Jade Raymond wants to be left alone.

[Margalis]

To say that the comic is mocking geeks and her media portrayal is absurd. She has never been portrayed as an airhead in the media.

If the comic was simply geeks masturbating to her then that logic might go somewhere, that would be an indictment of them. As it is she is being portrayed as a dumb slut.

The sexism in this thread is amazing. She is a "figurehead." Why? Even though she can talk intelligently about her game and is articulate she is a "figurehead" because - she is good looking! That's it, that's the logic? LOL.

Jealousy is a big part of it. Here is a girl who is out of the league of most pathetic geeks as well as much more accomplished and talented. And yes that includes many posters in this thread. Sucks that a dumb pretty girl is owning you in life?

Also when was the last time Gabe Newell was discredited for being overweight? Do you know what "discredited" means? Can you please point to the threads where people say Newell is not qualified for his position because he is fat?

Commenting about someone's appearance is very different from saying that their appearance makes them unqualified for their work.

[bhodi]

I don't get why we can't simply file this under creative usage of rule #34 of the internet.

Some guy did a comic for a cheap laugh while pretty much sprinting over the line of decency. Like that's never been done before.

[stray]

Well, now that we're talkin', I've been looking for an excuse to say that web comics really suck.

[Strazos]

Wait, there's a nekkid one? 

[Samwise]

Can you please point to the threads where people say Newell is not qualified for his position because he is fat?

Gabe Newell is not qualified for his position because he is fat.

There, I just said it.  And clearly I am representative of TEH CULTOOR at large.   

(edit) Here is a link to people who agree with me.

[schild]

I'm confused when did Jade become "not qualified" to be a producer. I'm sure she's qualified.

But this has absolutely no bearing on using looks to promote a fucking videogame. It would've made more sense to pay Kristen Bell a million bucks. And they probably would have sold more copies.

[Margalis]

I'm confused when did Jade become "not qualified" to be a producer. I'm sure she's qualified.

The implication of "figurehead" is that she isn't qualified and doesn't even do real work. You yourself said she wasn't a "real developer."

(edit) Here is a link to people who agree with me.

Um no, epic fail. Look up what "discredited" means.  I didn't ask for people who thought he was fat or made fun of him. I asked for threads where people said he was unqualified because he was fat. Lrn2rd.

[schild]

Eh? I never called her a figurehead. I called her the face of the game. I also said she wasn't a programmer, artist, or designer. She is a producer. A producer is none of those previous things. And I never said she doesn't do real work either.

You're confusing me, man.

[Margalis]

You weren't the one who called her that. It was Ookii IIRC. (Or Samwise, they are largely interchangeable in this thread)

I do have to say that the C&D is kind of lame, not really the right approach even if it legal. Ignoring it would really be the best approach. Either that or Jade personally posting and saying "I made a hit game and you work at Wendys, bite me."

[Samwise]

I asked for threads where people said he was unqualified because he was fat.

From the first page of Google results:

"Gabe Newell is such a fat lazy bastard."

"reminds me of old manager who got fired for being (fat, lazy, greasy. ..."

"Gabe Newell is a fat piece of garbage that couldnt hold his own in the console market."

"ahahahahaha valve is a bunch of fat lazy bastards"

"Maybe all such hatred enables him to consume some fat? lol gabe newell is fat lol"

"why did he get voted down. the guy is fat. very fat."

"that slob of an excuse for a human being mr Newell can sit on his fat ass, ..."

No, nobody at all seems to be linking weight with qualifications.  No sir.

Again: lol Internet.

[Aez]

I asked for threads where people said he was unqualified because he was fat.

From the first page of Google results:

"Gabe Newell is such a fat lazy bastard."

"reminds me of old manager who got fired for being (fat, lazy, greasy. ..."

"Gabe Newell is a fat piece of garbage that couldnt hold his own in the console market."

