The Big Picture: Mutants and Masses

[TripleDaddy]

Dear Bob:

Please shut your pie-hole when it comes to anything in, on or about Mass Effect. You clearly have no idea where the complaints stem from or even why there are complaints to begin with. An ill-informed rant is still ill-informed and does a huge disservice to the fans who actually have some nuance in their arguments about the ending. I suppose due diligence and journalistic integrity are hard, while name calling is easy, and I would offer my condolences on all the hate mail that is hurtling towards you, but you brought it upon yourself.

Sincerely,
A former viewer

 

[irishda]

Bad move Bob, very, very, very, very bad move.

It's apparent that you really haven't researched into the whole Mass Effect 3 debacle, so be prepared to hear that the Mass Effect series is a special case, BioWare didn't deliver on ANY of their promises, and they pretty much slapped their own IP in the face in the last 5 minutes of their game.

Remember: BioWare has stated that their fans are equal creators in the story along with their actual writing staff.

MovieBob has it right, you are wrong!
In fact all the crying fans are wrong!
Yes, I own and played through all the ME. ME3 ending was not the greatest but it in not that bad! There is a difference between not liking the ending and it being a bad ending. The story was wrapped up and playable. It didn't end in a way you liked it! SO GET OVER IT!
Also it would be impossible to get an ending that the crazy fans wanted. The game still has one set story. One story line that you follow. It would be impossible to create an endings that reflected what your chooses were along the way. Impossible!

ME is not a special chase because it is a game you like!

Thanks MovieBob for saying this, to bad it is falling on deaf ears.

I'm redirecting you to an earlier post because I don't like repeating myself [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/6.358098-The-Big-Picture-Mutants-and-Masses?page=2#14155298]

Your boy Blue's working on faulty logic though. Particularly the opinion that players and developers are starting to merge. To the extant that's true, but only in that many developers probably play video games. In no way do I think players are "becoming" developers of works they enjoy.

He raises the point of how people like editors, producers, etc. will influence a writer's work, then connects the professionals with things like fan feedback, focus testing, etc. He's essentially equating the players and their criticisms with the paid professionals and their criticisms. Here's the difference though (which I've been subtly hinting at), the producers and editors are in those positions usually because they've shown themselves to be fairly competent at that job. Meanwhile, the average consumer is fairly useless in terms of story mechanics (see: every fanfic forum ever). Even criticism can be nonsensical from the average person.

Part of being a writer is learning how to deal with criticism, what is potentially valid and what should just be ignored. With your superiors, they're paying you to write this stuff to begin with, so you're sort of stuck with listening to them. With the audience, the writer is under no obligation to ask them to approve their rough draft, nor are they under any obligation to act on criticism even if they do ask for it.

TL;DR: Responding for community feedback is a courtesy, and sometimes a smart move as well. It does not entail the least bit of ownership.

 

[Mister Linton]

After playing through ME3 twice with two very different Shepards, I can say without a doubt that all promises of player agency were completely fulfilled and anyone trying to claim otherwise is being either purposefully ignorant or clinically dense. OPINIONS of the final decisions and cliffhangers are reasonable to have, but I'm pretty sick of the patently false accusations being hurled left and right.

What all the whiners really wanted was a video reel at the end of Mass Effect 3 detailing everything that is going to happen in Mass Effect 4. What? You didn't know there would be another game in this multi-million dollar series? Please...

 

[shinigamimeijin]

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!!!

Except half of those things, they said after the game went gold.

(Director) 2/17/12
http://www.computerandvideogames.com/336331/interviews/mass-effect-3-we-cant-go-on-holiday-our-dlc-is-really-good/?page=2
So it's not like a classic game ending where everything is linear and you make a choice between a few things - it really does layer in many, many different choices, up to the final moments, where it's going to be different for everyone who plays it

 

[Klitch]

If Extra Credits was still here they'd use this as a "gamer call to arms" moment (though, granted, pretty much everything was a "gamer call to arms" moment for them). Why exactly is it that all the rights with artistic content belongs with the artist? I reject this new argument sprouting up that games must either be "art" or a "product," but never both. I've got shocking news, the vast majority of "art" is created with the explicit purpose of being sold for profit. Art is a product by any definition.

