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Ash and Tracy have both pushed back on the Fire Mearls hashtag and don't want their experiences to be held up as reasons to get rid of him. I honestly haven't seen anyone bring them up in particular, but I'm sure it's happened. I won't totally dismiss their sit-downs with Mearls, but I think he still needs to get dumped. It's great that he apparently made peace with them, but he didn't hurt just them and he and the company have made almost no outward appearance of any understanding let alone apology (the latter of which I would never actually expect). Up until this I kind of assumed they also didn't get anything out of talking to Mearls. They never really talked much about it afterwards that I recall, but it's been a while.
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May 25, 2020 06:57
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https://twitter.com/Delafina777/status/1264762849542332418 hey speaking of tweets
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May 25, 2020 07:21
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Kai Tave posted:https://twitter.com/Delafina777/status/1264762849542332418 hey speaking of tweets The idea that Mearls should get a pass just because he "only" enabled abuse rather than was an abuser himself falls a little flat for me. Ideally, we should be calling out both abusers and those enable them. Like, yes, removing bad actors isn't a long term solution to these structural issues, but it is harm reduction, and harm reduction is absolutely vital. Allowing a missing stair like Mearls to have a position of authority is incredibly dangerous, if in a slightly more insidious way than having an abuser have that power directly. If they weren't given an alibi by these enablers, abusers would have a lot less ease in causing harm for their victims.
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May 25, 2020 07:37
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My take is that Mike Mearls should get this pushback precisely because he's employed by WOTC. Sure, Zak is worse, but how do you disassociate from or deplatform Zak any harder than he already has been (for people already in the know)? That allegation by Price about Bulmahn is perhaps more comparable given Bulmahn's position at Paizo, but I don't think Mearls is any less of a threat just because he's merely an enabler.
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May 25, 2020 07:47
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I don't see why we can't call for Bulmahn to also be fired.
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May 25, 2020 08:54
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Terrible Opinions posted:I don't see why we can't call for Bulmahn to also be fired. To be clear, I was writing that post largely in reaction to that tweet from @wundergeek and just caught the one from Price right before I posted. I agree with you.
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May 25, 2020 09:02
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It's worth looking at the second tweet thread price has written about how any attempts to fire a game Dev for being a bad actor are wrong bexusse companies will just be encouraged to fire any employee that the internet campaigns against leaves just as bad a taste in my mouth as when people use that argument to condemn informing employers when they have staff who are white nationalists as they'll just do it to other people too. Since the solution seems to be....dont do what loving little you as an individual with no institutional power can do.
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May 25, 2020 10:53
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Kai Tave posted:https://twitter.com/Delafina777/status/1264762849542332418 hey speaking of tweets Okay, so this one requires a little bad MMORPG context for those of you who only play one type of bad game here. Price isn't talking about the TTRPG industry here, but the video game industry, and the specific comparison is absolutely bizarre. After leaving Paizo, Price worked on Guild Wars 2 (ArenaNet) as the lead narrative designer, and specifically the narrative designer for PoF, which is probably the best received expansion / content drop the game ever received. After PoF, she got into an argument on twitter: There's a lot of tl;dr, but basically someone tweeted a bunch of suggestions about how to structure MMORPG narrative to Price, Price responded along the lines of "These are 101 level game design theories that have been tried and discarded as mostly unworkable, stop mansplaining" and then Reddit organized a massive campaign to get her fired for "Being rude to a paying customer." This not only resulted in her getting fired, but also an ArenaNet developer who had been with the company since Guild Wars 1. The reason this is a bizarre comparison is that there is a HUGE difference between trying to get someone fired for a maybe rude but not offensive tweet and trying to get someone fired for directly providing an enemies list to someone he knew was harassing people and then not trying to fix the situation or even acknowledge his mistake for years afterwards. These are not comparable situations! There is no need for "Developer Solidarity" between someone taken down by reddit for telling someone to gently caress off and a dude who helped TTRPG Buffalo Bill!