"ahahahahaha valve is a bunch of fat lazy bastards"

"Maybe all such hatred enables him to consume some fat? lol gabe newell is fat lol"

"why did he get voted down. the guy is fat. very fat."

"that slob of an excuse for a human being mr Newell can sit on his fat ass, ..."

No, nobody at all seems to be linking weight with qualifications.  No sir.

Again: lol Internet.

Good stuff.

[schild]

On gametrailers today.



Please don't show anybody the comic. We need her in the public eye more. MORE. MOOOOOOOOOAR.

[stray]

That is pretty silly, I admit.

[Margalis]

Are you seriously incapable of reading? I asked for threads where people said he was unqualified because he was fat. Is that really a difficult concept?

"Gabe Newell is such a fat lazy bastard."

This does not say he is unqualified, or if it is implying that it is because of the laziness, not the fatness.

"reminds me of old manager who got fired for being (fat, lazy, greasy. ..."

Again this does not say that being fat disqualifies him.

"Gabe Newell is a fat piece of garbage that couldnt hold his own in the console market."

This is mean but again it doesn't say that he failed in the market *because* he was fat. It's simply a mean personal comment.

"ahahahahaha valve is a bunch of fat lazy bastards"

Again I don't see any comment about qualifications here except for laziness.

All your quotes are similar.

No, nobody at all seems to be linking weight with qualifications.  No sir.

You've yet to provide a single quote that gives what I asked for. Yes, plenty of people called him fat. But not a single quote of yours says he is unqualified *because* he is fat. The closest you got is laziness, but the context there is his complaints about console programming being hard.

Yes, people on the internet can be mean. No, that is not some sort of amazing revelation. I didn't ask for quotes where people said he was fat, I asked for quotes where people said he was unqualified because of his fatness. You didn't provide a single one.

This is not rocket science.

Ookii said that Jade Raymond was a figurehead (IE contributes nothing internally) *because* she was good looking. I've yet to see you quote someone saying that Newell is a bad developer or a non-developer *because* he is fat.

Edit: "Linking" means  not just that two concepts appear in the same sentence but that the are related. Newell is fat so of course people pick on him for it, but I still have yet to see ANYONE say that the guy is a bad developer because he is fat.

Edit2: That's my final word on this subject. I'm not interested in talking to people who can't read and understand basic English. You guys continue raging about how unfair it is that there are people in life more successful than you in every possible way.

[Samwise]

Yes, people on the internet can be mean.

I'm glad I was able to help you reach this breakthrough.   

[UnSub]

Here's the key point I haven't seen anyone make:

This isn't Jade Raymond's fault, but she's the one who has to deal with it. If you want to place the blame somewhere (cause it's fun!) then it's gaming journalism that deserves the most attention.

No-one knows who anyone is on a game without game journalists. Assassin's Creed gets announced and someone sees that the producer is an attractive woman. So they talk to her, she gives the presentation, whatever. But then more male journalists want to talk to the pretty woman. As Lum shows even vaguely respectable gaming sites start to pseudo-stalk her. To some extent, I'm sure that Ms Raymond is aware of what is going on, but for a whole host of reasons - she wants Assassin's Creed to be a success, doesn't want to rock the boat, thinks she can ignore it, whatever - neither she nor Ubisoft actively pull the plug on such activities (although perhaps some sites get put on a list and not spoken to again).

Assassin's Creed comes out to reasonable reviews and I believe is selling okay.

Then David Cheung draws the special comic. Someone on SA links it. Someone at Ubisoft sees it on SA (more than likely not Ms Raymond) and sets gears in motion that sees the lawyers come in. Numerous games journalists are attracted by the noise a cease and desist letter about something as juicy as naughty comic. Suddenly the story has legs far beyond SA where no-one would care or be listened to.

