CriticKitten said:
I repeat: if an employee from EA or Zynga had said what she said, we wouldn't even be having this conversation. You'd all be agreeing with me, hopping on the old bandwagon, and my posts would have been forgotten within 24 hours and wouldn't have been drummed up into this HUGE multi-page argument. But no, she's from Bioware and may have been involved in making some games we like, initiate defense sequence immediately! YOU all made this a big deal, not me. I was perfectly content to say my piece and move on.
I can't speak for anyone but me. Well, all of me. there are several of me in my skull. but that said....
Please. I complain about Bioware more than I ever do about Zynga. By the way, I have a history of defending Zynga. Not everything they do, but I certainly don't hold any animosity for them. In fact, I dislike Hepler. I dislike a lot of what she's said in the few interview I've seen with her and I really object to the notion that women don't like games because they're too busy cookin' and cleanin' for their mayuns.
So a person I dislike proposes something I won't use and don't really want, your response is if she worked for another company I disliked I would be patting you on the back?
This really isn't a big deal[footnote]I suppose you could call the original ordeal one, but that was mostly a big deal because people flipped out over something fairly minor, which probably led to the death threats in the first place. This is not that, however.[/footnote], but you're resorting to grandstanding. If anyone is making it a big deal, instead of a conversation, it's you. The "that's it, I'm done after this giant lecture" deal is overly dramatic and completely unnecessary. And honestly, I'm sorry if you're offended, but it doesn't look like anyone else is taking this like you are. Maybe I missed some posts, but it looks like fairly normal disagreement.
If your argument is so delicate that it cannot be challenged in a rational fashion, then perhaps your argument isn't very valid at all. I struggle to find a reason peple react so strongly to this suggestion. I'm not really for it so much as I can't see any solid argument against.
Note that I wasn't using FF13 or Heavy Rain as examples of good "games", but rather as examples of how her suggestion for a "game without game play" is several steps beyond even the most experimental of attempts to merge movies and games.
Yet, despite that fact, you made an excellent case for superfluous gameplay that demonstrates our exact argument. Well, our arguments, which are on a similar but not identical wavelength. Understand that no matter your intent, you have brought up games that demonstrate how superfluous gameplay can be to these things called "games."
I would argue adding perfunctory travel makes the issue in and of itself.
I know a lot of people who watched the Injustice cut scenes, and there's almost no connection between gameplay and cinema. The cinematics will provide an excuse for the fight, but all you miss if you skip the fighting and just watch the cut scenes you don't really miss anything. This is an issue. You have a two-hour movie with breaks for gameplay. This is the extreme--more extreme perhaps than your examples--but the point remains.
There is also a large install base for "just the cutscenes," which can be watched on YouTube or other video services. Why not appeal to those people with an optional mode? Hepler's own statement reflects upon the fact that we already allow you to skip the dialogue to get to the pew pew, which if games were really such a marriage of media would be just as bad.
You also bring up an interesting point about how she actively fired back at her critics on a regular basis (which is something I didn't know, hell, I basically didn't know this woman existed until I read this thread). That puts her more into the category of folks like Fish, and it makes me have even less sympathy for her plight to be honest. You're entirely correct: when you attack your critics like that, you give the inclination to them that it's all fair play. Death threats are still unacceptable and always will be, mind, don't get me wrong. But if she was indeed in the same boat as Fish, then I'm sorry, but I can't sympathize all that much.
The difference between her and Fish is that Fish went looking for a fight. Hepler fired back because she got all sorts of crap calling her a fat whore and the like simply because she suggested an optional piece of media. She shouldn't have, probably, but it did make things fair game, I agree. Thing is, it still only justifies it after the fact. She got a lot of shit by that point. I can't entirely blame her for firing back, but it's still the wrong step.
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 applied this as a parallel to skipping to the combat. I think you can parse that a little better.
I'm sort of curious, though. For the most part, isn't it a story/gameplay duality we're talking about? In which case, isn't it kind of pointless to further the distinction? She went on specifically about points that relate to combat. Even inventory is primarily a combat trait.
If it's basically an A/B setup we're discussing, why is it a problem that she's talking about skipping B to get to A?