Jennifer Hepler leaves Bioware due to threats by fans

[Delerien]

As far as i know it's by the way not possible to skip the dialogue in DA or ME. You can skip cutscences which often consist of dialogue, but there is a difference.

In ME3 you could play in "Action" mode, which takes out most of the dialogue and roleplaying options and makes all the conversations effectively scripted cutscenes.

There's also "Narrative" mode. It doesn't exactly skip the combat, but it makes it very, very easy to the point of not really requiring any skill or effort at all.

Frankly, I think there's probably a lot of future in that kind of system. It's a bit crude and reeks of dividing players into marketing demographics, but overall it's quite a nice touch. I imagine almost everyone buying the game played it in default roleplaying mode, and frankly, I don't think they lost a single tiny thing from the existence of those alternate modes.

If anyone is offended by the mere fact that these things exist, then all I can say is that I hope I never meet them because they sound really insecure.

Yeah now that you mention it I remember it. Though I don't see how or why anyone would choose one of these modes, the only harm they do is waste a bit of the teams time implementing them. Pretty sure that's negligible though.
But that is still different from the press space to skip we have for cutscences at the moment and i honestly hope it stays that way.

For a lot of games combat serves as filler, it doesn't actually add to the game, and sometimes avoiding combat is more fun than actually engaging in it. Think about Dishonored for example, or better yet Fallout.

Fallout did it so well that you could actually achieve an evil pacifist run if you wanted.

So, I think it is a pity she didn't have a bit more of an influence over Bioware - the pacifist run option was once a staple of Western RPGs.

If you could skip the combat there would be no point in avoiding it anymore though.

 

[ThriKreen]

Jesus Thri, we get it. You used to work for BioWare. Try to at least conceal your bias.

The phrasing of his response revealed his bias. It wasn't simply put, ie "Why do you think that?" No, instead it was some snarky response to something he disagreed with.

Well, it's hard to convey intent on a forum post, I didn't mean for it to come across like that. But it's really tiring that every time I see someone claim she's a bad writer, it's always them parroting "Oh she was just a bad writer" without even being able to point out what areas she even had part in, or how it was actually bad, as opposed to say, a character being intentionally antagonistic to the player.

Or referencing Mass Effect 3 and - oh wait, she wasn't even involved on that project!

See, I definitely disliked DA2 Anders. I don't know if that makes him a bad character necessarily, as my slowly mounting disgust with him was quite visceral and actually informed my experience quite nicely, but he was certainly aggravating.

Evilthecat mentions above she wrote "most of Orzammar". I recall quite a bit of that material being pretty good, but I cannot confirm which bits were hers.

And as probably reported elsewhere, the writers do peer reviews of their work, so it could very well be that Anders was set out to be exactly what they wanted him to be, and with the consensus of the whole department. I can't get into the details of why the character change from DA:A to DA2, as I wasn't involved and don't know, but isn't it funny how he's more memorable from DA2 than he was in DA:A?

No one person is responsible for it, as writing tasks, every aspect really, changes hands all the time, changes in gameplay direction, testers have to catch inconsistencies, etc., etc. It's really a group effort, there's a lot of line blurring between people and departments.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

As I highlighted several times before (and once in this post), she then went on to suggest a "fast-forward" option that lets her skip to the dialogue. Ergo she is not just talking about skipping combat and nothing else, she is talking about skipping EVERYTHING that isn't dialogue.

She has highlighted a specific dialogue/combat situation, yes.

A fast-forward button. Games almost always include a way to "button through" dialogue without paying attention, because they understand that some players don't enjoy listening to dialogue and they don't want to stop their fun. Yet they persist in practically coming into your living room and forcing you to play through the combats even if you're a player who only enjoys the dialogue.

She refers ONLY to skipping combat, and ONLY to skipping through to dialogue. Yet you read this as "skipping everything BUT dialogue", and specifically say she does NOT only speak of skipping combat, when that is EXACTLY the ONLY thing she talks about skipping. This is what is referred to as "confirmation bias", the selective reading of information and retaining only that which supports your preconceived notion, whilst discarding anything that opposes it.

