Videogames, the Me Too movement, Alec Holowka, Jeremy Soule

Games
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Yeah so Social Media might be the only option, today, for many.

The 13 year old girl that was sexually assaulted, that helped start this whole thing wasn’t going to consult lawyers nor did she have a group. MeToo was a method to get a group, to find support, to find others and it grew from there. The women in Hollywood, they have lawyers, and a number of them signed NDAs… and look where that got them.

There probably isn’t a single perfect way that will work for every case, and Social Media is just a megaphone, a way to be heard… anything that changes after that is being handled by internal investigations in some companies, lawyers and law enforcement, in others. It’s all dependent on the specific incidents… but wealth and lawyers are not required to find solidarity and other like victims on Social Media.

286

Also: for independent developers, there is no “HR”.

287

Sure there is, it’s run by the CEO’s sister-in-law.

288

Where your egotistical programming star controls everything around them!

289

I think there is a huge difference between:

  1. An employee/contractor that is working for a company and gets harassed by their colleague, or boss, or supervisor, or coworker and

  2. A couple in a relationship/hooking up, where the partner becomes abusive or aggressive.

The first is an HR issue, a lawsuit, a twitter blast in full force. Lawyers involved, people getting fired, big fallout.

The second is a bad relationship, get out when you see the signs. Break up with them. Fly home. Or whatever your exit strategy is.

Now if you are trying to sleep with someone in the industry in order to “get your big break”, that’s on you. Men don’t have that option, and women shouldn’t use it. It’s a bad path to take. And if it’s offered to you without you soliciting it (say, during or after a job interview), then it falls into the first category.

290

That’s what GG claims is happening, that is not actually what has happened based on the accounts provided, specifically with Alec. Recruiting people with promises of jobs and entry into the industry and then turning them into a sexual consequence after they arrive smashes both your points. Also, you changed the acting verb so the victim would become the one who acted instead of the person that lured them. Abusers are predators.

291

You make the assumption women are given the choice. In my experience, that has not always been true.

The third time I was hired, full-time, when I only had interviewed for a contractor position to wrap-up some projects. I was hired full-time since I caught a director’s eye in a typical quick-fire rotating interviewer session. I was never given any work. He forbid the nominal hiring manager from giving me any. The manager was about to be laid off (whole department was, why they needed contractors for wrap-up).

Guess what the “job” was?

I was senior in my field, married, with children at the time. Yeah … I said “no”. Things got ugly. At one point he had me seated in a hallway, with nothing to do, and no computer or desk supplies issued. Just me, and an empty desk. All day, every day. To make sure everyone knew what saying “no” meant.

Choices?

292

That story makes me feel some burn-it-down rage.

293

If the partner is your boss/co-worker, and the abuse happens within or in connection with your wor kspace (which is what all of the allegations so far have been about), it makes no difference. It is still workplace abuse.

Nice try. You just had to try and drag that old chestnut in, of course.

Men get sexually harassed too. Not as often, of course, since there are fewer women than men in positions of power in most industries, but it happens (see also Kevin Spacey). And probably more often than people think, because if women speaking up about abuse is taboo, a man speaking up about this is near unthinkable.

294

Thanks for relating these stories. I’m just stunned that there is anyone who wants to argue the other side of these situations or falsifying stories because yours are not the only ones I’ve heard or seen over the last 25 years.

295

This super clearly falls into the first category, and is shameful.

296

Wow, who is doing that? Who is saying workplace related harrassment is ok? Is this something you read in an article somewhere?

297

Which dovetails nicely back to a point that was made during the recent accusations - if you think it’s sad that these “greats” may find it harder to sell stuff in future, just think of all the great talent that these and other POS have destroyed or tried to destroy during their careers.

It’s getting better - but slowly, and it’s still mostly about staying out of the papers. Even in supposedly “uber-feminist” countries such as the Scandinavian ones.

I have a couple of friends who experienced this first hand. She was a Ph.D. student. Smart - working on important research, getting papers into top conferences, etc. But also not very happy and it was only after a while that she opened up as to why. She was getting constantly harassed by her supervisor Used all the classical tricks documented in other #MeToo cases - isolation (and as a Ph.D. student, it easy for your supervisor to isolate you), denigration, the works. She soldiered on, intent on completing her degree.

