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FMguru posted:My bold, visionary corporate concept: a workplace, but one where people gently caress all the time. And where we totally ignore the power imbalance and exploitation inherent in having executives trying to seduce their own employees, yeah.
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Mar 27, 2018 21:57
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That's like a really, really sad version of Wolf of Wall Street. Where nobody gets rich and there's no exciting drugs but an equal amount of terrible people.
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Mar 27, 2018 22:00
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quote:"I still don't think what we did was wrong. But society does, unfortunately." This should headline the syllabus to Intro Villainy 101.
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Mar 27, 2018 22:00
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Alien Rope Burn posted:From John Tynes' Salon article "Death to the Minotaur":
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Mar 27, 2018 22:05
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Yeah, it reads weirdly - I wouldn't say apologetically, but sympathetically in retrospect. The article was written over 15 years ago at this point, though, so I wouldn't make deep presumptions about that sort of thing. I know I've learned a lot since then, and I'd hope Tynes has too. But he's mostly out of the gaming industry at this point. Adkison runs Gen Con LLC these days.MadScientistWorking posted:Wait she's that Lisa? Yes. Lisa Stevens was involved heavily in the creation of both Wizards of the Coast and White Wolf. Though she's not as well known because she's generally been an editor or executive, I think it's fair to say roleplaying games would be very different without her.
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Mar 27, 2018 22:25
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Yes. Lisa Stevens was involved heavily in the creation of both Wizards of the Coast and White Wolf. Though she's not as well known because she's generally been an editor or executive, I think it's fair to say roleplaying games would be very different without her. Oh man, she had to deal with Rein*Hagen too? I'm surprised she didn't just carry around a hatchet to castrate all the dudebro game devs after that.
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Mar 27, 2018 22:41
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FMguru posted:My bold, visionary corporate concept: a workplace, but one where people gently caress all the time. Leperflesh posted:And where we totally ignore the power imbalance and exploitation inherent in having executives trying to seduce their own employees, yeah. Atari had a similar culture and that's mostly what most the dialogue about Nolan Bushnell has been about. Yeah, they were partying all the time but it was super exploitative for him to seduce employees or make them do things like get into hot tubs with the male executives while they're having a "meeting."
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Mar 27, 2018 23:39
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Kurieg posted:Oh man, she had to deal with Rein*Hagen too? She jumped ship to Wizards shortly after Vampire: the Masquerade shipped, so make of that what you will.
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Mar 27, 2018 23:49
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RocknRollaAyatollah posted:Atari had a similar culture and that's mostly what most the dialogue about Nolan Bushnell has been about. Yeah, they were partying all the time but it was super exploitative for him to seduce employees or make them do things like get into hot tubs with the male executives while they're having a "meeting." Yeah, I read that article too. Some differences: it was the 1970s, Atari was massively breaking ground by employing tons of women and paying them properly to do jobs that were completely male dominated up to then, and... the interviews were mostly with women who claim to have been fine with it. That does not in any way excuse the behavior, though, because undoubtedly there were women who were not fine with it, and did not get interviews in fancy articles about it. But the country's first sexual harassment lawsuits did not come about until approximately 1977, so ignorance of a potential legal liability is excusable, even if the behavior itself isn't. I simply do not accept that excuse for a 1990s game company's executives. Nobody in management can ignore or claim ignorance of the inherent power imbalance of their position, and even if they're just a super likeable nerd trying to create a "new kind of company" (actually not new at all in that respect), if they cannot understand that this creates a hostile workplace for everyone who isn't totally 100% down with loving their boss then they are incapable of running a company. Even if you ignore the moral hazard (and you should not!), they're exposing their shareholders to ruin via legal hazard, and that on its own is grounds to be fired by the shareholders. You have to be a goddamn moron to think you can run a company in blatant disregard of the law and then be surprised and upset when you're dismissed as a result.
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Mar 28, 2018 00:19
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I mean, that's the whole Silicon Valley thing, isn't it? "We're a new kind of company, the rules don't apply to us, hey wait what's this lawsuit, I'm the good guy here".
