It's insane how fragile these people act. I'm a man and I've been working in games for a long time. I've dealt with *much* worse than either Scott or Albertine are detailing here, and probably just about everyone in the industry has. Everything they're describing is fairly standard interpersonal drama that comes from working on a project for a long time with a small team.
Was Alec difficult to work with sometimes? I don't know, maybe. Scott and Albertine seem to think so, and that's fair enough, I guess. But it's also none of my business. It's no one's business except theirs. I've dealt with tons of difficult coworkers. To other people, I've probably *been* that difficult coworker. I do my best, but I'm not perfect, and no one is. We're all human. We all get frustrated and have personality clashes sometimes.
One thing that I think is telling about Zoe, Scott, and Albertine's accounts is that they all reference Alec getting frustrated with them. They each attempt to use this as a cudgel, as if him being frustrated with them indicates some sort of huge, glaring character flaw on his part. Not one of them turns that lens inward and wonders if maybe his frustration was valid, and what *they* could have done. Ironically, they're attacking him for expressing his own feelings of frustration... in their own essays expressing their frustration.
Even taking these accounts entirely at face value, the worst thing Benson and Watson can level at Holowka is that he was moody, occasionally aloof, and occasionally rude (and in Benson's case, he seems frustrated that Alec pushed him to work almost-standard hour work days, which is one of the most asinine things I've ever heard). Watson alleges that he made some kind of romantic advance on her and then stopped when she told him not to. I'm not saying these are good qualities. I'm sure Holowka was no saint; that much, I believe. But they're not crimes, either. If anything, they're fairly mundane. Many of these things, in one form or another, are probably things they themselves have done to others.
If the mood struck me, I could write similar petty diatribes about lots of my old bosses and coworkers (many of whom have been women, for whatever that's worth). I'm not going to, because I'm an adult, I handled my own shit, and I recognize that other people have their own problems and they don't need to hear about my interpersonal drama from years ago. I also recognize that there are two sides to every story, and that even my old coworkers who annoyed me don't deserve to have their every failing blasted onto the internet for total strangers to see.
I'd never heard of a lot of these people before this, so I don't particularly have a dog in this fight. I'd like to think I've approached it with an open mind. But every single time one of them has written more on the subject, I've become less and less convinced that they're victims. They don't sound brave or beaten-down. They sound entitled. I wish them all the best. I get that they're probably dealing with a lot of heavy shit right now, and that there are also a lot of assholes on the internet who want to attack them for it. That's not okay. But neither is enabling them.
