How renowned game designer Chris Avellone had his career ended with no due process through demonstrably distorted accusations

shitherewegoagain9 · 2021-01-31T20:33:25+00:00

Chris Avellone has worked on many of the best-regarded computer role-playing games. He was the lead designer of Planescape: Torment and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2, as well as a designer on Fallout 2, Fallout: New Vegas, Prey, Divinity: Original Sin 2 and Pathfinder: Kingmaker.

Until last summer, he was the most in-demand freelance writer in the gaming industry in general, having worked on at least 22 different games in the previous 5 years (several of which are still unreleased).

In June 2020, Karissa — a 35 year old woman he had been friends with in 2012-2014 — started a Twitter thread where she made it seem like he had gotten her drunk at a convention once and then taken her to her room with two other men, who left "a few moments" later, allowing Chris to try to force himself on her. She said she was only able to resist him because she was on her period, and she gave her story as an example of what he must have done to other women as well (none of whom have actually come forward).

Everyone read her story as "near rape." However, the woman's own roommate — sleeping in the room at the time of the incident — confirmed shorty afterwards that she had never heard this story before and that Chris was never in their room at all.

What actually happened is that Chris made out with Karissa in a 4 star hotel's hallway with no intention of going inside her room, with the two other men witnessing most of it and not realizing anything non-consensual was going on.

However, no journalists bothered to be accurate when reporting the story, and gaming studios quickly cut ties with Chris.

Three other women believed Karissa's story and decided to throw in their own milder accusations.

One of them, a long-time friend of Karissa's, claimed Chris kept groping her and inviting her to his room for sex at DragonCon 2014 whenever Karissa and Chris' girlfriend weren't looking, a story which Karissa herself had never heard before. However, this accuser made her profile private and deleted the accusation after a tweet she had made on the last night of DragonCon 2014 was unearthed where she denied that men had bothered her at all, claiming she was "fat & that's kryptonite to the frat boy element here."

Another one presented a text Chris had sent her in 2014 where he propositioned her for sex, saying it came entirely out of the blue as she had had no romantic or sexual relationship with him. However, she cropped out the beginning of the chat where she was flirting with him late at night, and she had also flirted with him publicly on Twitter before, calling him her "boyfriend in another life" and joking about the possibility of him sending her dick pics. She had also later told her other friends on Twitter that there was nothing wrong with being openly sexual and that there was a 50/50 chance she was down to sleep with them if they just asked.

Finally, one shared a story about getting drunk with Chris at a convention (for which she provided the wrong year) and waking up naked next to him, quoting him as saying that nothing had happened, but implying that something may have because she was naked. However, she left out the fact that there was a third person in the room with them until shortly before they went to bed, and other attendees at the time were also made aware that nothing had happened, and that she was only staying in Chris' room (not her room, as she wrongly claimed) because she had not booked a room of her own and did not want to travel all the way back home.

The exoneration video linked in this post is an attempt at clearing Chris' name through publicly available information. When it came out in September, Karissa made her Twitter profile private and deleted 60K of her tweets from between 2009 and 2017 — including all of her friendly interactions with Chris — before making it public again. Luckily, all of her relevant tweets are still archived in multiple places.

When discussing the accusations with his friends, Chris has denied ever breaking consent with anyone in his life.

Title	How renowned game designer Chris Avellone had his career ended with no due process through demonstrably distorted accusations
Author	shitherewegoagain9
Upvotes	11
Comments	1
Date	January 31, 2021 8:33 PM UTC (5 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/AntiFeminists
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/antifeminists/comments/l9la3g/how_renowned_game_designer_chris_avellone_had_his/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/AntiFeminists/how-renowned-game-designer-chris-avellone-had-his.779902 https://theredarchive.com/post/779902

Comments