JR Honeycutt Banned From BGG.CON 2019

@jason10mm

Yes there is more to the story, such as the getting women drunk, and other things which I will not gossip about here.

Even if you remove the abuse narrative, you are left with professional misconduct. The board game industry is a gig economy, not unlike the gig economy of the entertainment industry. Many parallels can be drawn between this situation and what we know occurs in the movie industry between people in power (directors/producers/big name actors) and young hopefuls. Victoria was only 22 years old just starting her career in the industry. JR Honeycutt was 10 years her senior and essentially a "star" in the industry with power and influence. He pursued her, suduced her, manipulated her, made her totally depended upon him, then cut her loose and destroyed her career in the industry. Then he moved on to another younger woman in the industry, and then, I believe, a third one.

This was an industry wake-up call. Even if board gamer consumers can't connect the dots, people with power and authority within the industry have. They are not only condemning this one individual's behavior, but also finally recognizing and acknowledging that power imbalance based sexual harassment and misconduct exists in the industry (which we have all known for a very long time), and taking steps to address it. Since the industry is a gig economy it is harder to recognize and define than if it were a single company, but it is still workplace harassment, with the workplace tending to be cons, trade shows and consulting gigs. It is something that is difficult to address industry wide as people move from gig to gig among many companies. In this particular case, however, much of the abuse occurred at cons and trade shows, which means it occurred within the realm of influence of GAMA and by individual con organizers, and therefore they have the power to address it to some extent. There are also individual publishing companies acknowledging that they need and want to address it, but don't know quite how to proceed, again because of the complexity of much of the work being done on a consulting basis, and also due to lack of expertise in the area, and essentially not having HR departments. This is where GAMA can help by establishing guidelines for professional conduct.

I do not mean to minimize the tragedy and trauma of the individuals involved in this particular story, however, the motivation for my post was not to encourage the discussion of this specific case, but rather the larger implications vis a vis the industry reaction. I have made a leap of faith that the members of this community are capable to having this conversation without pulling the discussion down into a "trial by social media" of individuals.

ETA:
TL;DR the story here isn't that this happened AGAIN. The story is that people with the power to effect change have reacted to address the larger issues and actually attempt to bring about change in the industry.

charlest wrote:
Here's my question - what do we do about his games? When I play Fireball Island with my daughter am I going to think about this? What about Unmatched which I have ready to go and need to review? Restoration said he's not receiving royalties from these games but is that enough?

My feeling is that his actions have already harmed enough people. Let's not allow them to harm the other designers who worked on these games or the publishers or all the people who work for those publishers. Any boycott of the many games he contributed to could also potentially harm Victoria, who is still trying to work in the industry (reduced revenues = reduced hiring), and, unfortunately, could make publishers hesitant to hire other young women in the future (because that is the way the world works).