Nintendo possibly fired employee over harassment

[Redstreak 6,653]

Today, Nintendo fired Alison Rapp, a former product marketing specialist for the video game company. Rapp in recent months found herself the target of GamerGate, a hate group that’s been harassing and threatening women and other targets online since 2014.

 

GamerGate’s harassment of Rapp was triggered by the hate group’s objections over changes made in certain Japanese-developed Nintendo games, including the recent Fire Emblem: Fates, as the games underwent a process called “localization.” Localization is a process by which cultural differences between Japan and the (in some ways) more conservative West are taken into consideration, often resulting in minor changes to the Western releases of Japanese games; things like characters’ ages being changed to address cultural differences regarding age of consent and sexualization of minors. For the most part it’s trivial, but also important, stuff.

 

Rapp never worked on Nintendo’s localization team, but her harassment began over changes made to Fire Emblem—specifically a mini-game in which players could use the Nintendo 3DS system’s stylus and touch screen to literally pet the faces of in-game characters. It was weird, but some people—members of GamerGate specifically—objected to its removal in the game’s Western release, crying “censorship” and latching onto Rapp, an outspoken feminist active on social media.

 

I’m going to link to Kotaku a bit, because they’ve done a great job covering this over the months. (Full disclosure: I have written for Kotaku in the past.) The site’s Patrick Klepekdid a great thing on the anti-“censorship” movement late last year, and, earlier this month, he wrote about the ongoing harassment of Rapp.

 

One prominent tactic for online harassers is to dig up something questionable from a target’s past and proliferate it in an attempt to discredit them. In this case, Rapp’s harassers unearthed a paper Rapp wrote in college concerning sexualization of minors in Japanese culture. Here’s how Klepek, a reporter who’s done far more research on this than I have, described it:

 

Rapp’s essay isn’t perfect and her tweets suggest she was, at least years ago, someone more comfortable with the ideas of teens being seen as sex objects than the average American might be. But, no ****: it’s an essay written by a young college student who was very into Japanese culture, where societal standards are different. The basic premise of her essay says Japan should be allowed to define its own cultural boundaries and not bow to the pressures of outside forces. Ironically, while Rapp has become a symbol of the supposedly nefarious social justice warriors censoring Japanese games, she’s being attacked with an essay in which she argued that Japanese culture should stay Japanese.

 

Rapp’s harassers openly employed tactics like calling Nintendo executives, whose contact information was disseminated on at least one neo-nazi website—The Daily Stormer, to which I decline to provide a link—and “act[ing] as a concerned parent,” to ensure Nintendo would take them seriously. And after months of this, it worked: Nintendo caved, and Rapp announced today on her Twitter account that her employment with Nintendo has been “terminated”:

 

Twitter—at least my Twitter feed, filled as it is with sane people—exploded in outrage to a degree I haven’t seen in a while. Rapp has urged friends and supporters to continue supporting her “incredible coworkers at Nintendo,” but based on the tweets I’ve seen today it seems many are preparing to take a stand.

 

At least one game developer—albeit a small one, though this is only one I happened to notice in my feed today—claims to have canceled plans to release a game on Nintendo’s Wii U system:

 

Doubtless there is some dark, malodorous corner of Twitter and the internet as a whole that’s rejoicing at this “victory"—getting a woman fired, through abusive and duplicitous tactics, allegedly over a perceived slight that she factually had nothing to do with in the first place, for the actual reason that she is an outspoken feminist and some members of the gaming community are shambling, half-witted trash people with nothing better to do than make life more difficult for the actual, thinking, human adults in the world who simply enjoy playing video games. But today, it’s Nintendo that committed the real offense, by giving in to the some of the scummiest people on the internet.

 

I reached out to Nintendo for comment about this, and was informed by a representative of the company that they have nothing to share at this time.