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Mar 28, 2018 00:29
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Pope Guilty posted:I mean, that's the whole Silicon Valley thing, isn't it? "We're a new kind of company, the rules don't apply to us, hey wait what's this lawsuit, I'm the good guy here". Specifically, it's the thing with companies run by young people with no experience running companies, and is not unique to silicon valley; but there are a disproportionately high number of high-tech startups run by such people in silicon valley. Wizards was seattle-based, anyway. I have seen an article recently about tech companies in the bay area doing the same sort of "we're all swingers" sex party bullshit recently, too: but I suspect that it's not quite as universal as the hyperbolic articles would suggest. Certainly a lot of silicon valley workers work at huge companies with thousands or tens of thousands of employees, and the wild swinger sex party thing is not typical of such companies. Leaving aside the sex party stuff? Yeah the whole "disruptive technology" thing is about taking the wrong lessons from the likes of Apple and Amazon. Amazon disrupts the bricks-and-mortar retail business model, therefore I can disrupt the on-demand car transport model or the hotel room model, and we'll just helpfully ignore that amazon isn't blatantly breaking the law by arranging to ship boxes of stuff to people (although it may well be abusing its warehouse employees) whereas I'm dodging hotel taxes and taxicab badge regulations.
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Mar 28, 2018 00:38
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The article about WotC sounds very naive more than anything. It sounds like Adkison's vision was a hippie commune that sold game books, but that isn't really a thing you can be and also be a corporation, with employees and a hierarchy. It's not ok, but it's a lot more forgivable to be a naive idiot in the 90s than it is to be doing the poo poo Paizo is doing in 2018.
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Mar 28, 2018 00:40
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It might be enlightening to remember that Lara Croft was absolutely blowing people's minds in 1996.
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Mar 28, 2018 00:44
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I was going to mention that it was the 70's and they employed a relatively large number of female employees in regular, well paying positions but it just seemed to be making the wrong point. Bushnell has apologized and some of the women interviewed had a boys will be boys, we were all crazy kids partying attitude but I didn't want to come off as thinking that made it better or excusable. I do agree that the 70's and all that came with it make it seem much better than the Wizards situation since that was all unknown territory and corporate culture in the 60's/70's was incredibly toxic relative to the nightmare it is today. I will say though that the Wizard's situation is much worse because they lived in an era where they did know better.
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Mar 28, 2018 00:51
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RocknRollaAyatollah posted:I was going to mention that it was the 70's and they employed a relatively large number of female employees in regular, well paying positions but it just seemed to be making the wrong point. Bushnell has apologized and some of the women interviewed had a boys will be boys, we were all crazy kids partying attitude but I didn't want to come off as thinking that made it better or excusable. I do agree that the 70's and all that came with it make it seem much better than the Wizards situation since that was all unknown territory and corporate culture in the 60's/70's was incredibly toxic relative to the nightmare it is today. Yeah exactly, and I meant to elaborate on what you were saying rather than imply that you were defending Atari. "He's just young and naive" doesn't fly with me. You don't get to run a multi-million dollar corporation with dozens or hundreds of employees if you're willfully naive about legal liability, and it's just not plausible for any adult in the 1990s to claim they have no idea there's issues with having free-for-all drunken sex parties with your own employees.
