My Thought’s on the Rapp Situation
Alison Rapp Problem Employee
Here’s my opinion on the Alison Rapp situation: Alison Rapp was a problem employee. I expect Nintendo had all their legal ducks in a row when they fired her. I suspect it would have happened eventually, but her encounters with the public as the censorship debate over… um, every Treehouse localized game counting out from now on? … probably was a catalyst. Still, Nintendo had a few problems with Rapp previously, as evidenced by her own words.
Then of course there’s Nintendo’s official statement on the matter:
I had problems with Rapp. I posted some complaints about her statements about videogames. ( See here for those statements: https://archive.is/OEblq ) But then, I haven’t run into a Treehouse employee yet that I liked.
I also mocked her on Twitter, and after her radical view on child pornography and child sexual agency made it out to the public I talked about them. Partly because I knew they were going to be controversial, partly because I didn’t agree with them and partly because they became news. I also had to bring them up when the odious Patrick Klepek decided to misrepresent them in his article “The Ugly New Front In The Neverending Video Game Culture War.” An article that did nothing helpful for Rapp’s cause, but ramped up the clicks to Kotaku and was a way for him to attack some of Kotaku’s relentless and implacable enemies.
(Yeah, I don’t think Klepek cared about Rapp, I think he saw this as ammo for his own goals.)
I felt she was a mean, obnoxious person who parroted hateful political talking points popular with the West Coast SocJus crowd. However, if she was being mean to Nintendo fans for any reason when they interacted with her politely on twitter, I’d have had a problem with her.
I had no idea she was camming until after she was fired, and never brought it up until after that event. Which brings us to the second part of this silly blog post.
Nintendo Problem Company
I think SocJus have radically misunderstood Nintendo lately. Nintendo, and specifically Nintendo of America, has normally been one of the most socially conservative companies in American gaming. Historically, they have fought tooth and nail against console games for grown ups.
http://www.atariarchives.org/cfn/09/09/02/0396.php
Nintendo wants to make games that are acceptable to overprotective parents and little kids. In order to remain competitive, they've gone through periods where they've loosened up on censorship, but come on, Nintendo is censoring sexy characters in their games _now_ because they want the socially conservative parents with kids market. Sure, them getting praise from sex-negative feminist game journalists is icing on the cake, but keeping their traditional, socially conservative base happy is the cake. If Nintendo had gotten what they wanted back in the Super Nintendo days, you’d never have seen games like Grand Theft Auto, Resident Evil, Dead or Alive or Senran Kagura on any consoles ever. They would be banned by law.
Great news for them, because they wouldn't have to compete in a market they don’t want and they’d prefer didn't exist rather than cut into their sales.
They are the opposite of edgey.
Where does “GamerGate” fit into all this?
The constant, depressingly censored localizations of Japanese import games when they cross the pacific is a bad joke. It’s such a bad joke that no one is laughing at, and people who cared about those games are quite angry about it. (I decided to give up on Nintendo as a lost cause and focus on, well, I guess Sony and PC as the best alternatives. Others took to the #TorrentialDownpour hashtag, which I've made some minimal contributions to.)
Did you seriously think that the above company was going to do all this inane, garbage censorship and then be OK with an employee having a risqué side job?
Here’s my guess about the seeming contradiction between Rapp’s statements and Nintendo’s statements. Nintendo probably contractually limits or forbids moonlighting. However, they probably also underpay employees. So they turn a blind eye except when they think it will reflect on their corporate image, and then enforce it. If people complain too loudly? I expect they’ll just crackdown on all moonlighting instead of benignly ignoring it.
As to me, what Nintendo does in the future is not much of a concern. I don’t trust them to respect people who are adults who sink money into their hardware and software, so I will look elsewhere when looking for consoles to buy. I had a good run with them, the GameCube, GameBoy Advance and Nintendo DS were great systems, and the Wii and 3DS (before they went mad with unnecessary, obnoxious censorship) had their charms. However, they've made it clear I’m not a customer that they want, so I feel foolish arguing with them.
I wish the people trying to get them to step back from the abyss the best of luck, though.
As to Ms. Rapp, as far as I’m concerned Nintendo can hire her back if they like, or not. I don’t have any control or interest over their internal policy.