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May 25, 2020 11:10
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Yeah I have to admit I'm not really sure how useful the whole "Mike Mearls isn't an abuser, he's just an enabler of abusers" distinction really is. Particularly since the abuser in question is not working for WotC and is, at least, drastically unlikely to be hired by them again, which means that if you're going to continue working your way down that particular line the next stop seems like it would be the person responsible for said abuser getting A). hired and B). being given a bunch of confidential correspondence that he could use to further harass people with, i.e. Mike Mearls. Mearls can be merely one symptom of a deeper hobby-wide dilemma and WotC should still fire him anyway, the two aren't mutually exclusive.
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May 25, 2020 11:13
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Also the whole "if you yell and get Mearls fired then companies will start firing innocent people at the behest of hate mobs" thing kind of falls flat because companies already do that sort of poo poo as Jessica Price herself is well aware of, demanding Mearls get fired isn't really something that's going to lead to an uncomfortable new precedent, that precedent already exists, it just usually doesn't result in shitbags who carry water for a rapist getting canned, so as far as I can tell if WotC did fire Mearls all it would be is a refreshing change of pace.
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May 25, 2020 11:18
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The idea that you can fix the problems in the industry without firing people like Bulmahn AND Mearls is absurd. You need to do much more than that, but any solution that doesn't involve firing someone like Mearls is not sufficient.
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May 25, 2020 11:35
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I feel like that person makes some decent points, and that we should listen to them considering that they are an abuse survivor. The part about considering how the systems that enabled the harrasment in the first place feels especially important to me. That being said, yes, we can want Mearls kicked out and also for other people who benefitted from Zak to get punished. Is there any truth to the fact that Mearls took step to make amends? And, to bring this back to a conversation that was happening earlier but that I didn't manage to join in time, what exactly maks the CR GM bad, and why are people watching him do bad GMing? Most bad GMing that I can think of kind of sucks to watch/listen to. paradoxGentleman fucked around with this message at 11:45 on May 25, 2020 |
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May 25, 2020 11:42
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paradoxGentleman posted:
He took two of Zaks former victims to lunch, never publically apologized or acknowledged he did anything wrong, and continued to smear his other victims. He hasn't done poo poo to make amends except to two very specific people and gently caress everyone else that was hurt or damaged by his actions.
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May 25, 2020 11:49
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Saw at least one conversation involving the Hills essentially going "wut?" to that.
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May 25, 2020 11:53
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I definitely don't assume that Mearles will be torn down from his throne but I am more disappointed by the Critical Role staff for not saying anything openly one way or another. If they don't know about the situation with Zak (which is probably known by a tiny fraction of people) that is one thing, but if they do know and don't say anything at all that is a huge shame. Not even being willing to tweet out open disappointment at Mearles being put back in his job from their influential position is de facto support of abuse in the roleplaying industry. I am not saying it isn't understandable, especially if they happen to have a personal relationship with Mearles, but it is what it is. If they are aware of all the facts and still say nothing, it says a lot about Critical Role.
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May 25, 2020 11:53
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The Libearian posted:It's worth looking at the second tweet thread price has written about how any attempts to fire a game Dev for being a bad actor are wrong bexusse companies will just be encouraged to fire any employee that the internet campaigns against leaves just as bad a taste in my mouth as when people use that argument to condemn informing employers when they have staff who are white nationalists as they'll just do it to other people too. Since the solution seems to be....dont do what loving little you as an individual with no institutional power can do. Yeah, it's like when people demand that Facebook/Twitter remove a Nazi from their userbase, and free speech absolutists make the argument that you shouldn't appeal to private corporations to use the banhammer on People You Don't Like, because those corporations might use those same powers to start banning people who are actually doing good work. It's a bad argument because we already know that corporations do the latter anyway (in this case, because they already did it to Price herself!), and if we were ever in a position where such a power could be wielded responsibly (i.e. corporations NOT having totalitarian control over their workplaces), that would require such a wild restructuring of society (i.e. the fall of capitalism) that you can't put that goal ahead of this particular one as a means of harm minimization.