When da Vinci took money to present a finished product and never delivered, why were the patrons justified in their complaints then? When did Bioware (and game companies in general) develop this immunity armor? They are allowed to lie, sell incomplete products as finished, and ream the consumer with crap like DRM, but we are the ones in the wrong for pointing out how immoral and unjust this is? They just rely on us to "get over it" and "move on" and then they continue these despicable business practices. The worst part is, we always do...

Why are gamers being treated like second-class consumers? As far as I can tell, there is no other producer-consumer relationship this one-sided.

fitting captcha: face the music

 

[tmande2nd]

So basically:
"Bend over and take it you entitled brat, because how dare you attack the people who pay for ads on our website"

Yeah no.
Maybe if anyone on the escapist staff could write anything beyond a straw man representation of the Retake movement.

The ending was shit, grade A smelly good for nothing misrepresented ripped off shit.
Maybe if Bob or Yahtzee actually knew what they were talking about in this case I would care, but from the way they write/talk they dont.

 

[Gxas]

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.

You seem to be misunderstanding the context in which Casey Hudson made the remark about A, B, C. Specifically, he was referring to the notion of someone talking to their friend and saying, "Hey, I got the A ending!" It clearly applies to the six color-coded endings that ME3 actually has, and it clearly wouldn't apply to a combinatorial explosion of 65,610 endings. (I suppose you could say "I got Kaidan ending A, Tali ending C, Liara ending B, Garrus ending C, Vega ending A, Ashley ending A, Javik ending C, EDI ending B, and Shepard died." That's a tad long-winded, though... I can't imagine you'd see much of it. Certainly it's not as easy as "My 'splodey thing was green.")

And, for the overly legalistic reading of your post, three letters which can be Latin or Greek (52 Latin letters in both cases, 34 Greek letters in both cases which are distinct from Latin letters) would make (52+34)^3=636056 endings. To handily trounce that number, you'd need three endings for each of the eight characters, plus two endings each for Anderson, the Council, Earth, and the Geth, and ten endings for Shepard to produce 1,049,760 possible endings. (And that's only 42 scenes worth of work for Bioware - again, a lot, but still quite doable.)

Haha, I've never even seen the video or anything of him being quoted as saying such, so I'm just questioning as an outside party. But this has definitely cleared a lot up for me. Thank you.

 

[hentropy]

I've been doing nothing but lurking on these forums for quite some time, including every recent ME3 feature and article. This is the first video I've actually wanted to respond to.

It seems like every person who writes off the reactions as outrageous or over-the-top haven't played the game (Bob, Andy Chalk) while others (Shamus Young, Critical Miss, the podcasters) have all acknowledged that the ending probably should be at the very least clarified and closed up in a way that makes it seem like it was written by professional writers instead of 12 year olds writing bad fanfiction after seeing 2001 for the first time. And Bioware is saying they will at least "clarify" the ending, which means they ACKNOWLEDGE at least some of the problems the fans have complaining about.

As for me, I know I don't have creative license, so I can't "demand" anything. The only thing I can do is beg. I'm begging them to improve the ending. Even if they are using the word "demand", they are really just using their soapbox to beg that Bioware does not leave us with this ending. Why? It's not just because of the money or the time invested. It's because Mass Effect was one of the great ones. It could have been the Star Wars of this gaming generation, and that's not an exaggeration. A sci-fi epic that could transcend this generation and could make people from here on out think differently about their real world and the choices we make. It could have been something I could give to my kids when they were old enough, and they could craft their own epic and experience it the way I did, just like when my own father watched Star Wars with me for the first time.

Instead... it's a joke. A freakin' joke. Instead of looking upon the Shepard with starry eyes and good memories, all anyone will remember was how bad the ending was, and how it nullified and made meaningless all of the brilliance that came before it. There's no way I'd subject anyone to the kind of emptiness and disappointment I felt at the end of ME3. The only thing that came close to that kind of disappointment when it comes to entertainment was the baseball steroid scandals. To find out that players that you rooted for your whole life were taking steroids, that their names would have an asterisk next to their names, that that would be their legacy... the ME3 ending felt like that. That there would always be some kind of cultural asterisk around the games. "These games were good but the ending was so bad it sparked the biggest fan outrage around a video game ever".

So I and many others are begging Bioware by giving to Child's Play and getting the word out... please do something with this ending. Make it so that I will feel comfortable buying your games again, and that I can give it to my kids when they grow up.