And the fallout is all on Ms Raymond. Whether Assassin's Creed is successful or not, what Jade will be remembered for is being pretty and appearing as a slut in a comic. It's the kind of bad joke that follows one around for the rest of their career if they stay in the same field. If she produces another game, the doors are open for copycat comics to piggyback on this controversy. She may become too 'hot' to be used as a producer on another game, because the journalists will again focus on her and not the lead dev. Or the whole incident may have soured her on working on products for an audience of male gamers who appear to have an odd stalk / hate relationship with her image.

f13.net love to rag on game journalism whenever possible; along comes a story that puts game journalism front and centre as the problem and everyone gets fixated on how the pretty girl and Ubisoft must be to blame for starting it.

[schild]

Unsub, Gaming journalism didn't crack this story.

Kotaku did via NeoGAF.

Wake me up when either of them are considered journalism. Also, once something hits SA or /b/, it's fucking everywhere. It's a small cyberspace we live in.

Games journalism isn't to blame for this one.

Now, as for focusing on her instead of the lead dev, most journalists will take an interview with whoever they can get. There's no question UBISoft has been pushing the pretty face on them. Why interview the designer when you can interview this sweet looking chick? Most journos won't turn that down because she is, after all, the producer. And an interview is an interview.

Even though game interviews suck ass.

[Margalis]

...

[Joey]

I said I wouldn't post in this topic again, but I will on a different subject: that Lum page rules.

"Restraining orders may be needed"? The fuck? It may be a cliche but some people really need to get laid.

His shot at the Joystiq article was kinda unfair, not that I'm pro-Joystiq or anything.  He only reprinted half of the article's first paragraph which was about the character Jade from Ubisoft's "Beyond Good and Evil".  If you check out the whole article, you'll notice that there's really nothing in it that's distasteful towards Jade Raymond.

I've been kinda surprised at how much I've agreed with Schild on this whole affair.  Sure, gaming "journalists" have played a part of blowing this whole thing up, but Ubisoft had the largest part of anybody.  They definitely did a good job of making her actual image as important as any screenshots or videos of Assassin's Creed.  That AC team pic speaks VOLUMES.

And since when does an industry newbie move into such a predominant position of a huge company's AAA title?  I'm not saying that Jade isn't qualified, but damn...  something sure seems a little odd about all of it, if in fact, her looks has nothing to do with it.

[UnSub]

Unsub, Gaming journalism didn't crack this story.

Kotaku did via NeoGAF.

Wake me up when either of them are considered journalism. Also, once something hits SA or /b/, it's fucking everywhere. It's a small cyberspace we live in.

Games journalism isn't to blame for this one.

Now, as for focusing on her instead of the lead dev, most journalists will take an interview with whoever they can get. There's no question UBISoft has been pushing the pretty face on them. Why interview the designer when you can interview this sweet looking chick? Most journos won't turn that down because she is, after all, the producer. And an interview is an interview.

Even though game interviews suck ass.

SA or 4chan don't rule the internet. Lots of people don't go there who do go to Kotaku or Joystiq or Destructoid because they don't want the particular kind of idiotic perversion that going to SA provides. The links through those sites and similar helped make Jade Raymond into a recognised name; the same sites helped make a lot of people aware about the comic that tore her down. Other sites picked it up off the back of that.

I don't care that the journalists chose to interview Jade over Patrice. It's the form those interviews took on publication that concerns me. And if Patrice wanted the interview, he'd have got them, because as you say, the journalist would take what they can get. From my brief skim of Patrice's interviews, I think he wasn't happy with the amount of attention she got, but it meant he didn't have to deal the "PR bullshit" either so he might have been happy for someone else to do that job.

Maybe 'journalism' was too strong a term in the strictest sense, but it isn't far off. It's not a high quality version of journalism, sure, but it is what passes for entertainment journalism / commentary. A bit of news gets reported and commented on superficially, which puts gaming journalism in the same place as the entertainment journalism in Entertainment Weekly. No-one's going to win a Pulitzer off the back of it, but it still counts as part of the profession.

