The Big Picture: Mutants and Masses

Falcon123

New member
Aug 9, 2009
314
0
0
Baby Tea said:
Frank_Sinatra_ said:
Remember: BioWare has stated that their fans are equal creators in the story along with their actual writing staff.
Fans are equal creators in the same way that readers of 'choose your own adventure' books are equal authors.
Read: They aren't.

"But they SAID we are!"
Yeah! And the cover of my 'Choose your own Adventure' book says I pick where the character goes!

But even IF every choice I make in the book ends up at the same, unsatisfying conclusion on the final page, the bottom line is: That's how it was written. I might not like it, and I might even feel cheated, but that's the creator's choice. I can not buy from them again, I can critique it like crazy, I can even ***** about it on the internet, but to DEMAND that a creator, that an artist CHANGE THEIR WORK because I am unsatisfied is the height of self-entitled bullshit.

No, it's not false advertising.
No, they don't owe you a thing.

Geez, I'd be happy with another bullshit 'boycott' rather than this garbage.
People need to grow up. Seriously.
Where were you in the three threads I've been stuck arguing in all day? This is the most true thing I've read about the controversy. Thank you
 

Corran006

New member
May 20, 2009
61
0
0
So Movie Bob says all the Mass effect fans are crying. What about his whole rant on Transformers and compare to to digging up his dogs skeleton. Now Movie Bob did not demand a new ending the the films nor did he write into the FCC or whatever. However he did seem as butt hurt as many of the fans he is now condemning. He never passes up a chance to take a swipe at the film, He needs to take his own advice once again and just accept it sucked he took the risk and move on.

As for the Mass effect ending, I think people were upset about many of the choices they made in the 150 hours of playing the 3 games were not really taken into account at the end of the game, and it almost did not matter what you did. Just to be clear I have not played the game yet either, I assume movie bob has not played any of them. However I think its more then someone died or someone lived in the ending where people are upset.
 

teebeeohh

New member
Jun 17, 2009
2,896
0
0
yes, the whole ME deal is kinda silly and dumb, still the ending sucks a lot and is kinda like like being given a single french fry to finish your gourmet meal
 

MonkeyPunch

New member
Feb 20, 2008
589
0
0
Surprise, lots oh ME3 whining again.

I'm also noticing a trend where they are using the fact that Bioware said that something was going to be one way during development and on release it turned out not to be.

O.M.G! First game ever to not release in the exact same state it was during production (for what ever reason)!!11one111!!!

teebeeohh said:
...still the ending sucks a lot and is kinda like like being given a single french fry to finish your gourmet meal
But you still enjoyed your gourmet meal, right? Doesn't change the fact that you were feasting on gourmet standard grub :)
Sure ending with an exquisite desert of your liking would have been better, but just savour the main course, in that case.
 

Gxas

New member
Sep 4, 2008
3,187
0
0
Erlenmeyer Flask said:
Gxas said:
Would you be able to give an example of how something that has been coded (read: prewritten) can not be an ABC affair?
At some level, every bit of "story" needs to be prewritten. This is true. On the other hand... would you say that the entire Mass Effect series can be boiled down to an ABC affair? No, of course not. Because, while all the possible choices exist in the games before you've even played them, there are so vastly many different combinations of choices that you can make that they simply can't be enumerated. This would be quite reasonable for fans to expect from an ending, as well.

Allow me to provide a more detailed illustration. Let's say that the ending provides two options for closure for all eight ME3 crew members, and allows Shepard to end the game working with any of his crew members, on his own, or dead. That's 16 scenes for the crew members and 10 scenes for Shepard... certainly it's a lot of work, but not beyond Bioware by any means. Now, let's see how many different options that provides... 2^8*10 = 2,560 different endings. What if Bioware were to provide three separate ending options for each crew member? 3^8*10 = 65,610 different endings. Yes, technically you can still enumerate all 65,610 endings (AAAA, AAAB, ..., BAFA, BAFB, ..., DTBL) but absolutely nobody will. Hence: not an ABC affair. I hope this makes it a little bit more clear.
Well, when I see "ABC affair", I assume that we mean A-Z, double letters, triple letters, and greek letters. Not literally A ending, B ending, C ending. Though, I'm starting to notice that more and more people are only showing 3 actual endings to the game. In which case, yeah, maybe there is some slight justification to the complaints. However, if you refer to my previous post, I still stand by that notion and always will.
 

