Former Xbox Exec Was Kicked Out After Refusing to Put on a Bathrobe at GDC

Laura Fryer, one of the original members of Xbox‘s founding team, shared her memories of working with Phil Spencer (who recently retired from Microsoft) in her latest YouTube video. However, she also revealed that she was forced out of Xbox after suffering an episode of harassment.

Fryer was working directly below Xbox founder Seamus Blackley (yes, the same guy who just claimed the whole division would eventually be shuttered by new CEO Asha Sharma) in 2000. After Blackley left, she became Director of the Xbox Advanced Technology Group. In this role, she cultivated worldwide Xbox Developer Support, launched XNA, created the Xbox Advisory Board, and ran Xbox game developer events around the world.

That’s where the aforementioned incident happened. At GDC 2004, Fryer and her team unveiled XNA, Microsoft’s game development framework designed to make it easier for developers (especially indie ones) to build games for Xbox and Windows PC. It provided a set of tools and libraries built on top of .NET that abstracted away a lot of the low-level hardware work, so developers could focus on writing game logic rather than wrestling with platform-specific code. Fryer recounts:

After an incredible day on stage demoing XNA, I went with a PR person and an Xbox executive to grab a couple of controllers from a hotel room. Next thing I know, I’m handed a bathrobe and asked to put it on. I laughed like it was a joke, and I got out of there as fast as possible, but I was freaked out. I barely really thought about it much until the next week when I got back and that’s when I was suddenly told that I was being reorganized out of my job.

Eventually, she confided in a friend inside Microsoft, who went to report this to Human Resources while she was still thinking about it. In her own words, that’s when “everything flipped”:

Unfortunately, even though the other person that was in the room confirmed my story, it didn’t matter. I was pushed out and nobody would help me. My career had gone from red-hot to radioactive.

Fryer then adds that it was Phil Spencer who helped her get a job on the publishing team:

Then Phil stepped in, and he told me straight up, “Don’t wait. Come and join my team and work for Bonnie.” He was kind. He was considerate. And he practically begged me to come and work with Epic. He knew we had a strong relationship and he genuinely needed my help. And just like that, my nightmare ended.

Fryer then helped ship big Xbox games like Gears of War and Gears of War 2, among others. She would eventually leave Microsoft in 2009, joining Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment as the General Manager of the Seattle studio.

In the video, Fryer notes that her situation showed that Microsoft’s culture was already breaking down. She adds that it was fully broken by the time Phil Spencer took over a few years later, and believes that it would have taken a “rare talent” to fix that. Fryer ends by noting that she never knew if Phil was aware of the full extent of her incident, but she would nonetheless always be grateful for being there when she needed him.

Ultimately, she portrays Spencer as someone with rare, genuine human decency in an industry and corporate environment that didn’t always reward it, as well as a leader who showed up personally when things got hard, listened without agenda, and consistently put people before politics. She also recounted another episode when Spencer decided to fly with her to meet the folks at Sigil Games in person to resolve a dispute about the MMORPG Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, which was originally supposed to be published by Microsoft, hearing out both sides (Fryer’s and the team’s) with balance.

Her portrait definitely fits with the overall picture of Phil Spencer as described by other prominent industry figures. As Fryer said, Spencer certainly made some mistakes along the way, but he was also a true gamer and someone who showed genuine care in handling delicate matters. We’ll see how the new Microsoft Gaming CEO fares.

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