So yeah, this is another black eye for gaming journalism such as it is, who started the fire and got to watch as things burned down as a result.

Also schild, please pick a story and stick to it: is it Jade's fault for being the relatively unqualified glory hog public face of AC, or is it's Ubisoft's?

Call me crazy, but I want people who actually worked on the game talking about THEIR game and not the person who made sure the right build was on the FTP dump and the artists had the right assets in the right folders. Look, I'm all for good producers and I'm friends with a good number of them. They're very good at their job. But I've never known a single one of them to take any undue credit. You have to be SOMEWHAT humble to be a producer. But it doesn't even matter. She used her hotness to become the most important person on that team in the eye of the public. That's epic failure if ever I've seen a case.

[UnSub]

Joey, that team shot was announced previously in this thread as a set-up photo for a magazine, not an official team shot for Assassin's Creed.

[Megrim]

Which nevertheless implies that the photo was arranged, selected and approved for-use by Ubisoft after it was taken. In all fairness, the front row should have been composed of more than just a single person, right?

[Margalis]

I edited out my comment above because I coulldn't find the link to the Joystiq piece and I couldn't really tell what was in the original piece and what was commentary by Lum. That said, the opening part about Jade is clearly double-entendre. What next, you'll try to convince me that "Pussy Galore" was a purely innocent name chosen entirely at random? You can't engage in obvious double-entendre then say "just kidding!!!!"

What did Jade from Beyond Good and Evil have to do with the piece. Nothing. The only point was to make a joke about how hot Jade is.

[Samwise]

What next, you'll try to convince me that "Pussy Galore" was a purely innocent name chosen entirely at random?

Just because those two words appear in the same name does not mean that they are linked to each other.   

You need some sort of connecting word in there for that.  Learn to English.

[Joey]

What did Jade from Beyond Good and Evil have to do with the piece. Nothing. The only point was to make a joke about how hot Jade is.

I'm not going to say that there's definitely no double-entendre there, but the piece could also be taken differently; with there just being a play on Ubisoft's "Jade" character against Ubisoft's "Jade" employee.

Aww hell, I don't know... 

(Maybe Jade from Beyond Good and Evil should be pissed as well.)  *shrugs*

[Roac]

Lawyer asshole takes a shot at internet asshole.  Rest of the internet assholes are split between the joy of eating one of their own, or eviscerating a lawyer.

[Furiously]

All I find myself thinking is people watched Baywatch for Pam Anderson's acting right....

[Megrim]

All I find myself thinking is people watched Baywatch for Pam Anderson's acting right....

Why, yes! They were a marvellously talented pair of actors, weren't they?

[geldonyetich2]

Ubisoft should stay the course and the rest of game development can follow.  We could have a pretty girl standing in the foreground of every development team's pictures.  They'd be a mandatory feature of any game, like DirectX compatibility or a collectible figurine.  "Richard Garriott's Tabula Rasa" won't sell nearly as well as "Claudia Schiffer's Tabula Rasa."  If they want to improve the ratings of the games they represent, they're going to have to compete with each other in wholesome events such as beauty pageants, mud wrestling, and kissing booths.  We'd better move fast, or Japan will beat us to the punch with their Zelda Girl versus Solid Snake Girl slapfight competition.

 

...

 

[Azazel]

This thread is highly amusing.

Though, I wonder if Ubisoft orchestrated the whole thing? Paid that guy to draw the webcomic, crated a goon account (or just ised one of their own staffers' one to post the linky..

Then sent the C&D to Lowtax, knowing it'd soon be all over the internets, and geeks everywhere would be talking about Jade and Ass Creed.




I have to admit, though. The game "journalism" industry and Ubi really are both pushing "pretty girl makes game" down our fucking throats a little too much. She's complicit as well, insofar as she could easily have told Ubi "heys please to not be making big fuss and pics about me quite so overdone?"

