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Thoughts on Roxane being fired?
Since Paralives Hub is not an official Paralives site, I hope we can discuss this issue here freely. If not, by all means please delete this topic. If yes, please everyone remain calm and civil in our replies. I made this post to make sure that Roxane’s voice is heard as loud and clear as Alex’s, because that’s the only way to be fair and allow people to be objective.
What it’s all about:
– Alex’s official statement: https://twitter.com/_amasse/status/1265707140200751106
– Roxane’s tweets: https://i.imgur.com/x3kxWvg.jpg [taken from this tweet: https://twitter.com/cloegal/status/1265712583933415424 ]
My personal opinion: Alex’s statement has left me with a LOT of bad taste in my mouth, especially after I read Roxane’s original tweets that are now gone along with her whole account.
The way I see it, we have a woman who is a bit brash and prone to losing her temper in stressful situations, but who is passionate and dedicated to the project she is working on. She wants to see Paralives succeed, but she starts noticing problems: with bad management, with lack of art direction, poor communication, treating employees and volunteers like slaves and, last but not least, failing to fully pay for services rendered.
She voices those concerns, perhaps not in the most diplomatic way, and suddenly she is getting fired over an email which is followed by a public statement that can potentially ruin her future career.
In that statement, her former employer uses tired and weak arguments that paint her as a rude, loud and unpleasant woman, and… he completely fails to address ANY of her extremely valid concerns. What’s more, he purposefully mentions that Roxane deleted her tweets, because it’s convenient for him to be the only side in this conflict with actual voice. That way he wins by default.
So please, before you form your own opinion on this, read Roxane’s tweets with an open mind – there’s a lot of hurt, both personal and professional, behind them. And there’s a lot of patronizing arrogance and very little substance in Alex’s statement.
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10 Replies
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I plan to remain netural until more information is revealed (if at all). I will say that believe the vulgar and overall unprofessional tweets were quite uncalled for. I feel bad becuase Alex stated that he wanted the entire siutation to remain private and peaceful, but sadly he was rushed into putting out a quick statement as a result of the predicament. Now people are looking toward him for immidiate answers to questions that have just come out of the blue and of course that’s going to take time.
I hope the the next few days we’ll get a better idea of what happened and what the plans are now. I don’t think this’ll be a major issue. The game is still super early in development and they plan on adding more poeple soon. Once everything is cleared up, I think people will calm down.
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Well just because I may like Paralives or at least hope to when it comes out, that will not make me side with Alex, I have had people talk all nice to others about something that went on between me and them, and make me out to be the bad guy, when it was actually them, so I am not going to take Alex side, just because Roxane used some more adult language to get her point across! For one, she just got fired, so of course she is angry, and of course she said some more adult words because of it, she is human, and shocker not perfect!
But that doesn’t make her the bad one here, just because she cursed and Alex didn’t, at least not publicly, doesn’t make Roxane the one in the wrong, we only know what Alex and Roxane says happened, and most likely we will never know the truth, unless someone else leaves the projects or gets fired and decides to spill some beans!
The fact is as far as we know Roxane may have been totally telling the truth, if you take time to get over her using some language that apparently really bothers some more than it should, and read what she said, it sounds like there might be some not so nice things happening behind the scenes, so I’m not putting all my apples in one basket just yet!
Even if we never really find out what happened with Roxane, if what she said is true, it will eventually become evident over time, because if it’s true it’s bound to affect the making of the game and Roxane may not be the only one to get fired or even just choose to leave on their own!
And I am not just taking Roxane side either, but having been in similar situations I am not going to just dismiss her word’s on Alex or anyone else’s say so, I am going to stick with having a more open mind on this and give her the benefit of the doubt, but I also won’t assume she is telling the truth either, so I won’t be hating on Alex either!
But I hope people won’t start hating on Roxane just because they like Paralives and Alex is the creator of the game, because just because you think you are going to like the game, doesn’t mean you have to love Alex or any of the ones who make it even or hate someone who is no longer working on it either for that matter!
I bet that is why Roxane took down her tweets and her account, because people were probably sending her hateful messages and she didn’t want to have to deal with it, which is understandable, but really sad too, since I was following her on Twitter and would have liked to continued after this, rather then treat her like she has leprosy all of a sudden!
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<div>While I know that there is a lot of information that I (and anyone other than the dev team) do not know, I have to say that I am leaning towards Alex’s side in this situation (if there really even is a side to take). Alex probably should have called Roxanne directly to give the news, but he is not the first to have fired someone over email. Additionally, when you are in a probationary period (which I was reminded quite frequently at my current job during MY probationary period) is that your employer is free to fire you at any time for any reason. That’s why they call it a probationary period. For that reason, a lot of companies do not even offer benefits to employees until after their probationary period.
</div><div>The fact that she went off in such a public manner shows a lack of professionalism that leads me to believe that Alex made the right decision. The published letter alludes that he was not alone in this decision, either. I mean, she blocked someone for not liking a perceived change in graphics. While I think it is fine to block someone on a personal account for whatever reason, you have to be careful when your account represents a company, product, group, etc. Her account and her tweets represented the development team and Paralives as a whole. Generally, her tweets seem to me that she does not handle criticism well and takes it all too personally. You can’t have thin skin in a creative field like game developing (or any job dealing with the public, for that matter). Especially when you’re developing a game that serves SO MANY different types of people like a life simulator does. Everyone has wildly different expectations and desires!
