This is extremely disheartening to hear, especially because I remember when this story first received some media coverage (and grabbed front-page real estate on HN). I knew, even before clicking on the link, that Jennifer Hepler would be the subject of this story.
Ms. Hepler was a creative force behind some of the strongest writing in the first Dragon Age, a game whose derivative (though thoroughly enjoyable) gameplay was enhanced dramatically by the depth, wit, and personality of its setting and characters.
The sequel, while (IMO) justifiably criticized for its dumbed-down gameplay, nevertheless retained a lot of the brilliant writing and storycraft tha made its predecessor so enjoyable. (AFAIK, Jennifer Hepler had nothing to do with the gameplay changes; she was responsible for the writing).
The relentless stalking and cyberbullying of Ms. Hepler, one of the franchise's true stars, is a damned shame. It was a shame a year ago, simply because of its immaturity. It's a damned shame now, because of its consequences.
If any studios out there are looking for writers, please seek out Jennifer Hepler ASAP.
So a kid threatens to shot up a school and spends half a year in jail [1], but endless viciously well described death threats like this and no police response? What's with the very uneven handed approach to law enforcement?
Oh right, school shootings make the news and are near terrorism and murdering a woman's family gruesomely is... normal?
Death threats are more numerous and less threatening than they seem. It's terrible to be regularly threatened by anonymous people but the fact is, any 12 yr old with an internet connection and a phone line can send/call in a threatening message. The likelihood of it being carried out, however, is slim to none. Few people would be willing to take the lives of children, and then face jail time, for the sake of a video game they don't like. As far as law enforcement goes, resources are limited and they can legally only do so much.
The difference is quite distinct, Justin was on Facebook. Facebook and LEO organizations have a cozy relationship, and Facebook provides all activity logs to LEO orgs for real-time processing.
One of the Boston Bombers was a prolific Twitter poster, and I'm sure that factored in the decision to monitor Facebook activity in real-time.
And if you run a gaming community, or really any online community, immediately hellban anyone who threatens someone else. Someone who threatens to kill someone's children does not deserve a second chance.
I think blizzard has the right approach: You don't get to post unless you post from your account which is linked to a credit card by which you pay for the game.
If you post something like this, it's easy peasy to get your ass arrested.
Although vigilantes or a mob whipped into a frenzy are often worse than the problem they're trying to solve, isn't there room for a group of well-intentioned, level headed investigators that can help address issues like this? As in, instead of SWATting the person in question or destroying their life by posting personal details, they'd collect information, try and resolve the situation before things got out of hand, and where that failed, hand off to law enforcement?
Some kind of community watch would go a long way towards clearing out a lot of the trash.
When I say speak up, I don't mean report it to the authorities (though in some cases, you should). I mean tell people that what they are doing is wrong.
Having a better defined, field-tested procedure is probably a good idea. Roughly A) Confront the aggressor to communicate problems and see if the situation can be resolved. B) Where it can't be resolved, investigate if the aggressor has a pattern of such behaviour, or if there are individuals in a position to be more persuasive that could help. C) If the behavior continues, institute bans, document incidents. D) Where bans are insufficient and repeated warnings have been ignored, escalate to involve relevant law enforcement agencies.
Just speaking up is not enough - as long as people can hide behind anonymity, the social repercussions are limited, they can just change screen names if needed.
Since they are taking advantage of the fact that their target is not anonymous, then the best response is to pierce the veil of anonymity the attacker hides behind. Don't just speak up - out the attacker if you know them.
There's also the problem that if an online conversation has nine "Hi, keep up the good work" responses for every "I'll rip off your head and shit down your neck" response, the ones that really stick in the mind are the latter... and the ones that get the most replies and attention will be the latter also. See the DailyMail
Back in the days of arcade gaming, companies had pretty serious policies about never publicizing or even mentioning the names of the engineers that worked on the games. This was primarily because the companies valued the talent and didn't want to see their key designers poached by other companies (and, by result, keep their salaries and royalties down as well). This is why people like Robinett (Atari 2600 Adventure) put the earliest easter eggs in their work.
I'm wondering if we need to go back to that system, or perhaps come to some middle ground where if developers are going to talk publicly about games, they do it under pseudonym or something.
I believe there can be a significant difference between "Jennifer Hepler, Employee, BioWare" and "Jennifer Hepler, Writer of this specific character you hate on this specific game, BioWare".
