That is an understatement. If you have not read the suit yet you should. Anyone Afrasiabi ever reported to should be fired or resign immediately. No matter how quirky or “Blizzard” they are. Heck even many former Blizzard names…some really big names…are implicated in Alex’s behavior.
1 Like
I think many of us have been saying this for a long time.
The fact that the first female Warchief had to be the one that was so bad they removed the position was perhaps the loudest clarion call - at least recently.
I have often posted that Blizzard’s “Dude-Bro Culture” is dragging it down, but it is almost inexorably linked to the Franchise.
I am not surprised. I have been beating this drum for years. The way Jaina, Tyrande, and Sylvanas are written can be politely described as:
Erratic and over emotional, until they come to their senses - which seems to be how Blizzard thinks women act if given a shred of power over males.
23 Likes
That dev team at Blizzard includes women, so those women should be getting blamed alongside those men.
1 Like
My man, the Afriasiabi was ALREADY “fixed” and I personally don´t see any real improvement in how thy story is being written. Sylvanas is still a joke, Jaina is still a joke, the story is still underwhelming…
This actually points to a more serious issue at the root of the bad writting than some a-hole letting his misogynistic tendencies leak a little in one power trip at the job. The females on this game have ALWAYS gotten certain “questionable” portrayals, even as far back as the RTS games are concerned. No, the issue is different.
And to fix that you FIX the actual root of the problem… which is the development process. THAT´S what is failing here, not some “lucky dudebros” who influenced the game -that´s NOT how design and creative process work in a company the size of Blizzard´s-.
I´ll speculate is even higher than them. It´s literally in the shareholder sphere of influence.
I mean this is not a “serious” game… or at least don´t ask me to take seriously (as in irl seriously level) characters getting killed when our toons literally massacre entire towns with no discrimination for a freaking pair of shoes I´m gonna discard 3 hours later. Actual self awareness prevents this.
4 Likes
Depends on your definition of ‘involved’. You’ve got whatshisface who gave thingo the ‘slap on the wrist’ for having the Cosby Room, but then you could have Whoever McBird who was doing some of the actual harassment.
If the former, then they’d all have known about it - perhaps it got ‘so bad’ that they left? Who’s to say.
You know… I am not trying to point to the women too much… But the records were pointing towards women doing 90% of the work.
Which wouldnt surprise me because of the whole “Small indie company” from a company with a team of 200 etc and the amount of women on the team… thats probably not many women I mean idk this is just assumptions either way.
I know this sounds anti female incel etc but I didnt mean it like that.
Its just the drunken behaviour of some of the males etc being too “safe spaced” and slacking might have done alot of harm to the games. So it is not the women bringing it down but the men not doing much work.
From the sound of things Blizzard sounds like a kindergarten for adults. Unironically.
1 Like
Letting the guy leave quietly is not a fix.
It’s time to clean house. Not because of petty gameplay reasons or because it’s popular to meme about FFXIV. I’m saying it is time for some high level people to go. Maybe even a lot of them.
5 Likes
Why not point to the women too? Justice is unisex.
If what this article says is true, those women chose to go along with it instead of making a stand. Blame whoever is responsible regardless of gender.
Why is it “full steam ahead, string him up!” when a man is to blame, but handling the situation with kid gloves when a woman is to blame? That sounds sexist.
1 Like
Frankly, to answer the question of the OP: no, I doubt it actually influenced/s the story. Any person of any moral quality can write a terrible story. I think that people are attempting to mix and match - although, the aforementioned viewpoint could become questionable in the days to come.
1 Like
Which is why I’m interested in everything that comes out of the lawsuit and or trail. We can’t stop the next Alex but we can stop paying them.
Storywise, I would like to believe innocent until proven guilty, but I’m looking at some of Alex interviews specifically
With a third eye.
Well the old guard literally ended like 2 years ago soooo yeah?
1 Like
“Why didn’t the woman stand up for themselves against the policy of sexism and retaliation that screwed over anyone who complained about said things?”
Gee, pal, I dunno. Probably just those darn SJWs, right?
30 Likes
From a quick skim of the lawsuit, it sounds like women did try to frequently report stuff like this happening, only to face retaliation and further harassment because HR was close to the people doing this stuff.
43 Likes
Or is he talking about women abusers not being blamed?
I think this sentence broke my brain.
It gets me thinking that a few of the “Dudebros” didn’t like Sylvanas or her fans from the getgo. They just liked abusing her every which way, and making her detestable and vile - but her fans didn’t shake.
I always felt like Sylvanas was treated particularly cruelly. Almost sadistically by the the Devs. And they joked about deleting the Characters who made the wrong choice in BfA - the Loyalists.
Maybe the new attitude at Blizzard is trying to fix that by giving her soul back.
3 Likes
Now this is a bit much. Surely you don’t believe this?
I wasn’t sure what to make of it, but after today I do think this is true.
What a mess.
3 Likes
Typical feminist doublethink; thinking women are both able to do anything but also perpetual victims who can’t stand up for themselves.
If this comes down to gender politics, aren’t there women in HR? These days the majority of staff in HR positions are women.
The problem with HR is that is doesn’t necessarily actually care about the majority of employees as much as the company itself, which could mean “cover up for top people because removing them would be too disruptive and a bad look as long as its mostly hush hush about what they did”.
5 Likes