ArenaNet Drama

Their behaviour on twitter and towards community was sooo unprofessional. The outrage on reddit was completely justified. Good thing that ANet didn't duck out and pulled the trigger.

Ditto what she said...

It's more than enough to keep up good relations with the people you physically see and interact with

on a daily basis, your own family, friends and coworkers.

That was some stuff. To be fair, both Jessica and Peter had valid points in terms of game development and "working conditions" in the industry. Quite frankly many of the responses from the playerbase, especially in reddit were completely uncalled for - and one of the reasons why I avoid reddit like the plague. It's an unfortunate incident that only enforces a lot of the negativity that surrounds the gaming community as a whole.

That being said, Jessica was completely in the wrong in how she handled the incident, and some of her comments certainly deserved the outcome that she received. I can understand her frustrations, but at the end of the day, in this 21st Century age of technology and social media, I find there are still a lot of people who completely miss the mark on how it works in the real world. And it is especially critical in an industry like this one where interaction with your customers is critical to success or failure. Nobody likes being told how to do their job by someone who really doesn't have good working knowledge of such - it has happened to me several times throughout my adult life, so it's not a gaming thing or a gender thing. And no, the customer isn't always right. But there is always a right way and a wrong way of handling that situation, and Jessica most certainly took the wrong way.

So I initially didn't want to post anything here because I felt that everything that needed to be said was covered on various other sites, plus it felt like a downer after the upbeat cupcake event. Miss Price started out with a great explanation of the hows and whys of writing for the commander and I can honestly say I agreed with her. Everything that happened after, not so much. I decided that I would look into her history and see if there was any mention of other issues and it didn't take long to find them. Most already know what they are so I won't post them here.

One thing that did stand out for me though was an older interview she did with Nerdy but Flirty back in 2013.

https://nerdybutflirty.com/2013/09/28/int…izo-publishing/

To save people time, I'm highlighting one of the questions that really stood out to me, based on her response to it.

5.) What do you hate or wish you could change in the nerd community or gaming industry?

I think I’ve touched on it above, but in case it wasn’t explicit enough: I hate gatekeeping. I hate the idea that newcomers should have to prove some sort of level of knowledge or dedication before being welcomed to participate.

If you’re unfamiliar with something I love, GREAT. I get to share it with you. I get to experience the joy of discovering it for the first time again through you. I get to be a teacher. I get to be a native showing a visitor around a city I love. And there’s a chance you’ll love my city so much [that] you’ll decide to move there, and we can be neighbors, and maybe someday you’ll show me a part of it I didn’t know about, or build a new part of it for me to love. It’s hard to imagine anything better than that.

Every time I watch someone in games or fandom drive someone away because that person is a newbie, or didn’t sufficiently prove their fan cred, I watch an opportunity for that sort of joy and wonder and sharing die an untimely death.

I'm not going to say that this response applies exactly to the current situation and subsequent firing, but here she seems to endorse the idea that you don't need to know everything to participate and that she's open to the idea of teaching a person, then going as far as saying at some point, they may even teach her something in return. That to me, implies a willingness to an open dialogue. I wonder what changed?