Subnautica sound designer fired over resetera screeching

So after much twitter screeching, tearing of hair, and gnashing of teeth the window licking paragons of virtue and all things just and noble over at resetera claimed Subnautica's sound designer's scalp (i.e. got him fired):

http://archive.fo/m8BMG

I recently purchased the game and I think it's a GotY material for a number of reasons; sadly one of those reasons related to the sound design.

The muted aquatic acoustics, combined with the bellowing echoes of Reefbacks' calls, or the terrifying "shit your pants" roar of a reaper leviathan from somewhere in the surrounding blackness all mesh so perfectly with the bioluminescent / Lovecraftian alien flora and fauna aesthetic while the minimalist Autechre-esque soundtrack blurs the boundary of the synthetic and organic.

I have no idea whether I agree with whatever this guy may or may not have said nor do I care. He's got skills and an ear for ambience and resetera are a bunch of hysterical SJW useful idiots.

In current year, I apparently need to resume check the politics of the best boy or sound designer of my preferred media.

**** these absolute morons.

It's almost as if people should be allowed to enjoy shit.

WTF does "resetera" mean? Is that like a new-age "et cetera"?

Or is this another online forum nonsense thing that is going to get blown waaaaaaaaaaaaay out of proportion?

I've got this game but still haven't played, but it looks and...sounds great!

That forum is cancer.

@mrbojangles25: it's a new forum, it's pretty much NeoGAF 2.0

@FireEmblem_Man: ah. So not important, yet somehow determining the fate of people. Got it.

Don't say things you can't take back. Cancer is no where near as bad.

True.

1. Circle jerk the same opinions over and over.

2. Anything outside of that will get frivolous warning made up from magic clouds to prevent any debate against it.

3. SJW are have free reign to be the most Nazi like egregious twats in the universe (as long as it politically coincides)

It's a not a discussion forum, it's a political rally for tampons. The great irony is, for all the gamergate bomb threat right-wing nut jobs who've lowered gaming and disrespect the womans, a place like V is far more open minded, far more about freedom of speech and far more emotionally stable and far less likely to go on spurious witch-hunts, which at this point, seems to be all that Resetera is know for.

Might lead to better discussion if we knew what was said and not just a link to a 21 page thread refresh of another unlinked thread. Is this it?

That can't be all, can it?

@asylumni: You could also read from page 1 of the thread of morons?

Resetera members are foaming at the mouth SA members or rejects.

Imagine a world where even $10 can't save you?

100% Cancer.

@Dasein808: Where? I got about halfway down the page and that's all I found aside from reactions to the thread and non-specified comments. If you have the info, why not just post it instead of sending people on scavenger hunts?

You will get fired from any job if you express homophobic or racist views, especially publicly. And that's a good thing. People can be bigots in their own homes. But there is no room for that shit in the workplace, and your employer especially doesn't want to see that shit on Twitter where it can tarnish their brand.

WTF is that supposed to mean? I'm not reading a whole thread to find out what this sound designer posted that got everyone in an uproar.

@UssjTrunks: Show me where this person did this.

Of course, you'll just criticize him in the name of the goon tard mind.

**** off, goon.

@UssjTrunks: what homophobic or racial slur did the sound designer posted? A video of Paul Joseph Watson? That hardly judges someone character but their political beliefs! I don't like PJW or Info Wars, but getting someone fired for different opinions is disgusting.

I can't find what the developer has said according to these people.

Anyway those forums are not about thinking or sharing ideas. If you want to be able to think, or have any form of discussion, you have to risk being offensive. Something users of Ne... Resetera and Vice and Kotaku and Polygon don't understand. You have to be able to test and present ideas that others may disagree with. You have to be able to wonder why.

Otherwise you get an echochamber and those are very dangerous as we see right here.

In a conversation, doesn't even need to be a discussion, it is of the essence that you listen. You don't just ban or get rid of, you listen to what the other person is trying to say. If you don't listen to their points, especially if you disagree with them, you're never going to learn anything. Because all you're doing then is just reaffirming your own beliefs.

