Problem is, it's still about as personal as a choose your own adventure novel. You can't, say, decide to become a slaver in Mass Effect 2 and help the collectors. Your adventure is only as unique as until you find the next person who made all the same choices and read the same pages as you.
This is why the ending of ME2 had such impact and why ME3's ending feels so divorced from the rest of the game, even discounting the other numerous literary flaws already discussed.
Have left PA forums.
If this community believes that hating someone based soley upon their gender is acceptable and understandable, I have no interest in being a part of it.
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CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
This is why the ending of ME2 had such impact and why ME3's ending feels so divorced from the rest of the game, even discounting the other numerous literary flaws already discussed.
Oh, I was wondering if he might comment (considering how many references he drops to ME in his Star Trek reviews). Thanks for pointing this out, going to watch now!
"If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
This is why the ending of ME2 had such impact and why ME3's ending feels so divorced from the rest of the game, even discounting the other numerous literary flaws already discussed.
Oh, I was wondering if he might comment (considering how many references he drops to ME in his Star Trek reviews). Thanks for pointing this out, going to watch now!
Sadly no comment on ME3 yet, unless we can throw some support money his way for a review request.
Have left PA forums.
If this community believes that hating someone based soley upon their gender is acceptable and understandable, I have no interest in being a part of it.
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CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
This is why the ending of ME2 had such impact and why ME3's ending feels so divorced from the rest of the game, even discounting the other numerous literary flaws already discussed.
Oh, I was wondering if he might comment (considering how many references he drops to ME in his Star Trek reviews). Thanks for pointing this out, going to watch now!
Sadly no comment on ME3 yet, unless we can throw some support money his way for a review request.
Ah, darn.
"If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
Ok so I slept for a bit since that's what people do and missed like, 2 pages of discussion which I have dutifully read but won't quote from now: I have never said anything about BioWare being entitled to my money, no one is ever entitled to my money in any case, maybe my landlord for putting up with me. What I am saying is that thinking ahead, let's assume BioWare puts out anyother game I might be really interested in. I would never go and say "Oh shit no, it's from BioWare! I can't buy this because they butchered the ending to ME!" which is and careful, Star Wars analogy, the same as saying you can't watch another film by George Lucas because you didn't like what he did to Star Wars. I do agree that from a standpoint of them being artists it doesn't look great for any future work, but I think the bigger problem is actually the big build-up that BioWare created themselves. I wonder if people had reacted differently if in fact they hadn't told us it would be the biggest bestest ending to a series of all time, think Assassin's Creed and the way people tend to shrug at it and buy it all the same.
Also, I am a bit undecided about the argument of "I gave BioWare 60 bucks so it's a big personal investment". Okay then, buy it for less. I know in case of ME many people were falling over themselves because they needed to play this game NOW, but if there is a future BioWare title and you don't wanna spend a lot on it, then don't. That's the thing about DLCs, too, everyone assuming you have to buy them. You were unhappy with the ending to ME3, but if there was a DLC with another ending that you would have to pay for, would you do it? Because I am pretty sure those hours of programming wouldn't come for free.
Considering bioware likes to spout shit about the fans being involved in the authorial and creative process, quite frankly I think we are entitled to a little bit of that. They said we were. Those were the words straight from the director's (Casey Hudson's) mouth. So what, do you think what he meant was "the fans are only involved in the creative process as long as they like what we're giving them?"
Also I've never watched Checkpoint, but it seems like a show for tools who buy into the shitty IGN rhetoric and we all know they're unbiased.
Considering bioware likes to spout shit about the fans being involved in the authorial and creative process, quite frankly I think we are entitled to a little bit of that. They said we were. Those were the words straight from the director's (Casey Hudson's) mouth. So what, do you think what he meant was "the fans are only involved in the creative process as long as they like what we're giving them?"
Also I've never watched Checkpoint, but it seems like a show for tools who buy into the shitty IGN rhetoric and we all know they're unbiased.