That ad schildy posted a few posts up illustrates it ferpectly.

[Mosesandstick]

We keep arguing over whether things are Jade's or Ubisoft's fault on their side, how are we supposed to know? The fact is whether due to media or Jade's team or someone at ubisoft (or all of them) there was a 'slightly' disproportionate amount of coverage given to jade instead of the game.. or the rest of the team.

I'm in the firm opinion that the comic could not be considered 'wrong'. I believe Margalis commented that the comic was definitely supposed to be degrading due to her being portrayed as a bimbo. I believe that possibly the comic is done that way to show what the male impression of a girl talking about games is (lol boobies?). Then again it might not be, the guy who drew the comic could have wanted something obscene, but this is why we have freedom of expression and nonsense like that. We don't know whether the comic is some form of social commentary or just a guy mocking an attractive woman, maybe we should ask the artist?

In terms of gaming media and the industry, everyone needs to grow up. It was obvious from the get go that there was a stupid amount of focus on Jade, someone over at Ubisoft should have tried to rein in the press. I don't know how hard this is or whether its even possible, but the idea of having someone else give commentary on the game might gave helped (then again this might not have been feasible, Ubi Montreal is a mainly French speaking team I believe). Or having better photos taken would've been nice too.

No one can expect the media on the internet to act 'maturely', there is a reason why they're on the internet. Most of the sites that have gone on and on about this whole 'OOO lookie Jade pretty' thing are... crap. I still think at the end of day, Jade personally suffers whilst everyone buys Assassin's Creed, but blaming the comic author and all the geeks that inhabit the internet for this 'situation' would be naive.

[Azazel]

Jade suffers? Jade "suffers" maybe. Who gives a rats ass if a bunch of randoms on the internet are talking about her. It's not like we're going to fuck her, or even ever meet her.

This is the internet. In three weeks (let alone 6 months) noone will care anymore and it'll be forgotten. it's a blip on the radar, and it's working wonders for the Ass Creed publicity machine.

[Ironwood]

Wait, wait, wait.  Hold on.

Who's getting the coffee's in ?

[Velorath]

I don't get why we can't simply file this under creative usage of rule #34 of the internet.

Some guy did a comic for a cheap laugh while pretty much sprinting over the line of decency. Like that's never been done before.

The comic itself doesn't bother me so much as the people who are arguing that she somehow deserved it.

[Kitsune]

Holy crap, people.  The guy drew a webcomic using the element of exaggerated parody to make a claim that Ubisoft was using an attractive woman to sell a game.  I don't think anyone can debate that Ubisoft has been very liberally distributing images of the game's female producer where most producers see the light of day once or twice a year, save the few exceptions like Carmack and Newell.  Even if 'the picture' wasn't an official Ubisoft picture, how was the comic's artist to know that?  If you see a picture of a development team all posing together, it's a pretty natural assumption to make that it's a corporate PR shot, and whomever arranged the shot was as subtle as a sledgehammer about singling her out.

Someone at Ubisoft has unquestionably sent her out to be the public face of the game far in excess of the exposure that most producers receive.  I find it likely that in an industry that didn't find it tasteless to use 'booth babes', her looks were a factor in that decision.  The game companies have proven an eagerness to dangle women as bait in front of their customers in the past, so why not now?

I blame Ubisoft for this, it only perpetuates the 'hurr hurr, gamers are pizza-faced basement-dwellers who do anything for the forbidden touch of a woman' image that denigrates both the gamers and the women.  The guy who drew the comic was in poor taste, but this is the Internet and it's full of poor taste, so I don't care but so much.

The only party in all of this fuck-up who gets my sympathy is Ms. Raymond.  While any reasonably observant person must have known that she was being used to put a pretty face on the game, it would be career-ending to tell the Ubisoft higher-ups to fuck themselves.  She had little option other than making all of the appearances and wound up covered in cartoon cum for it.