They can 'talk' about politics or the meaning of transgender but they will never walk away a better person who has learned anything because of their drakonian approach to eliminating discussion.

And I'll never get over this part. It's censorship country there, right? And then you see posts like this: "Apparently it's a dude with an avatar of a woman for... some reason. That actually makes more sense." that are sexist, which you would think they would also jump on real fast as they do with things like 'thread whining'. But those types of posts are fine according to the moderation team as long as they are against men, the oppressors. XD Aside from -or because of- being an echochamber they have this twisted (in their case a sexist) view of what is allowed or what is right. But don't ever try and expose it because, then you're out. It's not a fair discussion, in other words it's not a forum looking for truth.

TLDR: If you want a safe space, don't pretend to allow/have discussions or to together talk about politics/the idea of anything (like gender).

They are exactly not the place for any intelligent debate. Which is why how these spaces tend to do not much else but discuss these things is to me a curious idea. I would wager that such high levels of moderation on words while constantly having these talks means that the forum is not trying to be a safe space, but is rather trying to steer the 'discussion' in exactly one way: their 'undiscussed' way.

Not that I care that much. To me, people who frequent such boards are more likely to be braindead by now. You learn more from System Wars than such a board. But I would prefer if people here stayed away from such places. They are toxic to the mind.

Yes I would argue a place like resetera should not have discussion or should not be frequented by people let alone developers. I am risking offending you right now with this idea, and you can reply to it and I will listen to what you have to say about it. And that's how people can talk and learn. I would much rather have these developers move to System Wars, as weird as that may sound, because people can talk more freely here.

(Thumbs up to the mods and regulations here btw, for not killing the sharing of ideas left and right with the hammer.)

@KungfuKitten: pretty much the point of Dr. Jordan Peterson's interview by Cathy Newman. To have true free speech, you have to take a risk on being offensive.

@asylumni: Hello, many "marginalized:" LGBTQWTFBBQ members get in an "uproar" over anything they think the media will broadcast.

Especially if it makes them the "victim."

Isn't that the place where one of SW biggest hypocrites (char) resides???

No, I really don't know what you mean. I get "PG.1 to etc." and I don't want to read 21 pages of drivel to find out what set this off. I have no idea what "retarded SA inspired ban logs" are or even what SA stands for. I never frequented Neogaf and I don't read ResetEra. All I'm looking for is context.

This I know. But just because there are people that like to play the victim, it doesn't mean there aren't assholes out there. I don't know a single person in this whole thing and have no information to make any kind of decision or even any meaningful discussion about this.

Not everyone's bad on era though.

What's his nickname there?

We have racism at work, too. Don't worry, it's funny racism.

Anyway, resetera. Bin it.

Don't know as I don't go there, but char-o-crite would be a great one for him lol

I don't know who Jordan Peterson is but he sounds like a good person someone can talk to.

Social media has made the world a more fucked up place. I miss the days where you could just buy a game and enjoy it without having to hear about bullshit like this. The person is a good sound designer and that is all I care about. I don't give 2 fucks about their views and opinions. I care about the quality of their work. That person got fired over some bullshit post and that is ridiculous. People are going to be racist, prejudice, biased,... whatever. Not everybody is going to get along and share the same views. People need to just suck it up instead of getting so offended all the time. So much sensitivity, bandwagon jumping, pitch fork action, and SJW bullshit. People need to chill.

The game is getting review bombed on Steam nearly all of the negatives are of people pissed off that the devs caved in to SJWs and fired the person that made the best part of their game. What a shame I was thinking about getting this as well.

You can still buy the game though.

Anyway, if I would stop supporting companies/devs that have views I don't support I wouldn't be buying anything.

@asylumni said:

Might lead to better discussion if we knew what was said and not just a link to a 21 page thread refresh of another unlinked thread. Is this it?

That can't be all, can it?

Sure seems like that is it near as I can tell, and that is truly pathetic if that is the case.