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May 25, 2020 12:00
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Mormon Star Wars posted:He took two of Zaks former victims to lunch, never publically apologized or acknowledged he did anything wrong, and continued to smear his other victims. He hasn't done poo poo to make amends except to two very specific people and gently caress everyone else that was hurt or damaged by his actions. Uh. I'm surprised how that person is up in arms about going against one of the few people who actually made an attempt at an apology, then. I mean, good for you if he hired you to "to write policy for freelancers about improving writing for women characters in D&D products", but I'm not sure if that's enough? There are lots of other people who got hurt by this situation. ...man, I feel bad about talking this way about someone who experienced this poo poo firsthand.
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May 25, 2020 12:02
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Its really easy to get cynical about this because, man, the ttrpg industry is a bit of a cesspool.
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May 25, 2020 12:10
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paradoxGentleman posted:Is there any truth to the fact that Mearls took step to make amends? In the most token, milquetoast way possible sure, he put out a lovely non-apology in twitter when the business with Mandy went public, not even mentioning Zak by name if I recall correctly, then he went into self-imposed exile. The whole "he bought me lunch once" thing is news to me but I can't say it's really elevating my opinion of his response to the situation by much. paradoxGentleman posted:And, to bring this back to a conversation that was happening earlier but that I didn't manage to join in time, what exactly maks the CR GM bad, and why are people watching him do bad GMing? Most bad GMing that I can think of kind of sucks to watch/listen to. Critical Role is, like a lot of the popular RPG shows, largely just a semi-improv podcast sorta deal with D&D framing. People like it for the reasons folks like anything and Matt Mercer is a professional voice actor and a lot of his friends are also VAs and stuff so between that and good editing you have what I imagine is a pretty listenable version of people pretending to be elves around a table. Whether Matt Mercer has the power to decide whether a man lives or dies in his hands, I don't think it's exaggerating by much to say that the success of Critical Role is basically the best advertisement for D&D that WotC could have hoped for. There's been a lot of weird, easily avoidable rakes that CR has stepped on, like running a lovely corporate-branded Wendy's Hamburger D&D module and there was something about them relying on volunteer transcription work which, even taking it as a given that Mercer and his pals aren't secret elfgame podcast gazillionaires, still seems like one of those things you could take steps to do something about in increments or whatever, but generally what happens after one of these is Mercer posts an "aw shucks, I guess I done goofed" thing on social media and their unhealthily parasocialized fanbase rushes to forgive him.
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May 25, 2020 12:11
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paradoxGentleman posted:Uh. I'm surprised how that person is up in arms about going against one of the few people who actually made an attempt at an apology, then. I mean, good for you if he hired you to "to write policy for freelancers about improving writing for women characters in D&D products", but I'm not sure if that's enough? There are lots of other people who got hurt by this situation. It's absurd because Mearls ethical failure wasn't one that could be prevented by writing policy. You really don't need policy to spell out that emailing a list of names and email addresses to someone harassing people is unethical - mearls did that on his own, and having some pedantic rule against it wouldn't stand in his way. "but now they have a written policy, which is even better than someone replacing mearls, so there is no need for him to be accountable" - what in the world makes someone think that Mearls would follow it?
