Jennifer Hepler leaves Bioware due to threats by fans

Smeatza

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TheKasp said:
Sorry, I don't follow the reasoning to even point out that others receive such threats as well. It implies acceptance of the status quo we're in and refusal to change anything about it - in my eyes the reason why this BS is so prevelant.
Correct and correct.
I try not to judge people for being attached to/scared of changing the status quo though.

TheKasp said:
And the statement that it is 'ordinary' implies that as well. It is okay by your very own phrasing. Because it is normal. It is unchallenged. And by pointing out that it is normal chance of challenge of it disappears.
Well all I meant to illustrate with the word "ordinary" was the frequency.
It happens all the time, to all people in the public eye, from all walks of life and all industries.
Basically it's an attempt to discourage people from tying this kind of thing down to any particular industry or gender, because it's not, it's universal.
And I do think that's a bad thing.

TheKasp said:
There is also quite a big difference between public figures (Taylor Swift, Jim Carrey and such) receiving this kind of abuse and game developer.
The line between public figure and no has been blurred by the internet.
These days anyone with a public twitter account or public facebook profile is a public figure.

TheKasp said:
Those people went into the spotlight with the sole idea of getting attention -
No they didn't, very few famous people had the sole intention of getting famous.
Jim Carrey wanted to make people laugh, Taylor Swift wanted to play country music. The media decided to make these individuals into public figures, but these days the media and the internet have the ability to make a public figure out of an unknown individual.

TheKasp said:
They either have experience dealing with it or have people sorting that shit out. A person in the gaming industry has in most cases neither of the above.
Well you only have to look at the infinitely long list of celebrity breakdowns to see that having experience, or people to deal with it wont necessarily help.

I think people are going to have to learn that having a public internet presence is the same as putting yourself out there as a public figure.
She chose to do an interview that would be published to the general public, she chose to open a public twitter account. Perhaps she didn't realise just what she was opening herself up for when she did so, but the fact remains that it was her who opened that gate.

No this does not warrant all the abuse she has received, but anyone who has spent any time in the public eye, offline or online, could have told her that's what to expect, especially when you have controversial opinions you wish to express, just like Mrs. Hepler.

And to re-iterate, I don't think this is okay and I'm not happy with the status quo, but that is the current status quo, there's no avoiding it. And change doesn't happen instantly.
 

Erttheking

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If anyone asks me why I never want to get a job as a writer in the gaming industry despite loving writing and loving video games, I think I'm just going to point to this kind of crap. I don't need assholes saying how they want to murder me...then again I suppose I could take the job and intentionally fuck things up to troll them...nah. Not worth it.
 

Knight Templar

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endtherapture said:
I'm not defending the trolls behaviour but...
You do understand that the way you keep phrasing things makes it seem like you are?

Its like you've accepted this is normal and ok, when you really shouldn't. A big aspect of human behaviour is what is seen to be normal and acceptable, and acting like this harassment is both those things, as you are (intentionally or not) doing is not a good thing.

This isn't a problem with you per se I suppose. It's more of a general problem with people, acting like just because something happened on the internet it wasn't real, that a real person wasn't harmed and its ok to say and act however you wish because its all some game that everybody else is playing so you might as well join in.

j-e-f-f-e-r-s said:
Now with that said, I can't say I feel too saddened at the loss of Jennifer Hepler from Bioware,
Did you play Legacy? It was very well written, very good bit of DLC and done by her.
 

endtherapture

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Knight Templar said:
endtherapture said:
I'm not defending the trolls behaviour but...
You do understand that the way you keep phrasing things makes it seem like you are?

Its like you've accepted this is normal and ok, when you really shouldn't. A big aspect of human behaviour is what is seen to be normal and acceptable, and acting like this harassment is both those things, as you are (intentionally or not) doing is not a good thing.

This isn't a problem with you per se I suppose. It's more of a general problem with people, acting like just because something happened on the internet it wasn't real, that a real person wasn't harmed and its ok to say and act however you wish because its all some game that everybody else is playing so you might as well join in.
The trolls and people who sent her death threats are in the wrong. Very in the wrong.

However, unless the woman is getting seriously scary death threats sent to her house or personal email which she has a terrible fear of (in which case, she should go to the police immediately), the option is just to simply log out, delete her accounts, and walk away from the computer and then go back to her job, unless she's been contracted by EA to have some sort of "online presence".

It's part of online culture now. I have a Twitter account, with it comes the risk of "trolls". Short of government and police regulation of the internet, which people are extremely opposed to, for civil rights reasons, if I'm feeling things are getting too heated for me in online debates I can just walk away.
 