And I also beg Bob and anyone else who feels like commenting on this whole outrage with disdain, calling those of us entitled and whiny... play the games to their conclusion and then formulate your opinion using first-hand experience, don't snidely comment how silly the whole thing is because it's just a game. You should know that's no longer true more than anyone else, Bob. We, as the fans, have a right to ask that you fix this offensive insult that they passed off as a professionally-written "ending". They might as well have ended it by having a naked Wolf Blitzer slit Shepard's throat and played with the corpse while screaming racial epithets. Everyone would have agreed that ending should be changed because there was no artistic integrity to protect. Same thing here.

 

[X10Unit1]

Taking an IP and applying it to standard Hollywood movie formulas is not what I would consider risk. At this point, I don't think there is an IP that Hollywood hasn't ruined for someone. Given Hollywood's record on butchering IP, I am not surprised anymore when fans get upset when people working on the movie talk about it. It doesn't help that the media might take things out of context and/or not know enough about the IP to ask relevant questions that might clarify what the person might have meant.
There are always going to be the hardcore geeks for an IP and that won't go away but if you are doing something to the IP that even the people that barely know the IP are upset about it, you are doing it wrong.

 

[Bluecho]

I find it amusing that after ragging on Transformers and god knows how many other geek things that were done wrong, Bob defends Bioware when they step wrong. Seems a little ironic/hypocritical. When things are done horribly, are not the fans entitled to complain, or should they just take the blow quietly and be happy for some perverse reason?

Once again, we have knee-jerk reactions that failed to listen hard enough to get the point. Bob never said you couldn't ***** about TMNT or ME3 being a betrayal. He just said that when you storm into their offices demanding that the product be changed to conform to your arbitrary expectations, you're going to do damage to the medium, in addition to just looking silly.

And Bob's critique of the Bay-Transformers films while then defending Bioware is in no way hypocracy. The Bay films warrant criticism because they're crap from a storytelling and filmmaking standpoint, not just because they aren't what the fans wanted. But while ME3's endings deserve their own criticism, that doesn't give the fans the power to force Bioware into changing it because it doesn't conform to their expectations.

Hypocracy means saying one thing and then proceeding to do the exact opposite thing. It doesn't mean taking an opposing stance when the conditions and circumstances change and the issue shifts from one thing to another. In fact, being able to turn around and take the other side when the first position starts supporting a more extreme view is part of being a rational person.

 

[Saxnot]

by this logic, i should be allowed to create a saw remake which consists entirely of a steady shot of a field of grass where nothing happens for 2 hours.

what? you buy the ticket, you take the risk, right? don't try to limit my artistic freedom!

artistic integrity is important, true, but when you're working on a series consistency is just as important. a good sequel manages to keep what's good and improve what's bad about the previous iteration. in that regard, the ending of ME3 throws all consistency overboard to create something mediocre at best. that isn't artistic freedom, that's artistic failure

 

[Phuctifyno]

You know what would make a great new ending for Mass Effect?

Invasion and conquer by a supreme race of Teenage Alien Intergalactic Ninja Turtles.

I suppose, instead of complaining about someone else's fiction, I could make my own (fan)fiction and then just change the names and minor details... just like every other author that ever existed (except the first one, I guess), thereby creating my own unique intellectual property and having something to show for my gripes and frustrations from prior disappointments.

Naaaaah. ***** on the internet. More worthwhile.

 

[Limos]

Bob, Bob, Bob.

I'm guessing you haven't actually played Mass Effect 3, or maybe you would understand the outrage. The ending, is a crime against fiction. It throws out every single one of the running themes of the series, breaks all characterization of both Shepard and the Reapers up to that point, introduces plot holes at the last moment, has shoddy voice acting and writing, and worst of all.

A major selling point of the game
Was that there would be a lot of endings dependent on all your choices

Instead we got three endings that are differently tinted versions of THE SAME CUTSCENE dependent only on one variable (and only one of the colors uses it at all) and a last minute choice between the three of them.

None of your choices matter
Nothing is resolved
Nothing is explained

Then a window pops up telling you to buy DLC.

That is why fans are pissed. This is a piece of fiction that requires 90 hours minimum to experience, and then it throws a shoddy rushed ending with no closure at you and cuts off. That's it. That's all we get.

I'm not going to demand that they change the ending. I'm just never going to buy another Bioware or EA product, ever again, for the rest of my life, and I'm going to tell every single person that I know to do the same. The only thing Bioware writers deserve is to GO BANKRUPT AND STARVE IN THE STREETS.