Terminal Blue

Elite Member
Legacy
Feb 18, 2010
3,907
1,774
118
Country
United Kingdom
Stalydan said:
If this is true then this really defeats your argument. There is an amount of artistic license that creators should have over their games but when you promise one thing and then totally go against it and say that your fans are part of the creative process, that's too far.
Not really though.

It's only too far if you promise something specific which is beyond the scope of the product, for example by claiming that a sugar pill can cure cancer. That's false advertising, and it's illegal.

It is very, very hard to falsely advertise an entertainment product, because unless you are specifically claiming that watching this film will definately improve your life in some specific way (for example), everything about the experience is vague that enough that short of not actually functioning or just showing a blank screen, there's no way to demonstrate that a claim has been made which could not possibly be lived up to.

You don't have to like the product. You don't have to refrain from telling the people responsible that you don't like the product, but saying things like "it's too far" is, ironically, too far. They have not broken the law, they have not intentionally mislead you (unlike the film industry, which does so quite routinely and visually through trailers). They have produced a product you don't like. Tell them you don't like it and move on.

It might be nice if they changed it, but if they do so it will be on their own volition, not because it's the consumers' right to have a product which meets their inflated expectations.
 

BlueHighwind

New member
Jan 24, 2010
363
0
0
On Mass Effect 3, and the debate that's going on: I'm not a Mass Effect fan, I don't play those games, I don't really know what the ending is. But I can sympathize. I played FFXIII-2 a few months ago, and that ending WAS WORSE. So I'm going to play devil's advocate here, and stand by the fans against the game company. If they're pissed, they might actually have a legitimate reason.

You know what? Screw the rights of the artist, especially when it comes to video games.

For centuries now its been assumed that the creator has total control over his universe and that the audience just has to sit back and take it. And that's fine for a book, you're basically being read the story about other people doing other things. So you might care deeply about those characters, but you aren't actually those characters. If Tony Soprano's story doesn't end in a satisfying manner, you can pissed about it, but like your own life just ended without meaning.

Video games, however, are the newest form of storytelling. They're a radical departure of most kinds of fiction that we've seen. This isn't just the artist feeding the audience in a one-way street. Its the audience making their own choices in the story. Both the artist and the audience are collaborating on final outcome. For example, if the player gets bored of a game, the plot of Super Mario 64 will end in an anti-climatic whimper as Mario falls down a hole and dies, never to come back. In Mass Effect, this is even more pronounced, since the player makes choices actively during the course of the three games. You get to choice who your true love is, you get to choose who to save and what missions to take, and probably other things. Then when suddenly at the end of the game, all those levels of choice are RIPPED AWAY, you're going to get mad.

I don't see why they didn't let players actually design their own ending. Since there were multiple endings, you could have Bad, Good, Horrible, Bittersweet. That's what makes multiple endings an interesting feature. Maybe the Bad ending is the most artistically interesting, but that shouldn't be forced on people. You should let the audience discover that for themselves.

And you can babble about how the game company is creating "Art", but I still haven't heard ONE SINGLE argument as to how Mass Effect 3's ending is artistically meaningful. What does it represent? I honestly don't know, if somebody can argue that, maybe the Artist's side of this debate has more legitimacy. I have no idea what Mass Effect 3's ending was supposed to be, and it doesn't like many others do either. If they did understand, then they would have accepted it and wouldn't be up in arms about this.

So this is actually an interesting turn of events, I think. If the players of Mass Effect 3 get the ending changed, it would be a remarkable turn of events for fiction. Yeah, artists are geniuses, but its not like the mass collective of viewers and players aren't creative people either. It would be interesting to see collaboration between the audience and artist in the creation of the story, not just a one-way street of "take it or gtfo". Artists seem too often to get God Complexes, suddenly get filled with endless arrogance, assuming that since they first created the universe, they better than everybody else. Maybe that's not true.

