Poll: The Effectiveness of Boycotting: EA/ME3 Edition

[babinro]

I bought the game and it's day one DLC about a month after launch. I'm happy to say the DLC wasn't essential.

In fact, I'd say Arkham City had more of an essential feel to it with Catwoman than Mass Effect.

I do have one friend who is very interested in Mass Effect 3 but has not purchased the game because of the Day 1 DLC. He plans to buy the game when it price drops at least to the point where the DLC and game cost $60.00 together.

He's voting with his wallet which is great, but I question what kind of difference it makes if any when EA gets the sale on both items regardless.

 

[Grey Day for Elcia]

I like how people that up when it is 1 picture of 1 page in the group of a group that didn't even make up 1% of the boycott signatures.

Yeah, how dare people bring up that one pic which counts as evidence and demonstrates a point! It's totally unfair in light of the fact that it's inconvenient to my point!

Yes and 20% of Escapist users have Asperger Syndrome so yes a tiny sample size is highly biased. It shows ~19/833 users playing Modern Warfare 2. Yeah those are some solid numbers

Anyone that was going to buy, bought it. Anyone that never had an interest, continued to have no interest. Gamers have zero credibility and no conviction.

I like how people that up when it is 1 picture of 1 page in the group of a group that didn't even make up 1% of the boycott signatures.

OT: I haven't gotten ME 3 for various reasons but when I do get it I will not get the DLC to show which bits I was happy with and wasn't.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare - 13 million sales.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 - 25 million sales.

Oh yeah, they definitely boycotted the hell out of that.

Yeah and most of the sales were on consoles. 0.73m for MW2 on PC compared to 1.06m which funnily enough is more or less exactly how many people signed the petition with got 1/4 of a million so yea I would say that was successful.

Incorrect.

"While boycotts were threatened and more than 220,000 gamers signed a petition asking developer Infinity Ward to reconsider dedicated servers, sales of the PC edition of the game don't appear to have been affected greatly. In a post on the developer's official forums, community manager Robert 'fourzerotwo' Bowling revealed that, 'The PC version of Modern Warfare 2 has actually outsold the PC version of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare in it's [sic] first week. Making it the most successful PC version.'"
-Gamespot

 

[Grey Day for Elcia]

It shows ~19/833 users playing Modern Warfare 2. Yeah those are some solid numbers

Actually, it shows that out of 32 online members, 19 are playing--who knows if the others purchased the game. That's 60% of currently online members playing the game they said they wished to boycott and we have no way of knowing how many others own it and are simply not playing it of the remaining 40%.

So, don't make things up, k? K.

 

[anthony87]

I'm surprised to still see a few posts saying that the day one DLC was essential.

While Javik added some nice exposition and brought some fantastic snarkiness to the table, he was in no way essential to the plot.....then again I suppose you could say that none of the characters were essential with regards to the ending.

 

[flames09]

I bought it, got halfway and returned it.. I could not bare to finish it.

They ruined so much of what I enjoyed that I just let it with the good memories of ME2, I uninstalled it and returned it.

 

[Kron_the_mad wants to be deleted]

Wait you can return it on amazon.... even if it's PC? If so I just need to do something real quick...

 

[Savagezion]

The first red flag for me was Origin and "canon" femshep. Seiously, wut? Canon Shep is maleshep. That is the kind of logic making this game? Uh oh. I figured I could suffer through Origin though and it wasn't a deal breaker in and of itself. I just figured I would wait for reviews and see how it goes down.

Then "From Ashes" was announced and I didn't like that at all. Mostly because it was heavy exploitation of its fans, not because it was essential but it did run that risk. After watching most, if not all, of the content in the DLC there are nuggets that make the end not seem to come out of left field from nowhere. Basically, From Ashes makes the end do a 120 degree turn instead of a 180. The previous games from the very first mission in the very first game posed the question "Who are the Protheans?" You want the answer to that question that they dangle in front of you parallel to the main plot for 2(3) full games? Shell out. It's dirty. Perfectly legal and because its moral, is perfectly debatable. But this was when my personal outlook was, I won't be buying it new on principle.

Then the game came out. News of Tali's reveal came out and I facepalmed even though I am not even a Tali fan. That was such a half ass job and disservice to the fans especially considering how much they hyped that damn reveal. Maybe the reveal hyped itself but they bled it out there and then didn't deliver a reveal so much as a half ass image. This worried me and made me question the content in the game.

Finally, the controversy over the ending came out and forced me to watch it online. I slowly began watching more and more videos of the gameplay online until eventually just sitting through most of a playthrough. This is what took me from "pick it up for $30-40 later" to "Don't worry about picking it up at all." I actually prefer the ending of Mass Effect 2 where everyone dies over this ending. That is more akin to an open ending than ME3 is claiming to be. It's just a better end to Shepard's tale in general IMHO. I don't know if I ever will end up owning Mass Effect 3 but if I do, it will be for a $20 bill or less if they don't do something with that thing they call an ending. As it is, it is a story that starts out good and just plain out deflates the entire experience at the end.

I didn't buy it on launch and I am happy because it turned out it was a great product to boycott. They stuck it to me a little bit with Dragon Age 2. Glad I didn't get stuck twice.

 

[NinjaDeathSlap]

Bought it. Played it through 3 times now. Acknowledge that it is not perfect, but still love it overall just as much as the first 2 (which is a lot).

