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Bioware writer leaves after receiving horrible threats

G

Goon Boon

Banned
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http://www.polygon.com/2013/8/15/46...rassment-erodes-industry-spurs-support-groups

She was far from being the Orson Welles of gaming, but threatening someone enough to quit a job via death threats/harassment is a real disgusting low.
 
What the heck is with this title? I hope this is taken down seriously. Mainly why are you also attacking her? Seems pretty weird to make a thread about how people are horrible and then call her a horrible writer.
 
I think I remember reading about this back shortly after DA2 came out. Yeah it's rediculous but with the internet providing interraction between real people from the safety of their armchairs and without face to face interraction, you get people saying stupid and wild things.
 
has she ever played online? death and rape threats are how teenage gamers say hello.

not that I'm saying she shouldn't quit. she should find a job where her audience respects her.
 
I just got from reading the article and now I see the title of this thread. Can you please have the common decency to not be an ass when death threats are involved?
 
What's wrong with people.

It's one thing to make civil criticisms but death threats? Are the perpetrators usually 12 year olds?
 
ZiZ said:
has she ever played online? death and rape threats are how teenage gamers say hello.

not that I'm saying she shouldn't quit. she should find a job where her audience respects her.
Click to expand...

I don't think one teenage guy saying to another "you got raped" is quite the same as what happened to Jennifer Hepler. Good job making excuses for assholes though, it says a lot about you.
 
On one hand, she totally got some rightful shit for using the jealousy/woman/vagina/job card to her naysayers, if only for fueling that fire herself and playing a role in shit flinging, but death threats is way too far. Regardless of her writing ability, no human being deserves to be welcomed with threats to their lives. You can't justify that shit.
 
If anyone thinks sending threats of any kind is a good idea then the need to reevaluate their lives. Especially over a video game. I mean, really now?
 
The Smoking Bun said:
I thought this was about Mac Walters, a truck could hit him and nothing of value would be lost
Click to expand...

And just look at the huge difference between the way he was treated and the way Hepler was treated.

Foffy said:
On one hand, she totally got some rightful shit for using the jealousy/woman/vagina/job card to her naysayers
Click to expand...

She wasn't really wrong when pointing out that her gender had a lot to do with the way she was treated.
 
Krabboss said:
And just look at the huge difference between the way he was treated and the way Hepler was treated.



She wasn't really wrong when pointing out that her gender had a lot to do with the way she was treated.
Click to expand...

it had nothing to do with it

it was her ridiculous statements about wanting to skip gameplay and not liking video games at all
 
GrizzNKev said:
it had nothing to do with it

it was her ridiculous statements about wanting to skip gameplay and not liking video games at all
Click to expand...

Bull-fucking-shit, dude. We've both seen the threads on /v/ and you know that this isn't a gender-netural controversy that just happened to target Hepler. People hating the writing in recent Bioware games may have been the catalyst, but at the heart of this whole thing there was still a strong, concerted effort to link her with certain female stereotypes.
 
Krabboss said:
And just look at the huge difference between the way he was treated and the way Hepler was treated.



She wasn't really wrong when pointing out that her gender had a lot to do with the way she was treated.
Click to expand...

It's partly because a lot of people have crappy taste and responded to ME3 with "but 99% of Mass Effect 3 was awesome even if the ending was terrible..." and because a lot of other people have reasonable taste. See, Mass Effect 2 and 3 were kinda bad, so more bad wasn't exactly encouraging anyone to scream bloody murder.

Dragon Age Origins went from pretty good to suddenly very, very awful.

Orayn said:
Bull-fucking-shit, dude. We've both seen the threads on /v/ and you know that this isn't a gender-netural thing that just happened to target Hepler.
Click to expand...

I dunno.

Saying that people should be able to skip gameplay did piss a lot of people off, and that's not the kind of thing Waters or anyone else I can think of has said. Not defending the specifics of the response, but I can still see why people responded to her far more negatively than Waters.
 
I came in thinking, and to not lie, hoping, it was whatever his name that made a right mess of Mass Effect that had left.
 
Orayn said:
Bull-fucking-shit, dude. We've both seen the threads on /v/ and you know that this isn't a gender-netural thing that just happened to target Hepler.
Click to expand...

Thing is though, they hate the other writer as well. The one who's bringing back all the dead characters and saying 'Well it's our story so fuck you and your choices even though it was a touted feature', and that's a guy I'm pretty sure.
 
In the days of the internet I'm fairly confident that Mr Rodgers would get death threats. It's the anonymity and access that leads to this and people who receive online death threats are in no more danger than any average person.

BTW, the thread says she was a horrible writer. Did she work on any of the Mass Effect games? Bioware games may slip on the banana peel when it comes to overall plot, but their dialog is among the best in the industry. The character to character dialog in the ME games was pretty damn good and I wouldn't call anyone who wrote any of it a horrible writer.
 
Orayn said:
Bull-fucking-shit, dude. We've both seen the threads on /v/ and you know that this isn't a gender-netural thing that just happened to target Hepler.
Click to expand...

