Bioware: Yes, We Are Listening.

[JeanLuc761]

As somebody who's worked for the industry before, I have to say, this whole thing is depressing. Yes, it's good for a dev to listen to customers, but they (devs in general) have so little control that seeing a fanbase get so bitchy and self-entitled that a dev is actually starting to cave and act like they need to apologise for the story they wrote is just heartbreaking. If you read a book and don't like the way it ended, you don't rip out the last few pages and send the author hate-mail until they re-write the ending for you. Gah, this whole fiasco is reminding me why I refuse to be called a "gamer". I don't have near the massive amounts of self-entitlement and nerdrage to feel at home with the community.

That's not really the issue here. One of the major problems with this whole situation is that Bioware failed to deliver what they explicitly promised. Here's a couple quotes from Michael Gamble and Casey Hudson:

This story arc is coming to an end with this game. That means the endings can be a lot more different. At this point we?re taking into account so many decisions that you?ve made as a player and reflecting a lot of that stuff. It?s not even in any way like the traditional game endings, where you can say how many endings there are or whether you got ending A, B, or C.

Whether you're happy or angry at the ending, know this: it is an ending. BioWare will not do a "Lost" and leave fans with more questions than answers after finishing the game, Gamble promised.
"You'll get answers to everything. That was one of the key things. Regardless of how we did everything, we had to say, yes, we're going to provide some answers to these people."

Both of these quotes were made within the last two months, after the game was finished, and neither of them came true. This means either Bioware has something up their sleeves, or they were lying to our faces. That's a big reason people are pissed off.

 

[Sandytimeman]

As somebody who's worked for the industry before, I have to say, this whole thing is depressing. Yes, it's good for a dev to listen to customers, but they (devs in general) have so little control that seeing a fanbase get so bitchy and self-entitled that a dev is actually starting to cave and act like they need to apologise for the story they wrote is just heartbreaking. If you read a book and don't like the way it ended, you don't rip out the last few pages and send the author hate-mail until they re-write the ending for you. Gah, this whole fiasco is reminding me why I refuse to be called a "gamer". I don't have near the massive amounts of self-entitlement and nerdrage to feel at home with the community.

Okie on the flip side as an author its okie to take the praise and awards heaped upon you by your fans and peers but make a fuck up and its all "ITS MY STORY AND ILL DO AS I PLEASE!"

You have to realize these games, these characters have been a huge part of peoples lives. Myself I put over 240+ hours of play into the first 2 games alone. I bought every DLC pack, I loved every minute of gameplay. If I'm unhappy with the 3rd franchise, If I felt that the journey I made and the 300+ hours of gameplay was wasted...am I not allowed an opinion?

I am not one who is violently throwing crap to the authors, but surely they must see that this game ment something to everyone and its not the fact that shepard dies in the end, its that there is no closure. Thats what people really wanted, a conclusion to the 3 games. From my understanding you arn't told why your crew abandoned you and took off out of the system, or what happened to the allied fleets there. Those are major things that need to be wrapped up.

 

[Clive Howlitzer]

Man. if only people bitched this hard about day one DLC's. We'd be getting free games by now.

You really manage to get over all of these Mass Effect threads, don't you? Does it really bother you THAT much?

Honestly I get where Zeel comes from to an extent. I hate seeing people get praise for screwing up when people have done what they did way better and no one recognizes it. Especially when the people getting praise both seem like they are half assing it (I say seeming since even beforehand it seemed rushed) and that they have completely forgotten their fanbase and cast them aside. I stopped being a Bioware fan shortly after DA2 when they were basically saying they don't give a damn about their old fans anymore. Especially when SWTOR was coming out and they were pretty much saying they were going to extort us for all our money for a WoW clone with Revan in it. So I get it bothering him that fans are still sucking up to Bioware when they are being complete dicks to their old fans who have legitimate complaints and have gone a very off putting route of sensoring everything they don't like. Though I wouldn't bother trying to convince fanboys otherwise I might as well try to stop the ocean from moving.

