Nintendo fires marketer after sustained online hate campaign

Riesen_Meal

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2016-03-31-nintendo-fires-marketer-after-sustained-online-hate-campaign

I felt this was more suited here than in the Nintendo forum, as this seems where we we would welcome opinion other than from Nintendo enthusiast's...

Note : This could get heated so I would like to hear opinions objectively about the subject

I have read all sorts of comments online on Eurogamer and Kotaku about what this girl in question may have said or not said with little or no evidence to back it up - it seems the vitriol aimed at her from the online Nintendo community has been really negative as a whole...

To me it seems that she has been targeted by the Nin/anon community for comments made relating to child pornography online in 2011 (if it was even her who made them in the first place)

http://archive.is/9uScD

I know Nintendo are a 175 years old Japanese company and generally bawk at the first sign of negativity - but they did choose to refer to her online abuse as nothing to do with her termination in the statement about her sacking, they pretty much said she had moonlighted for a different company, yet she says she was allowed Moonlight so who knows who to believe...

What is going on here anyone?





From Eurogamer :

Nintendo marketing employee Alison Rapp, the target of a persistent online hate campaign, has been dismissed from the company.

Rapp revealed she had been fired via her Twitter account late last night


In a statement posted online after Rapp's dismissal began to trend on Twitter, Nintendo said the decision was made after it became aware Rapp had a second job.

For months now, Rapp has been the target of sustained attacks via social media and Nintendo has been bombarded with messages saying it should distance itself from her.

Rapp had acted as a spokesperson for Nintendo, had presented livestreams featuring the company's games and was a high-profile female voice on Twitter.

She had also become a recognisible face for Nintendo's Treehouse division, the company's US localisation department, during a time that some of its decisions were being criticised as "censorship" by certain corners of the internet.

Those decisions chiefly comprised the removal of a scene in 3DS role-player Fire Emblem: Fates where a gay character is drugged to fall in love with a straight protagonist and a mini-game in the same title where you could pet character's faces. These examples followed the removal of a slider used to set the size of your character's breasts in Wii U role-playing game Xenoblade Chronicles X.


Rapp's position as Nintendo employee - and as one of the few to have an active voice on social media - was enough to single her out. This is despite the fact that she worked in marketing - she did not decide how games were localised.


In fact, Rapp had posted to say she would have been in favour of the latter example remaining in the game.

Rapp continued to post online throughout the abuse - including during her recent honeymoon in Japan - sometimes encouraging her followers to send her images which would disrupt the deluge of posts corralled her way by internet trolls.

Throughout, Nintendo did not comment on the hate campaign. The first time her former employer made reference to it was last night, after Rapp had been fired.

"Alison Rapp was terminated due to violation of an internal company policy involving holding a second job in conflict with Nintendo's corporate culture," the company declared. "Though Ms. Rapp's termination follows her being the subject of criticism from certain groups via social media several weeks ago, the two are absolutely not related.

"Nintendo is a company committed to fostering inclusion and diversity in both our company and the broader video game industry and we firmly reject the harassment of individuals based on gender, race or personal beliefs. We wish Ms. Rapp well in her future endeavors."

Rapp has since responded to Nintendo's statement and clarified some of the details surrounding the matter of her second job.

"The second job thing? Funny story. Moonlighting is actually accepted at Nintendo. It's policy," she wrote on Twitter.

"To pay off student loans, I started moonlighting under a fake name, and with no real identifiers. An anon found out, told [Nintendo], and here we are. It was moonlighting Nintendo didn't like, despite the fact that it was anonymous."

Some have pointed to personal photos of Rapp from a modelling shoot which she had planned to make available online - although all of this was done under her own name, and discussed via her main Twitter account.

It sounds unlikely this is the second job she has mentioned, although it will have been seen by Nintendo regardless. Rapp's social media activity was scrutinised by Nintendo after the flood of attention and calls for her dismissal landed on the company's doormat.

"Nintendo stripped me of my spokesperson status and did a 'lateral move' so I wouldn't lead games as a [project manager] anymore," Rapp revealed, speaking of her return to work after her honeymoon. "[Nintendo] looked at my tweets and decided I wasn't a good representative of the company."