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May 25, 2020 12:14
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I don't follow the MTG thread on here, but this seems relevant to this thread's interests. Effectively WOTC banned a "reporter (aka a very high rated player) from their game for posting damaging and embarrassing revelations because they refused to give up the source. WoTC tries to get the source. The poster tells them no: https://twitter.com/mtghofbot/status/1264205700596666368 Their response: https://twitter.com/mtghofbot/status/1264804014882992128 Seems a bit harsh, and is going to cause another headache for Hasbro by WotC's inept handling and possible corruption. Links in the post can be found on the reddit post. [Magic: the Gathering] Popular streamer blows the whistle on Wizards of the Coast, refuses to give up his source, gets banned HobbyDrama Reddit posted:Magic: the Gathering has had a competitive play scene for just about as long as the game has been around (nearly 30 years now). The company behind the game (Wizards of the Coast, plus parent company Hasbro) has invested in the competitive scene significantly over the years, with big prize payouts and other player incentives to compete at a high level. There has been drama in the past regarding treatment of the “pros” and the amount of money available to those willing to pursue the game full-time, but that’s a topic for another day. Comstar fucked around with this message at 12:49 on May 25, 2020 |
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May 25, 2020 12:27
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Kai Tave posted:Critical Role is, like a lot of the popular RPG shows, largely just a semi-improv podcast sorta deal with D&D framing. People like it for the reasons folks like anything and Matt Mercer is a professional voice actor and a lot of his friends are also VAs and stuff so between that and good editing you have what I imagine is a pretty listenable version of people pretending to be elves around a table. Whether Matt Mercer has the power to decide whether a man lives or dies in his hands, I don't think it's exaggerating by much to say that the success of Critical Role is basically the best advertisement for D&D that WotC could have hoped for. There's been a lot of weird, easily avoidable rakes that CR has stepped on, like running a lovely corporate-branded Wendy's Hamburger D&D module and there was something about them relying on volunteer transcription work which, even taking it as a given that Mercer and his pals aren't secret elfgame podcast gazillionaires, still seems like one of those things you could take steps to do something about in increments or whatever, but generally what happens after one of these is Mercer posts an "aw shucks, I guess I done goofed" thing on social media and their unhealthily parasocialized fanbase rushes to forgive him. You haven't watched a single episode huh? Which is cool. But FYI they very much don't edit poo poo It's a live stream on twitch. They do just straight up play 5e. It's aided by yes the fact that the cast are clearly actors very good at Improv, but the dice do dictate the game. The Wendy's thing they thought would just be a fun goof to kill time one week, and when people told them about how bad of a look it was they seemingly agreed as they never put it on their YouTube pulled the VOD and you can't find it anywhere online outside of someone who ripped it live. The Transcription thing they stopped after the Kickstarter. After which is literally the first time I've ever heard about the free transcriptions they were getting. That is pretty exploitative. They aren't secret elf game gazillionaires though. They are maybe elf game hundred thousandaires. They have 8 cast members to pay alongside how ever many support staff members they have. Like I know they just hired Surena as a community manager. Which is still alot especially in the hellhole that is TTRPGs don't get me wrong. But they like most humans will step on rakes as they navigate this poo poo. If the worst take you step on is like playing some Wendy's promotional game without fully thinking about what you are doing then that is so loving small scale on the things I care about. And once again people are jumping to extreme and the worst conclusions regarding a vague post by the dude that could apply to any loving number of things going on in his life. paradoxGentleman posted:
He's a good DM of 5e and games like it. He struggled to adapt to hosting his first PbtA game in Monsterhearts 2. Which is a different mindset
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May 25, 2020 12:54
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It absolutely boggles my mind that a lot of you think Hasbro has its ear to the ground enough to listen to fans of a fan podcast about the employment of one of their brand managers. This is the company that released that bugfucking insane Ms. Monopoly game like, last loving week, the giant multinational toy company isn’t exactly woke and listening to the little people here, you know?
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May 25, 2020 13:38
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food court bailiff posted:It absolutely boggles my mind that a lot of you think Hasbro has its ear to the ground enough to listen to fans of a fan podcast about the employment of one of their brand managers. This is the company that released that bugfucking insane Ms. Monopoly game like, last loving week, the giant multinational toy company isn’t exactly woke and listening to the little people here, you know? That games been out for a while fwiw
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May 25, 2020 13:45
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food court bailiff posted:the giant multinational toy company isn’t exactly woke and listening to the little people here, you know? No, everybody realizes this. It's why Mercer's vague pity-party is so disappointing. CR is one of the only big players who might have made a difference.
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May 25, 2020 13:53
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moths posted:No, everybody realizes this. Extremely this. I don't judge CR on the effects of them speaking out, but rather than they are unwilling to even try. I don't even need them to swear off d&d or anything that extreme. But silence is an active decision too.