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Mar 28, 2018 00:56
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Leperflesh posted:You don't get to run a multi-million dollar corporation with dozens or hundreds of employees if you're willfully naive about legal liability, and it's just not plausible for any adult in the 1990s to claim they have no idea there's issues with having free-for-all drunken sex parties with your own employees. http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-nicholas18jul18-story.html Bud I've worked at several successful startups and this is simply not true. There's absolutely a period where the "anything goes" founders are making bank and the company is transitioning toward a more formalized management structure. The idea that making a financially successful company requires some Ur-Knowledge of legal liability or specific personality traits is not born out by my experience of working directly for these people. Edit: I take that back, the only personality trait needed is absolute shamelessness. I mean I've literally seen the CEO of a publicly traded company observe a pretty woman walking by outside, call a meeting to a halt, and run out of the room to talk to her. That's not an exaggeration. Megaman's Jockstrap fucked around with this message at 01:07 on Mar 28, 2018 |
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Mar 28, 2018 01:03
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Well, there's the difference between excusing and understanding, too. A number of gaming companies are built by people who want their business to be a circle of friends (or vice versa) and it's not unusual for RPG companies to basically be founded by gaming groups. So I don't think Adkison necessarily meant harm, but he didn't want to accept things had to shift from a circle of pals to a professional business, and that's irresponsible and damaging. And that's how you can also end up with stuff like the Paizo situation. Yeah, you may recognize that sexual harassment is a problem, and yeah, you may have been subjected to it, but somebody is your friend and you can just talk to them about it and clear things up and that's all you need to do because, you know, you're friends and colleagues. And I'm not saying that's necessarily what's going on, nor am I saying it's anything but irresponsible if something like that is. But it's how this stuff goes on even in front of people that by all rights should know better. There are reasons when I've asked folks who used to work for Palladium what a certain employee actually does and get a big ol' shrug, because hey, that's Siembieda's old buddy and he isn't going anywhere. That's also how you get a guy robbing Palladium for years upon years and nobody noticing anything being up. Because he's Kev's friend from the Detroit gaming club days and he's a known quantity who would never work to bleed the whole company dry! Of course, I remember talk from the Sisterhood of Gaming panel at last year's GenCon where one of the editors on V:tM (maybe Nicole Lindross, I don't recall) and Stevens talked about how the early days of White Wolf when they were creating Vampire). Most of the employees lived in the same house, so there was that notion of a communal company. Which is part is how they managed to stay afloat prior to having a big hit, especially when they'd inherited Lion Rampant's debt and were basically just trying to get out from under that, but it was also a boiling pot of problems.There were also eyerolls regarding Rein*Hagen where apparently he would keep having ideas he wanted to put in the book which dragged things out, especially since they'd be in the middle of layout and he'd want to like add 3 pages, and them nearly missed their print date because of it, at one point running after the deliveryman to get their manuscript out in time for GenCon after having pulled a late night getting it in order. Generally no matter how weird you think the TT industry is, it turns out to just get weirder the more stones you turn over.
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Mar 28, 2018 01:14
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-nicholas18jul18-story.html Sorry, when I say "you don't get to" I do not mean "we live in a just society where people who do this always get their just desserts" but rather "you may not do this, and do not have an excuse for doing this, and should rightfully be punished for doing this, including at a bare minimum removal from your position by your investors." And you do not have to be some kind of legal expert to understand that sexual harassment is a big deal with big legal liability potential. If you're incapable of understanding that, as an executive, your behavior at work can have legal consequences, then you ought not to be trusted to run that company by your investors. Undoubtedly many people are trusted anyway, because we do not live in a just world, but I don't accept that there are legitimate excuses for this sort of thing, including in particular, ignorance. The article Alien Rope Burn posted attempts to excuse that behavior by claiming it was naive, and implying by tone that it was excusable. It isn't.
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Mar 28, 2018 01:33
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Alien Rope Burn posted:And that's how you can also end up with stuff like the Paizo situation. Yeah, you may recognize that sexual harassment is a problem, and yeah, you may have been subjected to it, but somebody is your friend and you can just talk to them about it and clear things up and that's all you need to do because, you know, you're friends and colleagues. And I'm not saying that's necessarily what's going on, nor am I saying it's anything but irresponsible if something like that is. But it's how this stuff goes on even in front of people that by all rights should know better. And this is part of what makes OneShot's solution so important: they understood that this is a problem, refused to assume they were better than that, and hired outside investigators. Not assuming everything's cool because it's you and you're good and smart is so important in so many things, and also a far rarer skill than a lot of people think it is.
