HappySqurriel on 09 March 2007
Death2009 said:
I am a strong supporter of freedom of speech and the press. You take the good press with the bad and never suppress it. Nintendo's world will not collapse because one man hates their product.
Darc Requiem said:
Death2009, freedom of speech has nothing to do with it. This is about the work place. You can't call your clients product "a piece of shit" and not expect reprecussions. In most businesses he would have been fired for his out burst. His statement could have potentially caused EA and Maxis problems with Nintendo.
For example, lets say I'm a car sales men. The company I work for sells Toyota, Chevrolet, and Fords. What would think would happen to me if I singled out one of those brands publically and called them "a piece of shit"? I would be fired. Because if weren't, either of those vendors could with hold product or worse decide not to do business with my company because of my statement.
The bottom line is this. Hecker could have stated his opinion in a professional manner and everything would have been okay. He conducted himself like the average forum troll which garnered him extra attention. This attention shined a bad light on his employers. He could have said. "I'm disappointed in the Wii. I don't like how the Wii features what is essentially an overclocked Gamecube chipset. I think that this, along with Nintendo's new controller, promotes overly simplistic games. I think that games are an art form and that Nintendo hasn't provided an adequate way to display that art." Same thing he said, but I stated it like someone in his position should have.
A agree ...
Most individuals and companies are actually able to handle constructive criticism if it is phrased in an honest, non-insulting way.
On another note, I'm pretty sure his boss would be more conserned with the outrage from Nintendo's fans than from Nintendo themselves. Executives are either successful or failures depending on a 2% swing in their profit; if some of Nintendo's biggest fans decided to boycott EA's Wii/DS games for a year that could have a noticeable impact on game sales (and profits).