Why does the player have to be a slave to the developer?
 

Navvan

New member
Feb 3, 2011
560
0
0
All I'm going to say in response to the whole ME3 thing is that there is a difference between not meeting expectation and falsely advertising your product/work of art. Not meeting expectations is simply being disappointed by the end result and as MB implied is not illegal and is sometimes a result of the creative process that we have to live with.

Falsely advertising your product is saying your product is going to be, contain, or deliver a particular thing and then not actually doing so. This only applies to more detailed things, like stating something is totally solid gold and then having it be bronze. In contrast a more general statement that may imply the same thing is not illegal, such as this thing is totally worth its weight in gold. In the case of ME3 the people who filed the complaint (I'm not one) believe that they were explicitly told that ME3 would contain a certain item (most commonly claimed as not having a pick A,B,C choice ending based on a quote from Casey) which they feel was not delivered.

Personally I think that Bioware/EA can deal with any "false advertisement claims" as there is no official promises that was released by Bioware/EA. Likewise the case doesn't have anything like "Mass Effect 3: You will definitely not be choosing between three options at the end". In addition there are technically more endings than 3 that are determined based on a accumulation of actions (choices) throughout the game, although they are hardly noticeable. I can however see how people feel they were mislead which lead to the whole idea of complaint thing.
 

getoffmycloud

New member
Jun 13, 2011
440
0
0
I agree with Bob completely people have the right to complain to Bioware if they don't like the ending but the aim of the complaining should be to make sure Bioware doesn't do this again with future games not changing the game we already have. There is no way games can ever get better if developers are not allowed to make mistakes and are forgiven by the fanbase when they do get it wrong as long they correct it next time and if they don't they will lose customers and eventually go out of business
 

Karnesdorff

New member
Nov 19, 2009
33
0
0
Gxas said:
So are we complaining about some ending cutscene then?

Like I said above, I have no idea what happens, as I've not even finished the first game. But, if it's an epilogue cutscene that people are complaining about, then this is even more ridiculous to me than it was before.
It's more the whole last section of the game. It's not too hard to read up on why people are angry about it. Forcing a choice where none should be needed, or forcing a 'wrong' choice. The feeling that you could have run through the game doing the bare minimum and get the same ending as someone who 100% the whole game, a Deus Ex Machina turning up so we can have an 'Adam and Eve' ending, a hackneyed cliché that I doubt many people could seriously say is 'art' anyway.

This is usually due to poor storytelling on the designers part, or trying to force a conclusion where the player can clearly see a third option the game refuses to let you take. Fallout 3 was another example(before SHOCK! HORROR! it had it's ending changed via DLC) where the game expected you march to your irradiated death, because 'Destiny!', despite you having a companion who was immune to radiation and had went into another lethally radioactive area for you earlier. But they refuse to quite literally let your character live by walking through a door and punching a 4-digit number because 'It's your destiny not mine'. It was like there was a tabletop RPG DM sitting there trying to think of reasons you couldn't get out of his railroad 'artistic' campaign end.

Critics readily pointed out the BS here, and eventually it was changed via DLC. I don't know why so many people are saying changing an ending this way could never happen and shouldn't happen, because it already has.

Basically, if you end up creating an ending that ends up massively damaging the franchise, you messed up. When you create an ending that has fans saying 'What's the damn point of paying for content DLC since the entire setting will explode at the end of the game no matter what I do? My choices would mean nothing', you messed up. Hell, if they'd stuck with the ending plotted out for the trilogy by the previous lead writer, most people would have been happy.

EDIT: Actually, now I think about it, wasn't Neverwinter Nights 2 the same? The main game shipped with a 'Rocks fall, everybody dies' ending, that got retconned later due to crappiness?

K.
 

Aprilgold

New member
Apr 1, 2011
1,995
0
0
HUGE WALL OF REPLIES BELOW!


