Christie Golden is not being accused of the matters raised by the recent accusations.
I am however, rejecting her claims that she is free from responsibility for narrative decisions because she has to go along with the culture that recent accusations have informed us about.
I wasn’t aware she had made that claim. I think she just didn’t come up with the broad strokes of the story. I’m not trying to decrease Gold’s responsibility so much as I’m trying to get us to see the full picture of how the narrative team has been operating.
Again, there’s a specific incident that I recall where the day that the Sylvanas cinematic came out, she pushed out a tweet in an attempt to dodge responsibility and criticism for her participation in that narrative.
Which I reject because that’s subordination of judgment.
If anyone can finagle a tweet from 2018, the reference would be useful. I went back a month before the effort was getting annoying.
I think it’s this one?
Thanks, not quite a ‘damning’ statement there.
The only instance where I can remember Golden specifically mentioning her input was her saying she pushed for Jaina/Anduin to be used more.
While that’s something I disagree with personally, it’s hardly something I’d damn her over.
It’s also not the one that I was remembering. But I’d have to dig to find it.
I don’t think Christie Golden has done anything unethical or immoral. The story team is a team, every member of it has their parts they do. Golden writes dialogue and creates character personalities. Danuser, and seemingly Afrasiabi, create(d) the broader story points. So, IMO, they all can fairly be criticized, it’s just a matter of what they’re being criticized for, and I hope that problems not caused by Afrasiabi aren’t blamed on him just because people might not like aspects of the story.
I mean there needs to be multiple levels of accountability
Apparently Blizzard tried to shut down the Women Identified mailing list when it started
I’m just going to add here - it is normal in a corporate environment to try to diffuse responsibility. “That wasn’t my job”, “that was up to a different department”, “someone else made that decision”.
My question back to people - because again, I perform audits in a corporate environment - is again “Sure, but were you aware of it? Were you part of it? Did you escalate it to the appropriate level of management?” It’s natural for people to shift responsibility away - and we shouldn’t let them.
Pretty much.
These kinds of messes aren’t simply because there’s a bunch of bad people running around doing bad stuff and if you simply remove them, the bad stuff all goes away. While calling out the bad behavior, looking into it, and correcting it is great, that’s just a part of it.
To avoid even getting to this point, people need to be in the habit of being more open to questioning themselves and criticizing the nature of the media they consume and not just shrugging everything off with, “Because that’s the way it is,” Blizzard staff should have been looking to broaden their references and horizons and incorporating a more diverse creative team who’re comfortable writing stuff beyond their usual focus. Stop normalizing certain outdated tropes rooted in misogyny/racism/abuse/etc.
Of course such things don’t ensure nothing bad will ever happen to anyone. But they definitely help fight against the formation of a ‘frat boy culture’. If you don’t want other people calling you out you have to be able to call out yourself.
I wish things hadn’t come to this point, but hopefully it can help the Blizzard that survive do better in the future.
I don’t know how you’d get that one without a confession and I think the direction of Warcraft’s story is the last thing Blizzard, the victims and the accused are worried about right now.
Sure and ergo why it’s last on the list. Because it is, as you said, the last thing anyone is worried about.
This also isn’t the tweet that I’m thinking of, but I was provided with this:
Oh man, she has killed quite a few of Knaak’s characters. Someone protect the Aspects.
EDIT: Err, the remaining Aspects.
Scroll up, I asked about people of color on the team.
Questing team of hundreds has two (2) people of color. One (1) of which is a man of color.
It really is a white fraternity lmao
If Christie was the one who pulled the trigger on killing Rhonin then I legit respect her a lot more now.
Such an awful character. Way, way more of a mary sue than any character being accused as such these days.
I actually never found Rhonin to be all that bad. He wasn’t a good character, mind, but he was fun to read in the ‘generic fantasy/‘good’ dumb fanfiction’ manner.
But yeah, she wrote Tides of War; so she had the gun in hand at least.
Knaak for what it’s worth respected the Dragons even if Afrasiabi and Kosak didn’t.
Of course the Dragons were the only characters he respected outside of Malfurion and Rhonin… Everyone else was put down comically!
Krasus incidentally was a valuable character while Rhonin of course was a Mary Sue.
I say that Blizzard’s new Devs should revive Krasus in a comical fashion with Krasus tripping over his legs while getting reminded to not throw out prophecies.
Since according to Krasus himself there is a part of Anveena inside Kalecgos and we are nearing a Lightbound Expansion eventually we should have Anveena resurrected so that Jaina can stand on her own two feet!