As for day 1 DLC, I'm kinda neutral. I definitely understand why people would be pissed off, but at the end of the day I brought it and thought it was well worth the money (I'm one of those strange creatures who actually likes Javik, and who think that his attitude makes a nice balance with all the other characters who can't climb up Shepard's arsehole fast enough).

The ending? Well, suffice to say that I was disappointed, but not overly surprised. Many trilogies fall into the trap of writing themselves into a corner at the end, or trying to be too clever and botching it, or simply running out of time/money, so a large part of me was expecting this to happen. What actually pissed me off was more the way EA/Bioware's PR handled the backlash.

 

[vallorn]

I was in the UK and had my PS3 Special Edition Preorder with GAME... when that went tits up I switched to Amazon as fast as I could.

There were no regrets from this. totally worth it and while I may hate Day1 DLC most of the time I got it free with the special edition so I dont really care.

Also the beam gun that comes with that DLC reminded me so much of the ME1 guns that it became my Go To weapon for the entire playthrough for sheer nostalgia purposes.

 

[Mycroft Holmes]

Granted this is nowhere near an acceptable sample size for a serious survey, but even if you halve the number and assume 5%, there would still be tens of thousands of games not shipped simply because origin was required to run the game. Which is hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost revenues. And that's just Mass Effect 3 alone. Doesn't even factor in people who avoided other games because of it, and people who were turned off by EA's unreliably billing system(among other things.) I really wonder if the origin system has been an economically successful decision for them.

It just seems to me that by releasing the same products on steam, or without origin required, they could make a lot more money. Then to encourage origin they can provide incentives to using it(like small amounts of extra content), rather than mandating it. Just seems to me that it's a much better idea both from an economic standpoint and a PR standpoint. But then again, I don't run a billion dollar company.

 

[Fleetfiend]

I was excited for the game, and I bought it. I played it and I loved every second of it. Nothing more to say about it. I love the series and I loved the final installment.

Gotta agree with this guy. I liked the game, no matter how bad the ending was. I bought a copy for my boyfriend for our anniversary, and Gameflew another for myself.

And I honestly don't think that they care THAT much about boycotting. It will chip into their profits, sure... but they still made a ton of money, I guarantee. The only reason that I think they really care so much is because of the outrage that comes with the boycotting. Then again... it could be bass ackwards on this.

 

[William Dickbringer]

bought the collector's edition of it (had that preordered before the day one dlc was announced so really can't complain about that)
I however believe the ending thing didn't need to blown up to what it was it could have been worse (the third game in any series is a tough one)

 

[KennardKId5]

I didn't buy it because I've heard that ME3 is best enjoyed by playing the first two games first, and I didn't feel like playing two games of cover-based combat just to get a story. Mind you, this was before the ending details were out. The other reason was that I had used Origin briefly during the BF3 beta, and found it a buggy client full of glitches and frustration. The Day-One DLC just confirmed the solid belief that I would not buy the game.

 

[Phlakes]

Bought the Digital Whatever-the-hell Edition, played through it in a couple days, completely worth the money. And the strangest thing is, Origin has not exploded my computer, and EA has not kidnapped my wife and children demanding a ransom of undying loyalty to their products.

And I got a fucking brilliant game out of it too. Funny how that works.

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

I bought it without the DLC. And you know what? It turns out that most of the DLC was already on the disc. As a PC gamer who knows his way around some of the UT3 engine commands it was piss easy for me to unlock everything, and it seems that EA/Bioware can't detect if you acquire DLC files that aren't on the disc via other means. So I bought the core game on PC, and I have all the content now. Most of it I unlocked by editing game files.

Did you know that you can unlock the Collector's rifle for single player? That was advertized as an exclusive item that you can only get if you buy one of N7 Razer products. But all you have to do is tell your save game file that you have the gun. It is in the game. Fully functional. You can also unlock DLC weapons in SP using the same method. I think you can do that on consoles to with save file editor.

 

[DarthSka]

Bought the game standard (wanted Collector's Edition though) and haven't bought any DLC as of late. Might do so in the future when some extra cash falls in my lap, but for now, no.

 

[Crazy Zaul]

Mixture of 1 and 3, I bought it, and the DLC, played it, then traded it in to blockbuster, and a few months later, wrote this post, with too many commas.

 

[Tayh]

Bought standard edition and then purchased the DLC seperately from Bioware's website.
No regrets here, as usual is just a bunch of scare and doommongers trying to blow it out of proportions.

 

[Mausthemighty]

Pre-ordered the CE... I should have bought the regular edition instead. What I got was a robot dog which only walked around in the shuttle bay and didn't have a purpose beyond that. I loved the game before I heard about the ending... I haven't played it for a few months now because of that. I hope the extra content this summer will fix the ending. But I doubt I'll ever pre-order something from Bioware again, after Dragon Age 2 and this one.

 

[Ironside]

I purchased the game with the dlc and wish i hadn't. Bioware will have to do something rather special if they want me to consider buying one of their games again. Boycotts are useless as well - virtually nobody follows through with their threats - at least not enough to make a difference.

Wait you can return it on amazon.... even if it's PC? If so I just need to do something real quick...

I believe EA were offering refunds through Origin at one point as well were they not? BUt that may only have been for games purchased directly from thm.

id be curious to see how many people will bother to purchase future bioware releases

If BW makes another great game I'm sure a lot of people will buy it. However i expect a lot of people -myself included- will not be pre-ordering anymore and so will wait for reviews and price drops before they do buy it.