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May 25, 2020 14:07
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food court bailiff posted:It absolutely boggles my mind that a lot of you think Hasbro has its ear to the ground enough to listen to fans of a fan podcast about the employment of one of their brand managers. This is the company that released that bugfucking insane Ms. Monopoly game like, last loving week, the giant multinational toy company isn’t exactly woke and listening to the little people here, you know? Hasbro isn't making these weird decisions because it's dumb, it's making these decisions specifically to get people talking. And people are talking! About god drat Monopoly! They care about their bottom line above all else, and will make the tactical decisions necessary to improve their stockholder value, because that's what all corporations do. That's all that corporations do.
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May 25, 2020 14:08
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Meinberg posted:Hasbro isn't making these weird decisions because it's dumb, it's making these decisions specifically to get people talking. And people are talking! About god drat Monopoly! They care about their bottom line above all else, and will make the tactical decisions necessary to improve their stockholder value, because that's what all corporations do. That's all that corporations do. this is giving hasbro way too much credit
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May 25, 2020 14:14
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food court bailiff posted:the giant multinational toy company isn’t exactly woke and listening to the little people here, you know?
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May 25, 2020 14:20
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Terrible Opinions posted:No it isn't but the podcast in question here has demonstrably done more than anything besides Stranger Things to make D&D 5th edition a success, and they know it. but have they made it enough of a success to not still be 'rounding error' territory of money compared to all their other bigger properties though? 'cause more than anything d&d being such a small fish in a big pond is probably what's kept mearls safe from any kind of consequences from higher up
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May 25, 2020 14:25
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Lord_Hambrose posted:Extremely this. I don't judge CR on the effects of them speaking out, but rather than they are unwilling to even try. I don't even need them to swear off d&d or anything that extreme. But silence is an active decision too. I'm given to think that it might now be the whole 'get back to work playing a game you bums' and be COVID-related, but the problem is really transparency. The vaguebooking makes it hard to get any kind of read and it's not like 'no, I don't feel we're ready to meet at the table, I mean Laura and Travis have a very young son for God's sake' would be met by outrage save from the people who are perpetually outraged by CR in general. This just feels like dynamite fishing for people to call him the softest cinnamon bun and give e-hugs. There's not even anything especially wrong with that, but the timing is just sure weird.
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May 25, 2020 14:38
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Comstar posted:I don't follow the MTG thread on here, but this seems relevant to this thread's interests. Effectively WOTC banned a "reporter (aka a very high rated player) from their game for posting damaging and embarrassing revelations because they refused to give up the source. This is pretty wild.
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May 25, 2020 14:39
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Brother Entropy posted:but have they made it enough of a success to not still be 'rounding error' territory of money compared to all their other bigger properties though? 'cause more than anything d&d being such a small fish in a big pond is probably what's kept mearls safe from any kind of consequences from higher up It's been, and D&D is mostly an IP ranch today. Which is why Hasbro wouldn't think twice about ditching Mearls when he's damaging community goodwill towards the IP. The open secret is that "Dungeons and Dragons" is only worth anything as "official fantasy." There's a dozen other games that functionality do what D&D does, and probably half of them do it better. But brand loyalty being what it is, D&D is still the biggest draw. They've spent more money and effort maintaining that draw than on developing the game. They won't be responsive to anything outside of "will this affect brand loyalty?" Public concern or criticism from an influencer might. Again, D&D's value to Hasbro isn't game sales - it's the perception that you can put a D&D logo on anything and sell a million of it. That's what they're more interested in protecting. That's where the money is. Some office nerd who jeopardized ther brand to protect a dweeb with a bad haircut? Not really
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May 25, 2020 14:54
