The Jennifer Hepler Incident - Are We Our Own Worst Enemies?

[Brian]

To quote the 4chan culture: "Anonymous does not forgive."

My question is, where did someone determine to hold her responsible for some perceived decline of Bioware?  I gathered there were a lot of insults levied at every aspect of her character, which I largely ignored.  I haven't played DA to know about the complaints about her writing, but my suspicion is they are just as far out-of-line as everything else (I didn't see any problems in ME2 to speak of beyond the 'default' options if you didn't import a save being the opposite of my choices, pretty-much across the board).  Her twitter account was supposedly a poorly-timed coincidence, but who elected her as a target now, and pinned all of the (supposed) failings of the company on her?

That's what I don't get.

[thepanda]

I guess that depends on what you mean by dropping in quality. If someone has a thing against homosexuality, racial diversity, or inclusive storytelling then yes, I suppose they could make an argument that 'quality' is 'dropping'. (Gods know there is enough racism, misogyny, and homophobia being tossed around this little kerfuffle.)

What I'm trying to wrap my head around is the alleged six year gap between the supposed flippant remarks by Hepler about gameplay and the ensuing Twitter bombing.

I'd have thought six years to be an awfully long time to hold a grudge on the Internet.

but who elected her as a target now, and pinned all of the (supposed) failings of the company on her?

That's what I don't get.

She got scapegoated years ago for the 'decline' (see above) in Bioware games, even getting blamed for stuff where she wasn't even part of the project. Sort of like how in Star Trek fandom Brannon Braga gets blamed for all the shitty episodes, even the ones he didn't write. So someone saw she'd opened a twitter account recently, assholes in that fandom decided to harass her through twitter, she responded (foolishly), and the rest you probably know by now.

I don't know the community, but if it's like any of the other fandoms I've been in people have probably elevated those quotes into fandom law or something. Shades of 'Haruka was a man in the Silver Millennium'; rumors someone or a group of someones started on the internet and now a bunch of people see it as the gospel's own truth.

Meh.

[Arakawa]

Removed my last post since it's just too bitter, on second thought.

I should just say that my sympathies on this are squarely with Hepler, because her escalation stunt ("you're just jealous because I'm a woman who works in the game industry") doesn't even register on my radar of Dumb Moves. Have seen people engage in far more ludicrous (to the extent of hypocrisy) displays of the victim card on the internet, in response to infinitely (literally infinitely) more legitimate criticisms. (See: hubbub over one Violet Blue flipping out after she got politely Apple-fan-"politely" called out for referring to a MacWorld exhibitor as a "booth babe".) This one was -- yes, Hepler could have had more temper control and avoided forfeiting her sense of dignity and feeding the trolls like that -- but she at least lost her temper in a way that is entirely proportionate to trolls bad mouthing you for six years and resurfacing to flood your Twitter mentions stream with juvenile insults.

EDIT: http://www.spectrecollie.com/archives/2012/02/guilt-by-dissociation -- fairly complete summary of the incident I'm referring to.

Given that here the people doing the criticism are Apple fans, and Blue escalates with far less provocation, in retrospect this strikes me as an "unstoppable force meets immovable object" sort of incident.

[Jason_Miao]

I'm a bit late to this party, but here's a few thoughts:

Firstly, no one should be subject to harassment, on internet or otherwise.  But the internet is what it is; we've long ago decided to embrace the benefits of open access and (relative) anonymity, and we must now take the bad with the good.  I'm not happy that anyone gets harassed, but this isn't the heyday of AOL and I no longer feel that it's reasonable for anyone to be shocked and surprised at what happens when you post anything at any point in any online forum(1).

