RaikuFA said:
370999 said:
RaikuFA said:
370999 said:
So once again Bob doesn't understand the difference between games and movies. And misrepresents the retake ME movement. Standard stuff from him them.
Considering people are demanding donations back, making death threats and making BBB complaints over it, hes a bit justified. Hes just saying those above three make all fans of something look bad.
That is an extreme fringe and accompanies anything which is emotional. Bob is not a man to chide others for childish outbursts, remember the whole comparison between the Transformers movies and his dogs skeleton being dug out, covered in shit and views of it sold? I do.
Also he mentions the FTC without paying any attention to why that happened. That is not about the ending being bad, that is about Bioware outright lying in interviews. They said it wouldn't be an ABC affair and it was.
OK? And? I was promised a demo of MML3 and the sales of said demo would determine if it was gonna be cancelled or not. It got canceled before the demo was released and I can't make a BBB complaint over it cause it will be thrown out, just like your ME3 complaints.
Jaebird said:
Geez. Haven't seen this much of an outcry over fictional media since... Lost?
And it wasn't even this bad.
Well, you could make a BBB complaint, The Better Business Bureau is a private consumer watch organization with a lot of influance. Whether they would choose to pursue it and promote them on it's blacklist, and put pressure on the company as they sometimes do is debatable. All told being private the BBB can wind up doing some odd things... and depending on the roll of the dice they might actually represent someone over that demo thing... which is neither here nor there.
What we're looking at with EA/Bioware is the FTC.. Federal Trade Comission. The question here comes down to wheher EA/Bioware made promises and then intentionally chose not to keep them. With the Demo thing it could be argued that they never had the funding to consider making the game or any of a number of other situations. In the end there really isn't a product being judged, but rather the question of whether one was ever going to be created. With "Mass Effect 3" there is a product, and there are statements made by members of the Dev team including managers and writers, along with those interviews taken from that $3 ending app that shows that EA/Bioware deliberatly made promises and then chose not to keep them.
In the end a lot comes down to whether or not your going to find lawyers willing to take a case before the FTC or into civil court. I could be wrong but "Mass Effect 3" seems to be going to both. Lawyers have their own careers to worry about and generally won't take cases they have no chance of winning as it can affect their overall ratings (win/loss rate on cases) and so on. The FTC complaints and such here are noteworthy both because fans are angry enough to spend the money, and because there are lawyers willing to take the case, which means that they expect to be able to win it during a hearing.... and that says a lot all on it's own. See if this was just a case of some people yelling "lawsuit" in forums it wouldn't even be noteworthy, that happens all the time. This one is noteworthy because it's apparently actually been filed as I understand things... which means it's actually going to happen this time, real lawyers are apparently taking real money to make this a real case. Agree or not, this means it's a real issue. Any claims about how ridiculous it sounds, or other "ridiculous" cases that might be made are irrelevent at this point. In the end most of those "analogies" to what is going on fall apart because you couldn't get the funding or a lawyer willing to stake themselves on the case.
At least that's how I understand things.
As far as "Lost" goes, understand that with "Lost" there was no real investment on the part of the people watching it. "Lost" was free, all you have to do was subject yourself to commercials. With "Mass Effect 3" people have invested $60 in this product, and in many cases over $200 in the series (well over counting DLC, collector's editions, etc...). This means there is a larger, direct stake.
A better analogy than lost would be movies that dissatisfy viewers, in cases where everyone winds up hating a movie crowds of people tend to demand... and received, their money back. A theater giving a single customer a refund for not liking something is minimal, but if a full theater of people come banging on the manager's door, it happens. This is the equivilent of pissing everyone off in a theater, except nobody is getting a refund. A defense of EA/Bioware could be made if they were offering to buy back all of the Mass Effect merchandise they sold up until this point at the full retail value... sort of like a ticket refund, but for obvious reasons that's not happening.
One also must remember that "Lost" and other media with bad endings, also did not have the producers running around with a cash register trying to hit them up for money to see the finale. Not only does the ME3 ending suck, it's also one where it's impossible to see the entire thing just by playing the campaign. The degree to which you see the craptastic ending is influanced by "War Assets" of which there are not enough in the game to see all the options. Right now the only way to see those endings is to raise your "readiness rating" by playing the multiplayer mode, which is an intentionally frustrating grind fest, that happens to include a "pay to win" function where you can buy weapon packs to make it less of a frustrating grind fest... something targeted at those who might want to see the ending but have no real tolerance for the multiplayer or want to potentially put dozens of hours into it. EA/Bioware are also in a position where they can add more War Assets via DLC to make the ending an incentive to buy the DLC, and of course they planned to sell an app called "Mass Effect: Infiltrator" or something like that which would provide another way of gaining the needed points to see all of the ending.
Basically, Bioware/EA charges you $60 for a game with a crappy ending, but then tries to get you to pay money to fully experience that crappy ending. This is a point people overlook in this entire equasion... it's more than people just hating the ending, it's a matter of people hating the way this entire thing was motivated by trying to gouge money out of people... and that's beyond sacrificing the integrity of the triology for franchise purposes (which is also a factor... contributing to why the ending is such a mess, and why EA/Bioware wanted people to be talking about it... they aren't concerend with wrapping it up like promised, they want it to effectiely be a giant advertisement for the NEXT game... a cliffhanger or sorts added to what should be the end of the story... I have no issue with sequels, but feel they really needed to tie this game up as they promised. I bought a trilogy, end the story in chapter 3. Do another trilogy in the same universe later if you want, but don't turn the trilogy's end into a bloody marketing ploy).