I actually got the wrong idea from his posts. The few I had seen made it sound like he was bitching about everyone taking Bioware to task for fucking up so hard. I read some of his posts again and realized it seems he is just as annoyed with Bioware as I am, so I guess I take it back.

 

[Sandytimeman]

Also, thanks for the spoiler tag. Those of us who haven't played the game yet totally appreciate your courtesy.

So your actively surfing threads about the ending or peoples problems with the endings but you don't want spoilers?

 

[80Maxwell08]

Man. if only people bitched this hard about day one DLC's. We'd be getting free games by now.

You really manage to get over all of these Mass Effect threads, don't you? Does it really bother you THAT much?

Honestly I get where Zeel comes from to an extent. I hate seeing people get praise for screwing up when people have done what they did way better and no one recognizes it. Especially when the people getting praise both seem like they are half assing it (I say seeming since even beforehand it seemed rushed) and that they have completely forgotten their fanbase and cast them aside. I stopped being a Bioware fan shortly after DA2 when they were basically saying they don't give a damn about their old fans anymore. Especially when SWTOR was coming out and they were pretty much saying they were going to extort us for all our money for a WoW clone with Revan in it. So I get it bothering him that fans are still sucking up to Bioware when they are being complete dicks to their old fans who have legitimate complaints and have gone a very off putting route of sensoring everything they don't like. Though I wouldn't bother trying to convince fanboys otherwise I might as well try to stop the ocean from moving.

I actually got the wrong idea from his posts. The few I had seen made it sound like he was bitching about everyone taking Bioware to task for fucking up so hard. I read some of his posts again and realized it seems he is just as annoyed with Bioware as I am, so I guess I take it back.

Oh well then it was all just a misunderstanding.

 

[JoesshittyOs]

As somebody who's worked for the industry before, I have to say, this whole thing is depressing. Yes, it's good for a dev to listen to customers, but they (devs in general) have so little control that seeing a fanbase get so bitchy and self-entitled that a dev is actually starting to cave and act like they need to apologise for the story they wrote is just heartbreaking. If you read a book and don't like the way it ended, you don't rip out the last few pages and send the author hate-mail until they re-write the ending for you. Gah, this whole fiasco is reminding me why I refuse to be called a "gamer". I don't have near the massive amounts of self-entitlement and nerdrage to feel at home with the community.

UH OH! YOU USED THE S-E WORD!


Someone posted this in another thread and it was relatively enlightening. Go to the 10:30 minute mark and watch that. It's brutal, but very true.

Or don't, but never use the word "Self-entitlement" again.

Edit: or would it be "words"

 

[80Maxwell08]

I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with people being unhappy with the story. Going back to the store and asking for your money back is entirely what I would suggest you do if you're that bothered by it. That's not what bothers me about the community's reaction to it. It's that people are unhappy with the ending and demand that the developers change it to suit what they want. It comes off as extremely childish, and it's the type of mentality I can't publically admit to being affiliated in any way with. For a medium that is constantly pushing back at the public media to be seen as a serious art form and not the escapist playthings of a fringe group who needs to grow up, we as a community react to dissapointment or, really, anything a developer does that wasn't personally signed off on by every single gamer ever very childishy. This isn't just people demanding Bioware release (presumaly free) dlc to "fix" the ending, but things like the boycott on L4D2, the nerdrage over Tali's face being based on a stock photo, ect. Where in any other industry or medium, people would simply be unhappy with something a creator has made and move on to other producers, the gaming community bitches and cries with every move a developer makes, and it's embarassing. I can't think of the last announcement made by a gaming company about an upcoming product that wasn't met with cries of "RUINED FOREVER!!!"

I honestly haven't heard a single person say they wanted the ending changed to what they want just fixed so it didn't have so many problems. I can't comment on problems myself since I didn't get ME3 and have no desire to. If you think about it a bit we have finally gotten to a point with technology where we can fix games after they have came out rather than just rereleasing them with the fixes so people have to buy them again. Also I just want to say a few points about Tali's photo. If you want to skip this then go ahead.