Now then, I'm done.

That's probably for the best. Once you've got to the point where you're calling everyone fanboys you are arguing from emotion and defensiveness.

...besides defend my apparently controversial belief that a video game should actually include a "game" in it.

Oh, I see we're back to maps, tactics, combat and inventory as all that makes up a "game". Yep. Time for you to take a break.

Protip: Someone who literally wishes that 95% of the product that they are working on would go away so that people can get to more of their bit is not someone who should be working on any product.

Where are you getting "95%" from? Hepler specifically referenced combat, inventory, maps, and tactics. Is it your argument that these four elements make up 95% of games?

Videogame writers should be looking for ways to integrate narrative and gameplay, not segregate it and make one bit go away.

Why must one of those four things be part of the integration? What if your game was based on puzzles, or exploration, or elaborate dialogue trees? Would they no longer be games, because they failed to properly integrate with combat, inventory, maps, and tactics? The industry will be sad to hear it if so.

That's 100% the wrong way to approach writing for an interactive medium. Hepler is better out of videogames if she wants people not to play them, she can go and write TV or books or something where all that inconvenient gameplay isn't getting in the way for her.

Why does combat = gameplay?

 

[Bruce]

As far as i know it's by the way not possible to skip the dialogue in DA or ME. You can skip cutscences which often consist of dialogue, but there is a difference.

In ME3 you could play in "Action" mode, which takes out most of the dialogue and roleplaying options and makes all the conversations effectively scripted cutscenes.

There's also "Narrative" mode. It doesn't exactly skip the combat, but it makes it very, very easy to the point of not really requiring any skill or effort at all.

Frankly, I think there's probably a lot of future in that kind of system. It's a bit crude and reeks of dividing players into marketing demographics, but overall it's quite a nice touch. I imagine almost everyone buying the game played it in default roleplaying mode, and frankly, I don't think they lost a single tiny thing from the existence of those alternate modes.

If anyone is offended by the mere fact that these things exist, then all I can say is that I hope I never meet them because they sound really insecure.

Yeah now that you mention it I remember it. Though I don't see how or why anyone would choose one of these modes, the only harm they do is waste a bit of the teams time implementing them. Pretty sure that's negligible though.
But that is still different from the press space to skip we have for cutscences at the moment and i honestly hope it stays that way.

For a lot of games combat serves as filler, it doesn't actually add to the game, and sometimes avoiding combat is more fun than actually engaging in it. Think about Dishonored for example, or better yet Fallout.

Fallout did it so well that you could actually achieve an evil pacifist run if you wanted.

So, I think it is a pity she didn't have a bit more of an influence over Bioware - the pacifist run option was once a staple of Western RPGs.

If you could skip the combat there would be no point in avoiding it anymore though.

The reverse is also true though - if you have the option to avoid combat you no longer have to put in a mechanism for skipping it.

 

[Delerien]

The reverse is also true though - if you have the option to avoid combat you no longer have to put in a mechanism for skipping it.

Avoiding combat would still (hopefully) involve a challenge of some kind, for example talking your way out of combat, sneaking past the enemies or simply charging past them. Skipping it would involve no such challenge and thus remove the part of the game that is actually played and not just watched. Enabling the option to skip combat would make it essentially pointless in that the outcome is the same one way or the other. If you win you continue, if you skip it, the game would probably just "assume" you've won and let you continue.

 

[Bruce]

The reverse is also true though - if you have the option to avoid combat you no longer have to put in a mechanism for skipping it.

Avoiding combat would still (hopefully) involve a challenge of some kind, for example talking your way out of combat, sneaking past the enemies or simply charging past them. Skipping it would involve no such challenge and thus remove the part of the game that is actually played and not just watched. Enabling the option to skip combat would make it essentially pointless in that the outcome is the same one way or the other. If you win you continue, if you skip it, the game would probably just "assume" you've won and let you continue.