One particular sticking point has been Rapp's university thesis, dated from 2011 - before she joined the company - and which is publicly available. In it, Rapp discusses Japan's relationship with the sexualisation of children. Ironically, she often argues for Japan's culture to remain unchanged - the exact opposite point she has since been targeted for.

However, the discussion of such a thorny subject - especially when dissected and reproduced by some as a defence of child sexualisation - was enough to bring yet more abuse to the fore. One internet campaign provoked an anti-sex trafficking charity into contacting Nintendo to complain about Rapp's views.

Without knowledge of Rapp's work outside of Nintendo it is difficult to say how justified the company was in its dismissal - although it is clear Nintendo was having difficulties dealing with Rapp's continued tenure as a public face of the company.

Reaction to Rapp's firing was swift and largely damning of Nintendo's decision. Both Rapp and Nintendo trended on Twitter last night. One indie developer has decided not to release their game on Wii U.

Looking through the sentiments posted on social media, many have expressed their disappointment that Nintendo has parted ways with Rapp. There has been condemnation, too, of the fact that Nintendo only commented on the abuse she faced as an employee now she is no longer part of the company.

Nody

So in summary; she broke the contract rules, her employer was made aware of it and fired her because of breaking her contract. The rest is simply fluff and noise but of no real relevance to that point.

RedXIV

I saw this as it started last night on Twitter and it basically came down to one thing for me. I'm so tired of all the PC/feminism/safe space/entitled to my opinion/gamegate stuff that is going on.

I appreciate that no group comes out of this shining, the guys who aimed a campaign of hatred are definitely in the wrong. I can understand their cause, but their approach was completely over the top. However, Rapp didn't (and still isn't) doing herself any favours. As a professional, I wouldn't touch her with a 10 foot barge pole, simply because of her attitude and history on twitter. You can be damn sure Nintendo would have been happy to let her go with no public announcement and she could have refrained from making herself into a bit of a spectacle but maybe that's the point of social media and what people want.

Nintendo are an old and successful company and one of the key tenants in that is ensuring your image is clean. They've done this by the book, given a statement, wished her well and left it at that. Could they have supported her more. Possibly, but difficult to do that without getting sucked in to the war itself.

All in all, I miss having it nice and simple. where they announced games and we all got giddy and talked among ourselves about what we hoped they would be like...god I must be getting old.

Riesen_Meal

I honestly buried my head in the sand for all of the GG stuff...

Nintendo have always been a company I have held in a huge regard, I still do...

I don't think the girl did herself any favours either, but it seems the same crowd as the GG crowd have latched onto this and as usual ran away with it...

Yes I miss the simpler times of gaming, before all this social media stuff and PR nightmares became involved - but the fact of the matter is gaming is no longer restricted to teenage boys in their bedrooms and widely enjoyed by everyone these days...

um7y1h83ge06nx

I saw some of the pics she posted on Twitter, a bit risqué being honest, that didn't do her any favours with Nintendo either.

joe123

Have no idea who she is and have no interest in this GG thing but from skimming through her Twitter account, she seems like a bit of a tit and quite unprofessional for someone who was meant to be representing Nintendo.

Links234

Fieldog wrote: »

- but the fact of the matter is gaming is no longer restricted to teenage boys in their bedrooms and widely enjoyed by everyone these days...

Gaming never was restricted to teenage boys though and that's something that really rubs me the wrong way, both me and my sister had grown up playing games, from the days of our cousins hand me down Atari 2600 to the Amiga (which is still working and features regularly at retro gaming nights) and Sega Megadrive, to the PS1 days. So many of my friends grew up playing games too. The notion that it had been solely a boy's interest is revisionist at best. Which is why it's so obnoxious to hear claims that women and LGBT people for that matter are somehow forcing our way into gaming, when really we've been here all along.

That's not particularly aimed at you, just a general point I wanted to make in response to the attitude that gaming has always been a boy's toy so to speak.

K.O.Kiki

Lesson 1 of being a professional: don't tweet out every damn detail of your professional life.

gizmo

Nody wrote: »

So in summary; she broke the contract rules, her employer was made aware of it and fired her because of breaking her contract. The rest is simply fluff and noise but of no real relevance to that point.

