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Let’s talk about Nintendo and its bad Rapp

Microsoft versus Sony, Battlefield versus Call of Duty and Forza versus Gran Turismo. These are some of the rivalries that can get people talking about console wars. “Game On or Game Over” is your place to get inside the minds of Nicholas and Andy as they seek to find the true meaning of gaming and tackle some of gaming’s most controversial subjects. Both are award winning authors – although the awards haven’t been mailed or created yet — but trust them. Would they lie to you?

Nicholas: As we’ve mentioned in the past, the gaming industry is rife with controversy. Now while that mightn’t be good news for your average gamer who might only be interested in the latest instalment of Call of Duty or Need For Speed, it works wonders for us because it gives us something new to discuss each week. On that note, it goes without saying that the last two weeks have been an absolute doozy, and with that, there are two topics I’d like us to tackle this week, both somewhat related.

Towards the end of last month the internet was ablaze when news broke that Alison Rapp, now former Treehouse employee at Nintendo, was let go following what was initially reported as the final straw in a long line of harassment from ‘gamergates’ (something that I’d like to discuss individually later on). The frustration from the community initially stemmed from assumptions that Nintendo had unfairly terminated her employment as a means to protect their image, following months of targeted attacks towards Rapp for the work the Treehouse team had been involved with in the localisation of Japanese titles for western audiences.

Nintendo had then come out clarifying that their actions were not based on harassment, but due to a conflict with Nintendo’s corporate culture as it was discovered that Rapp was moonlighting at a second job. Since then neither party have really responded and the internet seemed to have dropped their interest in the case, but it’s a pretty meaty topic that I’d like us to explore further. So, before we get into the nitty gritty, I wanted to ask what your opinions are on the entire case, and what your thoughts are on the legitimacy of the termination decision.

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Andy: I have to be honest with this one. I saw this pop up on my news feed on Facebook and Twitter when it originally happened and my initial reaction was one of disappointment and disgust directed towards Nintendo. On the surface it seemed like a classless knee-jerk reaction towards Rapp. Then, as often is the case more and more information comes out that starts to bring the story towards more logical interpretation. It’s easy to vilify Nintendo, and talk about how things “look” in regards to this. It’s easy for the Gamergate crowd to say she got what she deserved. The truth of the matter is, no-one of us will know what exactly happened. Sure, we can draw conclusions based on what we know, or what we think we know, but none of that matters.

Cut and dry if it was against her contract with Nintendo to have outside work in the manner she did, then that’s all there is to it. With all the talk that this has created I have yet to see Rapp post any part of her contract with Nintendo saying that it was ok for her to moonlight with IGN. The natural argument there is “Well, others have done it and didn’t get in trouble.” How do we know that though? Maybe Ms. Rapp was warned and disciplined before this and her firing was just a natural course of events when employees are disciplined and continue to do things they shouldn’t.

Nintendo has always been an image-conscious company. They have a rather strict set of rules that no-one is above the company. Recognition is company wide and when an employee veers outside of those rules they tend to drop the hammer fairly swiftly to bring things back to centre. Knowing the little I know about this, my gut says it was in her contract that she couldn’t do that and that Nintendo warned her before and then to stop future indiscretions they made an example out of her. I just have a hard time believing that Nintendo said “enough with this Gamergate stuff you’re fired.” Especially since they stuck with her for so long through all the previous Gamergate stuff.

You’re more of a Nintendo fan than I am though. What do you think about that whole situation and how it played out? Is it as big of a deal as some people want to make it out to be, or is it simply a case of an employee not holding to their contract and getting canned for it?

Nicholas: My first reaction when this all blew up was, “wait, what?” It interests me how the internet seemed to be in uproar once Rapp was fired, but there didn’t seem to be a lot of conversation about this situation while the harassment was on-going. Now perhaps I’m just out of the loop, but for all the chatter that took place two weeks ago, it seems it came out of no-where. That’s perhaps my biggest gripe, this inconsistency.

As for how I take this entire situation, well I think you’ve made quite a great point, we can speculate that her termination was based off Nintendo wanting to distance themselves from the abuse and we can speculate that it’s due to her moonlighting, but when both parties (understandably so) will want to protect themselves, it’s always a case of he said, she said.

What’s annoying though from a gamer’s perspective, is how the attention was so quickly diverted from it being a Rapp vs. Nintendo issue, to being a gaming community/industry problem, and it links to what I’ve said above. Rapp first came out claiming that she was no-longer a “good and safe” employee of Nintendo, and then followed up saying that she wanted this to be a conversation about “making the industry the best, most progressive it could be”. To me, it instantly says, “Nintendo’s to blame” and doesn’t open up a conversation about what really happened here. Even in your response before you mentioned how you initially thought Nintendo had done wrong.