And thus I think it would be a superior option that plays more into what she was talking about in the interview - making the game's writing more important in the actual game.

 

[deadish]

Well ... she is a writer, not a game designer. I can't say I'm surprised that "skip the bad parts" would be the most obvious solution to her - as it would be for the typical layman.

And that is precisely the problem. She was not a typical layman, she was a senior writer for a respected triple-A gaming company.

She is a layman when it comes to game design. She doesn't know anything about RPG mechanics, reward curves, etc. She probably can't design a game to save her life. She is a writer.

 

[GloatingSwine]

Where are you getting "95%" from? Hepler specifically referenced combat, inventory, maps, and tactics. Is it your argument that these four elements make up 95% of games?

Of Bioware RPGs, they certainly do. The balance of the games is heavily shifted towards combat as the primary means of player interacting with world. In any given Bioware RPG you will spend significantly more of your overall play time fighting than not fighting. Someone mentioned the first visit to the Citadel earlier, but that only sticks out because it's the only significant stretch of the game where you aren't shooting robots bugs and zombies every few minutes, or driving around looking for things to shoot (and everyone hated the driving around).

Why must one of those four things be part of the integration? What if your game was based on puzzles, or exploration, or elaborate dialogue trees? Would they no longer be games, because they failed to properly integrate with combat, inventory, maps, and tactics? The industry will be sad to hear it if so.

If the game was based on puzzles, exploration, or elaborate dialogue trees then those things should be integrated into the narrative. (See: Ico, Shadow of the Colossus for integrating exploration and narrative, your exploration of the world is the narrative). But in Bioware games, especially recent ones they aren't. (and no, they don't have "elaborate dialogue trees", because 3/5 of your responses will lead to the same dialogue from the other party anyway. Bioware make combat heavy RPGs, and so the combat should be integrated into the narrative

Why does combat = gameplay?

Because Bioware can't make puzzles or explorable areas worth a damn. Remember that we're talking about the specific context of Bioware RPGs because those are the ones Hepler worked on.

Also note: She did not advocate replacing combat with anything else. If she'd said "I suck at combat and I wish there were viable alternative ways for players to progress that didn't involve it", that would have been fine.

But she didn't. She wanted to fast forward past it.

 

[GloatingSwine]

You can't really get Bioshock's or Dragon Age's story if you play a completely different game.

You can get Dragon Age's story from two out of three books in the fantasy section of your local bookstore. It's so amazingly generic.

So, when those that don't suck are coupled with combat that people might have trouble with, they should just deal with it and either suffer through the frustrating combat or just never get that story?

You don't get to know what happens in a book if you can't read the language it's written in. I want to read Metro 2034, but I don't understand Russian and I'm not going to learn it just for that.

And how many visual novels have you actually read/played through? I hope it's enough to justify your sweeping statement that they all suck and that most of them are just porn.

1. Most of them are porn. Including most of the ones anyone not Japanese has ever heard of because they got made into animes with all the porn taken out.

2. Enough to know that they're bad. Because, frankly, they have no gameplay, and it literally doesn't matter how good the story is I have a whole room full of books which are worlds better, and if I'm not going to do anything but read and, if I'm very lucky, use a menu driven interface to click through locations to find the next event full of text to read, I'll read one of those.

Interaction is what separates video games from other media, not challenge. Garry's Mod and Minecraft's creative mode are video games (or parts of them), and they have pretty much no challenge at all. Regardless, no one is demanding that combat change to cater to them, they would just like the option to just skip over the combat so they can do what they actually want to do, enjoy the story.

And the combat is the actively interactive part of the games. It is the part of the game where the most player agency is defined, the part where you actually can choose how to do things, it is the part of the game which changes in response to what your capabilities are because it defines what options you have in a far broader sense than "pick from a list of three".

 

[Terminal Blue]

Someone mentioned the first visit to the Citadel earlier, but that only sticks out because it's the only significant stretch of the game where you aren't shooting robots bugs and zombies every few minutes, or driving around looking for things to shoot (and everyone hated the driving around).

