In Defense of Hepler Mode

[Canadish]

Wait, *that's* what people were angry at Helper for?

Based on the vitriol, I assumed she must have been responsible for ME3's ending or something.

Wow, also, yes "Helper mode" seems like a decent idea for some games.

I'll play devil's advocate for the "Reddit" Troll's in the sake of fairness, as well as try shed some light on the real troublemakers.

It wasn't just that.

She was also the one who wrote Anders, in Dragon Age 2.

Anders in DA1 was a devil-may-care ladies man who's only goal was to settle down with a lass and get away from the Mage Tower.
Over the course of events, he may of died.

Anders in DA2 was a crazy Mage terrorist, Bi-sexual virgin, who's goal was to destroy the nasty Chantry (Church).
If he died, he was alive again.
He was also fused with another great character, Justice, who was also turned into this insufferable new character.
The player is given the option along the line to do a quest for Anders, which seems a little dodgy and illegal.
The results of this quest are the crutch on which the ending relies on in order to set up DA3.
So, even if you ignore Ander's and the quest, everyone seems to just pretend you did it.
The end of the game is really more about him then the player character.
He also generally makes advances on the player, regardless of sex, and is the only romance in the game to give a sharp spike of Rivalry points if you turn him down.
You're only given 3 options to Ander's offer, 2 variations of "Yes" and 1 "No" but which involved getting very blunt about it and being an asshole about it.

This was on top of all the other garbage pulled by the rest of Bioware/EA in the months leading up to this.

.


Then, there was the quote's from an alleged earlier interview, where she claimed she wanted to write stories that would have the same appeal as "Meyer and Rowling" and not something "written by some old white guy".
If the quote is indeed from her, she made it a Race and Sex issue out of it, intentionally or not.
That's where she became the real symbol of hatred in peoples minds.

There was an understandable backlash from that.
And obviously, a very less than understandable reaction as well.

The interesting bit however, is the "Reddit" incident.

I'll just throw it out there. It wasn't Reddit users. It was a 4chan raid.
They caught wind that Hepler was going to be doing and interview on Reddit and someone made the suggestion that they go dive in and blow the thing the pieces.
It's important to note that 4chan HATES Reddit, in a schoolyard tribal kind of way.

The whole thing was a stunt to try ruin their image with the mainstream, which worked perfectly.
Most of the really vial comments weren't "serious", but just shit thrown out by a handful using 10 minute mail and trolling accounts in order to get some image fodder and get people to start hating on Reddit.
The media acted as they predicted and they got everything they wanted.

But, that caused Hepler to throw out her infamously immature (if understandable) "vagina" comment, which then drew out the genuine nut-case misogynists, the genuine nut-case feminists, and everything in between and beyond. It became some kind of maelstrom which ceased being relevant to the initial people involved.

Meanwhile, they sat back and laughed at the utter chaos of the whole thing.
It was admittedly pretty funny looking at it in the broad strokes at how a petty little rivalry morphed into the shitstorm it ended up being.

 

[Playbahnosh]

What I'm trying to say is once someone has bought the game they can play it however they want. It doesn't make a different to how anyone else plays, so why's it a problem?

Correction: once someone has bought the game, they can play it however the game designer allows them to. You are not entitled to a "skip game, gimme cutscene" button.

But the problem runs deeper than that. Sometimes people forget that these are games and games are meant to be played. Now, you could argue that it's not the game designer's business how anyone plays his game, true. But you yourself said you are a writer and it irritates you when people skip story parts and cutscenes. Well, try to see this from the game designer's point of view:

Let's say you write a book, a long novel. An engaging story with action, drama, romance and whatnot. You work hard on it for years to make it the best you can make. You even put little illustrative pictures between chapters to set the mood. Now, I believe you would get quite irritated and maybe feel a little offended when people buy your book and only look at the pictures and don't actually read any of the book. Then you get on the internet and read downgrading comments about your book on how some guy who bought it "had to leaf through damn walls of texts just to get to the pretty pictures". Then they start to demand your books to come pre-bookmared at the pictures, so they don't have to leaf through the pages of text to "get to the good part". See?

Alas, "once someone has bought the book they can read it however they want. It doesn't make a difference to how anyone else reads, so why's it a problem?"

...that's why.

 

[JediMB]

While I certainly wouldn't use it myself, I'm not opposed to the idea of a pure story mode for those who'd be into that sort of thing. Anywho...