I guess my question is, why do we instantly assume that Nintendo has terminated her because of the harassment and why don’t we try to ask more questions before making these kind of assumptions? Does it seem like the gaming community is almost self-deprecating with how we assume we’re always in the wrong?

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Andy: I think the answer to your question is fairly simple actually. The mentality today is there has to be someone to blame and when it’s between a person and a corporation then it “has” to be the evil corporation’s fault. It’s the cool thing to hate a company, it’s cool to jump up and down about a perceived injustice, and it’s cool to jump on a bandwagon and ride it down the hill to thwart the evil corporation. I would argue that some of the people that were up in arms about this didn’t even know what was going on, they just saw hate being directed in the way of Nintendo and followed suit.

That’s really a microcosm of how gamers react to everything right now. There has to be a bad guy, someone to blame for everything. Also, you don’t need to have all the details or know what you’re talking about if you make enough noise. It doesn’t seem like many people want to put time into actually looking at, and understanding, the entire situation before the rush to judgment and proclaim to the world the degree of injustice that is going on. They see one Facebook post or tweet that says “Rapp fired from Nintendo over Gamergate harassment” and nothing else matters. It’s no longer about making an educated, informed decision about something. Now it’s all about reading one or two tweets or headlines and basing your opinion solely on that.

So far this week we have focused largely on one instance of internet furore. I want to throw you a little bit of a curveball though. In the grand scheme of things, in the world of playing video games, does the firing of one person from a large video game company really matter? It doesn’t affect the games we play, unless it’s someone like Kojima who created the game of course. For the most part the game will be the game no matter who works on it. In the case of Rapp I believe she translated games from Japan. If I’m not related to Ms. Rapp then I don’t really have a dog in the fight to care about. So why do we continue to have this faux outrage with issues like this?

Nicholas: I’m sure I’ll be called out and told I’m wrong for this, but it’s because the community is hung up on this entire ‘gamergate’ fiasco and talk of sexism that we can’t seem to move on from. I really do believe like there’s an element of self-deprecation in the community were we want to highlight want misogynistic arseholes we are, and it’s for this reason that these situations and articles continue to be talked about. There’s really no-one apart from Rapp who’s going to be affected by this entire situation, but we’re fiends for talking about yet another case of injustice in this broke community/industry that we’re a part of.

Perhaps it’s the vocal minority that we assume represents the majority, but it always seems like gaming is moving away from just enjoying games, and it’s discussions like whether or not Nintendo fired one of their community representatives because she was on the end of internet abuse that seem to dominate most ‘hot’ discussions. The question that I’m still yet to understand is, we’re in a situation now where an individual was being harassed by a group online for about a year. This individual is terminated and we immediately assume it’s due to her employer wanting to protect their image. The internet loses their collective sh*t, but as soon as said employer comes out saying that it’s because she had a conflicting job, the noise dies down and everyone goes on their merry way. No-one questions anything further and no-one seems to care anymore.

Is it just me, or does it seem like a load of rubbish? How can we be enraged so quickly and then return to normal as immediately after? Where’s the consistency?

The thing that bothers me though about this situation, aside from what we’ve mentioned above, is this whole term ‘gamergaters’. Depending on which side of the fence you sit on, and I’m not interested in re-igniting this conversation, but ‘gamer gate’ was either about the harassment of certain individuals online or the exposition of conflict of interest with regards to journalistic integrity. It’s been a year since that blew up, but when we discuss the (quite frankly) losers who were harassing individuals such as Rapp, we refer to them as ‘gamergaters’. Is that a term we need to drop and not assume that people who are trolls online are involved of some organised goal? Is there a reason why we’ve moved on from calling these people what they are, trolls?

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Andy: I think the gamergate thing, at least the term for it, has certainly ran past what it originally meant and stood for. Now, like you said, it’s used by everyone to describe everything. It’s akin to the story of the boy who cried wolf. Are some of those claims true or at least hold some merit? Sure. Are all those claims true and is everyone the evil bastards that just look to hold their heel over the throat of women to keep them suppressed? Of course not. That’s the thing that frustrates me the most about it, and this whole Rapp issue is a perfect example.

When it first came to light people couldn’t hit publish fast enough to get their stories out about how gamergate reeled its ugly head once again. That a great person was defeated in yet another battle. Rapp didn’t help matters much by some of the tweets she sent out. Thinly veiled comments so that people knew what she was talking about, without ever really flat-out saying it. Just enough where people could put two and two together. Part of that is from someone who just lost their job, so I get it. Then Nintendo released their statement and it was almost like the air was released from a balloon you could just see the new threads, posts, tweets start to die off and shrivel up.

