When I see some journalists running to defend Bioware that the ending should not be changed because of artistic integrity and all this, I wonder if they have thought things through.
1. First, let´s talk about integrity. Bioware lied to me when they said they would not pull up a "Lost" with the endings. They have explicitly said that all questions would be answered. That's really not the case here - all there is to the endings is speculation. We don't even know who is dead or alive in our squad.
2. Second, I think its fun to talk about artistic integrity in a game in which the face of one the main characters is a rushed photoshop job. A game is a product, and every consumer has the right to evaluate the product that he/she is buying, eventually demanding reparation if the product is bad in anyway or their money back.
3. Granted, the definition of "bad" can be subjective, but the ultimate judge in this case has to be the company that produced the game - Bioware. They have to evaluate what their consumers are telling to them under the context that only them can provide. People are saying, for example, that the endings were rushed. Were they? Only Bioware knows. I work with art and sometimes my clients or my editor make criticisms that are valid, I have no problems to adjust my work to make it better. Hell, Bioware has been jumping all kinds of hoops to make ME appeal to a more mass market, to sell more DLC, etc. They say that they are changing all the time because of consumer feedback. They said that they built the game with the community. Well, this petitions and demands are just more feedback. People are not invading the studios, They are saying: "This product you sold to me does not look like what you said it was - can you do something about it?"
You, journalist, can and should report what is happening, but blindly defending Bioware artistic integrity is just missing the point. People are not trying to destroy the artistic vision of anyone - they are interacting with a company that said that this kind of interaction is welcome (the child's play petition is running on the Bioware foruns!)
4. This is interactive media - not a book or a movie. Mass Effect 1 had different endings (or outcomes), Bioware chose 1 to be canon and people had fun with the others. ME2 was the same thing, hell , Shepard could have died and the story would have ended on 2. Beside that, DLC of all kind added to the history. To "change" the ending, Bioware does not need to erase what they already did, they can complement that in several different ways, without any sort of butchering.
5. The thing that characterizes interactive media (including digital art) is change. Graphics are updated, patches are uploaded, additional quests and options are added. This is a different kind of art, with a very different kind of rules. Bioware can say that it's ok and expand on the ending (like they did when they brought Liara to ME2, hearing the fans) or they can say no (like when people asked to remove gay romances). Either way is fine. This is really not a big deal and it is not a crisis of artisitc integrity. It is a case of a company offering a bad product in the eyes of a lot of its costumers.
1. First, let´s talk about integrity. Bioware lied to me when they said they would not pull up a "Lost" with the endings. They have explicitly said that all questions would be answered. That's really not the case here - all there is to the endings is speculation. We don't even know who is dead or alive in our squad.
2. Second, I think its fun to talk about artistic integrity in a game in which the face of one the main characters is a rushed photoshop job. A game is a product, and every consumer has the right to evaluate the product that he/she is buying, eventually demanding reparation if the product is bad in anyway or their money back.
3. Granted, the definition of "bad" can be subjective, but the ultimate judge in this case has to be the company that produced the game - Bioware. They have to evaluate what their consumers are telling to them under the context that only them can provide. People are saying, for example, that the endings were rushed. Were they? Only Bioware knows. I work with art and sometimes my clients or my editor make criticisms that are valid, I have no problems to adjust my work to make it better. Hell, Bioware has been jumping all kinds of hoops to make ME appeal to a more mass market, to sell more DLC, etc. They say that they are changing all the time because of consumer feedback. They said that they built the game with the community. Well, this petitions and demands are just more feedback. People are not invading the studios, They are saying: "This product you sold to me does not look like what you said it was - can you do something about it?"
You, journalist, can and should report what is happening, but blindly defending Bioware artistic integrity is just missing the point. People are not trying to destroy the artistic vision of anyone - they are interacting with a company that said that this kind of interaction is welcome (the child's play petition is running on the Bioware foruns!)
4. This is interactive media - not a book or a movie. Mass Effect 1 had different endings (or outcomes), Bioware chose 1 to be canon and people had fun with the others. ME2 was the same thing, hell , Shepard could have died and the story would have ended on 2. Beside that, DLC of all kind added to the history. To "change" the ending, Bioware does not need to erase what they already did, they can complement that in several different ways, without any sort of butchering.
5. The thing that characterizes interactive media (including digital art) is change. Graphics are updated, patches are uploaded, additional quests and options are added. This is a different kind of art, with a very different kind of rules. Bioware can say that it's ok and expand on the ending (like they did when they brought Liara to ME2, hearing the fans) or they can say no (like when people asked to remove gay romances). Either way is fine. This is really not a big deal and it is not a crisis of artisitc integrity. It is a case of a company offering a bad product in the eyes of a lot of its costumers.
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