If we're specifically focusing on her dismissal then yes, it seems to come down to this. She's admitted to "moonlighting under a fake name, and with no real identifiers" but claims it's allowed under Nintendo's rules. This was in response to them claiming said moonlighting was in "conflict with Nintendo’s corporate culture" so it could come down to what exactly she was doing that they took umbrage with.

What's giving this further legs is the fact that she's claiming it was an anon who dug up details about this while they were going through the rest of her personal history online and passed them onto Nintendo.

As for the rest... Nope.

Riesen_Meal

Links234 wrote: »

That's not particularly aimed at you, just a general point I wanted to make in response to the attitude that gaming has always been a boy's toy so to speak.

I get ya...

Trying to say it without generalising anything seems impossible, and is like treading on eggshells...

Im 35 now, but as a child growing up I always had games around the house, I had a SNES, Master System, C64, N64 etc etc

My younger sister or mother never really showed an interest in games at the time, and never played any game for over 5 minutes (just to humour me) as they never grabbed them - but I'm just speaking of my own experience growing up...

Flash forward to when the Wii came out and of course my Mam gets a Wii fit and a DS for Brain Training... (of course largely unused!)

My sister got a DS as she liked Mario (for a week) and I'm sure it's resigned to a casual drawer somewhere...

I did have one female friend of a huge group of us as kids who did play games and I used to play Diablo 2 and other PC games with her and her Dad...

Around mid 2000s though it seems women took a bigger than ever interest in gaming, I wonder was the Wii the trigger for the larger uptake or was it a change in mindset of the general populace...

Nowadays sure my better lady half plays more games than me, and I'm the bloody casual...

bigphil2

Another View on it..

http://www.thejimquisition.com/nintendos-corporate-culture/

Links234

K.O.Kiki wrote: »

Lesson 1 of being a professional: don't tweet out every damn detail of your professional life.

Her being outspoken on twitter has little to do with any of this, she was specifically blamed for the localization of the latest Fire Emblem. It would take a special kind of naive to think we'd still be having this conversation if she hadn't been blamed for it, and hadn't put up with months of **** from assholes who were deliberately trying to get her fired.

RedXIV

Links234 wrote: »

Her being outspoken on twitter has little to do with any of this, she was specifically blamed for the localization of the latest Fire Emblem. It would take a special kind of naive to think we'd still be having this conversation if she hadn't been blamed for it, and hadn't put up with months of **** from assholes who were deliberately trying to get her fired.

Sorry Links234, I normally agree with everything you say, but lets be fair here, her actions on twitter are definitely part of the problem. You've hundreds in the industry who would actually be involved with this sort of thing, I've worked in it myself. She's pulled attention to herself and used her position as a platform to preach her views, most of which i agree with but just because i agree with them doesn't make it right for her to drag the company into it either.

I've plenty of hobbies and opinions that I'm proud of and share with friends but I don't use my professional presence to talk about them. When I'm being paid to do a job, i do the job. Social media is a tricky beast, people living through it as part of their career are playing a high risk game. You can get famous or infamous. Chances are both.

EoinHef

Her being outspoken on twitter could well have something to do with it,wasnt there a guy nintendo fired awhile ago for appearing on a podcast unofficially?

Think he had something to do with localisation as well. So ye Nintendo obviously dont like there employees speaking publically.

alastair_doom

EoinHef wrote: »

Her being outspoken on twitter could well have something to do with it,wasnt there a guy nintendo fired awhile ago for appearing on a podcast unofficially?

Think he had something to do with localisation as well. So ye Nintendo obviously dont like there employees speaking publically.

From the jimquisition link above

This termination follows the firing of a man I’ve had the pleasure to work with during my Escapist years, Chris Pranger – a localizer who was booted from Nintendo after appearing, unsanctioned, on a videogame podcast. It would turn out this appearance violated his contract, and he was axed in spite of his clear loyalty and ability.

So yeah, it looks like Nintendo has precedent here.

Riesen_Meal

https://issuu.com/honorsreview/docs/volumeiv/33

Here is that thesis, gonna have more of a read of a bit of it now....

Other stuff I'm reading is she was NSFW Cosplaying on a different Twitter account and obviously she has been picked out and the tweet sent to Nintendo...