No it's not.

There are many hours of non-combat experience in Mass Effect 1. I picked the citadel because its the longest period you're forced to stay out of combat, but if you're going for 100% completion you are going to spend hours and hours out of combat. There are numerous quests which are entirely non-combat or combat optional, and overall, a relatively small proportion of the playtime of Mass Effect is actually spent in combat.

If the game was based on puzzles, exploration, or elaborate dialogue trees then those things should be integrated into the narrative.

Just like combat is integrated into the narrative. i.e. not actually at all.

In case you didn't notice, all the important decisions you make in the game are made in dialogue.

I'm beginning to think maybe these games aren't right for you in the way you seem to think they must be. You don't seem to actually like them very much or have very many good things to say about them. Maybe you should go and find other, more hack and slash oriented RPGs to play, as I said earlier it's not like you have no options in that regard.

Also note: She did not advocate replacing combat with anything else. If she'd said "I suck at combat and I wish there were viable alternative ways for players to progress that didn't involve it", that would have been fine.

But she didn't. She wanted to fast forward past it.

Right.. and what's wrong with that?

As mentioned, such a system was actually implemented in Mass Effect 3. Did its existence destroy your enjoyment?

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Of Bioware RPGs, they certainly do. The balance of the games is heavily shifted towards combat as the primary means of player interacting with world.

We're going to have to agree to disagree. Mass Effect was most famously referred to as a "Guns n' Conversations" game, not a "Guns and Guns" game. Arguably the finest piece of content created for that series over the past couple of years was the Citadel DLC, the crowning moment of which had you hanging out in your apartment at a party.

If the game was based on puzzles, exploration, or elaborate dialogue trees then those things should be integrated into the narrative.

I don't recall Hepler ever making an argument against integration of disparate gaming elements into the narrative. I agree this has never been a strength of Bioware...they don't really do indirect storytelling...but I'm really not certain why that has anything to do with whether or not Hepler is competent to write for a gaming company, or why it constitutes an argument for why game writers (or voice actors, or graphic artists, or mo-cap actors, or sound artists) need to be enthusiasts for combat. They're not lead designers, and even if they were that would just lead to a very particular type of game.

Because Bioware can't make puzzles or explorable areas worth a damn. Remember that we're talking about the specific context of Bioware RPGs because those are the ones Hepler worked on.

Also note: She did not advocate replacing combat with anything else. If she'd said "I suck at combat and I wish there were viable alternative ways for players to progress that didn't involve it", that would have been fine.

But she didn't. She wanted to fast forward past it.

And I'm still not certain why that is a controversial desire. As she states, the option to skip dialogue and story not only exists, it's commonplace, and we don't even bat an eye at it. Older RPGs like Fallout were often lionized for the ability to use social skills to completely bypass combat. Not replace it...bypass it completely. Modern story-heavy games like To the Moon, The Walking Dead, or Gone Home eschew traditional conflict mechanics like combat entirely in favor of shunting the player through extremely linear narratives, and yet are celebrated experiences. That's to say nothing of more contentious "art" games like The Path and Dear Esther. Naturally games of this nature won't appeal to everyone, but that's what this whole conversation is about. That different people have different game play preferences, and this "No True Scotsman" fallacy we're indulging about what can and cannot constitute "actual game play" is a little silly.

 

[Dragonbums]

-snip-

Like someone else has stated, you presented an opinion on a public forum.
Like all discussion threads someone found your post worthy enough to give you a dissenting opinion.

You are the one making this a big deal.
You weren't looking for a discussion. You were looking for a soap box. You called everyone who defended Hepler raging "fanboys" when if you even followed the controversy surrounding her, it is the Bioware fans that do not like Hepler in the first place.
While varying people gave you calm, rational opinions you have become increasingly angry in your posts. Opting to insult your debaters, or simply disappear in the hopes that those you argued with will disappear so you can once again repeat what you said 9 pages ago without anyone disputing you.

 

[TallanKhan]

But if we were in the mood to look for a silver lining, at least thats one less of the DA2 team having input on DA3...

