Comment on Laura Fryer - HR needs to stay in their lane (and out of Game Development)

• scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Then have a conversation instead of making accusatory statements about what I must believe like calling me a gamer gater and saying “I’d like to see some sources on this proving that the rampant sexism and toxic work environments have been done away with in the last 5 years before being this confident about it.”

  Of course things aren’t great still, of course there are still bad toxic places to work. I’ve worked at both pure toxic and toxic positivity and they both suck and both should be removed. I’ve had places where I myself went to HR and watched them do an investigation which then ended up with me terminated after I reported people for being godawful. I have also had the opposite happen, where simply disagreeing with an approach means that I’m an agitator and the dreaded “Can we have a few minutes to speak”. They went from doing nothing to protect the employees to now overprotecting everything.

  I’ll agree that she should have talked about why the bell swung in this direction, and she has previously mentioned about her own sexual harassment in the past and that would have been a good time to bring up how she told us how she felt ignored by it. It’s important to understand context to understand why it’s swinging the other way, but now it’s become where everything is so coated in foam that there’s only the “approved” way to do things, which means covering the user in bubble wrap before sending them through the feel-good forests, and it’s making things very boring to play.

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  • velma@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Also, I wasn’t the first one to bring up “gamer gaters” in this conversation, but you sure came at me like I was:

    sh.itjust.works/post/65037722/26885280

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  • rursta@retrolemmy.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    What “other way”?
    Capitalists still own the IP to the games.
    Capitalists still larceny from the workers they hire.
    Capitalists still culture their companies with vanguards (HR) or not.
    The overton window is firmly still leaning far right: authoritarian, 1 person owning all the means.

    I am not dear Velma, but I am politically literate enough to know the window has shifted fascist.

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  • velma@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    now it’s become where everything is so coated in foam that there’s only the “approved” way to do things, which means covering the user in bubble wrap before sending them through the feel-good forests, and it’s making things very boring to play.

    Is this because of HR or maybe it’s because of capitalism’s penchant for the enshittification of everything? If a product is appealing to everyone, it appeals to no one.

    I think the HR issue is separate from the quality of the games. Indie dev companies are putting out really great quality games at a higher frequency than when AAA games were dominating the marketplace. Maybe there’s an argument that the smaller dev teams don’t need as much involvement from HR because they’re smaller and can police each other better about not being assholes to one another. It’s an interesting topic regardless.

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    • scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      I think it’s both. I do think they’re in the room, they have elbowed in a spot at the table and I’ve seen it first hand, however I don’t think like in the video they are the only say. I think you’re spot on in saying that bit, “If a product is appealing to everyone, it appeals to no one.”

      I think HR in the room is another symptom, I think it’s executives trying to make sure no one feels put off by a game so that everyone plays it and they have the biggest audience. Then you have Legal come in and neutralize more dialogue because it could be considered rude or offensive. Then marketing comes in and says that they don’t know how to market this to this group, and then at the end you get a very boring game that is perfectly safe for everyone to play, but that no one wants to play.

      It’s simply that corporations don’t understand creative work. Creative work and art are subjective, and they are meant to heighten emotions and make people think about it. They are meant quite literally to go counter to everything a corporate environment pushes for.

      I also agree that I have been going Indie more because you can tell they aren’t as over-encumbered by corporate pressure. They have something they want to make or say, they are passionate and they get it done. I guess my thesis, seperate from Laura’s, is that HR and these other teams need to let creatives be creatives. Step in when you need to for sure, but stop at that line and go no further. HR should be there for HR reasons, Legal should protect the company from liability, and marketers should market the product, but none of them (or the executives) should be swaying the creative process to make their jobs easier. It’s their jobs to protect the creative process, not the other way around.

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      • velma@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        Step in when you need to for sure, but stop at that line and go no further. HR should be there for HR reasons, Legal should protect the company from liability, and marketers should market the product, but none of them (or the executives) should be swaying the creative process to make their jobs easier. It’s their jobs to protect the creative process, not the other way around.

        I totally agree with you. Thanks for coming back to the discussion table with me, so to speak.

        As long as the creative process doesn’t include objectifying and sexually harassing their women coworkers, absolutely. There’s honestly a fine line, I know it doesn’t seem very fine, it seems really obvious that it shouldn’t be happening, but the entirety of the history of creating games has been tainted with the pervasive sexism that’s allowed to bloom under a “boys will be boys” kind of approach with these creatives.

        Maybe the future of gaming isn’t with the big companies at all anymore. Maybe they’re too big to succeed the way they used to.

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      • rursta@retrolemmy.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        It’s simply that corporations don’t understand creative work.

        I wish you were a tad politically literate. Capitalists are against 🌈creativity✨ Corporations are owned by capitalists. It is in their interests to exploit the workers’ creative process, even sabotage them, for undeterred profit.

        They are meant quite literally to go counter to everything a corporate environment pushes for.

        🤔 weird how that is, huh

        I guess my thesis, seperate from Laura’s, is that HR and these other teams need to let creatives be creatives.

        Then those teams have to be anticapitalist, by default.

        HR should be there for HR reasons, Legal should protect the company from liability, and marketers should market the product, but none of them (or the executives) should be swaying the creative process to make their jobs easier.

        Then you miscomprehend why executives hired all the above to sway the creatives to make their lives richer.

        It’s their jobs to protect the creative process, not the other way around.

        And this is the thesis, me, Velma, and other creatives have been saying yor millennia: vanguards are class traitors. They only exist to protect “executives.” “Executives” created HR to vanguard their interests.

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