When she became a couple with a mate of mine, who had started as a research assistant in the same institute, Prof got really mad. Straight up told her to sleep with him, or she could forget about her degree. And it wasn’t an idle threat. The research community they were working in is small and he was one of its most reputable scientists. As her supervisor, he had final approval over her thesis, and finding another supervisor would be near impossible - even without him smearing her name to all the other professors in the community (which he’d already been doing). HR was no help - what proof did she have? This was not his first round in the rodeo, so any attempt to build a case would be a “he said, she said” situation. Certainly couldn’t rock the boat when it comes to one of the University’s most reputable (and profitable) professors.

So she walked out. Three years of research down the drain. Suffered from depression for several years after. Left the sciences completely and never came back. She wasn’t the first. Probably wasn’t the last either - as far as I know, Prof worked there for many years after (he certainly hadn’t left or faced any consequences when I moved away from the area).

Not content with that, he went after her boyfriend as well. Harassed him, slandered him as being lazy, obstructed his research, etc. for a couple of months until bf got fed up, and resigned.

This is many years ago now. I would love to think that this wouldn’t be tolerated today, but honestly? I don’t think it would have gone down very differently. I still can’t imagine the University HR department doing anything constructive about a case like this (the threshold for censuring a Professor is… high) and her outing him would have achieved… absolutely nothing. Maybe he would be censured/suspended for a short while. Either way, her career would still have been destroyed.

To end the story on a positive note: my friends are still a couple today, so much as he tried to destroy them, he didn’t succeed. That we’re still discussing whether this kind of stuff should be ignored (and by extension - tolerated) in 2019 though…

298

So I had a good long think about this last night. There was some incongruity in my mind as to between the “side” some people think I’m on (I’m not on a side) and who I am as a man, a husband, a father, a brother, etc.

The fundamental chunk I may have been missing is the nature of the videogame industry. I was approaching these discussions from the very real and honest viewpoint that in 99% of the business world, you just don’t have the opportunity to set yourself up for these kinds of abusive relationships. That is, you basically never hear of say, an IT consultant, or an accountant, or a truck driver forming relationships with people in order to possibly collaborate with them. This just doesn’t happen in my experience. Much, much more prevalent are shady hiring motivations after interviewing formally, or outright terrible behavior once people are working together closely in an office.

That’s why the Zoe Quinn/Alex Holowka and Chloe Dykstra/Chris Hardwick allegations are so alien to me. I can’t even imagine someone (male or female) hooking up with someone else first as a sexual relationship but with the intent or hope that it leads to industry contacts and work. This just doesn’t happen in most of corporate America. But when I started to think about it, game development is almost nothing like corporate America. It’s more like art. It’s much more like the freeflowing and confusing art world that I have dabbled in and always found bewildering how messed up it is and how few and far in between the financial and critic success,

In that context, I can see how the very nature of the industry is set up to be rife with abuse. I could see how someone would leverage someone else in order to gain sexual favors for them. I can see how it would feel impossible to “break into” the industry, so it would be alluring to fly to a different country without a solid return home plan and be set up for victimization.

While I still think it’s insane to put yourself in that situation, I can admit I don’t know enough about how the indie gaming scene works and how small and collaborative it must be required to be. I think perhaps there is a SYSTEMIC problem with how things work there. It’s an alien world to me, but I admit now that there might be power dynamics there that are pretty terrible for vulnerable women.

I only hope things change and transparency prevails. I can also see why people would take to social media to vent frustrations and accuse others of being predatory. Because there is not much recourse to bad actors in that industry, it must be incredibly difficult to figure out a way to prevent other women from being leveraged and mistreated by (what I hope is) a minority of game designers/developers.

So, while I’m not totally on board with the public finger pointing with no evidence, I can see how it happens and be more sympathetic to it. Perhaps it’s the best they have until we figure out a better way forward.

299

Hey @Guap, I disagreed with you a fair bit upthread, so I want to say I appreciate the time and effort you’ve put into thinking about and communicating this.

I think you’re right in that although there are similar problems all over, this definitely articulates in different ways in different industries. But the overall goal of transparency (sunlight is the best disinfectant, etc) I think is a great way to frame some of the discussions around MeToo.