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Mar 28, 2018 02:06
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Pope Guilty posted:And this is part of what makes OneShot's solution so important: they understood that this is a problem, refused to assume they were better than that, and hired outside investigators. Not assuming everything's cool because it's you and you're good and smart is so important in so many things, and also a far rarer skill than a lot of people think it is. Yeah. Geek Social Fallacies feels more relevant than ever to help explain why RPG companies and fans react so badly when these issues come up. Lurking and overt sexism is also very important, but GSFs can serve as potent cover for it.
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Mar 28, 2018 02:46
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RocknRollaAyatollah posted:Atari had a similar culture and that's mostly what most the dialogue about Nolan Bushnell has been about. Yeah, they were partying all the time but it was super exploitative for him to seduce employees or make them do things like get into hot tubs with the male executives while they're having a "meeting." It'd work better if it went the other way - just bang cool people who are down with being part of a bang network, and then offer them jobs if they happen to have the right skills. Then people know what they are getting into and are in a better position to say no if they decide that they want to keep working and banging separate, and you don't have the awkward moment at the end of the job interview where after the candidate accepts the job the interviewers stand up from behind the big desk and it turns out none of them were wearing pants and for some reason the interviewee runs away at that point. EDIT TO ADD: Come to think of it, it probably *does* start out that way - just a group of pals who bang and also make a company together. The mistake they make is that they then assume that people they employ will be down for the same arrangement they're currently down with, and they don't adapt to a more professional basis of working once they expand beyond the friendship group. Alien Rope Burn posted:She jumped ship to Wizards shortly after Vampire: the Masquerade shipped, so make of that what you will. Warthur fucked around with this message at 18:31 on Mar 28, 2018 |
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Mar 28, 2018 18:27
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Warthur posted:The big problem with the ideal of the fuckparty office is that it does things backward - makes you an employee first, setting up a power imbalance, then tries to glomp you into the polyamorous network. This would only work if 100% of your employees got into the company that way, and they never changed their minds. And it'd still be a legal quagmire, because eventually every company finds itself needing to fire someone, and that someone now has all the ammunition they could want for a big expensive lawsuit.
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Mar 28, 2018 18:32
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Well if you're a group of friends you can start it as a partnership - there's no conflict of interest if you're actually equal partners, even if one of you acts as supervisor.
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Mar 28, 2018 18:32
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Leperflesh posted:This would only work if 100% of your employees got into the company that way, and they never changed their minds. And it'd still be a legal quagmire, because eventually every company finds itself needing to fire someone, and that someone now has all the ammunition they could want for a big expensive lawsuit. It honestly depends on the structure. Like, if everyone who comes in buys in as an equal partner and so on, as Jeffrey points out. At that stage though it starts to resemble not going corporate at all, and simply being a polyamorous commune that happens to produce books to make ends meet. That puts a huge crimp on your potential expansion. On the other hand, maybe indefinite expansion is a poison chalice and aiming to simply make enough to keep you and yours healthy and happy and supplied with necessities and luxuries is actually enough. TG probably isn't an industry where you can do that, though.
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Mar 28, 2018 18:37
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Yeah you avoid the conflict of interest, but not the assumption of unwarranted legal risk. If you're all also the 100% financiers of your venture, then I guess your legal hazard is lowered. At that point, though, you're still restricting your company's growth potential, which is a fairly bad idea. e. gently caress, beaten on all counts hah
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Mar 28, 2018 18:37
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Any mere employees have to work out of the satellite office and can't come to the sex parties. Them's the breaks.
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Mar 28, 2018 18:49
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Just put a box of waivers next to the box of wet-wipes outside the Executive """Wash""" Room.