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Dawgstar posted:I'm given to think that it might now be the whole 'get back to work playing a game you bums' and be COVID-related, but the problem is really transparency. The vaguebooking makes it hard to get any kind of read and it's not like 'no, I don't feel we're ready to meet at the table, I mean Laura and Travis have a very young son for God's sake' would be met by outrage save from the people who are perpetually outraged by CR in general. This just feels like dynamite fishing for people to call him the softest cinnamon bun and give e-hugs. There's not even anything especially wrong with that, but the timing is just sure weird. It's just my problem with the internet in general to instantly jump to the worst possible conclusion and then write statements of fact attacking someone based around the worst interpretation. I don't particularly give much of a poo poo, it wouldn't shock me or shake me to my core if tommorrow he did or said something utterly offensive. But man, Matt vague posts all the drat time. It's what he does. Maybe it is a tactic to get "uwu hugs" because he feels like poo poo at the time. But I can't ever remmeber a time where he was vague posting woe is me when it comes to a situation like this, and others being hurt. Even if he doesn't burn bridges or name names he is generally pretty willing to talk about his criticisms of goings on and not frame them as an attack on himself. Dexo fucked around with this message at 14:58 on May 25, 2020 |
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May 25, 2020 14:55
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moths posted:No, everybody realizes this. There's literally nothing but ubsubstantiated conjecture that Mercer's tweets have anything to do with Mearls at all. Also while he didn't speak out about Mearls back when Mandy's story came out, he did speak out in support of her. The number of people who know what Mearls did is tiny, even with it trending. Every person posting it had people in their replies asking what it was about, it was not common knowledge. It is here because we're the type of people to not only expose the bullshit but remember it, but even in this thread there are points when x/y/z person has been exposed and months later someone is saying they know nothing about it. I wish CR did play a better game than 5e, or even rotated games because their popularity has seen huge sales bumps to every other game they've shown on the show, however well they ran it and whatever rules or style of game they got wrong one way or another. But hardly any of the industry are out there criticising Mearls and WotC. Paizo aren't, Onyx Path aren't, Penny Arcade, whose Acquisitions Incorporated isn't as big as CritRole but is still pretty big, they're not etc. etc. It's not as if Mearls is out there criticising the hashtag or defending him, he just hasn't spoken out. And I have no idea if he even knows about it, or if he's avoiding doing so because of his career/money or because they're friends or because he doesn't know what's true (as certainly Mearls will have been denying what happened). They were definitely poo poo with the Wendy's thing, and assorted other issues, though their campaign setting is a hell of a lot better and more progressive than anything else WotC have done, arguably even moreso than eberron though that managed to be better in other ways. But yes the success of Critical Role, and that leading onto the explosion of livestreaming tabletop games has absolutely sold more 5e copies than anything WotC did, Mearls had gently caress all to do with 5e's success. it was people playing the game and videoing it that did that.
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May 25, 2020 15:15
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what's the story with the wendy's thing? i know they made some dumb fantasy setting as a joke (or well, an advertisement masquerading as a joke) but nothing beyond that
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May 25, 2020 15:18
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Brother Entropy posted:what's the story with the wendy's thing? i know they made some dumb fantasy setting as a joke (or well, an advertisement masquerading as a joke) but nothing beyond that They put out a supplement kind of thing and CR did a session of it and people were like 'um, Wendy's has terrible labor practices maybe look a little closer next time.'
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May 25, 2020 15:20
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Brother Entropy posted:what's the story with the wendy's thing? i know they made some dumb fantasy setting as a joke (or well, an advertisement masquerading as a joke) but nothing beyond that That was pretty much it Wendy's made a 5e ish game as an advertising thing like they did with that Rap album years ago. Critical Role ran it as a one shot I don't even think it was sponsored like their Doom Eternal oneshot. People brought up some bad things in Wendy's past after to the cast after the stream and afterwards they removed the vods and never posted them to YouTube. And they also take down anyone who posts it to YouTube as there is a rip of the stream out there if you want it.
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May 25, 2020 15:25
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ah, gotcha. thought for a second people were saying there was something lovely about the game itself
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May 25, 2020 15:29
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Brother Entropy posted:ah, gotcha. thought for a second people were saying there was something lovely about the game itself I mean it was based on 5e 
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May 25, 2020 15:33
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