Sh left because of death threats to her family and you find a way to slip in "Awful, but I'm glad she's gone." Classy.

I hate being a gamer. I hate being part of this toxic, entitled community.

The problem isn't her, the problem isn't even trolls and the "vocal minority" we're all so fond of shunting blame onto. It's you. It's everyone like you. It's everyone who quietly puts up with trolls and then celebrates themselves when they make a shouting mob to force Microsoft to change DRM.

It's all connected. We feel entitled to believe we have any right but to vote with our wallet, that we're an integral part of the process and not just consumers, and then wonder why trolls appear.

We've all become a bunch of arrogant monsters. We should be happy, because we're convincing a whole generation of artists that we're not worth producing for. And problems like this are about to get worse, since trolls now know that their harassment tactics work.

Well thank you for misrepresenting my opinion so thoroughly. Simply put, had she resigned in any other circumstance to my mind it would have been a cause for celebration, and it would be hypocritical to pretend just because the circumstances were unpleasant, that Jennifer Hepler's departure is not still a positive development.

With regard to your other comments. If you hate being a gamer so much, then don't, take your own advice, vote with your feet. If your not happy with the community you have chosen to be a part of then make a decision not to be rather than whining about what you don't like.

I, for one, am very grateful that people have are willing to challenge the status quo, that they will shout down poor decisions from companies like Microsoft rather than laying down and being grateful for what they are given. Perhaps you don't realise that the reason Microsoft changed course when people shouted had nothing to do with people being entitled to everything, but rather, they understood people would vote with their wallets and that is what they wanted to avoid.

As far as gamers convincing artists that we are not worth developing for this is just hogwash. What we may very well see, on the other hand, is an end to the relentless homogenisation that plagues the industry, an end to the bloated budgets and the culture of chasing demographics. While I agree that games are art, the development process is not an artistic process, its a commercial process. You talk of people voting with their wallets but and people should do this, but for a business to be progressive, it must involve its customer base in its development decisions, because the aim should always to be to avoid a situation where people feel they have to vote with their wallets by identifying why they would, and fixing the faults. The problem with the gaming industry is that it doesn't welcome feedback from its user base, it tries to dictate what people should enjoy, and attempts to defend positions rather than considering them objectivley. It is this refusal to open a dialogue that makes people shout and rage at companies, and it is said companies recieving those opinions, whether they want to or not, that may actually save the gaming industry, rather than condemn it.

 

[Dragonbums]

If you don't like FPS combat, why play an FPS where the overwhelming majority of your time will be spent doing something you don't like?

Because the only way to get to the story (which is what most people played Bioshock for) is going through tedious gameplay.

It is an option though, just play different games.

That's not fair. She doesn't want to play a different game. She wants to play THAT game for it's STORY.

No, just almost all of them.

And the ones that don't suck should allow players who aren't that stellar at games to easily get to the story part.

But I suspect the vast majority of the people who play Bioware games for the story also like the actual gameplay elements of videogames, because if they didn't they wouldn't be playing fucking videogames in the first place!

No. Most Bioware fans merely tolerate the gameplay because they want to know what happens next. However if they could skip it all and get to the plot, they would.

Bioware games are fuck all like visual novels. Also: Visual novels are fucking terrible. Really, if you want to read a book read a fucking book. Japan just likes them because, let's face it, most of them are porn.

All visual novels are terrible? How do you know exactly? Where are you basing these assumptions on? Do you read enough of them to make such a sweeping generalization?
And how do you know most of them are porn?
The game Hatoful boyfriend I told you about- is not a porn game.
Here is the definition of a visual novel game: Visual novel games are games in which the player helps make a movie progress through his or her interaction with the game.

In games like Mass Effect and Dragon Age, you basically progress through the game through dialogue interactions with various characters and NPC's throughout the game. In fact, one of the largest sections in ME1 simply involved you talking to various aliens on the Citadel for a whole 30 minutes to one hour. The only time the combat didn't feel shoehorned in was when it involved saving other valuable NPC's and getting to facilities to challenge story important enemy NPC's. Which was not a whole lot.