The internet allows for a fairly "shotgun" approach when it comes to abuse. But, maybe it would be beneficial to spread the abuse out instead of allowing it to focus.
Though, there is still doxxing. You can't rule out that that information is in some way discoverable regardless.
You'd be surprised how difficult information is to get when it's not explicitly presented. The belief that the "information age" is inherently informative is a false assumption. Plenty of companies have staff directories but they don't explain the roles of each individual member. Jennifer Hepler can be presented as a creative member of Bioware working on something in some capacity.
Jennifer Hepler left BioWare this week to begin work on a book about narrative design and do some freelance work. Her most recent job title was senior writer on Dragon Age: Inquisition. But it was Dragon Age 2 that led to the death threats, the threats against her family and children and the harassment.
When asked if the harassment led to her depature, Hepler told Polygon "No, leaving Bioware was for family reasons. I am going to be working on a text book on narrative design among other game-related freelance projects."
Unrelated, but Dragon Age II is actually a game with an interesting story, that strays far from the classics (in a good way). The game did not deserve the backlash it got.
Combat is good too, albeit the weird camera angle is somewhat of an annoyance.
As a story it was good, but as a game the backlash it received was fully justified.
It reused the same areas and assets to the extreme. You literally spent all your time running around the same 5 or 6 dungeon maps with different entrances and exits. The combat was repetitive and the constant waves of enemies appearing out of thin air removed any tactical positioning or clever conservation of abilities.
For some context, this article is part of a moral panic going on in the UK right now regarding trolling, "cyber-bullying", etc. that was set off by the suicide of a teenage girl which was blamed on internet harassment. The suicide story has fallen apart since, but never let the facts get in the way of some good outrage, and the usual suspects are in full force using it as leverage against free speech.
Undoubtedly some will see this as a success and use it against writers/devs they don't like in the future. Needs to be nipped in the bud now by reporting this people. These are legitimate threats, not jokes.
Especially when you're an asshat in real life. As an example, BBC tracked down a bully and, surprise, the guy was a real piece of work. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kFNYuteAjA)
I believe the culture wars regarding these sorts of subjects will get a lot worse, maybe with lots of deaths, before it become better.
All sides of it, has their own reasons, many of them legitimate... But if history is good in showing precedents, the end result of this will be countless deaths and destruction, before it gets better.
It's not a gender thing. George Lucas did receive death threats for Jar Jar, I'm sure.
I've received death threats just doing customer support at a previous job.
There's always going to be crazy douches out there who say crazy douche things. If we start legislating away free speech (and I realize this is a UK site where that's already happened even more than in the US) because of the 0.001% of psychotic douchebags then we're harming ourselves and not really protecting anyone.
Making death threats is already illegal, we don't need any more legislation about it.
the article ? "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."
The Polygon article talks about Toulouse, a male former Microsoft employee in charge of XBox Live bans, quitting his job there due to death threats and similar bullying messages.
Microsoft's response sickens me. StepTo: I need security at public events, people are threatening my life because of the role I have at Microsoft. Microsoft: Uh, no. No wonder his former role goes unfilled.
A bit of both. The article mentions that this incident was only one of several that came to light in response to recent fan-bullying and threats, and other incidents cover male game devs.
That being said, the gaming community tends to be a fair bit more vitriolic when women are involved.
One of the reasons why even as a die-hard gamer I disassociate completely from the community that surrounds it. The only community I've found that doesn't make me red with rage is the Kerbal Space Program community.
I tend to shy away from official communities on official forums, and join the Penny Arcade sub-community version of it.
The forum mods there tend to be utterly draconian in what they won't tolerate, and this kind of shit would get you IP-banned basically instantly. The discussion of games is generally a much higher-level thing and the community is relatively self-policed, too.
Ms. Hepler was a creative force behind some of the strongest writing in the first Dragon Age, a game whose derivative (though thoroughly enjoyable) gameplay was enhanced dramatically by the depth, wit, and personality of its setting and characters.
The sequel, while (IMO) justifiably criticized for its dumbed-down gameplay, nevertheless retained a lot of the brilliant writing and storycraft tha made its predecessor so enjoyable. (AFAIK, Jennifer Hepler had nothing to do with the gameplay changes; she was responsible for the writing).
The relentless stalking and cyberbullying of Ms. Hepler, one of the franchise's true stars, is a damned shame. It was a shame a year ago, simply because of its immaturity. It's a damned shame now, because of its consequences.
If any studios out there are looking for writers, please seek out Jennifer Hepler ASAP.