Sometimes the games industry is an amazing place.  Sometimes it can move us, or show us things we never realized.  Sometimes it can introduce us to amazing people.  For me, this is not one of those times.  In fact, I would say that I’m…

…disappointed.

Stick with me here, please.  You might think you know where I’m going, but there’s a good chance you’re wrong.  This piece isn’t going to be well formatted, but I need to write something down about this.  It touches on a topic I’ve referenced a lot, and has convinced me I need to revisit the topic later…

The Crime?

Alison Rapp was fired by Nintendo.  I’m not going to get much into the details of this, because there’s enough weirdness and insanity that diving in too deep makes me feel like my frontal cortex has been saturated in crude oil.  Short version, rooted in a localization backlash, an online harassment campaign became focused on her despite the fact that she was not associated with the localization work.  This campaign found various things from her past that may not be complimentary, but don’t really apply to an employer-employee relationship.  Eventually, though, Nintendo fired her due to a “moonlighting” job that she had that, according to the big N, didn’t comply with their company policies.

Nintendo may or may not have been justified in this.  I don’t know what they consider to be the policies that this moonlighting job could have violated, or the exact nature of it.  Nor do I care about any of that.  This information can be looked up elsewhere and I’m not interested in repeating it here.  Instead, I’m more interested in the reactions that people have had.

The Facts As We Know Them

There’s a lot of arguing about this in comments sections, articles, and ed-ops.  From what I seem, most people involved are so interested in proving that their preconceived ideas are right that they aren’t interested in what’s true.  I want to try to present a point of view based on information that is the least subjective, and most reliable.

ONE

The campaign against Alison Rapp has the earmarks of a misogynistic witch hunt.  Was it in fact misogynistic?  I can’t speak to the motivations for anyone who partook in it, so I can’t say that the majority of them were partaking, either consciously or unconsciously, in misogynistic behavior.  However, because it appeared to target a woman who did not appear to be related to the project that triggered things it APPEARS misogynistic.  This is true, even if all actors involved were acting with complete intellectual honesty and complete clarity on the facts behind their actions.  If that were the case, then there has not been an adequate effort to distinguish things to prevent this appearance.

TWO

From what we can see, Nintendo was well within their rights to release Alison Rapp with an official reason being the moonlighting job.

THREE

It is not clear if Nintendo’s decision was based entirely on the revelation of the side job, or influenced at all by the online campaign against Ms. Rapp.

FOUR

Nintendo did not make any public statements in support of Ms. Rapp, and against the campaign.

FIVE

While Nintendo’s official ruling is that the side job was the cause of dismissal, and they have denied that the harassment campaign was the cause, but because they made no effort to stand by their employee it APPEARS that it was influenced by the harassment campaign.  For a large company like Nintendo, the appearance is almost as significant as the fact.  This is asymmetrical with the harassment campaign which does not have to be so concerned with their appearance.

With these points established, a reasonable supposition is that it is likely that Ms. Rapp’s side job was brought to Nintendo’s attention because of the harassment campaign.  If so, then the harassment campaign would be responsible for Ms. Rapp getting fired.

It’s entirely possible that Nintendo’s action came completely independent of the harassment campaign, but that doesn’t seem likely.  The idea of a misogynistic online harassment campaign getting a scapegoat fired is terrible.  The fact that this is a reasonable line of logic is a tragic and sad truth of current culture, both online and gaming, and that is something that should be fought against.  As much as that state of things bothers me, that isn’t what

IMPORTANT ASIDE

Before we go on, I would like to make something clear.  I AM NOT SAYING THAT ALISON RAPP DID OR DID NOT DESERVE TO BE FIRED.My feelings on that are separate from the effect I want to get at, but laying out this situation is necessary to get to the issue I want to discuss.

Reactions, and Reactions to Reactions

Here’s the meat of what’s bothering me.  People are free to think whatever they want of this event.  They may think that Ms. Rapp deserved to be released, or that the move was uncalled for.  They can also speak or act in reaction to it.  Some may be happy, or some may be upset at Nintendo.  There are reactions on forums that seem to be celebrating this with an undue enthusiasm.  I can’t get behind celebrating someone losing their job with that kind of verve.  In the “best” case scenario for those campaigning against her, this should be a regrettable necessity.  Reveling in it seems to feed from, and back into a poisonous and mean spirited nature.