 

http://www.playboy.com/articles/today-nintendo-fired-a-woman-for-being-viciously-harassed

 

Absolutely ****ing disgraceful

[weed 73,968]

that sucks :(((( and I thought Nintendo was one of the most progressive companies

[StarstruckIllusion 52,903]

1 minute ago, neptugne said:

that sucks :(((( and I thought Nintendo was one of the most progressive companies

They are when they aren't being harassed by a bunch of fugly tubs of lard. Or I guess her comments on questioning child **** and **** really didn't mix with Nintendo's child friendly look. 

[Seeka 12,372]

Dear lord as if Fates wasn't enough of a base breaker.

I'm not sure if Nintendo can survive till Pokemon Sun and Moons release.

Though we don't know whether or not if this incident with fates had any actual correlation to her firing. There may have been a lot going on behind the scenes and this may have been the straw that broke the camel's back.

Though I honestly doubt it. The Fire Emblem series, while being popular, is mostly a cult following (before Awakening, anyways). So I do doubt her firing has anything to do with the "petting" issue of Fates.

And Nintendo has done a lot of ocalizations and such to make sure childlike characters were either aged up or had something done to them or did something to make sure they weren't sexualized and adult.

Though, Nintendo does have to know that we know what the game is like before it hits America. Most game companies should know that. If something is in a game overseas and we know about it, we're going to be expecting it in our releases.

 

[Sizzily 14,543]

Oh Kotaku 

[Edonis 28,950]

http://on.mash.to/1RKFQ7N New statement from Nintendo said it was because she had a second job that breached her contract. 

[StarstruckIllusion 52,903]

Oh wow, how tragic. They brought that up bc she was feminist? They trashed her for changing Japanese games while she argued Japanese culture should stay Japanese? Wow that's sad. My view on this was completely wrong, and im now on the side of Alison Rapp. Nintendo, how sad…

[StarstruckIllusion 52,903]

OOPS just found their comment. Change the title of the thread, they just said its not true. 

http://mynintendonews.com/2016/03/31/nintendo-comments-on-alison-rapp-termination/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

[Luiz 4,253]

"Nintendo 3DS system’s stylus and touch screen to literally pet the faces of in-game characters"

 

so whats wrong with petting faces of video game characters?  

[Logan 20,740]

I remember all the internet goblins being mad that they couldn't pet pixels in America. 

[Redstreak 6,653]

10 minutes ago, ROARyals said:

OOPS just found their comment. Change the title of the thread, they just said its not true. 

http://mynintendonews.com/2016/03/31/nintendo-comments-on-alison-rapp-termination/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

Mmmm I don't know, it could be a part of it, but she herself directly brings up the gamergate issue when talking about it on twitter so I'm having a hard time believing that's all there is to it. Regardless, there's still a point to be made wherein some of their staff have been unabashedly harassed for months while Nintendo stayed silent.

[Seeka 12,372]

7 minutes ago, Luiz said:

"Nintendo 3DS system’s stylus and touch screen to literally pet the faces of in-game characters"

 

so whats wrong with petting faces of video game characters?  

It's what the characters say afterwards is what may have made the localizers remove it. That and the incest/shota/loli connotations as well (not many FE characters' ages are ever explicitly stated).

EDIT: Or at least, that's what I guess.

[Luiz 4,253]

Just now, Seeka said:

It's what the characters say afterwards is what may have made the localizers remove it. That and the incest/shota/loli connotations as well (not many FE characters' ages are ever explicitly stated).

 

ok, i've never played this game  

what do the characters say afterward?

[Seeka 12,372]

1 minute ago, Luiz said:

ok, i've never played this game  

what do the characters say afterward?

Let me go to the FE wikia. The didn't remove what they said afterward. Just what came before it. I guess because the localizers thought it was too much like foreplay? I don't know. I think the entire practice of localizing should be removed if you're releasing stuff six months prior in Japan.

They also removed a few other things in the Fe: fates localization, but for some odd reason, after data mining it was revealed that everything had been translated and the code was there.

The entire thing about Fates is a base breaker. Fates is different from previous FEs just do to the amount of optional stuff available outside battles.