BioWare Launches Survey to Help Direct Mass Effect 4

StewShearerOld

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Jan 5, 2013
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BioWare Launches Survey to Help Direct Mass Effect 4

[tweet t=https://twitter.com/GambleMike/statuses/488827474336161792]

BioWare produce Michael Gamble has Tweeted a survey he says will help the Mass Effect 4 team make it "the best one yet."

Considering how things turned out with <a href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/video-games/columns/experienced-points/9506-Mass-Effect-3-Ending-Controversy>Mass Effect 3, the last thing you might expect a company like BioWare to do is look to the franchise's still steaming fans for direction on where to take the series next. That being the case, the company has recently reached out through Twitter looking for gamers willing to offer up their two cents about what's important to them as development of Mass Effect 4 moves forward.

More specifically, producer Michael Gamble <a href=https://twitter.com/GambleMike/statuses/488827474336161792>has Tweeted out a survey that he's asking fans to fill out in order to help the new game's team "make the next Mass Effect game the best one yet." The survey itself contains a variety of questions inquiring after player's gaming habits, what's the important to them in RPGs and which element of the original Mass Effect trilogy mattered most to them. One can only imagine how many "not messing up the ending" responses they'll receive.

Oddly enough, the survey also asks about participants' involvement in cosplay. Granted, there has been a lot of excellent Mass Effect cosplay over the past few years, but it strikes as a tad curious to us that BioWare would be interested in a questionnaire supposedly aimed at improving the next chapter in the saga of Mass Effect. Go ahead and take the survey and what questions you think BioWare should be asking for Mass Effect 4.

Source: <a href=https://twitter.com/GambleMike/statuses/488827474336161792>Twitter


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Eiv

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Did the survey, hopefully they are actually constructive and don't just make the game a beige pile of goo. Listen to people but still use common sense.
 

Mike Hoffman

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Sep 25, 2013
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I recall a similar survey a couple years ago for the next Mass Effect game. The biggest question was "prequel, sequel, side-quel?" (IMO, anything but sequel).

BioWare has a decent focus on cosplay as of late. Their Community Manager got into the industry because of her cosplay and was on the questionable show Heroes of Cosplay. One of the earlier DA:I promo items was the plans for Morrigan's dress for cosplayers.
 

RedEyesBlackGamer

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Mcoffey said:
Hopefully Casey Hudson keeps his damn distance this time. All the problems with Mass Effect 3 were pretty much directly his fault.
Lets not underplay EA's potential involvement. The ending was a half-baked mess, which could indicate a rushed deadline.
 

StewShearerOld

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Mike Hoffman said:
I recall a similar survey a couple years ago for the next Mass Effect game. The biggest question was "prequel, sequel, side-quel?" (IMO, anything but sequel).

BioWare has a decent focus on cosplay as of late. Their Community Manager got into the industry because of her cosplay and was on the questionable show Heroes of Cosplay. One of the earlier DA:I promo items was the plans for Morrigan's dress for cosplayers.
I didn't know that! Really nifty. :)
 

Micah Weil

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Yeah. This is a good idea. Absolutely no way this could possibly fail.
Hey, anyone know who those guys are, and why they're wearing masks?
 

Terminal Blue

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I hate to point this out but.. it's a marketing survey.

If the game is being made (and it is) they will already have a pretty decent idea of where they're going to go with it. The reason we have these surveys is actually to find out which aspects of the game to focus on in marketing.

..or I could be really cynical, but things like "what about the Mass Effect series is important to you" strike me very much as marketing questions.
 

Neonsilver

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Don't think it will do much, but I did the survey anyway. Maybe someone reads why I can't look forward to the customization and actually does something about it.
 

AntiChri5

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Eiv said:
Did the survey, hopefully they are actually constructive and don't just make the game a beige pile of goo. Listen to people but still use common sense.
Honestly, that's BioWare's biggest problem. They listen to outside commentary far too much, rather then being confident.
 

Fappy

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I took the survey. I basically told them to just make a next-gen version of Mass Effect 1 XD
 

Mike Hoffman

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RedEyesBlackGamer said:
Mcoffey said:
Hopefully Casey Hudson keeps his damn distance this time. All the problems with Mass Effect 3 were pretty much directly his fault.
Lets not underplay EA's potential involvement. The ending was a half-baked mess, which could indicate a rushed deadline.
There's no confirmation on what happened, but once Drew Karpyrshyn left, that's where things went south. Literally, he moved south to Texas to work on SW:TOR.

Anyway, Mass Effect always had a writing process of Karpyshyn and the other lead writer (Hudson or Mac Walters) creating the overall plot and write out most of the game, then come to a full team and go over everything. Bits a pieces would get rewritten and so on. Then Karpyshyn left Hudson and Walters to do everything. Hudson apparently wrote the ending we got and didn't have the team go over it. None of this is confirmed and basically can't be confirmed unless someone comes up and says that is what occurred, so it's basically fan speculation based on other evidence and stories.

The other big rumor is that the ending leaked, so EA made the team rewrite the ending, but once again it was down to Hudson at that point. Karpyshyn did confirm that the original direction of the ending was different ([a href="http://www.giantbomb.com/mass-effect-3/3030-29935/forums/mass-effect-3-turns-out-it-was-supposed-to-be-abou-540743/"]I love it[/a]. Rumor is the final "choice" in the game is destroy humans to save the galaxy or destroy the reapers and let the galaxy get destroyed in couple hundred years), but it was never fully written out. Anyway, all of this is "citation needed", but fun speculation and it's what I think happened (except for maybe the EA forcing the rewrite part).
 

Gennadios

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I wonder if there's a "Don't make a new one" response. I'll check it out when I'm home.
 

WashAran

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evilthecat said:
I hate to point this out but.. it's a marketing survey.

If the game is being made (and it is) they will already have a pretty decent idea of where they're going to go with it. The reason we have these surveys is actually to find out which aspects of the game to focus on in marketing.

..or I could be really cynical, but things like "what about the Mass Effect series is important to you" strike me very much as marketing questions.
This is definitely marketing. We know that they are already making the game, which means they are well beyond concept and planing-phase. It might help them get an idea on what to cut, and that does not sound very good now does it.
 

leffi3

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What got to me what the fact that never once did they ask the important questions. Like what worked and what did not in the previous games.. But it does not matter I guess, if I can't get it on steam without 3rd party logins and whatnot, they won't get my money. Simple as that.
 

Grimh

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I doubt this will have any significant impact on the development, if it does then I doubt I'll enjoy the finished product.
 

V4Viewtiful

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Mike Hoffman said:
The other big rumor is that the ending leaked, so EA made the team rewrite the ending, but once again it was down to Hudson at that point.
If this is true, people seriously need to stop being all pissy about spoilers. I understand keeping that sense of mystery and or discovery but knowing how something ends doesn't stop you from enjoying it. At least it shouldn't

AntiChri5 said:
Eiv said:
Did the survey, hopefully they are actually constructive and don't just make the game a beige pile of goo. Listen to people but still use common sense.
Honestly, that's BioWare's biggest problem. They listen to outside commentary far too much, rather then being confident.
Yeah but if they had listen people would have been happy with that Indoctrination theory. And the stuck to their guns instead... by re-editing the endings again after the fact.

:/
 

Fulbert

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Guys, I might've messed everything up. I wrote I wasn't looking forward to any aspect of the new Mass Effect because as far as I'm concerned Mass Effect is effectively a massive dating sim series and I can't think of any other aspect it excels at. If they happen to read my answers they will surely cancel the development! I don't want the fans of the series to lose their favourite franchise because of me!

Quick, tell me how we can fix this!