The Trayus Academy sequence in KOTOR 2 was painfully long, repetitive, and boring. If I could have pressed a button and skipped right to the end of that section, I would have done it in a heartbeat.

Waitwaitwait...

Did you play KOTOR 2 with the Restoration Patch? Because as I can recall the Trayus Academy is quite a short experience in the original version of the game, while the restored content involved actually running around in the academy and fighting its students (plus freeing your inexplicably captured allies).

Just wondering.

 

[The Wooster]

What I'm trying to say is once someone has bought the game they can play it however they want. It doesn't make a different to how anyone else plays, so why's it a problem?

Correction: once someone has bought the game, they can play it however the game designer allows them to. You are not entitled to a "skip game, gimme cutscene" button.

But the problem runs deeper than that. Sometimes people forget that these are games and games are meant to be played. Now, you could argue that it's not the game designer's business how anyone plays his game, true. But you yourself said you are a writer and it irritates you when people skip story parts and cutscenes. Well, try to see this from the game designer's point of view:

Let's say you write a book, a long novel. An engaging story with action, drama, romance and whatnot. You work hard on it for years to make it the best you can make. You even put little illustrative pictures between chapters to set the mood. Now, I believe you would get quite irritated and maybe feel a little offended when people buy your book and only look at the pictures and don't actually read any of the book. Then you get on the internet and read downgrading comments about your book on how some guy who bought it "had to leaf through damn walls of texts just to get to the pretty pictures". Then they start to demand your books to come pre-bookmared at the pictures, so they don't have to leaf through the pages of text to "get to the good part". See?

Alas, "once someone has bought the book they can read it however they want. It doesn't make a difference to how anyone else reads, so why's it a problem?"

...that's why.

Books with images are often pre-bookmarked. Either by notable different paper types or, you know... an index.

 

[Eamar]

What I'm trying to say is once someone has bought the game they can play it however they want. It doesn't make a different to how anyone else plays, so why's it a problem?

Correction: once someone has bought the game, they can play it however the game designer allows them to. You are not entitled to a "skip game, gimme cutscene" button.

But the problem runs deeper than that. Sometimes people forget that these are games and games are meant to be played. Now, you could argue that it's not the game designer's business how anyone plays his game, true. But you yourself said you are a writer and it irritates you when people skip story parts and cutscenes. Well, try to see this from the game designer's point of view:

Let's say you write a book, a long novel. An engaging story with action, drama, romance and whatnot. You work hard on it for years to make it the best you can make. You even put little illustrative pictures between chapters to set the mood. Now, I believe you would get quite irritated and maybe feel a little offended when people buy your book and only look at the pictures and don't actually read any of the book. Then you get on the internet and read downgrading comments about your book on how some guy who bought it "had to leaf through damn walls of texts just to get to the pretty pictures". Then they start to demand your books to come pre-bookmared at the pictures, so they don't have to leaf through the pages of text to "get to the good part". See?

Alas, "once someone has bought the book they can read it however they want. It doesn't make a difference to how anyone else reads, so why's it a problem?"

...that's why.

Interesting, but I'm still inclined to disagree. While I said that it irritates me (a bit) when people skip cutscenes and dialogue, I also said that they have every right to do so.

I'm not saying this HAS to be implemented in every game, I'm simply building on Shamus' thought that it wouldn't necessarily be an awful thing. I, as the author in your analogy, would not HAVE to cater to the demands of the internet commenter, but hell, perhaps someone else might, and perhaps they'd do well out of it, I don't know. Incidentally, illustrated books often have contents pages which would enable the reader (viewer?) to skip straight to the pictures if they wanted to. It would also enable them to start in the middle, if they really wanted.

Basically, I stand by my original statement. Sure, it's disheartening to see disparaging comments made about something you worked hard on, but that's just part and parcel of being professionally creative. There are always going to be people who, to the creator's eyes, don't "get" it or interpret things differently.

Why, only this evening my father and I sat down to watch Return of the King. We decided to skip straight to the charge of the Rohirrim (over half way through) and watch it from there, because that's the bit we both happen to enjoy most. We weren't in the mood for the rest. Had my sister been watching the film and not us, she probably would have fast forwarded through all the bits with Frodo and Sam. Our DVD, our choices. And I think Peter Jackson can cope with that.