RIGHT?
It's hard to tell, but I hope you're being sarcastic. Mostly on the last part, I could give less of a damn about the first part.
I read @Orikaeshigitae's post on the topic, and it struck such a cord that even I agree with it, and I like the endings.
Dedwrekka on
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CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
Considering bioware likes to spout shit about the fans being involved in the authorial and creative process, quite frankly I think we are entitled to a little bit of that. They said we were. Those were the words straight from the director's (Casey Hudson's) mouth. So what, do you think what he meant was "the fans are only involved in the creative process as long as they like what we're giving them?"
Also I've never watched Checkpoint, but it seems like a show for tools who buy into the shitty IGN rhetoric and we all know they're unbiased.
RIGHT?
It's hard to tell, but I hope you're being sarcastic. Mostly on the last part, I could give less of a damn about the first part.
I read @Orikaeshigitae's post on the topic, and it struck such a cord that even I agree with it, and I liked the endings.
I'm not being sarcastic. Well, at least not in the sense that I meant the opposite of what I typed. About checkpoint, I was trolling. Like I said, I don't know the show, but an inflammatory title like "the masses are effected" isn't a great way to get people who don't like the ending to even consider your opinion. It is a great way to encourage further trolling however.
About IGN I'm not being sarcastic. There's an IGN employee in the game for christ's sake, beyond even the usual amount of "give our game a decent review so we don't pull our advertising and never give you pre-release copies" how can they possibly be unbiased about mass effect 3? In that video where Colin Moriarty talks about the ending, he gets about 30 seconds in and completely strawmans the detractors. I stopped watching the video because if he can't listen to us, why should we listen to him-kind of like if you make an episode of PATV that immediately insults anyone you may be trying to convince to see things your way HINT HINT.
About authorship being somewhat in the hands of the fanbase I am absolutely not being sarcastic at all. There's so much precedent; like, for example, that shitty mass effect novel that was terrible that came out a few weeks before the game. That atrocity got sent back to shop to actually be more in line with the universe it took part in, last I heard. The editors didn't do their jobs so the fanbase had to step in and do it for them. Or how about Fallout 3? Haven't played it myself, but I know how the game originally ended, and I know they released DLC to expand on/change it as a result so don't tell me other epic-scale RPGs haven't responded to logical negative fan reaction.
There's also some idea out there that the right to authorship lies solely and inextricably with the original creators of something, and a subversion of that is some kind of taboo. This is entirely bullshit. Quite frankly I'm not sure anyone who espouses this has ever picked up a comic book. These can have a completely different set of "authors" (writing, drawing, inking, etc) from one month to the next! The largest example I can think of of how authorship is never in just one person's hands would be a superhero you may have heard of, Batman. Anyone remember that thing where they had a poll on whether or not to kill off Robin? And they did it? Yeah, DC asked for fan input (like Casey Hudson saying the fans are involved in the creative process) and then DC followed through. Jason Todd has been back in the comics since, but it's still consistent within the universe of the series and we got the excellent Under the Red Hood movie out of it. Then of course there's Frank Miller. He wrote the storyline that redefined batman comics with The Dark Knight Returns, but he also wrote all that ultraviolent "goddamn batman" crap that's targeted specifically at adolescent males (TDKR's sequel falls under this umbrella). I feel confident saying most people consider TDKR representative of Batman's nature as a person and character, and all that other crap, well... not.