1. Bioware basically took the mystery of a character whose face was one of the biggest mysteries in the entire series and solved that by using a stock photo and a few minutes of photoshop that people easily replicated and showed how to on youtube.
2. Someone pointed out on another topic that in the codex in one of the games it says that Quarians don't have hair.
3. For someone whose skin can't be revealed or else she will get a major infection she sure is pretty tan.

I do think that many of the criticisms leveled against ME3 are totally justified and everyone just throwing around "entitled" seriously needs to think for a moment about what they are defending.

 

[Merrick_HLC]

I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with people being unhappy with the story. Going back to the store and asking for your money back is entirely what I would suggest you do if you're that bothered by it. That's not what bothers me about the community's reaction to it. It's that people are unhappy with the ending and demand that the developers change it to suit what they want. It comes off as extremely childish, and it's the type of mentality I can't publically admit to being affiliated in any way with. For a medium that is constantly pushing back at the public media to be seen as a serious art form and not the escapist playthings of a fringe group who needs to grow up, we as a community react to dissapointment or, really, anything a developer does that wasn't personally signed off on by every single gamer ever very childishy. This isn't just people demanding Bioware release (presumaly free) dlc to "fix" the ending, but things like the boycott on L4D2, the nerdrage over Tali's face being based on a stock photo, ect. Where in any other industry or medium, people would simply be unhappy with something a creator has made and move on to other producers, the gaming community bitches and cries with every move a developer makes, and it's embarassing. I can't think of the last announcement made by a gaming company about an upcoming product that wasn't met with cries of "RUINED FOREVER!!!"

1-Please try going to a store and going "I want to return this movie/game/book because it sucked."
No store on earth is going to give you your money back.
However, complaining to the maker of the product you think it sucked is really FAR more likely to be productive, because they realize you may not buy from them again in the future.

2-I haven't seen anyonego "I want this perfect ending totally exactly like what I want"
What I've seen is people complain of how the ending doesn't fit with the characters/rules of the universe & such and want one that makes sense with those.
Now this is OBVIOUSLY a debatable argument, but it's NOT the same as "I don't like it so change it to what I want."
I'm willing to bet EVERY person playing through ME3 has been disappointed by a games ending before without protesting it this much.... probably because they felt those endings made sense in the narrative of those games.

3-People need to stop comparing games to other mediums.
Yes if people dislike the ending of a movie, or a TV show, or a Book people just shut up and move on.

But you know what.
Movies and TV shows and books do not regularly release more content after the 'ending'

When 2001 a Space Oddyssey ended, they weren't going to come out with 20 minutes more footage from the movie and ask moviegoers to pay $10 for it.

When St. Elsewhere ended on the whole thing being the dream of autistic kid, there wasn't "Oh and we're going to make more episodes set BEFORE this was revealed and you can buy those to watch"

Games ARE NOT movies, they ARE NOT books. DLC opens the potential to come in and add more chapters and change things that the fans dislike.
This alone makes the act of asking for that DLC to be a different ending a FAR more reasonable thing than asking for it for movies or TV shows or books.

It's a false comparison.

 

[Acton Hank]

As somebody who's worked for the industry before, I have to say, this whole thing is depressing. Yes, it's good for a dev to listen to customers, but they (devs in general) have so little control that seeing a fanbase get so bitchy and self-entitled that a dev is actually starting to cave and act like they need to apologise for the story they wrote is just heartbreaking. If you read a book and don't like the way it ended, you don't rip out the last few pages and send the author hate-mail until they re-write the ending for you. Gah, this whole fiasco is reminding me why I refuse to be called a "gamer". I don't have near the massive amounts of self-entitlement and nerdrage to feel at home with the community.

That's not really the issue here. One of the major problems with this whole situation is that Bioware failed to deliver what they explicitly promised. Here's a couple quotes from Michael Gamble and Casey Hudson:

This story arc is coming to an end with this game. That means the endings can be a lot more different. At this point we?re taking into account so many decisions that you?ve made as a player and reflecting a lot of that stuff. It?s not even in any way like the traditional game endings, where you can say how many endings there are or whether you got ending A, B, or C.

