Aw man, I really like their games.
Sad. One positive note for me was that it sounded like Annapurna was really effective in their prompts to the studio to make changes (i.e. relegate the co-founder), and regardless of whether this person should be kept on as a writer, is providing a pretty valuable service mediating.
Just to clarify for anyone not bothering to click and read all the details, Steve Gaynor, the co-founder of Fullbright, has not been accused of sexual harassment, improper touching, or anything outwardly aggressive or sexual. The reports from current and past employees accuse him of making Fullbright a toxic place to work, especially if you were a woman, by being a controlling jerk, ridiculing people, and downplaying women’s contributions.
The anti-women stuff super sucks considering the kinds of games Fullbright made and the culture they supposedly had. Him being a general ass to everybody is sadly pretty common at any small business that isn’t big enough to actually have much of a hierarchy.
Also a little dispiriting is that after all this, they didn’t let him go, they just moved him from creative lead to writer. I’m sure it was hard to imagine the project carrying on without him, but that’s not really how you clean up a toxic environment. “The guy who laughed at your ideas, ignored your contributions, and drove a dozen women out of the company? He’s in that other office over there now.”
JD
2002
Yeah, I can see that. That said, he’s not working onsite, and he’s not to directly communicate with the team anymore - all done through the publisher. And while one might argue that it would have been the proper thing to have him fully removed for the project, it should also be acknowledged (as cornchip did) that Annapurna was pro-active about this and interfered in the first place after seeing the turnover.
JonRowe
2003
That is sad. I really like Fullbright’s games.
Sounds like Steve is just not the type of person who should be in directorial control over a project. Difficult to work with, especially if you are a woman.
Definitely have worked on creative projects with people like this, and it sucks. The sharing of a wikipedia article in response to a valid concern seems like a pretty bad way to communicate.
Since Gaynor is one of the founders though, he’s probably pretty hard to kick completely free of the company.
In this industry, “after seeing the turnover” but “before the company went under” counts as pro-active, I guess.
JonRowe
2007
This feels pretty similar to the things we heard about Joss Whedon.
Pharaoh
2008
“allege he told them what to do, micro-aggressed, gas lit, and laughed at stupid ideas.”
I’m sorry, but I have to say something. Is this the side effect of the helicopter parent generation finally getting into the worker pool and being armed with a whole bunch of labels they learned from social media?
I understand we live in a charged climate with everything going on, but this describes every creative director I’ve ever met, in 3 different verticals - let alone the founder of a company. Is it approaching the point we can’t disagree with someone else because we have to compute the possible labels that might get attached to it? Sure he might have been an asshole doing it, but every team creative endeavor involves opinions and passions, and managing that is a shared responsibility.
Or you know you could just be realizing this has been going on for a long time.
Bullshit. It’s specifically a director’s role to manage that responsibility. It’s in the job title. Of course everybody in a team needs to help to build team confidence, but ultimately it’s the director/manager who has the responsibility, and certainly he shouldn’t go about torpedoing the effort.
While it’s true creative direction is probably harder to compartimentalize than more standard management, it does not excuse being an asshole.
Now if what you are saying is that this behaviour is quite common, then yes, it is. But it’s not cool and it being creative management versus “regular” management is not an excuse. This would not fly in an IT office environment and it does not need to fly in a creative environment. It might actually be even more counterproductive, since creativity is more suceptible to distressed mental states than a lot of other kind of tasks.
More like a massive deterioration of professionalism in the workplace, especially in creative workplaces.
Ehhhh… you give the past too much credit. People have been unprofessional for generations, especially in creative workplaces.
Pharaoh
2013
Bullshit. It’s specifically a director’s role to manage that responsibility. It’s in the job title.
Not bullshit, reality. Bottom line is a creative endeavor, be it film, music, games, whatever the medium, is a collaboration with people at multiple levels of experience, perspective and motivations. If you weaponize everyone with highly radioactive verbiage, it absolutely destroys the aspect that brings the absolute best results - the unplanned epiphanies that communication bring. Communication is sometimes angry, it’s sometimes confrontational, it’s sometimes passionate, but it all comes from people wanting something to be seen, loved and successful.
That never happens if the second you say B when I said A, we start throwing labels that we are toxic and micro-aggressed eachother.
“It’s everyone else’s responsibility to manage the asshole manager” is certainly a take.
Pharaoh
2015
More like a massive deterioration of professionalism in the workplace, especially in creative workplaces.
That’s exactly my point. It’s a whole generation who has no clue how to interact with each-other.
I’m not driving on the wrong side of the road. it’s everybody else doing it.
Maybe it’s the manager who has no clue how to interact with a younger generation of creatives and his time has passed.
Pharaoh
2017
“It’s everyone else’s responsibility to manage the asshole manager” is certainly a take.
What a lazy, drive-by post. That’s not what I said, but illustrative of most of the effort people will make with this story.
Even if that’s true, you can’t change a whole generation. But you can change your management style to compensate if you want to be a good manager.
