BioWare writer quits after death threats to family

[frigidmagi]

Metro

The senior writer on Dragon Age II has decided to leave developer BioWare after ‘graphic threats’ were made to kill her children.

Jennifer Hepler was working on sequel Dragon Age: Inquisition but is quitting BioWare this week to go freelance, in large part thanks to threats she and others of the team received in the wake of Dragon Age II’s release.

The game was unpopular with many hardcore fans and although Hepler was able to ignore most of the threats and abuse on the BioWare forums and Twitter she also received emailed death threats and threats against her children, as well as abusive phone calls.

Hepler revealed the threats in a wider article on the subject of fan abuse on website Polygon. The story is also reminiscent of an incident last month, when fans threatened to murder a Call Of Duty developer because of minute changes to some of Black Ops II’s weapons.

The catalyst for Hepler’s abuse was a six-year-old interview in which she admitted she didn’t enjoy combat in games. This was enough for fans to blame her for unpopular changes in Dragon Age II, describing her as a ‘cancer’ that was destroying BioWare.

‘I was shown a sample of the forum posts by EA security,’ says Hepler ‘And it included graphic threats to kill my children on their way out of school to show them that they should have been aborted at birth rather than have to have me as a mother.’

The situation highlights both more general problems with cyberbullying and the targeting of women via Twitter, both of which are likely to see more strict legal sanctions in the future.

Another part of the problem for Hepler though was BioWare’s sympathetic portrayal of homosexual characters, which has not only been the catalyst for some of the abuse but also much of the positive support from fans.

‘The outpouring of support I received — large amounts from female and gay fans — was incredibly heartening,’ said Hepler. ‘Without the negativity, I’m not sure that I would ever have heard from all of these people confirming that there is a need for characters that tackle touchy social issues, for characters who are untraditional or even unlikeable.’

[Hotfoot]

Look, I hated DA2's third act and that ruined the game for me, but this is vile. The people doing this shit are assholes and cowards of ill repute and deserve to be publicly shamed for their actions.

What's worse? This is largely because she chose to speak out against this little fucks and they retaliated.

[LadyTevar]

Let's be honest folks... this wasn't about 'combat failing', this was about HOMOPHOBES. Both DragonAge games, but 2 especially showed sympathic, caring same-sex relationships, and some A-holes had their manhood hurt. So, they lashed out like all homophobes with hurt manhoods and went after the woman, cause it had to be HER fault.

I hope they have enough info to prosecute these bastards.

[Hotfoot]

More than just homophobes, but sexists as well, people who think that women don't have a place in gaming.

That said, her official statement is that she left Bioware for family reasons and to pursue personal projects.

[General Havoc]

Forgive me for sounding very insensitive here, but I have unavoidable suspicions every time someone claims that the reason they left a company was entirely due to the attacks of invisible, anonymous internet trolls who rained mindless abuse down upon their poor, undeserving heads. Yes, internet hate-trolls exist. Yes, they do awful, senseless, terrible things for no reason. But it is very easy to simply gesticulate wildly in the direction of the internet and claim that you are being unfairly abused. Especially when there's a financial incentive to doing so. This writer presided in no small part over a financial and critical flop, and is now leaving the company for reasons that, if you look only at the public statement by Bioware, look a lot like "we suggested it was time to leave". If she leaves it at that, she may have trouble finding another job. But by claiming to be the victim of internet bullies for her stand against homophobia, now she is the martyred warrior against intolerance, and those who object to her work on Dragon Age, are bullies and homophobes.

I'm not saying she made any of this up. The internet is indeed a mindless hate machine, and I would not put this sort of behavior past its denizens. I am, however, saying that there is a possibility she made this up, as it is utterly without corroboration, and there is a strong financial and professional incentive for her to do so. We do not automatically believe politicians when they claim that the only reason they dropped out of a race was because of the malicious internet attacks directed at them by the evil, trollish supporters of their opponents. Similarly I do not automatically believe that the fact that she was at least partly responsible for writing a bad game had nothing to do with her leaving the company at which she wrote it.

Internet trolls exist, and are scum-sucking, contemptuous fucks. But they did not write Dragon Age 2. And it is very easy to cry victim and exaggerate when someone criticizes your work, as a means of deflecting the issue away from the mistakes you made. I am not saying she is exaggerating. But no matter what she was or was not called by internet trolls, she did write part of Dragon Age 2, which was a poorly-written game. I have a hard time believing that didn't factor into the matter at all.

[Lys]

It's more likely that she isn't making anything up, but using - and possibly exaggerating - abuse that did happen in order to deflect attention from her being let go from the company for writing a game that flopped. Look at this way, if the threats did happen exactly as claimed there is pretty much zero reason for her not to cite them as the primary reason for leaving the company. As Havoc points out it makes her a martyr and diminishes the effect on her professional credentials. So we have no corroboration that what she says is true, but neither do we have any particular reason to disbelieve her. People are more likely to seize upon and exaggerate things that actually happened than they are to make them up out of whole cloth, and the anonymity of the internet has caused such things to occur before. Though, notably, there were no death threats about the Mass Effect 3 ending that i'm aware of, which also caused a shit-storm. Though the game was also good right up until the big reveal at the very end, which means it could and was fixed.

[General Havoc]

Well in fairness, there may or may not have been death threats about the Mass Effect 3 ending. None were ever (to my knowledge) publicly revealed, but there were trolls angry enough about that ending to have made them.

As I said, I know nothing of the truth here, only that this explanation conveniently defuses a number of things and marginalizes many complaints that could be made about this woman's work. It is entirely possible that she did receive hateful abuse, I don't deny that. But there is a strong incentive for her to accentuate the abuse she sustained, financial and otherwise, to the point where if there was no abuse, I would expect people of low moral fiber to resort to inventing it. Whether she (or others) are among such people or not, I cannot possibly begin to speculate.