EDIT: also that typo in my original post ("different" instead of "difference") is bugging me way too much

 

[80Maxwell08]

My own take is that this was less about the gaming community being full of sexist monsters, and more about the condition of the community at Reddit, where the initial thread took place.

You would be wrong about that, it has a lot more to do with the rage over Dragon Age 2 (including being called "The best RPG of this decade" with "The best RPG combat ever." as well as "A pinnacle of role-playing games with well-designed mechanics and excellent story-telling, Dragon Age II is what videogames are meant to be." by this very site while one year later Retailers are refusing to carry it [http://www.gamebanshee.com/news/107364-dragon-age-ii-ultimate-edition-wont-exist-due-to-retailer-disinterest.html] and its Add-On was cancelled due to lack of interest), Mass Effect 3 and the general business practices and industry-destroying ways employed by EA that no game journalist seems to care to talk about, nay... consumers being even outright mocked [http://www.nitrobeard.com/home/2012/4/4/being-rude-1.html] by them as being "entitled", a "whiner" or any number of things...
If that left a lot of people in the industry feeling "dismayed", just imagine what the constant barrage of PR, lies, shilling, whitewashing and "10/10 GOTY!" awards for every single "AAA" hype release makes people outside of the industry feel like.
And it's not done yet, it'll happen again and again till it is properly dealt with by press or the industry.

It's just a classic example of pent up rage and frustration built up over years and years of being both mistreated and ignored directed at a convenient target (however wrong that may be). It's also why EA just won the "Worst Company of America 2012" Award...

Now that the storm is passed, I want to backtrack and actually talk about her proposal, because it doesn't seem that outrageous to me. All she's asking for is a way to skip combat sequences. Call this gameplay option "Hepler Mode". I mean, people who don't like the story can skip cutscenes. If you're watching a movie at home you can skip right to the car chase, the kung-fu fights, the sex scenes, or whatever it is you want. This is entertainment, after all. Would you walk into your friend's house and forbid them from fast-forwarding through a movie because they're "watching it wrong"?

As for what she said, no it's stupid. If someone wants to skip parts of your games (which extends to movies too really) or if parts of your game can be skipped you did it wrong and fail abhorrently as a game designer, go back to the drawing board and try again instead of introducing "skipping modes" or try not structuring your game around "combat sections", "cinematics sections" and "story/talky sections" or just make a movie instead.

Yep that pretty hit the nail on the head. If you don't like playing games then go watch a movie don't come in here and tell people to make it less interactive.

 

[hathfallen]

Hey by the way:

Would you walk into your friend's house and forbid them from fast-forwarding through a movie because they're "watching it wrong"?

Yes I would actually do this.

 

[inzesky]

Of course skipping combat in an RPG would ruin it! I mean the nerve of you people, how could you not gang up on Ms. Hepler sooner! I mean it's obvious this all just a nefarious plot by a SINGLE Bioware writer who has no influence on gameplay design to destroy the very foundation of the TRUE Hardcore RPG badass gamer. Combat.

You remember Planescape Torment right? One of the arguably greatest RPGs in the last 20 years, now that game would be nothing without it's awesome mindless, hack and slash combat, which you totally could not skip... oh wait.

 

[goliath6711]

Couple of quick notes here:

1. Why would you want to skip cutscenes?
So if you fail a level and have to repeat it multiple times, you really want to rewatch the cutscene that precedes it every single time? Because for me, after having to see it for the third time in a row, it's kinda lost its dramatic impact. I'd be okay with a cutscene being unskippable the first time it plays, but skippable if it has to be repeated after that.

2. Gameplay can not be skippable.
If gameplay is this essential element of a game that must be present and must not be shoved aside for any reason whatsoever, then so are cutscenes, and sound, and level design, and graphics, and story. Every single solitary one of these elements are essential for making not just a proper game but a game period. If even one of these elements is removed or can be ignored, then it is not a game by definition.

3. You're playing it wrong.
One of my favorite ways to play sports games (football, baseball, basketball, hockey, etc.) is to set up a cpu vs.cpu match. In fact, other than using the single-player modes to unlock the secret content in WWE '12 (I refuse to pay money to download those secrets), one of the things that I like to do is use created wrestlers and watch them in computer controlled matches in the Universe Career Mode. Are you telling me that I'm wrong for playing it that way?

