Anyway, ArenaNet's continued refusal to condemn the increase in harassment they've subjected numerous women in the industry to is pretty telling.
I know that it's hard for companies to find the spine to take controversial moral stands, but you'd think "hey, stop threatening to rape and kill female devs, their families, and their pets" would be, y'know, low-hanging fruit everyone could get behind.
And my understanding is that their internal response to this has been to institute more restrictive social media policies (e.g. employees aren't allowed to complain about work at all on their personal accounts) but NOT to institute any additional protections for those who comply.
One of the larger issues here, of course, is not just their insistence that they own 100% of their employees' time and off-work lives, but the promotion of the company brand as one in which you can interact directly with devs.
Video games have a fan community that's more hostile to creators than any other fan community I'm aware of, and video game companies require more direct engagement from their creative talent, with fewer protections, than the rest of the entertainment industry.
Or, put another way, the video game industry insists that its creatives also function as customer service reps.
Now. To be VERY clear, I think anyone who is abusive to a customer service rep is being a garbage person and needs to get smacked down hard by the company.
However, there's a whole realm of not necessarily overtly abusive, but exhausting, behavior that kind of comes with the territory of your job description being, "whenever possible, make the individual customer happy through your interaction with them."
I admire the fuck out of people who take that on. And I especially admire people who make a career of it. But most people, with good reason, aren't interested in doing that.
And the fact that your average video game company wants--and pressures--its creative staff to be out there engaging directly with consumers, and expects that engagement to proceed as if the creative staff were customer service reps, is bullshit.
And it would be bullshit EVEN IF the video game fanbase weren't notoriously riddled with aggressive misogyny, racism, etc. But of course the standards for how female and male devs are allowed to behave are different, and the treatment they receive from gamers is different.
All of that, however, is just about what happens on the clock and on company-controlled social media, where even the most aggressive gamers generally know not to use slurs, issue direct threats, etc.
Then you've got employees' personal accounts. And if you--as someone whose job isn't customer service--shouldn't have to perform customer service duties on company owned media, how much more should you not have to on personal social media?
TV writers don't have to do this. Movie screenwriters don't have to do this. Novelists don't have to do this. The only branches of entertainment where creatives seem to be expected to perform customer service duties--including off-the-clock--is geek media, esp games/comics.
And as much as I don't like it--I loved the idea, initially, of how much creatives and fans rubbed elbows in games--the simplest solution is for companies to eliminate direct access to creatives except in PR-controlled interviews/chats/etc.
The better solution, of course, is a lot more nuanced and requires active, continuous dialogue between management and creatives. It requires a much less paternalistic approach, nuanced discussion of what safety actually means, fluid standards of access, and so on.
But that's not going to happen, because it would require corporations to unclench with regard to their employees, and to ACTUALLY treat talent as valuable. Not by offering free sodas and a foosball table, but by treating their talent as people.
And it's also never going to happen because it would require management to actually LEARN FROM employees who understand things like internet harassment far better than they do. Not in "listening sessions," but in actual conversations. ACTUAL listening.
So, given that most video game management is terrible at actual, authentic relationships, the safer option is just a PR wall between fans and creatives.
And the reason I hate that isn't because I actually think engaging directly with fans is at all useful as far as creative feedback. It's not. What's useful there is actual data: are people buying? How much fanfic/fan art is being made? etc.
That's what tells you if the story's actually hitting or missing with a majority of your audience. Forum posts/tweets/etc. don't.
But the reason I've continued to engage both in company-sponsored social media, and in doing game dev behind-the-curtain threads here on Twitter is because I'm interested in paying it forward as far as people who are listening--and usually, they AREN'T talking.
A lot of what I know how to do I learned by people pulling back the curtain for me. Sometimes individually, on purpose, but often without even realizing I was there.
And the voices we need more of in games often aren't talking in game-focused social media. Why would they? It's ardently hostile to marginalized people. If I were just a fan, if it weren't my industry, I wouldn't bother.
But I've always read--ravenously--creatives' accounts of HOW they do things. And all I can do in thanks for that is pull back the curtain for others.