Furthermore, if you still think the "original authors" are the only ones who have the right to work on something, then I guess you should go find them all, take them off their current projects, and bring them to work on Mass Effect 3, since only two of the writers of ME3 have been there through the series (and one had a very minor role in ME1). There is no "real authorship" here because there is no consistency with who is writing it. Even the lead writer has changed. I also don't know for a fact but I doubt the art team was the same. Every alien race in 1 and 2 had very unique appearances and reasons for them, while now quarians are best represented by a photoshopped stock image. Cool. I remember watching a video about the creation of the krogans, and they put a lot of thought into even the eye placement (originally they were on the sides, but only prey have eyes on the sides of their heads, so they moved the eyes forward). The amount of photoshopped stock images used throughout mass effect 3 absolutely does not give me the same impression of effort or thought. If it is the same people, I don't have an issue with telling these same people to maybe look at what they've got in the game, take a little time, and see if they can come up with something better.
So ultimately, I think the fanbase gets authorial input because Bioware said we get authorial input, and even if they hadn't said so they would be wrong. And yes, things are definitely allowed to get edited without losing integrity they may have had in the first place. For example I'm editing this post right now.
You have exactly as much authorial input as the creator of the work (Bioware) solicits. If I say, I'm going to solicit feedback from my fans for my next work, that doesn't mean I'm going to use all or even most of your ideas. It means I'm going to listen to what you have to say and then pick and choose the stuff that I like that fits into the story that I'm creating. It doesn't mean you get editing privileges, or final say on content.
Also, you seem to be conflating sequels/reboots/offshoots with editing the existing work. Show me a comic where they re-released issue #XX but changed what batman says on the last page because that would be the appropriate analogy. Of course just because someone did it once, doesn't mean everyone has to do it in the future. No one is arguing whether Bioware can go back and change the ending. The argument has been over whether Bioware has to and whether or not people are coming across as demanding or requesting.
The difference between demanding and requesting is purely semantic in this case. For example, to demand is to urgently request. I suspect most if not all of the fans speaking out against the endings are making requests, and considering the time frame of the game's release I think we can agree that those requests can comfortably be described as urgent.
Now, what I think a lot of people are doing is conflating the usual, reasonable understanding of the word "demand" with that one often hears in the context of hostage negotiations or terrorists. So in this case the word has come to reference a form of coercion, typically in the form of violence or legal right. So, let's consider that. Can anyone reasonably get away with threatening Bioware with violence to get them to change their story? No, even if INTERNET RAGE is what it is. Do fans have the legal right to force Bioware to change their stories? Despite what that one idiot said to the FTC, the answer is no. So it cannot be considered coercion in those forms, or if it is it is purely fantastical coercion in the minds of the deluded.
Now, there are other more possible forms of coercion at hand. We have discarded with legal and physical force. I'm sure there are others but the ones that stand out are either moral or economic. Moral force is slippery and, considering the game is a money-making venture, it is unlikely to have any real power here. The Retake Mass Effect thing could be considered a form of moral coercion but, even if it was intended that way, it is rather badly planned. "DO WHAT WE WANT OR WE WILL GIVE TO THE CHILDREN" does not a persuasive or coercive argument make. The use of an artistic argument is either a poor attempt at moral coercion (because if there's anything I know about creative folk it's that they can creatively excuse and explain any number of perceived flaws, especially moral/artistic) or simply constructive criticism. If you feel that constructive criticism is yet another example of coercion, you may need to chickity check yourself before you wreck yourself. So finally we come to economic coercion. Fans can use their economic force (in the form of either buying games or not) to try to coerce Bioware. They might also work together to buy out Bioware and therefore coerce them through hostile takeover, but that is so absurd that I think we can dispense with it completely. So I think we can all agree that fans are either failing horribly to use moral coercion, which is still well within their rights, or fans are attempting a feasible plan of economic coercion- something equally within their rights as consumers. This is the nature of their "demanding".
So, I put it to this thread: Is it rude to no longer spend money on a thing if you no longer want it? Is it bad to demonstrate to the people that produce your entertainment that your viewpoint is a common one with economic weight behind it? Is it wrong to be a consumer, essentially? The word "boycott" has a lot of baggage. I see nothing wrong with using your sensibilities and tastes when it comes to your purchasing power.