Secondly, complaining about having to play the game in a game is missing the point of the medium.  Reading those quotes feels like a blind man complaining about having to watch the screen to get the context of the dialog in a movie, or a three-year-old bitterly protesting the lack of pictures accompanying  whatever story Bri last wrote(2).  In gaming, time and ability is just other aspects.  If one is too busy or currently unable to play a computer game...well, don't.  There are plenty of types of media content which can be consumed in half an hour, three minutes, or whatever.  A statement that one should change how games to remove the actual game seems as silly(3) as installing a tracking device in a TV so that it makes you go play outside after a certain time period.

Thirdly, the first two articles were fairly ridiculous, and didn't finish the third.  I feel like telling the two writers "Hi you must be new to the Internet."  The Destructoid article appealing to the maturity of the gaming community...well, what community?    As for the Gamespot article about Bioware's "rights".

But BioWare has the right to do so much more. It has the right to pursue legal action against Hepler's attackers.

Yeah.  Good luck with that.  Something I've often said: Anyone can sue anyone for anything.  Doesn't mean the plaintiff is likely to win, the defendant did anything that the law can address, or that the plaintiff even has a point.

It has the right to shut them out of its community, to refuse them any kind of service in the future.

Bioware is a company that makes RPGs.  And my understand of the RPG market is that it's the sort of venture where you sell a crapton or sell thee copies, one of them to your mother.  So...no.

It has the right to tell them that this behavior has no place in the gaming community,

Again...what community?

(1) Granted, plenty of divorcees and people on probation seem shocked at what lawyers find on their own Facebook account.  Keep in mind that these are people stupid enough to post about their affairs and breaking their terms of probation on Facebook in the first place.

(2) Then again, Bri probably gets fanart, so maybe that wasn't such a great example.

(3) Maybe she should get a job with a company that writes visual novels?  That seems win-win.

[Grahf]

What I'm trying to wrap my head around is the alleged six year gap between the supposed flippant remarks by Hepler about gameplay and the ensuing Twitter bombing.

I'd have thought six years to be an awfully long time to hold a grudge on the Internet.

The fervour seemed to crop up after a (now deleted) Reddit posting that accused Hepler for the perceived decline of quality in BioWare games, even ones that she's never worked on like Mass Effect. It seems that once the idea took root in people's minds that it just steamrolled from there into the current mess.

[Dracos]

I think saying "Gamers do not like Rockstars" is actually somewhat disingenuous, even if it it seems right on face.

Some chunk of Gamers love having someone to blame.  Sure, if there's actually a shitty game, they can hide behind they deserve it (for some value of obnoixiousness), but that's not really the goal.  The goal is to have a face which is not The Hero (often a lead designer or producer who can do no wrong and is attributed every bit of genius that goes into a game, see almost every japanese designer you know the name of for examples), that can take all the wrong of a game.  If it can be associated with a series, all the better.  Writers and localizers are often great targets for these kinds of folks, because its easy to construe that 'the game would've been excellent if not for their misinterpretation of The Hero's Vision'.  The woman who localized the remarkably bullshit Metal Gear Solid 2 had to deal with a lot of this as I understand it.

Of course, actually arguing back doesn't help.  Even if you're good at it, they're not looking for understanding, they're looking for someone they can blame for all the bad decisions.  It's even easier when they don't understand game development as a collaborative art.  Any designer can be responsible for all of it.  And since in very rare cases, someone owns up or gets revealed as it, the myth of such lives on forever.

*ignores the rest of the thread to just voice on high.  Cuz he's lazy and it is late.

[Kt3]

A bit late, but I found a video that I felt sums up my opinions on a lot of things regarding the incident.  Feel free to comment, share what you thought, whatever.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QLz0CqtMVc

Edit: As per warning by Brian, ME3 spoilers.  I didn't even realize it myself, and I'm playing through ME2 right now.  My bad.  :(

[Brian]

^$@#ing ME3 spoilers in the video. -_-

Edit:  I'm not sure.  The video trended toward saying she didn't deserve to be used as a scapegoat ... and then tore into her anyway.

But on the controversy being 'manufactured', yeah, I got that feeling as well -- and it was echoed elsewhere in this thread.  Six years?  Yeah....