The wind from the sails of the movement was ripped away and they were left standing around looking for someone else to blame, anyone else. No-one popped up and two weeks later there is nary a issue anymore other than an employee got fired for doing something that was stated in her contract not to do. Gamergate started with legitimate concerns and issues, yet it’s morphed into turning every little thing into a huge issue. Part of that is the fault of those who started the whole thing by trying to make issues fit what they need them to be, and others are just like you said, trolls. Trolls who have found a convenient banner to hang their hats on and hide behind. It makes it hard to sift through everything and see what is truly important and what is just mindless bickering.

Something you said really stands out to me though. “Depending on which side of the fence you sit on…” Why do people try to pigeonhole themselves to be on “a side”? Why can’t adults act like adults and do what’s best for the industry, treat everyone equally, make and report about great games and have fun. When and why did the industry become so damn confrontational with the very people they need support from?

Nicholas: As I said, and what I think will probably require its own in-depth discussion at some point, it just seems like the industry/community likes to shun itself and pull itself down. Once again, I think it might be the case of the vocal minority, but there is that trend of calling out the community as being offensive and sexist. It’s not to suggest that everyone in the gaming community are civil, but it’s much the same way with any community or society – most people are law-abiding, and there are some rotten apples.

The people who abused Rapp are rotten apples, but that’s not the majority of the community, and nor should we continue to talk like it is. Sexism isn’t an issue in the gaming community, it’s an issue with a select (in the scheme of things) number of idiots. That’s what gets my goat about the fact ‘gamergate’ still exists. There isn’t a sub-community within the gaming community that fly under the banner of ‘gamergaters’, there’s just morons in the group of otherwise nice people who want to spoil it for the rest.

As we approach the end of this week’s article I wanted to ask you two questions. One, do you personally ever see the term ‘gamergate’ becoming a thing of the past, or do you think we’re stuck with seeing it every time someone is a dick online? Second, Rapp said that she wanted this entire situation to be a discussion on making the industry the best and most progressive it could be. Honestly speaking, do you think anything that’s happened out of this is going to change anything about the current ‘state’ of this community/industry that we’re a part of?

Andy: Let me answer the last part of your question first. No, I don’t think anything that happened in regards to this latest incident will change anything within the community we are a part of. I say that for two reasons. One, I think the vast majority of the gaming community either hasn’t heard about gamergate, or flat out don’t care about it. Two, the people that continually bring up gamergate are always going to do so, but they are – like you said – the vocal minority. Expecting the vocal minority to change just won’t happen. There will always be people out there who want to see the world burn, and want to get their moment in the sun so they can say “Look at me look at me.” I’m past caring about that overdone shtick. They’ve cried wolf way too many times.

Do I think this incident will lead to progressive change as a whole? No, not really. Mostly because if people can’t spin something to suit their needs and benefit from it then it falls by the wayside. Look no further than this very incident. Once Nintendo made their press release almost all of the commotion online died. Those who were wanting to spin it into something more than what it was were left looking around trying to figure out what to do. They ended up just walking away and circling waiting for another buzz-worthy event to happen so they could rile people up again.

This whole thing reminds me of something my mom said to me when I was younger. There are three sides to every story. Person A’s side, Person B’s side, and then the truth. That is probably ones of my biggest pet peeves about the gaming industry is how quick we are to jump to conclusions without having all the facts and fully understanding the issues. Rapp was fired from her position and it “has” to be because Nintendo is sexist and is sick of the gamergate stuff. Or, just the opposite but people siding with Nintendo and condemning Rapp’s behavior. For all the posturing and chest thumping that the game industry does about being inclusive, innovative and forward-thinking I can’t help but shake the feeling that the gaming industry is still very much in grade school. It’s pick a side and throw stones and mud at the other side. Scream as loud as you can because that makes you more right. Until we collectively ask for a higher standard and not all the clickbait, circle the wagons and incite the mob type articles then there is no reason for the industry to change.

Tune in next time for the next instalment of Game On or Game Over. If you have any ideas for our next article, feel free to contact Andy or Nicholas on Twitter.

Update: This article incorrectly stated that Rapp moonlighted at IGN. This has been corrected.

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About the author

Nicholas Simonovski

Events and Racing Editor at Stevivor.com. Proud RX8 owner, Strange Music fan and Joe Rogan follower. Living life one cheat meal at a time.

About the author

Andy Gray

From the frozen land of Minnesota, I was the weird kid that begged my parents for an Intellivision instead of an Atari. My love for gaming has only grown since. When I’m not gaming I enjoy ice hockey and training dogs. I’m still trying to get my Elkhound to add to my Gamerscore though, one day this will happen.