salaciousbcrumb
Arcane
- Joined
- Mar 12, 2012
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THE NARRATIVE BEGINS
Scumbags Harass Woman For Working On Mass Effect: Andromeda's Animations
Internet cretins engaged in a harassment campaign against a woman who worked for Electronic Arts this weekend, flooding her social media and various internet profiles with vitriolic, often misogynistic messages. Her sin, it appears, was working on animations for the game Mass Effect: Andromeda.
Allie Rose-Marie Leost, who worked for EA’s motion-capture labs in Vancouver, saw vicious harassment on Twitter and other websites today, most often from people who blamed her for Andromeda’s awkward facial animations. The harassment appears to have been primarily triggered by a vile blog post at Ralph Retort, a right-wing, GamerGate-tied website, that claimed Leost was the lead facial animator on Andromeda. That website also accused her of performing sexual acts to get her job at EA.
Here’s a small sample of the hundreds of messages Leost faced today:
As often happens with these internet witch-hunts, the harassment campaign against Leost was based on false information. BioWare today released a statement clarifying that she was not, in fact, a lead animator on Mass Effect: Andromeda. (There has been some confusion over whether Leost’s social media posts indicated that she was a lead, but given that she worked at EA Labs and not at the Andromeda team’s offices in Montreal, it’s clear that’s not the case.)
BioWare also condemned the abuse with a statement this afternoon:
Leost did not immediately respond to an e-mail seeking comment.
Somehow, the attacks seem completely predictable despite how terrible they are. In the age of President Trump and GamerGate, it all feels straight out of some especially insecure and desperate playbook. Starting with the transformation of a game’s sometimes silly character animations into a conspiracy, and then later a scandal in which the data points waver between incomplete and meaningless, the cycle isn’t new by this point.
PRESIDENT TRUMP
GAMERGATE
DESPERATE
DESPERATE
http://archive.is/WrjpC
BioWare cuts off GamerGate complaint about Mass Effect facial animations
An online harassment campaign directed at a former employee of Electronic Arts, blaming her for the poor animations in Mass Effect: Andromeda, has summoned a defense from BioWare.
This afternoon, the studio published this statement:
t is an oblique rebuttal of this claim, made yesterday by Ethan Ralph, that the "lead facial animator" at Electronic Arts' Montréal studio is a woman who ascended to that role only because of her celebrity as a cosplayer.
BioWare's statement above refutes that she ever was in a position of leadership, or that she is currently employed by the studio. It's unclear what her status with BioWare is or was. We’ve reached out to an Electronic Arts representative to confirm.
Ralph's post yesterday, igniting the harassment campaign, included a screenshot of Allie Rose-Marie Leost's Twitter page in which she identified herself as "lead facial animator for Mass Effect: Andromeda." That claim has since changed.
Mass Effect: Andromeda launches Tuesday on PlayStation 4, Windows PC and Xbox One. The game is available in preview on Electronic Arts' EA Access and Origin Access subscription services.
In the preview window, it has come under intense fire for its poor character animations, particularly in dialogue sequences where facial animations, coupled with sequenced dialogue, give off a robotic vibe emblematic of role-playing games from one or more console generations ago. These deficiencies won’t be patched by or before launch.
Still, given the numerous people involved in the final presentation of character models in a game, from motion capture through to final animation, the accusation of a single person being responsible seems like quite an overreach.
GamerGate, however, has been preoccupied with the conspicuous inclusion of women, minorities or other marginalized groups, whether as characters in a video game story or on a development team. Its many sympathizers openly and vehemently resent the inclusion or publicity of either as an insincere social indoctrination by politically correct forces. Their hostility is typically channeled through social media or Reddit.
Leost is also a cosplayer, though her Facebook page seems to have been taken down in the wake of this controversy. Ralph is well known as a GamerGate advocate through his site, The Ralph Retort.
The journalist Brad Glasgow, who has written extensively about GamerGate, deplored the blaming of Leost for the problems Mass Effect: Andromeda is facing.
This afternoon, the studio published this statement:
t is an oblique rebuttal of this claim, made yesterday by Ethan Ralph, that the "lead facial animator" at Electronic Arts' Montréal studio is a woman who ascended to that role only because of her celebrity as a cosplayer.
BioWare's statement above refutes that she ever was in a position of leadership, or that she is currently employed by the studio. It's unclear what her status with BioWare is or was. We’ve reached out to an Electronic Arts representative to confirm.
Ralph's post yesterday, igniting the harassment campaign, included a screenshot of Allie Rose-Marie Leost's Twitter page in which she identified herself as "lead facial animator for Mass Effect: Andromeda." That claim has since changed.
Mass Effect: Andromeda launches Tuesday on PlayStation 4, Windows PC and Xbox One. The game is available in preview on Electronic Arts' EA Access and Origin Access subscription services.
In the preview window, it has come under intense fire for its poor character animations, particularly in dialogue sequences where facial animations, coupled with sequenced dialogue, give off a robotic vibe emblematic of role-playing games from one or more console generations ago. These deficiencies won’t be patched by or before launch.
Still, given the numerous people involved in the final presentation of character models in a game, from motion capture through to final animation, the accusation of a single person being responsible seems like quite an overreach.
GamerGate, however, has been preoccupied with the conspicuous inclusion of women, minorities or other marginalized groups, whether as characters in a video game story or on a development team. Its many sympathizers openly and vehemently resent the inclusion or publicity of either as an insincere social indoctrination by politically correct forces. Their hostility is typically channeled through social media or Reddit.
Leost is also a cosplayer, though her Facebook page seems to have been taken down in the wake of this controversy. Ralph is well known as a GamerGate advocate through his site, The Ralph Retort.
The journalist Brad Glasgow, who has written extensively about GamerGate, deplored the blaming of Leost for the problems Mass Effect: Andromeda is facing.
More deflection from the usual suspects, what are they trying to do here make their readers pity buy the game to spite Gamergate? Make a political statement by buying a piece of shit for 60 bucks, here look I just set fire to my money that will show those Gamergate misogynists. The best thing right now marketers at EA and Bioware can do is get Trump to slag it off on twitter. That way the mainstream media will jump on it and champion this piece of shit and millions of SJW leftards will go out and buy the game.
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