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Mar 28, 2018 18:54
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Hold on, guys, I got it: there's a group of people at the top, we'll call them the "inner circle", and that's the people allowed to come to the sex parties. They should probably wear masks and heavy red robes - so that nobody knows who is who, and there's no power imbalance - and they can ...oh poo poo I've invented the Illuminati
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Mar 28, 2018 18:54
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Warthur posted:Now I begin to wonder whether the original Vampire was, like Star Wars, one of those projects which was saved in the edit... 1e World of Darkness books are really... not great. 2nd Edition gets slightly better, particularly after the large org reshuffle that saw Bridges moved off of Werewolf and onto Mage. Revised is better but there are still a few stinkers that slip through from time to time because people trusted the writers not to go too far off the reservation. I'm not exactly sure what kind of person MR*H was to work with, but I know he was bought out of the company, I heard some rumors of him driving fans away at Cons, and everything that he has done since his tenure at Werewolf does not strike me as the kind of things a person who's good at running a business would do.
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Mar 28, 2018 19:01
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:...oh poo poo I've invented the Illuminati
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Mar 28, 2018 19:01
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Kurieg posted:1e World of Darkness books are really... not great. 2nd Edition gets slightly better, particularly after the large org reshuffle that saw Bridges moved off of Werewolf and onto Mage. Revised is better but there are still a few stinkers that slip through from time to time because people trusted the writers not to go too far off the reservation. I still remember how achingly pretentious his little columns or whatever at the end of 2E Apocalypse and 1E Wraith and thought to myself that this is not a man who I want to game with, despite having obviously bought many of his games. Especially Wraith where he's losing his mind narrating how his players were dead and their souls eaten and then crapped out into the underworld and they're just staring at him because of how REAL and INTENSE it was. Probably they were too polite to say 'dude what?'
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Mar 28, 2018 20:12
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Dawgstar posted:I still remember how achingly pretentious his little columns or whatever at the end of 2E Apocalypse and 1E Wraith and thought to myself that this is not a man who I want to game with, despite having obviously bought many of his games. Especially Wraith where he's losing his mind narrating how his players were dead and their souls eaten and then crapped out into the underworld and they're just staring at him because of how REAL and INTENSE it was. Probably they were too polite to say 'dude what?' He's gotten worse since then, he's entered an auteur stage where character sheets are a relic of the past and your character should actually be an action figure, no wait it should be a deck of cards. Yeah it should be a deck of cards and those idiots making vampire should just shut down already because they're cutting into his market share of "succubus" which is totally different than vampire for reasons.
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Mar 28, 2018 20:41
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Every rpg should be a deck of cards.
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Mar 28, 2018 20:42
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Kurieg posted:1e World of Darkness books are really... not great. I really like 1e Chicago By Night, but I suspect part of that comes from it being the playtest campaign and so having a dose of extra richness and road testing arising from actual play.
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Mar 28, 2018 20:59
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Warthur posted:I really like 1e Chicago By Night, but I suspect part of that comes from it being the playtest campaign and so having a dose of extra richness and road testing arising from actual play. The werewolf books were not anywhere near as polished. The tribes backstabbed each other at every opportunity and their clan stereotypes were flanderized up to 11. Also 1e was when bridges was at the helm so the neoprimitivism and saintly exotic natives thing was in full swing.
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Mar 28, 2018 21:18
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slap me and kiss me posted:Every rpg should be a deck of cards. This but only semi-ironically.
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Mar 28, 2018 21:21
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homullus posted:This but only semi-ironically. I wasn't being ironic at all. Character sheets are so 80s.
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Mar 28, 2018 21:24
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Blocks of putty, for character sculptures.
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Mar 28, 2018 21:25
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Subjunctive posted:Blocks of putty, for character sculptures. Sadly, Hero Forge beat you to market.
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Mar 28, 2018 21:26
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Kurieg posted:The werewolf books were not anywhere near as polished. The tribes backstabbed each other at every opportunity and their clan stereotypes were flanderized up to 11. Rage Across New York was especially awful. I remember how it said that unlike the awful white tribes, the Wendigo and Ukena only warred on one another for noble and pure reasons. It reminded me of something from, I dunno, MST3K or something - "My race is pacifist and doesn't believe in war. We only kill out of personal spite."
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Mar 28, 2018 21:27
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