4. If you want people to like your gameplay, don't make it suck.
That is the laziest solution to a problem I have ever heard. "If you want people to play your game, then make it good." Okay, brilliant deduction, Sherlock. Just one more little part that needs to be answered. HOW DO WE DO THAT? If you can't answer that question, then keep your earth shattering revelations to yourself.

 

[AbstractStream]

Having "Helper-mode" might actually influence more people to jump on the gaming wagon. Is it a good idea? Yeah, I don't know about that yet.

As for Helper herself, I felt bad for her. *shrugs*

 

[tklivory]

One of my favorite Nintendo DS games is 'Hotel Dusk', a visual novel that nevertheless offers gameplay without requiring fighting. I am a bit disappointed by those who *seem* to equate gameplay to fighting, as there are so many genres that don't have fighting, and so many games where the fighting is so poorly implemented that I wish I could skip it so I could play the story.

Now, having sunk several (tens of) thousands of hours into gaming over the years, I still don't consider myself a 'hardcore' gamer. However, I have been gaming for several decades (since I was 3 and was learning how to read with Zork and Rogue/Larn), and I have always said that a good game means I had fun. Some games I've played several dozen times through (Betrayal at Krondor) and others I never quite finished (The Witcher) - does that mean Betrayal at Kronder is better? That it is better 'designed' because it encouraged me to play through to the end successfully? Nah. But, like someone else said, I would have appreciated the ability to skip some of the combat in the Witcher so I could finish the story. (Mind, I've finished both Demon's Souls and Dark Souls, so I don't think it is a lack of ability to play the game, necessarily.)

Also, remember that no such thing as a perfect game exists. Every single game that is released has errors, shortcomings, decisions made during developments, etc, that led to an experience that does not match up completely to the design documents. Saying that 'not playing all the game designers made' means it's a poorly designed game is a statement that doesn't quite line up with reality. I love 'Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood,' for example, but have never played the multiplayer. Does that mean the game is poorly designed? Or that I chose to enjoy what I chose to enjoy?

*shrug*

 

[Bara_no_Hime]

Shamus offers support for a "Hepler Mode" in games.

Yes! Thank you!

I said much the same when the forum exploded about this weeks ago, and I was mostly yelled at or ignored. When people did speak vaguely rationally, it was the "games are about gameplay" argument.

... or about taking her comment about being a working mother out of context. There were a lot of people who really wanted to make her comment be about women staying home and raising kids - which is absurd since she is a working mother herself, and uses herself AS that example.

Anyway, thank you for saying this. It might not quell the tide, but at least now, when people start saying stupid stuff about her, I can link them to your article.

 

[The Random One]

You know, when I first heard about Hepler's comments, I was angry. But then I remembered it was Bioware. And I remember than when playing through Mass Effect my most common thought was, 'Why am I shooting at stuff in this game about flying through space to talk to aliens?'

I was legitimately disappointed when I noticed that the 'Story' mode in ME3 only made the combat hyper-easy. I don't want the combat to be hyper-easy because combat in ME is not frustrating, it's just boring, and making it hyper-easy only makes it a different kind of boring. I just want it to be replaced by a box that says, 'And then Shepard went down there and punched a bunch of aliens in their face-analogues.'

Maybe I should make some cupcakes and demand Bioware add that option. Or maybe I should do something constructive and use that idea to create a combat-less, dialogue-heavy space exploration game. Or maybe I should learn to cook cupcakes. The last two seem to be more productive.

 

[BreakfastMan]

LA noire's wretched boring combat n chases are skippable, becuz its just shite. i honestly dont get why it was put in in the first place, or why it wasnt improved.

Even if the driving sections were way better, I'm not a big fan of driving games. Even if it was the greatest driving simulator in the world, I'd still be happy to have the option to skip it. Holy shit, it's almost as if people have complex tastes that can't be filed neatly into a stereotype. What a crazy notion!

B-but, if someone disagrees with me they are stupid and know nothing, right? And if they enjoy the story in a game more than the actual gameplay, they should just go watch a movie and shut up, right? Or have I been lied to by all the nice people on this thread? D:

 

[Pat8u]

story should be displayed during gameplay sections aswell though, if you only display it during cutscenes its a movie

 

[Calamity]

Not everyone that dislikes Helper has something against her fast forward button comments, or is a sexist moron.

I simply don't like her because I don't think shes a very good writer and found every character she's been in charge of to be my lest favorite characters in Bioware's games.

I realize this was probably stating the obvious and didn't need to be said, but eh, I wanted to say it anyway.