300

Yeah, I can see why people like @Nesrie are questioning “Do you want to go back to the dark ages?” with incredulity. I certainly don’t want that. The path forward is hard. Whenever I was dating or interacting with a woman I always thoughts “What would my mother say if this woman told her about my behavior right now?”. That steered my course pretty well, although admittedly I have a pretty good bit of respect for my mother and her opinion matters to me. Maybe that’s the ultimate goal of MeToo and this movement. Perhaps the next logic stage is a social media app where your mother weighs in on your behavior more often.

Mother Score?

P.S. Also, thanks @CLWheeljack, I appreciate it.

301

Yes, and so ultimately, I think the real question here is: How does a society go about teaching its children basic respect for others? Why do some children grow up with that respect for others, while others don’t?

302

People, rightfully, like to point out that HR isn’t really there for the employee (excepting very low level stuff), they’re there to protect the company.

I think this is a combination result of the ugly side of bureaucracy and corporate culture. A company that actually, legitimately prizes the well being of it’s workers seems like it would have a much better HR department although I sadly cannot speak to this. I’ve worked for some good companies in my career (more not so good ones) but never what I would call a great one. Additionally, the best ones were very small (without being obnoxiously startup), and I could go to my then boss with anything and get support. HR wasn’t really part of the equation (the HR person was only doing that as part of their duties; at 20 something total employees everyone tended to wear more than one hat).

I developed really bad anxiety in 2015. I was urged, by a number of well meaning people, to disclose it with HR at my then job. With a 2500+ sized company that was as corporate as corporate comes. I didn’t suffer for that but Ididn’t get anything from it easier. When I sat down with HR, I had barely finished explaining that I had developed an anxiety disorder and was getting treatment when the first thing she said was “are you seeking an accommodation”. I wasn’t, the only accommodation I could imagine helping at the time (some work from home) wouldn’t have been allowed. She didn’t ask what had caused the anxiety and I didn’t imagine she would. As the decidedly sole factor was my actual boss at the time, I’m not clear how that discussion would have done anything except made my position more precarious.

The irony, I suppose, is that companies that treat their people better will do better in the long run. But a long list of reasons means that frequently it’s not priority 1 (when it should be), and this is the sort of bullshit that becomes regular.

I got written up. The main thrust was that I had royally screwed up phase 1 of something (a sprint’s - 2 weeks at that company - worth of work). Everyone took the Dev Manager;s word. when the architect finally sat down to review the code, his words to me were “I don’t think Scott [ who, it must be said, haqd a “development background” and liked to talk about it frequently] understood this at all, you appear to have done everything right to me”. But nothing changed, because that company’s culture was such that you kept your head down for safety, and sanity’s, sake. The architect was empathetic but it only goes so far.

Alls well that ends well. I was informed I was being written up again 6 months later (the “30 days or else” deal). It was largely bullshit too. I stopped the conversation, said “Scott, you’re the reason I have an anxiety disorder, you are the worst boss I’ve ever had, this job is a train wreck thanks to you”, the HR Lady said “you’re going to get a chance to talk”, I said “history here has proven it won’t matter, I would rather quit that have to listen to this bullshit. I would be glad to type up a letter of resignation right now”, which I excused myself and did. When I returned to the conference room Ole Scott was visibily shrunken in his seat and looked like he was about to vomit, although I can’t imagine anything serious came from my “outburst” (he could easily spin everything). God it felt good though.

I got cheered at two separate doctors offices when I announced I’d walked off the job, and got a hug from a nurse.

303

Indeed. Wow. So you were basically forced out?
I take it you kept your head down at your future jobs?

This thread has been sobering to me, as I have been contemplating a discussion with HR at my current job with regard to what I feel are changes that need to be made, but I’ve so far been instinctively avoiding it without knowing exactly why, other than feeling like I wouldn’t be able to find the right words to get anything accomplished.

Thanks everyone for sharing your stories.

304

Having small children, the generational changes here are interesting. While children’s indoctrination has been cooperation focused for quite some time, there’s definitely a different tenor these days (maybe in a post-bullying awareness world?) where kids are really actively encouraged to be kind to one another. I mean even stuff like the Buddy Bench would have been weird and maybe even a cause for ridicule in my day, but today it’s more or less an accepted fixture of my kids’ schools.

So, I think there’s been real movement towards kindness and respectfulness these days. Like, corporal punishment is widely regarded as unacceptable, but it was commonplace not too long ago.