The insults targeted her gender but that had nothing to do with the initial cause. The same people who harassed her have pointed out how much they respect people like Ree Soesbee.

The mocking of her insane feelings towards games I see, threats of course aren't necessary. But I never felt she was attacked specifically because she was female.
 
I didnt like DA2 and I thought the writing was terrible. I would never have wished death upon someone or their children over it. After reading about her childish comeback I just felt sorry for her. Almost as if in the heat of the moment she just lashed out with the first insult she could think of and it just made things worse.
 
Orayn said:
Bull-fucking-shit, dude. We've both seen the threads on /v/ and you know that this isn't a gender-netural thing that just happened to target Hepler.
Click to expand...

People attack what ever is easiest to attack.

If you're fat, they call you a fatass.
If you're gay, they call you a faggot.
If you're a women, they call you bitch.

If /v/ really hated women why wouldn't they call out other women writers in the game industry?
 
Krabboss said:
She wasn't really wrong when pointing out that her gender had a lot to do with the way she was treated.
Click to expand...

That's not what I meant at all. At one point she boasted that people were jealous and only critical of her as she was a woman, had a vagina, and had a job working in games. It was less of her pointing out her gender than as a means to literally fan flames. Of course she was targeted for being female by some, but when you make claims like that on Twitter (and the response she got back was so bad she closed her account at the time) you are not dealing well with the matter at all. Engaging these sort of people in any sort of way is a bad fucking idea, especially in an almost "nah nah nah nah naaaah" sort of way. The way she addressed what I was referring to was almost on the level of the shit /v/ tosses at her. Even so, it never needed to escalate to death threats.
 
I H8 Memes said:
In the days of the internet I'm fairly confident that Mr Rodgers would get death threats. It's the anonymity and access that leads to this and people who receive online death threats are in no more danger than any average person.

BTW, the thread says she was a horrible writer. Did she work on any of the Mass Effect games? Bioware games may slip on the banana peel when it comes to overall plot, but their dialog is among the best in the industry. The character to character dialog in the ME games was pretty damn good and I wouldn't call anyone who wrote any of it a horrible writer.
Click to expand...

No, she wrote for Dragon Age II.
 
GrizzNKev said:
it had nothing to do with it

it was her ridiculous statements about wanting to skip gameplay and not liking video games at all
Click to expand...

Even so that does not mean you act like a psycho and send her death threats. This is why people laugh at video games, a major portion are internet tough guys who are losers in real life desperately trying to find something to fight for and get offended easier than Christian fundamentalists.I joke about Walters but if I met him I would critique his work rather than throw my monkey poop at him like the Jennifer; haters prefer to do. Gender definitely plays a role, these guys feel threatened by women and take every opportunity to put them down. "Bitch, go make me a sandwich." Nerds and Geeks have become the new alpha male douche-bags.
 
BioWare fans are ridiculous.

I hate Mac Walters with a passion but death threats is going too far. I was kind of hoping he was the person the title was referring too..
 
GrizzNKev said:
it had nothing to do with it

it was her ridiculous statements about wanting to skip gameplay and not liking video games at all
Click to expand...

Yeah, no. That's not even close to being true.

And the fact that anybody gave a shit that a writer doesn't like gameplay is just further proof of that. She had nothing to do with the gameplay aspects of the game, she was a fucking writer.

AppleMIX said:
People attack what ever is easiest to attack.

If you're fat, they call you a fatass.
If you're gay, they call you a faggot.
If you're a women, they call you bitch.

If /v/ really hated women why wouldn't they call out other women writers in the game industry?
Click to expand...

The fact that it's even easy/possible to attack somebody for being fat, gay or a woman should tell you there's a problem. And /v/ are sexist all the time, what are you even talking about?
 
Hepler isn't a very good writer in my opinion (and is responsible for some kind of crappy queer-baiting in Bioware's games) but pretending that the backlash and outrage leveled at her didn't have anything to do with her gender or looks is a bit blind. Legitimate complaints became, or were coupled with, or morphed into shitty personal attacks and all decent discourse was swallowed whole by outright misogyny.

Pretty much exactly like the Anita Sarkeesian situation but, no, just a coincidence, right?
 
AppleMIX said:
People attack what ever is easiest to attack.

If you're fat, they call you a fatass.
If you're gay, they call you a faggot.
If you're a women, they call you bitch.

If /v/ really hated women why wouldn't they call out other women writers in the game industry?
Click to expand...

They can't count that high.
 
GrizzNKev said:
The insults targeted her gender but that had nothing to do with the initial cause. The same people who harassed her have pointed out how much they respect people like Ree Soesbee.

The mocking of her insane feelings towards games I see, threats of course aren't necessary. But I never felt she was attacked specifically because she was female.
Click to expand...

As I edited into my last post, it did start because of the writing, but morphed into a very personal hate campaign that stuck with Hepler in a way it didn't for any of the other writers in question.

AppleMIX said:
If /v/ really hated women why wouldn't they call out other women writers in the game industry?
Click to expand...

Well, /v/ does that too because /v/ is a total cesspool. I should know because I posted there for years and watched it slowly descend into anarchy.
 
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