As to the argument about if the fans have editorial or authorial input, I agree with Sticks to an extent. Fans are not legally creators of the work, therefore logically we cannot have any more input than we are allowed by the legal creator. To pretend otherwise, as Bioware employees have done from time to time, is simply that: a pretense. This is a fine pretense, there is nothing wrong with crowd sourcing, but there are dangers and Bioware has frequently encountered them. When you allow fans to dabble with a narrative that oftentimes becomes enthralling and a real investment of their time, money, and emotion, you risk disappointing and aggravating them by its very nature. If you don't want fans to feel "entitled" to your creation, don't encourage so much entitlement! Sometimes Bioware has literally entitled their fans, or at least written all over their advertisements and box art that "YOU GET TO DECIDE", etc. I'm paraphrasing, but you can see why that can be problematic. When you tell someone that "THIS IS YOUR STORY", you can't expect to claim it as solely your own and not receive backlash. I'm not saying that encouraging fan investment and involvement is an inherently bad thing, but it contains quite a few risks and Bioware should know that. When they speak of artistic integrity, they should probably consider that they have formed co-artists out of their fans. What about the fans' artistic integrity? Wouldn't it be against the very values they espouse were the fans to merely accept a mediocre or outright offensive narrative, even if the offensive/mediocre part is just the ten minute ending? Would you be okay with writing an excellent story and then letting the last five pages just be an outline?
It's kinda sad/interesting how condescending gaming journalists have been towards the gaming community. The problem isn't just the ending, it's the fact it is "THE" ending. It was a tall order to expect a bunch of different endings, but BioWare pretty much said "Don't worry, you wont be disappointed." I thought KOTOR 2's ending was bad...
It's kinda sad/interesting how condescending gaming journalists have been towards the gaming community. The problem isn't just the ending, it's the fact it is "THE" ending. It was a tall order to expect a bunch of different endings, but BioWare pretty much said "Don't worry, you wont be disappointed." I thought KOTOR 2's ending was bad...
What did you expect, it isn't exactly a secret that the majority of gaming journalists are in the pocket of the gaming industry.
I wouldn't go as far as to say that, but I've got a feeling a few of them are thinking "Now that I've stepped up to the plate for BioWare, they've just gotta invite me to their next launch party!"
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CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
I wouldn't go as far as to say that, but I've got a feeling a few of them are thinking "Now that I've stepped up to the plate for BioWare, they've just gotta invite me to their next launch party!"
Yeah, my impression of game "reviewers" is that it's a lot more pathetic than them getting paid by game companies or anything sordid like that. It's more like white knighting for a pretty girl in hopes she might notice you.
I'm telling you, guy. Bioware may invite you to the parties she throws because she pities you. But she will never date you.
"If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
Obviously, this is sad and speaks towards the nature of humanity's inability to distinguish supporter from the supported. However... the movement had a pervasive (read: viral) tendency to associate "Child's Play" with "Change the Endings!"
Sure, Child's Play could release a statement of neutrality. The amount of people who see the forum signatures/slogans/etc of RME versus those that would see Child's Play's statement? Not enough to make up for the bad press. So it's pretty obvious that this was something the charity had to do. If RME had instead, say, spread the donations amongst a bunch of related charities, that would have been more fitting and more likely to avoid this kind of silliness. It's also what most other charity drive-style things do (Humble Indie Bundle et al). I think that would have been the best course in this first place. At this point, it may be better for them to just keep donating to Child's Play individually without the big RME sign. It doesn't give Child's Play bad press and it sends the message that it's not about the attention so much as putting their money where their mouth is, so to speak.
It remains to be seen whether they'll go to the spread-funds style or donate individually or simply choose another charity. The last option is just going to result in the same thing I suspect.
Wow... I hate to sound conspiratorial, but remember the phone call recording where Gov. Rob Blagojevich threatened to cut state funding to the Children's Hospital? I wonder if EA had a similar conversation with Child's Play.
