Gamers rage over Mighty No. 9 hiring a woman community manager

Inafune has done the unthinkable and hired a woman who isn't completely familiar with the Mega Man franchise as the game’s community manager (gasp!)

[GenericNameHere]

"hired a woman who isn't completely familiar with the Mega Man franchise as the game’s community manager"

Well, that's not too bad. Does she at least know anything about videogames and old school platformers?

[pat_11_5]

She's a community manager, I don't think experience with the genre really matters that much.

[SamPao]

She actually is an artist at the studio there...

[ScubbaSteve]

From what I've seen about this story they weren't really complaining she was a woman. They were worried because she's a feminist and went on the forum complaining about them needing to change the characters to be female and then the company hired her as a community manager. Which is fine, but she tweeted that she was designing the robots all day which made many of the kick starter investors worried again.

The company however said she isn't really doing that so everyone's getting in a huff about nothing and the gaming journalist sites are trying to spin it out to get some hits.

All in all there's nothing wrong with women working for a developer, there's nothing wrong with women characters in a game, but you might want choose a spokesperson that doesn't have an agenda and is going to stick to the company script.

[rdgneoz3]

And if you want to edit the quote from the story used to: "Inafune has done the unthinkable and hired a person who isn't completely familiar with the Mega Man franchise as the game’s community manager." Then I could see why people might be worried (it's nice when people actually have knowledge of what they're working with), let alone her rants about wanting to change the characters.

[Kcube90]

Actually they are not mad that she is a woman, they are complaining because she is talking about changing the character, the reason she got hired because she is either friends with someone at the company or dating one of the people working on the game, she also has not really played a mega man game; yet she is the community manager and she is helping with character design, so yeah I can understand the legitimate issue with the complaints.

[yewles1]

*gran* We'll never be taken seriously at this rate...

[XiSasukeUchiha]

Gamers Chill if she doesn't know anytime about games then i might well be pissed

[HighResHero]

So is there any relevance to this or is this just more flamebait sensationalist nonsense?
I have a hard time believing too many gamers would have a problem with a (decent, QUALIFIED) woman being community manager.

[admiralvic]

Apparently she isn't familiar with the MM franchise, which worries people. To me, that seems like a legitimate beef. It's hard to justify why you should manage a community you don't know much about. Especially a more niche game like Mighty No. 9.

[rainslacker]

Isn't she working on the game though? She probably knows more about it than many of the people who are "raging" against her.

And no, you don't really need to know anything about the subject matter to manage a community. Community manager just puts everything in place for the community to talk to one another, and help with special stuff that is directed by those in charge.

The guy who ran the PS blog for so long(his name escapes me) probably didn't know about 1/100th of the things Sony was doing at the time he started. I'm sure it'll be the same now that he's moved over to MS. He'll get up to speed, just like this woman likely will if she's qualified to run a community.

[Flipgeneral]

Is the headline of the article a little misleading?

Gamers are upset about her lack of knowledge with thr MM franchise as opposed to her gender....

[HighResHero]

Just as I figured and what's even worse is them using it to manipulate people.

[ShinraE5]

I think this page saw the other article and thought "hey, let's jump on the bandwagon and get hits".

The community (although again acting like a**hats) is angered over her knowledge and not her ovaries...

[CLOUD1983]

"Women reportedly account for 45 per cent of all people who play video games. For the mathematically challenged, that’s almost half."

LoL where did they get those numbers from r they serious there is no way that's true unless they count androir/iOS games, fb games & browser games if we r talking about serious games for consoles & PC there is no way for that to be true, I call those numbers bullsh1t serious female gamers amount imo to less than 10% of the total gaming population (I speak for consoles & PC games & not browser games) that's it in every online game I have play & I have play a lot I find a woman very rarely especially on MMORPGs I have join clan/guilds on many different games with 50-100 members & most of the times there is no females at all or just 1-2 at most so I can't believe that half gamers population is females no chance.

[pat_11_5]

http://www.theesa.com/newsr...

[CLOUD1983]

Did u see anywhere on this article info for what kind of games they r talking about? because if they mean smartphone, fb & browser games then yeah right that's what most females I know play but can u call these women who play those kind of casual sh1t gamers? I repeat those numbers is bullsh1t.

[contradictory]

yes, because all people who are considered gamers do infact play MMORPG's

you can't call yourself a gamer if you don't play that genre

truer words have never been said

[SoulSercher620]

Why? I don't care if it's a guy or girl. As long as they are competent enough for the job.

[My_Name_BTW_Is_Dante]

They aren't raging because she's a woman. They're raging because she knows nothing about the Mega Man franchise considering she's supposed to be a community manager yet will know nothing about the community.

[OMNlPOTENT]

The article lost all my attention when it defended "Tropes vs Women in Video Games". Seriously? I don't think anyone cares one bit if a woman is working on the game. I don't even think too many care if she's a feminist. If she was designing things then yeah.. People had a point to be pissed. That design is really ugly. Otherwise it was a huge misunderstanding and not even worthy of an article. Especially an article from someone so biased toward one side.

[vivid83]

but to be fair the game isn't megaman so why is it such a big deal?

[specialguest]

Its a big deal because the startup backers are serious megaman fans and are expecting a megaman-like experience in a non copywrite infringing form. They are the life blood of the project and they do not want someone who may potentially take the project to a different direct due to lack of knowledge and experience.

[admiralvic]

Is it Megaman? No.
Is it considered a spiritual successor to Megaman? Yes.

There are a lot of similarities between the two and there were concerns of Capcom taking legal action against it (because it mirrored Megaman that much). So while it isn't Megman, much like Dark Souls isn't Demon Souls, they're generally considered the same thing and people would prefer people that know whats going on work on the game. Especially when the community is mostly Megaman fans who've been put off by Capcom's iOS games, lack of Megaman love (several games canceled, bad box art Megaman in SF X T, No Megaman in MvC 3, etc) and general interest in just cashing in off the IP.

[thebudgetgamer]

That's embarrassing for all of us.

[megadrivesonic]

The un-professionalism is strong with this journal.