Whether you're happy or angry at the ending, know this: it is an ending. BioWare will not do a "Lost" and leave fans with more questions than answers after finishing the game, Gamble promised.
"You'll get answers to everything. That was one of the key things. Regardless of how we did everything, we had to say, yes, we're going to provide some answers to these people."

Both of these quotes were made within the last two months, after the game was finished, and neither of them came true. This means either Bioware has something up their sleeves, or they were lying to our faces. That's a big reason people are pissed off.

It's not so much that "they failed to deliver" as much as they actively decided to do everything they said they wouldn't do.

 

[Erttheking]

God, could they at least give us a date for this announcment I feel that they're keeping under wraps?

 

[Something Amyss]

I'm mostly following rumors of "The Truth" - it sounds to me like it fits the rumors just about perfectly: a new ending released as free DLC a month or so after release... just in time to trigger a second wave of appreciation for the game, je pense.

Kinda sad if that's the case. Not only are people already trying to apologise for a bad ending and an " incomplete" product, but Bioware is going to come along and demonstrate that it was so. Particularly after all the smoke they blew about this ending and its intentions.

 

[Nikolaz72]

I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with people being unhappy with the story. Going back to the store and asking for your money back is entirely what I would suggest you do if you're that bothered by it. That's not what bothers me about the community's reaction to it. It's that people are unhappy with the ending and demand that the developers change it to suit what they want. It comes off as extremely childish, and it's the type of mentality I can't publically admit to being affiliated in any way with. For a medium that is constantly pushing back at the public media to be seen as a serious art form and not the escapist playthings of a fringe group who needs to grow up, we as a community react to dissapointment or, really, anything a developer does that wasn't personally signed off on by every single gamer ever very childishy. This isn't just people demanding Bioware release (presumaly free) dlc to "fix" the ending, but things like the boycott on L4D2, the nerdrage over Tali's face being based on a stock photo, ect. Where in any other industry or medium, people would simply be unhappy with something a creator has made and move on to other producers, the gaming community bitches and cries with every move a developer makes, and it's embarassing. I can't think of the last announcement made by a gaming company about an upcoming product that wasn't met with cries of "RUINED FOREVER!!!"

I honestly haven't heard a single person say they wanted the ending changed to what they want just fixed so it didn't have so many problems. I can't comment on problems myself since I didn't get ME3 and have no desire to. If you think about it a bit we have finally gotten to a point with technology where we can fix games after they have came out rather than just rereleasing them with the fixes so people have to buy them again. Also I just want to say a few points about Tali's photo. If you want to skip this then go ahead.

1. Bioware basically took the mystery of a character whose face was one of the biggest mysteries in the entire series and solved that by using a stock photo and a few minutes of photoshop that people easily replicated and showed how to on youtube.
2. Someone pointed out on another topic that in the codex in one of the games it says that Quarians don't have hair.
3. For someone whose skin can't be revealed or else she will get a major infection she sure is pretty tan.

I do think that many of the criticisms leveled against ME3 are totally justified and everyone just throwing around "entitled" seriously needs to think for a moment about what they are defending.

Why is it I get this feeling from you..

-Everyone who doesnt agree with me are wrong, and they arent entitled to their own opinion-
-Everyone calling those agreeing with me entitled are wrong, and shouldnt say that-
-Im right you're wrong. Im right because lots of other people agree that im right and everything 'yo'u know that makes 'you' believe you're right is wrong-