I just smell a marketing ploy here, to alter the memory of Dragon Age 2 from "That bad game Bioware made" to "That daring game Bioware made which resulted in them being attacked by homophobes." I have no proof, of course. But then again, neither do they.

[Josh]

And it could be column A and B. This is the internet, where people threaten to beat each other up over musical tastes, TV shows, and a million other stupid trivial things.

Thing is if it was the gay lovin' that brought on all the hatred for DA2, one would expect a similar hue and cry for the same options existing in ME3.

(Not to mention that DA itself had gay/lesbian romance paths as well.)

Honestly I'd expect that more of the threat-age came from making what most people considered be a subpar game that didn't live up to the original.

[frigidmagi]

Let me point here that it's a matter of public record that threats were made against her children. That's not something they made up. Frankly, I don't care about the rest of it. This is getting out of hand and way past the line.

[Batman]

You get to tell game designers they fucked up all you like (I've done that more times than I can remember, if only in a 'You, damn you incompetent designers of game X' fashion (in case you haven't noticed by now, I'm not particularly interested in the real world people behind fictional projects). It's a game. You can always, you know, stop playing it. You can badmouth it, and their incompetence in designing a game you expected to love, but you do not threaten them or their family. Being bad at your job (assuming for the moment they were to begin with) is not a crime, leave alone one punishable by taking it out on their relatives (a punishment that no longer exists in US Law to my knowledge).

[General Havoc]

Let me point here that it's a matter of public record that threats were made against her children. That's not something they made up. Frankly, I don't care about the rest of it. This is getting out of hand and way past the line.

Well if that's true, then they did not append such a public record to the article in question, which, I suppose, they're under no obligation to do. But while if that's so, then those responsible are plainly scum-sucking shitlords of the highest order, the base and unfortunate fact is that raving hyperbole on the internet is in no small supply. Forgetting the actual lunatics out there for a moment, I personally called, in jest of course, for the filmmakers responsible for the latest Spiderman movie to be drowned in a septic tank. Would it therefore be reasonable for the filmmakers in question to send out press releases claiming that critics of their movie have threatened their lives? Is that the proper context to frame the discussion of the merits of that film in? Does that imbue Spiderman with the status of an unfairly maligned classic, denigrated only by violent maniacs and internet trolls?

Now, to be fair, the article does not claim such things, but it does come uncomfortably close. It refers to the game as having been unpopular with "hardcore fans" and explains none of the reasons for it, diving immediately into twitter abuse and aggressive threats, the strong implication being that anyone who hated the game did so only because of homophobia, and immediately engaged in this sort of behavior. It also mentions that she left the game recently. DA2 has been out for three years, and the majority of the hubbub surrounding it took place at the beginning of its lifecycle. I know there are some fans who can't let anything go, and I remember that furor that erupted over the whole "I dislike combat" thing. I thought it was stupid then and I think it's stupid now. But something here does not add up for me. This just seems, from my layman's perspective, like a very odd moment to suddenly be accosted by unbearable trolling. Obviously there's no time limit on mindless hate, and one threat too many is a perfectly valid reason to quit. But still...

If this woman received actual death threats for having written a bad game, then that is abominably stupid. If her children received such threats, that is grotesquely offensive, and those responsible should be soundly beaten. But none of that changes the quality of DA2. And reading between the lines, I am sensing an effort to do just that, by re-framing the conversation from those who like DA2 vs. those who hate it, into those who like DA2 vs. ignorant reactionary homophobic internet trolls.

There are ignorant reactionary homophobic internet trolls in the world, but not everyone who hated DA2 is one.

[Hotfoot]

1. Her official reason for leaving Bioware was other reasons, by her own statement amended in the article.

2. Bioware never said "it's time for you to leave", in fact, Bioware and EA both defended the parts of DA2 in question to the hilt.

3. The homophobic backlash from DA2 was pretty severe, remember David Gaider's "Deal with it" post on the DA2 forums? This was a vocal but clear minority in the throng of people who disliked DA2. That you didn't see it is unfortunate but does not change that it happened, nor does it include you in that group of people simply because you disliked DA2 any more than it does me. Moreover, you and I both know that as disappointing as DA2 was, it wasn't entirely bad. If it was, would you have played it again?

4. At no point does the article or do the developers ever indicate that the poor critical reception of DA2 was due to homophobia, merely much of the violent diatribes on the forums, twitter, and email.

5. Homophobes or not, anyone who threatens actual violence over a videogame is a child in need of an object lesson of what it means to be an adult.

On the subject of such things, this is a massive trend that is being brought to light. There have been numerous stories and examples over the last few years of this behavior and each time someone speaks up about it, they only get more threats, harassment, and intimidation. Given the sheer numbers involved, it's difficult to pass it on to the police because they just don't have the resources to track down several hundred people from across the world.

I mean, between Fat, Ugly, or Slutty, the article by Polygon cited by the article above, which includes interviews with the heads of Bioware who cited it as one of the reasons they left after Mass Effect 3. There's no incentive there, they left the industry and don't want to come back. They gain nothing from this statement.

Now that said, it's clear that the majority of feedback to these games and for these people was positive. Hepler even says so in the above articles. Still, when people are able to get your personal information including your home address and make threats on your life, even if it's the internet, you don't feel safe because even if it was some crackpot, it might not be and you don't know. You can't possibly sift through the thousands of hateful letters and try to discern which are legitimate threats and which ones are hot air.

There's a documentary coming out next year called GTFO that was kickstarter funded that is trying to show the amount of harassment women get online comparative to men. The moment it hit funding, the MRAs and misogynists came out in full force with the death threats, rape threats, and so forth.