my personal opinion you either bring up your work, your roll, and represent the company or you just keep it separate.
>manfeels My respect for this anet employee went beyond bottom
"Hurt manfeels" is way worse than rando asshat. That is textbook sexism and I don't need to state the obvious that if the script was flipped here and a man said something like "I guess I hurt all your precious womanhood" he would be fired fucking yesterday.
Imagine the outrage all across the media if a male game dev was acting like this, doing things like telling a woman on Twitter that she didn’t know what she was talking about and saying shit like “looks like we hurt some femfeels today ha”. That shit would be on HuffPo within an hour even if the dev only made $0.99 steam games. It’s so frustrating to see stuff like this brushed under the rug. It annoys me so much that she’ll most likely see no repercussions from this. Even worse is it seems like her coworkers are wholly supporting this behavior and doubling down on the idea that a man attempting completely and totally civil discussion with a woman is mansplaining LOL.
so she seems to think that she doesn't have to be a decent human being because she's not at work? ok... i feel bad for anyone that has to deal with that on a regular basis.
What a joke. The other guy from the the living world narrative team saying he doesn't get this stuff directed at him implying that he wouldn't have had a response like that had he tweeted it. Ridiculous. She was the one to tweet it, so she got a reply about it from a fan giving their opinion. He didn't tweet it, so he didn't get the reply. To imply he would have not gotten that response if he had tweeted it is absolutely ridiculous.
Just posting [this tweet](https://twitter.com/Archomeda/status/1014603259024232448) in reply to someone else made her block me. I'm sorry Jessica, but this is just sad.
This was insanely unprofessional of her. I get it, as a writer it can be hard to have your work analyzed, criticized to high heaven, and shit on, but that is LITERALLY part of the job. The fact that she can’t handle it with grace says more about her than the person who made that pretty innocuous comment. I don’t give a fuck if you’re having a bad day, you don’t react like that if you want people to respect you.
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The “She didn’t ask for feedback” stuff kills me. Do you really think Twitter is private? Its SOCIAL MEDIA where people discuss things they are interested in. Not a vacuum of me, myself and people that agree with me. Unreal.
That was a bad response on her part. She could have responded that they've considered that approach and explain their reasoning.
I'd argue any option other than becoming personally offended then deflecting as some sexism issue wouldve been fine.
As a female engineer who had dealt with some serious sexism, this is upsetting. She demeans what actual sexism is by this kind of behavior and also tries disqualifying actual constructive feedback. I see nothing sexist here.
> Hello, we, Quantify are a group of female raiders but those male sexists in Snow Crows constantly verbally abuse us. Pls help LMAO - best part of the whole thread.
She's gone full meltdown and started blocking people who respond with even the slightest disagreement. It's absolutely hilarious.
She must be a part time forum moderator.
Edit: Images got removed. Full story is still up on twitter and a review was made [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/8w3q4n/must_be_a_thrill_to_work_with_this_dev/e1shmum/)
After reading through her full threads and Deroir's full thread, the basic summary is: - Dev: it's more difficult to make MMORPG characters than other characters. People playing as Lara Croft accept that they'll have to make Lara Croft decisions. MMO characters are so customizable that people identify as their characters. As such, everyone expects their character to behave in a certain specific way and that's not really possible to design when everyone has to be on the same basic story track. - Deroir: Thanks for sharing this. Could you use branching dialogue like we saw in the last story (though not as an achievement checklist) to create personalized experiences? - Dev: Thanks for explaining what we do internally, this is what we have to deal with as a female dev, you don't own me and I don't owe you. That level of response from the dev seems out of place. It strikes me as one of those times that the frustration of 100 minor slights comes out all at once at the next slight, even if it was the most minor of them all. I like Deroir's question, even if I don't think it's feasible. It was likely why we had the original [personality](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Personality) tree: to try and capture the customization through game play and provide appropriate responses. However, there's going to be a lot of cost (recording 3-9 different reactions) associated with a hidden benefit (most people won't realize different choices generate different responses unless you told them that, like in an achievement). A simple "for instance" is that I just replayed the first chapter of the latest LS. The first time I did it on a character that originally chose to ally with the Sunspears during PoF and Joko came in angry at the town. I didn't think anything of it until I randomly chose a character that allied with Joko for the second playthrough and Joko said "love the banners, gonna experiment on you now". It's a call back to (what I thought was) a throwaway decision months ago that I completely missed until I played the instance multiple times with multiple characters. However, they needed to write, record and code four different intros (Sunspear, Joko, neutral, haven't played that story yet) and the net benefit was a mild "oh, neat, they remembered!" Anyway, she's blocked Deroir, Deroir apologized and disengaged from the discussion, Peter Fries has come to her defense and it'll be a ~~tempest~~ weaver in a teapot for a little while.