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.
I'm just aggravated that he had to bring it up for no reason what-so-ever. Its not even that these connected signifgantly, theres a different between a change in cannon and a change in ending.

crimson sickle2 said:
Bob, you got a little offtrack at the end; now I think this whole video was just an introduction into a rant about the retake movement.
Who smells conspiracy?

RaikuFA said:
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.
For all the whining that this movement has caused, it is bringing to attention some consumer rights that we kinda just forgot about. I'm sure a savvy lawyer could find a way to turn this ending dabocal into a actual case against EA and Bioware if they wanted too.

I guess the best thing to the ending to is if your driving your car and loving it all the more, but at your destination it turns out you were actually in a coma dreaming about driving your car that never existed, and you also somehow got a HIV from your dream is how abrupt the change in what the game wants you to do happens. It encourages and has encouraged you to keep your save files because they'll pay off later and to go on side quests, to fall in love with this character or that one. And while your swooning to kiss it on the cheek it pulls the rug away leaving you falling into a completely different place where apparently your past life never existed. Its so abrupt and just makes no sense and offers no closure. And if they do "The Truth" DLC then I will just call it out on being a extortionist money tackle to get more money out of the consumer base.

MonkeyPunch said:
Surprise, lots oh ME3 whining again.
I'm also noticing a trend where they are using the fact that Bioware said that something was going to be one way during development and on release it turned out not to be.

O.M.G! First game ever to not release in the exact same state it was during production (for what ever reason)!!11one111!!!
Could we please, for whoever sake that you believe in as a mystical person, not use this argument ever again, please? There is a concrete difference between a brick wall and a conclusion to a walk. The point of Retake Mass Effect is to show that fans will willingly pay for a DLC that changes the ending to something that would bring more closure, NOT BECAUSE SOMETHING GOT CHANGED IN DEVELOPMENT! The script, if anything, should have been the first thing done. You don't shoot a movie without a script because its dependent on it, just like you don't write a book without words. With a RPG the script should be written out, can changes be made to the script, oh yeah. But a good ending will always give you a sense of closure to most of what loose strings were left, this didn't. You spend fifty or a hundred hours constantly doing side-quests and being a signature boyscout only to have your scout master forget who you are and think your stealing the uniform, forcing you three choices.

There are plenty of quotes from the developers that the ending would not be a straight A, B or C option, and if the script was written first, then they were lying during this time. Not saying that this is a giant conspiracy, but just saying that its all whining is not all true when you remember what the whole movement is about.


--------------------------------------------------

You see Bob, the main difference between a film is that you watch it for two hours and then your done until you want to watch it later in a few years. With a game, you spend anywhere from four hours for some FPS campaigns and a un-countable amount of hours in others. I'm sure a lot of people clocked some 50 hours into Mass Effect one and two in order to get the best endings so that at the end of it so that it will ensure that their hard work is payed off and then at the last possible second it rips off Deus Ex ones ending.
 

Product Placement

New member
Jul 16, 2009
475
0
0
Bob. You may not agree with me, but I felt that the original FTC complaint was a very justifiable action, that soon spiraled out of controlled by ragers who followed suit for all the wrong reasons.

The original FTC complaint was based the fact that the developers specifically promised a game that would end with a scenario where you choices throughout the game series affected the outcome and you could end with 1 of 16 possible outcomes. That is simply false advertisement and totally deserving of that complaint.

I can't help but to feel disappointed about the ending myself but I'm pretty certain that this is the ending I'm going to have to accept. I'm also fairly certain that if a DLC will pop up at a later date, that promises a different outcome if I'm willing to fork over some extra cash, I must certainly am not going to buy it. I'm also certainly not going to buy any other DLC's for that game. Furthermore, I'm finding it highly doubtful that I will ever involve myself this intently in any Bioware product ever again, which are strong words for me, since I used to consider it as one of the greatest gaming companies out there.
 

dragonswarrior

Also a Social Justice Warrior
Feb 13, 2012
434
0
0
Draech said:
dragonswarrior said:
AGH YOU DON'T GET IT YOU DON'T GET IT YOU DON'T GET IT!!!!!