Bad management, lack of art direction, and poor communication may very well be valid points. The COVID environment does not help with that situation at all. It’s honestly hard to work together when you’re not physically together, and it sounds like they are not at the moment. In any case, it’s really hard to say when on the outside. Time will certainly tell.
I have to completely disagree with the “fully paying for services rendered” argument though. This is a patreon-funded project. Much like a non-profit, when you take a job for a project like this without secure, reliable funding, you are agreeing to being worked hard and using all relevant skills no matter what your job description is. This is very commonplace for small entities. I know first-hand and through friends that it is. I do not see anything particularly wrong with this. It is how things get done with limited funding. The point is to be doing it because you are passionate about the mission/project of the place you are working for, not your paycheck. Obviously you should be paid fairly, but I have a feeling based on the Patreon funding milestones that she was being paid a decent wage.
With all that said, I do not wish any bad or harm against Roxanne. I hope the best for her. From the little bit of information I got from her playstyle and opinions, I would probably totally agree with any disagreement she may have had with Alex or the team creatively. However, ultimately, it is not her project.
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My quick thoughts in bulletpoints so you don’t have to read too much:
- It’s very clear both (/all connected) parties are very passionate about the game.
- Roxanne shouldn’t have went to Twitter beforehand or not in that manner
- I felt like Alex (though understadnable) shouldn’t have “outed” Roxanne in that way
- I hope the game will actually become what it was supposed to be
- I know they said nothing will change about the development but considering Roxanne’s words with how there was poor communication and a lack of art direction we can only assume (which I’m not telling anyone to assume anything) how this is going
- I hope Lea and the other employees are happy and are being treated well
- I also hope Alex is able to work well and is doing good
- Same goes for Roxanne, I hope she finds another job quickly and wish her the best
- Hopefully the rest of development goes well from this point forward in regards of employees and volunteers (discord mods) as well, so pretty much communication in this small passion project
I think this still was long, but I think everything I’ve just said has been said before and I didn’t wanna go full explaining mode, but there is one more thing I wanna adress my concern for.
People who were sceptical before/ anti-Paralives, thinking anything slightly negative about the game will and are taking things to twitter and any other outlet to say “I told you so”, “this project isn’t gonna happen”, “blablabla…”. This is childish and not okay, but don’t go commenting on that, it’s not worth it. They clearly are not interested in Paralives even if it becomes the best game ever. So commenting is just useless as they just want your attention and see you annoyed.
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Well, based on her recent Tumblr post it seems like Roxanne regrets doing what she did. (the post is on Reddit if anyone wants to look at it)
It does kinda make me feel like it was more on her than the rest of the team though. All of this combined with the fact that neither Lea or Christine came out in her defence….I mean Lea is moving from France to Canada to work with Alex….I kinda doubt/really hope that she wouldn’t be making such a life changing move if her boss was a toxic piece of work.
I just hope people can back off from Roxanne now and give her some space. (or at least don’t send her hate)
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I have decided to stay neutral on this topic. I’ve read all the tweets through thoroughly and I was shocked to hear that Roxanne had been fired. I don’t know about anyone else but I genuinely thought the team got on very well together, seeing tweets of them visiting each other’s islands in Animal Crossing etc.
But after this has happened I’ve realised that personally I cannot pick sides, because for me, I am not on the team and therefore have no way to tell for sure who is really at fault.
Also, from what both sides have said I can see that both Roxanne and Alex did things I do not agree with. For example, Roxanne was apparently toxic for the rest of the group as she often yelled and was not professional at all. On the other hand, apparently Alex is controlling, blames Roxanne and Lèa for his own design choices, and does minimal work.
Alex did also say that Roxanne was not professional in the communication side of things too. Personally I was confused by this as I often thought she was great at answering questions and had real personality, without it getting in the way of work. She was rarely brash in my opinion and when she was she apologised in a respectful manner.
Alex, however I think would have been right to decide not to work with her if her toxicity held work back and ruined the environment for the other workers.
Overall I believe both sides have valid points, however as the founder and boss of the Paralives company, Alex does have the right to fire/discipline workers if it negatively effects the company. Despite this as someone who is not working on the dev team I have no way to say whether what was done was morally right or wrong. I do believe Roxanne had some very valid points on the development process such as blaming her and Lèa for design choices they did not make and putting off certain aspects of the game. I hope these issues will be fixed and Alex will address and find a solution to these problems, so Paralives can be the best game it can be.
A final note to the community:
I really don’t want a go e to spread hate about this subject. If you are not part of the developers team you do not know for sure anything that went on, and without all of the solid facts it is impossible for anyone to make a decision. I don’t think it’s fair to target anyone in this situation, instead we should focus on making the game the best it can be and continuing to build a tight community. I hope everyone can be respectful and everyone can move on from this with no judgement and in a well mannered way 🙂
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Thank you all for staying respectful and neutral, it’s really nice to see it being this way as a community. In my opinion, there was a mishandling of the situation on both side, and it sadly got out of hands. It doesn’t matter much to dwell on who’s more right or wrong though, we can just hope that things will be better for everyone in the future and that it won’t hinder anything in their lives. Let’s not be hateful toward anyone, and just wish them the best of what’s to come!
-Stay kind and stay safe 🙂 -
honestly, roxane’s tweets could be classed as “unprofessional” but she’s right. men act like that all the time and they get patted on the back, they don’t get any grief and they absolutely DO NOT get fired. he could easily have talked to her about the way she was behaving or maybe even actually listened to what she was saying. it’s unfortunate because i think she was amazing but i guess that’s just the way the misogynistic cookie crumbles…