Dectomax

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Capitano Segnaposto said:
Dectomax said:
What the flippity fuck is wrong with some people? Is there any information on WHY they were sending death-threats, or is this just a case of crazy people being crazy?
At this point, if a member of a forum would do this, the Moderators and the owners of said Forum should take this to the police. A few reports of people getting arrested or fined for death threats would go a long way to stem the tide of the children doing this.

If the above would be too difficult, then they can easilly ban the IP address. No need to continue to have stuff like this continue on. I know that whenever I get a DDOS attack or death threats against admins, we ban the IPs as well as the players from all of our servers.

I am not so much angry at the people saying this now, as I am more at the people who are doing nothing to stop this from happening (Aka the Moderators/Administrators).

CAPTCHA: vegan zombie wants grains!

I am so sorry Zombie, no one should suffer like that...
What I'm more confused about is a while back some guy was arrested for saying shit like this on LoL and yet nothing of that order seems to have been done in this case.

Fucked up world we live in, 'eh?
 

Fappy

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Oban said:
/v/ is apparently celebrating the occasion: http://archive.foolz.us/v/thread/205238974/

/v/ hates Todd Howard? Wow, those guys can suck a bag of dicks!

OT: The Bioware fanbase is one of the most polarizing groups I've ever been apart of.
 

Knight Templar

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endtherapture said:
It's part of online culture now.
I reject that, and so should you if you think this is wrong.


Short of government and police regulation of the internet, which people are extremely opposed to, for civil rights reasons...
Sending death threats, and harassment in general, is typically illegal already.
But you're wrong, thats not the only way for things to change as I noted in my post you can stop acting like this is something we should accept.
 

JazzJack2

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Neverhoodian said:
Yeah, no. Regardless of how you feel about the direction Bioware's games have taken, that's no excuse for death threats.
No it not, but the point is that the 'death threats' are being used to negate legitimate criticism by grouping criticism with the death threats (i.e as 'trolls') so they can be dismissed without being discussed properly. I think the real issue here is that either she couldn't take the real criticism but used these trolls as excuse so she didn't have to admit to that (I find it very difficult to believe a grown woman would be so scared by a couple of empty threats from forum trolls that she would quit her job.) or that Bioware want to let her go due to the exceedingly poor quality of her writing (and/or the controversy that surrounded this) and so gave her the option to fall on her own sword and resign (with the 'death threats' being the excuse for doing so)

Also, the guy comes across as a pretentious douchebag, one of those insufferable "wake up, sheeple" types.
So you refuse to engage with or discuss his video because you don't like the he talks? great job mate.
 

endtherapture

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Knight Templar said:
endtherapture said:
It's part of online culture now.
I reject that, and so should you if you think this is wrong.


Short of government and police regulation of the internet, which people are extremely opposed to, for civil rights reasons...
Sending death threats, and harassment in general, is typically illegal already.
But you're wrong, thats not the only way for things to change as I noted in my post you can stop acting like this is something we should accept.
Well it is...just look at 4chan, one of the worlds most famous websites built on "trolling".

How do we convince the trolls to stop then? How do we do it?

If Heplet really felt so threatened she should've called the police.
 

MetalDooley

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Have I missed something?DA2 came out like 2 and a half years ago.Are people still making threats to her over it?

Because the only thing that's more dumb than threatening someone over a video game is threatening someone over a video game that came out years ago
 

IllumInaTIma

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Oh come on guys, she obviously had to grow a thicker skin, everyone gets death threats and they're ok with it WHAT THE FUCK?!
 

Angelblaze

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IllumInaTIma said:
Oh come on guys, she obviously had to grow a thicker skin, everyone gets death threats and they're ok with it WHAT THE FUCK?!
Yeah that's...it's slightly more upsetting then the death threat itself frankly :/
 

Bluestorm83

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People are absolutely fucking nuts. "Jennifer Hepler, I did not enjoy the story of Dragon Age 2. I felt that it lacked cohesion and direction, and would not be interested in your future projects." See that sentence? That is definitive criticism, where you make known how you feel about a product. You don't say you're going to kill someone's children because they made up a story that you did not like. Some fucking people...
 

Callate

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I don't know what's worse- that some people think it's reasonable human behavior to threaten someone's children because they don't like the way they do their job in an entertainment medium, or that, as the post from "/v/" suggests, some will take this as proof that this will actually get them results they want.
 

lacktheknack

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Some days, I feel like proposing temporary bans from the whole damn internet for certain behaviours.

This is one of those days.