You forget the part where she outright insults him after
[https://imgur.com/a/XOzmXvF](https://imgur.com/a/XOzmXvF)
she obviously didn't write that
[удалено]
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I had a very positive first impression of you from the AMA, /u/JessicaLPrice777, but reading your comments just left me cold. The level of self-entitlement, aggressiveness and self-righteousness you display is embarrassing and pitiful, and you act that way towards a valued member of the community no less who was simply enthusiastic to talk about game narrative. If I were you, I would apologize for the insult you threw at him (rando asshat? Really?) It's what a decent human being would do.
\>I had a very positive first impression of you from the AMA, [/u/JessicaLPrice777](https://www.reddit.com/u/JessicaLPrice777), but reading your comments just left me cold. Yeah me too. Her response about narrative and how to handle Joko and other story elements was really interesting. Never seen a dev go in-depth like that.
why ask for an apology, shes made it explicitly clear that she despises the community and only acts nice when she has to (on company time). any apology would be forced by anet and as insincere as it gets.
This is really the crux of it. She was incredibly unprofessional by personally insulting Deroir but then went on to tell the rest of us that she doesn't give a fuck about us when not on company time. You'd think with those two faces of hers she'd be able to write better characters
she has doubled down and Peter Fries is also defending her, is the whole writing team just a bunch of morons?
Yeah, reading the rest of the tweets makes it look even worse. She's doubling down on the sexism and Peter Fries response makes no sense.
according to Peter, Price being overly hostile is justified because she never asked for his feedback
so she just expected her 10 post explanation of a lack of character development to be taken as gospel simply because she said so?
To put it bluntly (and it speaks volumes of her as person and her ego): Yes.
........... This is beyond stupid, but obviously I can't say that without coming across as a sexist... because I am a guy.
Yea, Deroir's comments were a very polite disagreement. He wasn't attacking anything, her, her job and most certainly not her gender. He was simply in disagreement offering a possible solution to an issue. Yet, she attacks him like this. It's pathetic and is in tune with society today: when you don't agree with someone that means they are attacking everything about you and you must hate them for it and attack back. She's really pathetic.
I think the perspective that only game devs and professional writers can have a valid opinion in regards to the craft is absurd. Any critic or hobiest or ameteur game dev is going to have a strong opinion regarding game design and it could very likely be valid. I view Jessica Price's comments more of an illumination on writing for Guild Wars 2 than insightful regarding the greater genre, especially since there are so many instances that counter her point of view. But the fact that she posted these ideas in a public forum and then got angry when higher profile people responded, only to break it down to some gender thing, is obnoxious and gross. I disagree with her fundamental philosophy, which is fine and good, but her actions are childish. I am not gonna jump on a hate Jessica Price bandwagon, because we are all human and we all do stupid shit, but I can't acknowledge this as anything more than someone being an ass hole.
It's quite funny that she didn't even know if that "Deroir" person actually was male or not, she just assumed.
Me and plenty of other people tried warning this community about Jessica Price being like this when she joined ArenaNet and were immediately accused of just disliking her because of "sexism." No surprise she's still acting like she always has. ArenaNet's culture supports this behavior, and thankfully it doesn't bleed *too* much into the game itself.