*Breathes* Okay.

How. How Bob. How do fans with INTELLIGENT RESEARCHED CRITIQUES of a game asking for a Goddamn intelligent ending from a group that has previously managed to provide them with such PREVENT ARTISTS FROM TAKING RISKS?!

They don't!! How does that, I don't even... URHGU It makes no goddamn sense!!

You did make some good points though...

But seriously? Telling someone that what they do was shit doesn't stop risk taking. Asking them to change said shit into something better doesn't stop risk taking. Because people will always make risky shit. And they will always make risky quality. That will NEVER change. How does someone asking for something to be quality change that?

Which brings us to the biggest difference between TMNT and ME3. TMNT is trying to make a story with changes to the original. No one has ANY idea whether it will be good quality or not.

Mass Effect 3 had a shitty ending.

That is the difference between them.

Captcha: Face The Music

Damn straight!!
You have creative rights over some1 else product or not?
Pick one.

If not then you get to critique the ending, not change it.

If you have you get to change it. How can you misunderstand that?
The creative rights bit was silly. That's trying to simplify an incredibly complicated subject. Tuning something (to use the tired but true platitude) that is many shades of grey into a black and white yes or no kind of thing.

There is no such thing as creative rights. People create stuff based on something, other people create more stuff based on that, and so on and so forth. Rights, privileges, titles, rules, laws, and constraining or binding concepts have nothing to do with the freedom of expression. Or the implementation of said freedom.

To be specific I believe you are addressing my TMNT vs ME3 difference. This argument is solely about whether fan critiques or fan changes prevent creative risk taking. A critique of a lore change that may or may not effect the quality of the art piece in question, made before the art piece has even gone into production IS COMPLETELY DIFFERENT THEN critiquing a risk that was taken and turned out to be a Bad Idea. Creative rights doesn't factor into this at all. Though I say that because creative rights is a silly idea in the first place.
 

Gigatoast

New member
Apr 7, 2010
239
0
0
Gotta love how pro-ender arguments basically amount to "Stop complaining because I don't like it when you do that!".
 

Zhukov

The Laughing Arsehole
Dec 29, 2009
13,769
5
43
Personally, I see no reason to apologise for pointing at a broken thing and saying, "Hey, that thing is broken!"
 

TorchofThanatos

New member
Dec 6, 2010
163
0
0
As gaming continues to evolve and the line between developer and player begins to blur, it becomes more and more apparent that the old ways of judging those who create the stories we enjoy no longer apply to games. We are just as responsible for the stories being told through games as the developers are, and while games empower and encourage us to make decisions to alter the outcome, we must realize that our power in that regard is shared with the developers, and is not exclusively our own. By the same token, the onus of integrity does not solely fall on the developers. We, as participants in the story, must also hold ourselves to a standard, in providing constructive criticism, frank examination, and willingness to adapt or compromise when it comes to the narratives we come to love. Only by doing this can we blur that line between gamers and developers. Only by showing this desire to address these stories as living things in which we have a say and for the benefit of which we will work with their original creators will gamers stop coming across as spoiled brats and start to be considered a vital part of the game creation process.
There is line very large line between players and developers! There two are not even close to the same! They create the stories and we play them! The stories are not ours they are theirs. Developers do not need or should share any power with the players. They gives us the choices and we play them out. This entire ME3 ending stupidy proves that we shouldn't have any say in anything. Retake ME! It is not ours! If fans controlled what was created the industry would grind to a halt and we would all still be playing D&D clones.
They make and we enjoy. We give them money and they give us the game! That line should not be changed until we can show that we are more then brats and we have not shown that. Players think that there options matter. They don't the only think that matters is your money. Players should learn the difference between an ending they did not like and a broken ending.
This reminds me of the DA2 rants that people went on. It was a good but they didn't like it so they called it trash.
The ending to ME was created by the creators! Deal with it!