So... anyone knows why he was fired?

@Litchie: He offended the uselessocracy.

@knight-k: Well of course, most music artist I listen to are left leaning but I'm not gonna start chucking my CDs out just because I disagree with some of there political views. But there's a limit and its the principle that counts as well. These devs caved in to a vocal minority of professional victims and fired the person responsible for one of the best parts if not the best part of their game. All they did was sabotage themselves and gave more than a mile to the SJWs. If they cave in like this whats to say they won't do something this again in the future. What if these folks try to get a lead artist or programmer fired just because they voted Republican in 2008 or simply just disagreed on a politically correct ideology despite agreeing with nearly everything else.

I don't know what they did, but I'm sure the company had a good reason to fire them. No company wants to be associated with homophobia/transphobia. If it was something internal, then likewise, no company wants a toxic workplace.

This.

And the fact that there is more intelligent, meaningful in-depth discussion of video games in any given hour at Resetera than any given year on this forum is a timely reminder that the people who don't feel welcome at Resetera make it a better place through their absence.

Yeah, but how? I don't get why we should have opinions here and there when no one knows what the hell is going on.

There is no reason to debate gender. What someone identifies as is irrelevant to you.

If you want to engage in a scientific debate, then that's fair. But most "debates" about gender revolve around people not knowing the difference between gender and sex (which immediately takes the "scientific" out of it as one party is willfully ignorant to science).

There is a lengthy, meaningful discussion about all of this on Resetera that allows for diverse viewpoints. Both its existence and substance serve as a counterargument to what you are claiming here.

Kotaku has most of the details in their article. The characterization that it was Resetera users who got this guy fired is false, though they may have helped put the guy on the radar of his employers. Most places of employment have codes of conduct that their employees are expected to follow, especially when acting in a way that connects their job to their conduct. This particular user used the same Twitter account to identify himself as working for the company that he did for making the statements in question:

As of February 2, according to his Twitter feed, Chylinski had been working on a Subnautica expansion. Today he tweeted “So. I just got fired…” Game director Charlie Cleveland confirmed that Chylinski is no longer with developer Unknown Worlds, telling Kotaku, “Over the weekend we discovered that one of our team members had made many hateful statements online that are against our company values. After discussing the matter with him, we decided to stop working with him immediately.”

Gamespot (the site) suicided itself. At one point it was the most active forum around with extensive gaming discussion. Your argument is deeply flawed and trying to paint it up as "we are intellectual more so than", just comes across as pretentious claptrap. A self-back pat at it's worst.

Ironically, had you replaced the context of this post with the sites swapped around, you probably would get moderated Resetera for insulting the user-base along with predictable dog-piliing, with no chance at all to reply back.

Thankfully you can express your viewpoint without much fear here, it's one of the advantages of a dead forum with a reasonable rule-set that isn't harbinger of nut-cases.

Multiple users given out warnings and the thread locked down.

Good example.

@uninspiredcup:

Yes, I agree that a moderated thread with 1250+ posts that is locked when things get too inflammatory is a good example of how to run a discussion thread about issues such as these. I think that our different responses to this indicates that Resetera is a better fit for me than it is for you, which is fine.

Part of the reason that this board is dead in the first place is a lack of moderation - not of the racist/sexist variety so much as the ceaseless trolling that makes discussion difficult so often. I dare say, however, that if you expressed viewpoints like the fired employee in question, you'd discover quite quickly that there are limits to what can be posted here, too.

Twu.

Thanks for shining some light. I've no idea exactly what he said (except what's in the Kotaku article, and those things aren't good things to say), but he apparently said several things that the company tells their employees not to do. And they talked with him about it before firing him. So, to me, it sounds like he was fired with a good reason. He should probably be more careful next time he's got a job at a studio with rules.

Happy to do so. I'm always surprised that employee codes of conduct aren't more widely known about and are often left out of the conversation when something like this happens. Representing the company in an appropriate way is standard operating procedure in most workplaces, and is a mandatory part of both accepting employment and maintaining it. If this guy hadn't connected his work to his rhetoric, he'd still have a job today.