Wow... I hate to sound conspiratorial, but remember the phone call recording where Gov. Rob Blagojevich threatened to cut state funding to the Children's Hospital? I wonder if EA had a similar conversation with Child's Play.
I have not invested in the series. I don't know if that gives me an outside perspective or if i shouldn't say anything.
But if people have invested that much money and time into the series. Even the smallest grievance with the series conclusion should be listened to without that person being labelled "entitled".
Posts
Mass Effect 2 - $60
Mass Effect 3 - $60
Plot-Related DLC (not including Pinnacle Station) - $40+
All of that assumes you didn't buy Collector's Editions, artbooks, comics and/or the non-essential DLC.
That's a lot of time and money to find out they weren't going to make good on previous promises.
It's a perfectly reasonable attitude to be wary of future Bioware products if it's going to be that much of a personal investment.
You just gave me an awesome idea for a game.
http://blip.tv/sf-debris-opinionated-reviews/mass-effect-rev-follow-up-5597505
This is why the ending of ME2 had such impact and why ME3's ending feels so divorced from the rest of the game, even discounting the other numerous literary flaws already discussed.
If this community believes that hating someone based soley upon their gender is acceptable and understandable, I have no interest in being a part of it.
Oh, I was wondering if he might comment (considering how many references he drops to ME in his Star Trek reviews). Thanks for pointing this out, going to watch now!
Sadly no comment on ME3 yet, unless we can throw some support money his way for a review request.
If this community believes that hating someone based soley upon their gender is acceptable and understandable, I have no interest in being a part of it.
Ah, darn.
Also, I am a bit undecided about the argument of "I gave BioWare 60 bucks so it's a big personal investment". Okay then, buy it for less. I know in case of ME many people were falling over themselves because they needed to play this game NOW, but if there is a future BioWare title and you don't wanna spend a lot on it, then don't. That's the thing about DLCs, too, everyone assuming you have to buy them. You were unhappy with the ending to ME3, but if there was a DLC with another ending that you would have to pay for, would you do it? Because I am pretty sure those hours of programming wouldn't come for free.
Also I've never watched Checkpoint, but it seems like a show for tools who buy into the shitty IGN rhetoric and we all know they're unbiased.
RIGHT?
It's hard to tell, but I hope you're being sarcastic. Mostly on the last part, I could give less of a damn about the first part.
I read @Orikaeshigitae's post on the topic, and it struck such a cord that even I agree with it, and I like the endings.
Cool. @Jacobkosh has a pretty nice analysis as well: http://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/156984/awesome-mass-effect-3-there-goes-the-neighborhood-by-jacobkos
About IGN I'm not being sarcastic. There's an IGN employee in the game for christ's sake, beyond even the usual amount of "give our game a decent review so we don't pull our advertising and never give you pre-release copies" how can they possibly be unbiased about mass effect 3? In that video where Colin Moriarty talks about the ending, he gets about 30 seconds in and completely strawmans the detractors. I stopped watching the video because if he can't listen to us, why should we listen to him-kind of like if you make an episode of PATV that immediately insults anyone you may be trying to convince to see things your way HINT HINT.
About authorship being somewhat in the hands of the fanbase I am absolutely not being sarcastic at all. There's so much precedent; like, for example, that shitty mass effect novel that was terrible that came out a few weeks before the game. That atrocity got sent back to shop to actually be more in line with the universe it took part in, last I heard. The editors didn't do their jobs so the fanbase had to step in and do it for them. Or how about Fallout 3? Haven't played it myself, but I know how the game originally ended, and I know they released DLC to expand on/change it as a result so don't tell me other epic-scale RPGs haven't responded to logical negative fan reaction.