There are other reactions, of course.  One game developer, Brandon Sheffield, was upset at Nintendo, and decided to cancel a release they had planned for the Wii U.

So @NintendoAmerica just fired someone because GG didn't like her. We had a game planned for Wii U. Not now we don't https://t.co/x5363cgBnF

— brandon sheffield (@necrosofty) March 30, 2016

He’s free to assume causes, and react as he wants.  In fact, he followed up on this tweet on with a piece on Gamasutra. In this he pointed out that he was also upset that Nintendo didn’t do anything to support their employee against this bullying.  He also went on to talk about the responses that his tweet got.

As the day wore on, yesterday, that initial tweet blew up. 1,200 retweets and counting, and tons, I mean tons, of hateful comments pointed in my direction.

I learned from hundreds of people tweeting at me that:
– nobody cares because nobody has heard of us/me
– nobody wants our stupid walking simulator anyway (we are not making a walking simulator – we were planning to bring out a new version of our small puzzle game Gunhouse)
– nobody would ever buy our games because they’re bad
– nobody will buy our future games now
– the people who would not have bought our games anyway are somehow going to affect us financially because now they’re definitely not going to buy our games… even more??
– I’m an idiot because she wasn’t fired because of harassment and becoming a liability in that regard, it was because of her essay, “do your research.”
– I’m an idiot because she wasn’t fired because of harassment or even the essay after all or for any of the things we said before it was because of another job and was completely unrelated and obviously everybody knew this and “do your research.”

This isn’t so shocking that the knee jerk reactions from people who inherently disagree with him would have things like this to say.  What I find even more disturbing, though, is the reaction that other professionals had in the comments section of this article.  Granted, more of those comments, agreeing or disagreeing with Mr. Sheffield, on average were more polite and showed more reasoning than what would be found on, say, reddit.  However, even there some threads devolved into arguments about GG and SJWs.  Also, one particularly sarcastic, even spiteful comment stuck out to me by Nicholas Gatewood.

So you claim to not know why she was fired, and that you cancelled the Wii U version of your game because Nintendo wasn’t supportive enough of Rapp? Sure. It’s not like you wanted to reach a larger audience and make money or anything. You made a financially irresponsible decision just so you could make a political statement and feel politically correct. Yay, PC points for you.

[…]

You cancelled your Wii U game because you wanted to appease the true PC Master Race. It’s fine, we all have self-destructive moments of weakness. Just don’t act all high and mighty and call out Nintendo for doing something any sane company would’ve done.

In that block quite, I removed the middle paragraph that spoke to the accusations against Ms. Rapp, because it is irrelevant to my point.  Even on a professional board that should be more insulated from the muck of other comment sections, you still have someone belittling another for stating their beliefs and standing up for them.  This action of standing up for their beliefs did not do anything to attack the commenter, yet the commenter felt it necessary to go further to be some sort of PC elitist.  This is a move to diminish the other, and bolster the self.  To discredit what they are saying with an ad hominem attack like this, rather than considering the substance of what was being said, is the real problem I have.  Even on a professional forum, people can be so interested in proving themselves right, they close themselves off to finding the truth.

Final Thoughts

I pay little attention when labels like Gamergate or Social Justice Warrior are used.  I have seen them each used in such wildly different ways that it is clear that there is no agreed upon meaning.  Any time I spend trying to understand the phenomena, everything devolves into this same problem.  All effort goes into trying to prove they are right, rather than an honest effort to find the truth.

If we truly care, what we should want is the truth.  If we want the truth, then we should want people to try to prove us wrong.  If we are proven wrong, then what belief we had was not true and we would want to exchange it for something closer to the truth.  The transition can be painful, depending on the belief, but we will come out the other end wiser in mind, and stronger in character.  If you value your beliefs, challenge them.  Welcome having others challenge them, not in any adversarial or hostile way, but to try to enlighten yourself.

The games industry can be a great place, but seeing closed minded bickering infect it like this…

I probably haven’t explained my point adequately, but I’m done with this topic for now.  BTL radio next week will be about something else.

Kynetyk is a veteran of the games industry.  Behind the Line is written to help improve understanding of what goes on in the game development process and the business behind it.  From “What’s taking this game so long to release”, to “why are there bugs”, to “Why is this free to play” or anything else, if there is a topic that you would like to see covered, please write in to kynetyk@enthusiacs.com