They're still challenge elements. It doesn't matter what type of challenge elements they are, they're still present because that's the thing that seperates videogames from other media. If someone is bad at combat they shouldn't demand games with lots of combat change to cater to them, they should play games with different challenges that are more fun for them!.

She did not demand for the games to cater to her. She simply offered an option. An option that will affect absolutely nobody but the person who chose it.
Your fun with gameplay will not be affected.

She is explicitly calling for the challenge element of the games to be removed because she doesn't like that challenge element. She is not calling for it to be replaced with anything, she is calling for it to be removed. (NB: If a challenge can be skipped at the player's behest, it's no longer a challenge.)

That is an outright lie. I even quoted the interview for you.
She said she wishes that game developers could put in the option to allow players who are not really good at playing games to skip combat in order to get to the dialogue.

Putting something in is not the same as taking something out. Putting something in, is adding something to the game.
You are getting your panties in a knot for some stupid fucking feature that will never affect you unless you chose to have it affect you.

 

[Gunjester]

This is absolutely appalling. A real shame. BioWare's writing team is the poorer for it.
No one deserves the kind of treatment she's been given.

Agreed with the second line. But not the first.
She added little insight, more interested in broadening audience than producing something of quality. The first Bioware had insight, heart, a lot more to offer in the form of relationships. Sure, you couldn't f*ck anyone you wanted in any gender you wanted, but that's closer to life, and if you make relationships unrealistic, they're not as satisfying.
If you wanted to sleep with EVERYONE in DA:O, you had to have a character from each gender, forcing the character to break their own personal barriers and try to experience something new. If you didn't want to see through the eyes of another gender, tough shit, no Alistair/Morrigan for you. They had REAL sexual identities, interesting views on relationships. Everyone in DA2 was bisexual, they had the nearly the exact same responses to both genders. They had no sexual identities, even in DA:O the bisexual characters justify their interest in the same gender, the only thing that game was missing was exclusively homosexual characters.
Finally, someone who seeks to weaken the relationships of gameplay and story is better to be lost than kept in this industry. The only thing that sets us apart from other mediums in interaction with it, the less we have, the less we are what we are. Both Mass Effect 3 and Dragon Age 2 had two gameplay components, combat and conversation. No crafting, no joining between these two components, it was like if you made a peanut-butter and jam sandwich by spreading one on each and eating them seperately, it may feel in your mouth that the residue's mixing, but it'll never be as tasty as slammin' them together and chowing down.

 

[IceForce]

As far as i know it's by the way not possible to skip the dialogue in DA or ME. You can skip cutscences which often consist of dialogue, but there is a difference.

Wrong. (In ME at least. Dunno about DA.)

http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Dialogue#Known_Dialogue_Issues

Second bullet point.

All dialogue in ME is skippable.

 

[DjinnFor]

What the flippity fuck is wrong with some people? Is there any information on WHY they were sending death-threats, or is this just a case of crazy people being crazy?

The only thing crazy is taking these death threats seriously.

See if you're so bold when it's your children who are being threatened.

I wouldn't take random death threats directed at anyone seriously if it was over the internet.

 

[JazzJack2]

Because the only way to get to the story (which is what most people played Bioshock for) is going through tedious gameplay.

Why on earth would any want to play a game purely for it's story? even the best of storytelling in games is pretty average in comparison to the standards of literature.

No. Most Bioware fans merely tolerate the gameplay because they want to know what happens next. However if they could skip it all and get to the plot, they would.

She said she wishes that game developers could put in the option to allow players who are not really good at playing games to skip combat in order to get to the dialogue.

This shows just how shit Bioware (and a large amount of other modern game designers) have become in recent times. The fact that the gameplay is not integral to the story (and is seen as even seen as a nuisance by fans) but the two are instead distinct entities of which one can be disposed without detriment to the other, shows they don't understand how to write storylines for games.