There's also some idea out there that the right to authorship lies solely and inextricably with the original creators of something, and a subversion of that is some kind of taboo. This is entirely bullshit. Quite frankly I'm not sure anyone who espouses this has ever picked up a comic book. These can have a completely different set of "authors" (writing, drawing, inking, etc) from one month to the next! The largest example I can think of of how authorship is never in just one person's hands would be a superhero you may have heard of, Batman. Anyone remember that thing where they had a poll on whether or not to kill off Robin? And they did it? Yeah, DC asked for fan input (like Casey Hudson saying the fans are involved in the creative process) and then DC followed through. Jason Todd has been back in the comics since, but it's still consistent within the universe of the series and we got the excellent Under the Red Hood movie out of it. Then of course there's Frank Miller. He wrote the storyline that redefined batman comics with The Dark Knight Returns, but he also wrote all that ultraviolent "goddamn batman" crap that's targeted specifically at adolescent males (TDKR's sequel falls under this umbrella). I feel confident saying most people consider TDKR representative of Batman's nature as a person and character, and all that other crap, well... not.
Furthermore, if you still think the "original authors" are the only ones who have the right to work on something, then I guess you should go find them all, take them off their current projects, and bring them to work on Mass Effect 3, since only two of the writers of ME3 have been there through the series (and one had a very minor role in ME1). There is no "real authorship" here because there is no consistency with who is writing it. Even the lead writer has changed. I also don't know for a fact but I doubt the art team was the same. Every alien race in 1 and 2 had very unique appearances and reasons for them, while now quarians are best represented by a photoshopped stock image. Cool. I remember watching a video about the creation of the krogans, and they put a lot of thought into even the eye placement (originally they were on the sides, but only prey have eyes on the sides of their heads, so they moved the eyes forward). The amount of photoshopped stock images used throughout mass effect 3 absolutely does not give me the same impression of effort or thought. If it is the same people, I don't have an issue with telling these same people to maybe look at what they've got in the game, take a little time, and see if they can come up with something better.
So ultimately, I think the fanbase gets authorial input because Bioware said we get authorial input, and even if they hadn't said so they would be wrong. And yes, things are definitely allowed to get edited without losing integrity they may have had in the first place. For example I'm editing this post right now.
Also, you seem to be conflating sequels/reboots/offshoots with editing the existing work. Show me a comic where they re-released issue #XX but changed what batman says on the last page because that would be the appropriate analogy. Of course just because someone did it once, doesn't mean everyone has to do it in the future. No one is arguing whether Bioware can go back and change the ending. The argument has been over whether Bioware has to and whether or not people are coming across as demanding or requesting.
Now, what I think a lot of people are doing is conflating the usual, reasonable understanding of the word "demand" with that one often hears in the context of hostage negotiations or terrorists. So in this case the word has come to reference a form of coercion, typically in the form of violence or legal right. So, let's consider that. Can anyone reasonably get away with threatening Bioware with violence to get them to change their story? No, even if INTERNET RAGE is what it is. Do fans have the legal right to force Bioware to change their stories? Despite what that one idiot said to the FTC, the answer is no. So it cannot be considered coercion in those forms, or if it is it is purely fantastical coercion in the minds of the deluded.
Now, there are other more possible forms of coercion at hand. We have discarded with legal and physical force. I'm sure there are others but the ones that stand out are either moral or economic. Moral force is slippery and, considering the game is a money-making venture, it is unlikely to have any real power here. The Retake Mass Effect thing could be considered a form of moral coercion but, even if it was intended that way, it is rather badly planned. "DO WHAT WE WANT OR WE WILL GIVE TO THE CHILDREN" does not a persuasive or coercive argument make. The use of an artistic argument is either a poor attempt at moral coercion (because if there's anything I know about creative folk it's that they can creatively excuse and explain any number of perceived flaws, especially moral/artistic) or simply constructive criticism. If you feel that constructive criticism is yet another example of coercion, you may need to chickity check yourself before you wreck yourself. So finally we come to economic coercion. Fans can use their economic force (in the form of either buying games or not) to try to coerce Bioware. They might also work together to buy out Bioware and therefore coerce them through hostile takeover, but that is so absurd that I think we can dispense with it completely. So I think we can all agree that fans are either failing horribly to use moral coercion, which is still well within their rights, or fans are attempting a feasible plan of economic coercion- something equally within their rights as consumers. This is the nature of their "demanding".