I think the big issue is the slider tweet, the rest of what he posted was personal opinion and clearly unrelated to the game or his employment, thus firing him for holding different opinions held and expressed in a personal capacity wouldn't stand up anywhere, the slider tweet that directly addresses the game and the fact he was known to be working on the game is the issue as now you've potentially brought the company into disrepute.

@kjtc1979: I'm reading through it, it'll take a while. There are things people can say on the forum, right? People can disagree with each other to some degree without getting banned immediately. And that's good. But can they go in-depth without getting in trouble if their views don't align with the mods?

I see astroglide got banned for trying to present an opinion that could have simply been discussed instead of temporarily silencing him. He got a temp ban for derailing (don't know how as the original post was about alt-right being a bad thing, and he keeps talking about politics like most other people in that thread) and a 'both sides are the same' type of argument, which by the way can be a completely valid argument to make in a discussion. For example women and men can be very much the same on many fronts. Someone else on the very same page also made a 'both sides are the same' type of argument (nekkid) and curiously he didn't get a ban.

FtheQueen is trying to protect astroglides opinion there saying he is just trying to learn through talking about these things but instead they keep misconstruing his posts. The other posters who seem to have smelled blood and he is now gone.

Curious why it's not allowed to complain about a thread. I don't see anything wrong with that either but OK. Someone said he's "just there for the video games" which is seen as a complaint by the original poster, and the aptly named Ban Puncher tries to protect that opinion but fails as well as he got a warning.

Someone states Japanese games should then not be bought because of their (so that's generally speaking obviously) stance on women. Which is considered a 'whataboutism' but is of course on topic and still contributing to the discussion. He gets a warning for 'Concern Trolling' which I have no idea what that means but he obviously didn't do anything wrong there. Turin Turambar rightfully so tries to defend that opinion but again... this is getting tiresome, nobody does anything with that and he got a warning.

Maybe I'm wrong about the following, I obviously don't have an account there. But this is what it looks like to me.

Inconsistent overactive moderation ignoring any argumentation resulting in a tame (except against people they ban) and lopsided forum. If you want to discuss alt right and the issue of developers having a political view that is undesirable, then let people say what they think about it without making them scared to. I wouldn't post anything of value there because it's a complete minefield. You can speak your mind in one thread and suddenly get an unexpected 3 day ban, no wrong intentions, contributing to the discussion, instead of them arguing with you. If I took one popular side that people present in a thread there and decided to challenge that idea for the sake of testing it, I'm afraid I would immediately get destroyed by moderators and not arguments. I've never seen so many moderations in a topic before. And most of the posts that people dare write are as mild as milk. Hardly any post challenges anything. The mods seem to have opinions on political and social views that they are letting influence their job of providing a base for discussion.

e.g. GamerGate is seen as a hate movement, and being associated with it in any way is seen as an accusation. Which I can agree with to a point. There were bad people part of that movement doing bad things. I think we can all agree with that. There were also some friendly folks from GG who made for some good discussions on YT about journalism and developers, the relationship between them and what should be disclosed to the outside world. That part is maybe a little tougher to acknowledge for some people but the discussions are there and I think some good things came from those discussions. Those two parts of that movement are hard to marry, right? They're two very different parts of that same movement yet because of all the bad things, the good things get drowned out. That happens with other movements, like feminism, just the same. They're not the same movements but they share similarities in that regard. Not to the same degree I'm not arguing that. But there is good and there is bad to those movements, and the good bits get drowned out for many people, yet I don't think that if I were to protect the good bits of GG on resetera they would let me get away with that.

I've read the OP and thread title a few times now... and I can't decipher what it means. This new age hipster language had me confused.

So what exactly got him/her fired which messages that are reactions on what?

Tried to read it for a while still couldn't figure it out. Just a bunch of upset people being upset it seems.

What is going on?