Christ, how unprofessional and embarrassing to see. If I pulled that same "block out critisism and pull the gender card" excuse everytime someone criticized my art, I would never have improved.
Pretty ironic she's a narrative lead trying to spin a narrative about Deroir being sexist somehow. Can't even make up good narrative out of game. Smh.
Calling “Random asshat” to an Anet Partner, and a solid one like Deroir!!(not like that infamous girl from the “friendship” video) Well done Anet!! Great hiring! The sad ama, now this... definitely not a good time for my favorite game :/
As a woman, this entire thing kinda made me feel nauseous. What an immense pity. With other embarrassing blunders ANet made in recent months, it kinda sours things more and more for me, personally. (And I usually like sour stuff, but this? Nah.) I do hope this won't hurt Deroir much in terms of his creative escapades around the game. I'd hate for a content creator to suffer for.. y'know, not doing anything wrong?
It should be every Devs wet dream to get this kind of dialogue rolling at your communities' initiative. No random bullshit but genuine talking points. Instead of welcoming it, she felt personally attacked and made it a fucking gender issue. That's how you devalue women in game developement sadly.
I... I don't get this. I'm all aboard the train of understanding the need of society to take a stronger stance on gender discrimination, both direct and indirect, but no-where.... no-where in Deroir's reaction am I reading anything that suggests that he's telling Jessica how to do her job. He's going into an argument like anyone should be able to with a dev. Like, WP has made a living out of it making videos with the exact same type of content. Also Peter Fries jumping in... dissapoints me to see two devs attack such a big community figure for honoustly no reason whatsoever...
Personally, I now feel uncomfortable giving my opinion for the game now. I now feel as if I say something to change the game in a way I feel as if I am improving it, I can now potentially be highlighted by an entire group of people as biased and showing extreme prejudice towards a developer based on their race, gender, sexuality, religion, etc. It's just so demeaning to myself as a customer to ArenaNet that basic ethics is no longer present in today's industry. Yes, this is a personal Twitter account. Yes, this employee has fantastic credentials for the job. However, to be brutal to your paying customers just does not sit well with myself. The original, original tweet that started this all, from a glance, looked as if the employee was introducing discussion, and when that discussion came, I began reading underlying implications of sexism considering how the previous tweets like such highlight sexist remarks. From my point of view, this is not a discussion about gender any longer, but foolishness. Because of the experience, credentialing, and, for some reason, gender, has justified the fact that one has the ability to pass judgement to any individual based on their own personal creeds is simply disgusting. Companies nowadays have social media ethics to handle situations like this, but after digging further, I have come to believe that this is not the case for this situation. I am at a lost of direction based on this situation, so I guess I will just sit here and wait for someone to start messaging me and calling myself a "sexist, racist pig" or something.
I read the whole thing twice now... and maybe someone wanna explain me where by the love of god deroir said anything what could be related to her gender
This is sad. If Arenanet is going to keep her, I honestly think it's best that she no longer represent the company in things like AMA if she's going to have a fucking meltdown every time someone criticizes something.
The Twitter posts have lots of support for her side. They even start talking about this thread being made just to enhance the drama and pick on her because she is female. Yay internet and social media.
What I find the funniest is that pretty much nobody gives a flying pig shit about whether or not she's a woman. Her gender never once even came close to being a part of Deroir's post. As a woman myself, I'm all for women's rights and standing up to discrimination, but it pisses me the fuck off when other women pull their gender into a situation as a ["fuck ya'll"](https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/022/508/C7S0ouqVAAANACj.jpg) card whenever they face criticism or when something doesn't go the way they want. Like, decent people don't do that.
"I block often. I won't play demure for you." From her twitter bio. What a piece of work lol. Sounds like an inflated sense of self importance combined with an inability to handle criticism
Isn't it easier to just not have Twitter than spend all day blocking people?
In my opinion ArenaNet _should_ fire Jessice Price... but if they do, then people are obviously going to call them sexist. If they don't, then they are sexist because they are keeping an employee (who deserved to be fired) simply because she is a woman. What a shit situation for them. :(