So, I put it to this thread: Is it rude to no longer spend money on a thing if you no longer want it? Is it bad to demonstrate to the people that produce your entertainment that your viewpoint is a common one with economic weight behind it? Is it wrong to be a consumer, essentially? The word "boycott" has a lot of baggage. I see nothing wrong with using your sensibilities and tastes when it comes to your purchasing power.
As to the argument about if the fans have editorial or authorial input, I agree with Sticks to an extent. Fans are not legally creators of the work, therefore logically we cannot have any more input than we are allowed by the legal creator. To pretend otherwise, as Bioware employees have done from time to time, is simply that: a pretense. This is a fine pretense, there is nothing wrong with crowd sourcing, but there are dangers and Bioware has frequently encountered them. When you allow fans to dabble with a narrative that oftentimes becomes enthralling and a real investment of their time, money, and emotion, you risk disappointing and aggravating them by its very nature. If you don't want fans to feel "entitled" to your creation, don't encourage so much entitlement! Sometimes Bioware has literally entitled their fans, or at least written all over their advertisements and box art that "YOU GET TO DECIDE", etc. I'm paraphrasing, but you can see why that can be problematic. When you tell someone that "THIS IS YOUR STORY", you can't expect to claim it as solely your own and not receive backlash. I'm not saying that encouraging fan investment and involvement is an inherently bad thing, but it contains quite a few risks and Bioware should know that. When they speak of artistic integrity, they should probably consider that they have formed co-artists out of their fans. What about the fans' artistic integrity? Wouldn't it be against the very values they espouse were the fans to merely accept a mediocre or outright offensive narrative, even if the offensive/mediocre part is just the ten minute ending? Would you be okay with writing an excellent story and then letting the last five pages just be an outline?
These are things to think about. Also like four hours ago this cbsnews.com/8301-501465_162-57401660-501465/mass-effect-3-apology-bioware-co-founder-releases-statement/ happened. Dr. Ray Muzyka, you my hero.
What did you expect, it isn't exactly a secret that the majority of gaming journalists are in the pocket of the gaming industry.
Yeah, my impression of game "reviewers" is that it's a lot more pathetic than them getting paid by game companies or anything sordid like that. It's more like white knighting for a pretty girl in hopes she might notice you.
I'm telling you, guy. Bioware may invite you to the parties she throws because she pities you. But she will never date you.
http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/355/index/9845819/235
Sure, Child's Play could release a statement of neutrality. The amount of people who see the forum signatures/slogans/etc of RME versus those that would see Child's Play's statement? Not enough to make up for the bad press. So it's pretty obvious that this was something the charity had to do. If RME had instead, say, spread the donations amongst a bunch of related charities, that would have been more fitting and more likely to avoid this kind of silliness. It's also what most other charity drive-style things do (Humble Indie Bundle et al). I think that would have been the best course in this first place. At this point, it may be better for them to just keep donating to Child's Play individually without the big RME sign. It doesn't give Child's Play bad press and it sends the message that it's not about the attention so much as putting their money where their mouth is, so to speak.
It remains to be seen whether they'll go to the spread-funds style or donate individually or simply choose another charity. The last option is just going to result in the same thing I suspect.
Speak of the devil: http://www.reddit.com/r/masseffect/comments/r93jo/retake_mass_effect_fund_raiser_under_attack_by/c43yppv
Sounds reasonable enough.
Makes sense. Thanks for the link, it looks like they did what they had to do.
But if people have invested that much money and time into the series. Even the smallest grievance with the series conclusion should be listened to without that person being labelled "entitled".