People arent throwing around the word entitled, they are giving it to people who are willing to -coerce- a developer into changing a finished product. And dont pull an (its not finished, hurr duur, gu duuuerp, I didnt like the ending so it isnt finished, gurdurr) Thats what this bioware group did, im just happy some of that money went to a good cause, but the whole campaign wasnt made as a way to get a new ending, oh no no no no no, it was made to make the other side look bad until they caved in. Theres no way Bioware could actually change the ending in such a short time, and by not doing it they were 'lol, against charityh' They were made out to be the devil because some arrogant, internet bafoons. Didnt know how to make a civil movement against a decision they thought was wrong. Insulting journalists, sending hate-mail to developers. And using a charity to make the opponent look bad, and spamming game-forums with threads where they are eager to remind how 'wrong' everyone else is for having different opinions. And as the video posted, how they are the 'enemy' This is an unhealthy group mentality, and you should abandon it. Making people with other opinions than yours 'enemies' People who are -different- enemies. You are essentialy pulling the perfect bad-guy politician move out of the 80's.

And yea, that works. The same way as the Republicans holding the whole economy hostage works, it works but its not really morally sound, this is not the same as listing a complaint on a complaint forum, trying to keep spoilers where they belong. This is whining. 24/7 across the whole internet. A campaign, at large. Made to make Bioware look bad when what they did was change the story in late-developement cycle because some 'other' bioware fans didnt like the leaked endings. Go make a campaign based on hate against them instead.

Just because some guy on the internet supports you doesnt mean you (Or you agree with him) Doesnt support your arguement, as everyone is individuals. Everyones idea is based on subjectivity. There is no 'one' right or wrong. I didnt like the ending as much as I could have, but I think the game was well worth 60 bucks, if it wasnt I would have bought it. I liked Dragonage II? That apparently makes me an ehm... Non-old fan? I enjoyed Baldurs Gate 1. (2 was made by Black isle afterall) Aswell as KOTOR and Jade Empire. But because I enjoyed Dragonage II my opinion is void as im the enemy. HAH!. HAH HAH!. Seriously.

 

[Daystar Clarion]

I've pretty much convinced myself that the

Spoiler

Indoctrination theory

Is true.

Bioware have played us, so well, got such emotion from the fanbase, that when they roll out the proper endings, we'll be singing their praises for it.

I mean come on

Spoiler

What better way for Shepard to be indoctrinated than also making the fans experience a pseudo-truth as well.

If it occurs on April 1st, all the better

 

[BloatedGuppy]

You could always go outside. Meet a nice girl if you don't have one already. Or guy, whichever it is you prefer.

Joking aside, I understand the anxiety for closure, but we serve ourselves best in this situation by being patient and trying to get a bit of emotional slack. Bioware have made their move, so now we need to let cooler heads prevail and make ours with dignity and intelligence.

Trust me, take some time to do something completely unrelated to games to clear your mind and come back with a cool head. You'll feel a lot better and you'll be able to articulate yourself far more effectively.

I HAVE a nice girl. She's sick. She's also even more upset about Mass Effect 3's ending than I am. You know the comic, of the girl blubbering and hugging her Garrus body pillow? That's more or less an apt description of her.

I actually think I'm more upset on her behalf then my own. She's a pretty huge Bioware fangirl. Mass Effect meant a LOT to her. Silly, I know, games and what not, but we love what we love.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

What makes games different in that regard? What about them makes it okay to scream like a 7-year-old on amphetamines and demand that your disappointment with a product be retconned out of existence?

Because they ARE different. Because games allow for multiple resolutions, something not available in any other art form. My Shepard is a woman. If someone else decides to make their Shepard a man, that does not impact MY experience. My Shepard is straight. If someone else decides to make their Shepard gay, that does not impact MY experience.

If you liked Star Kid and the Red/Blue/Green ending, then you're golden. You had your ending. There it was, catharsis achieved. The existence of a DLC that expanded on or changed that ending needn't affect you in the slightest. All you have to do is not buy it. The same way the existence of a Black Shepard or a Hispanic Shepard or a Fat Shepard doesn't need to impact my Shepard, the existence of an alternate ending can be completely disregarded by anyone who feels that the ending didn't need changing.

That's why this whole "you can't violate art like this" argument is so confusing. This is a game that has always been about points of divergence based on player input. How adding one more would suddenly violate the spirit of the game when it's entirely within the spirit of the game is beyond me.