 

[irishda]

What people need to get is that he isn't saying you don't have the right to complain. You can complain all you want. But DEMANDING that you get a better ending because it was OWED to you is just plain silly, and the unbelievable extremes the "Retake" movement have gone to to get what they are "owed" are just downright pathetic.

Now becuase this is the internet, and because the "Retake" movement tends to make strawmen of people who disagree with them, I'll spell this out in big letters for them.

[HEADING=2]Nobody is saying you need to like the ending.

Nobody is saying you can't complain.

But there's a line that can be crossed[/HEADING]

And the "Retake" movement crossed it veeeeery quickly.

Except that Bob doesn't know fucking ANYTHING about why people are mad and what they are saying. He's completely misrepresenting the people who are complaining, why they are complaining and how they are complaining.

He didn't bother doing 5 fucking minutes of research to find out what the whole thing was about.

Bob is the one making the Strawmen here.

I'm assuming he's misrepresenting the people who are complaining because he called them whiny crybabies. To be fair, that probably doesn't represent the majority of the people dissatisfied, but it's a rather apt comparison for the minority who's making the most noise about it.

I'm assuming he's misrepresenting the why because you guys think he thinks that everyone hates the endings because they're not happy endings. But he makes it pretty clear in the video that he's mad because people are asking for the ending to be changed, and he doesn't feel any entertainment/creative medium should be asked to changes aspects of the story because people didn't like them.

I'm assuming he's misrepresenting the HOW because he cites the FTC complaint. True enough that it was only one man who filed the complaint. But there's plenty of people that defended the move, which means it's now pretty much tied to the "change the ending" crowd as an example of "look at the ridiculous lengths they'll go to".

Feel free to correct my assumptions.

 

[Gigatoast]

Can we just establish a new rule here? If you have no idea why fans are upset then you have no right to critisize them for being upset.

If anyone here understood that then this wouldn't even be an issue.

 

[mxfox408]

Wow Bob and yatzee both failed at understanding the point. only one who hit it on the spot was shamus.

 

[putowtin]

hey....
wait a minute....

were you taking the mickey out of Bob Ross?

This I will not stand for!

 

[Aprilgold]

Wow, that was a cheap swing (and a miss) at the whole ME3 "controversy."


You'd think this was something new. Thing is, it isn't even the first (or last) time this has happened. Public pressure is far from a new concept.

2 gaming related ones come straight to mind. First being Fallout 3s DLC that extended the ending and gave what the fans want. I heard no one from the games media jump at that one.


2nd one not everyone remembers. A particular game called InFamous 2. When it first showed up with trailers, the main character, Cole, had suddenly changed from a grizzle voiced, bald guy with a scar going down his face to a Nathon Drake 2.0s. And the fans went nuts. So what did they do? Changed him into his original look and all where happy.

So did the games media go on about artistic integrity or any of that? Course not. Actually, one of the IGN guys has been very loud about all this is. Colin Moriarty, who has gone on about how it goes against the artistic integrity and how people shouldn't demand this or that and entitlement this and that and rabble, rabble, rabble.

But skip back to when this happened with InFamous and suddenly:

"But with the new Cole design, Sucker Punch heard loud and clear what fans of Infamous wanted, and they delivered. Infinite amounts of kudos to them for doing right by their community. Fans of Infamous won?t soon forget it. Sucker Punch is one of Sony?s most valuable developers. They are tuned-in with the PS3 faithful, and it?s things like this that prove it."

Hell, the this aint uncommon outside of games either. Sherlock Holmes was killed off by Doyle and for 8 years people protested for a change and eventually gave in. This gave us some of the best Sherlock books.

Blade Runner, a great sci-fi by Ridley Scott had its whole ending changed after early preview showings.

Go back far enough and you see that Beethoven revised his opera Fidelio multiple times at the behest of his fans, cast members, and creative peers. I dare someone to say Beethoven lost his artistic integrity.

How many forms of completely interactive art is there anyway? We've even gotten to a point where we a consumers are funding game projects. Which is wonderful.

Gaming can't be just lumped into one category of "art" and then leave it as that as some form of blockade.
Art can change depending on the audience, depending on the demand and so much more. Again, this is hardly the first time this has been done or ever will be done. Just the biggest highlighted one by gaming media.

This whole "entitlement" accusation just need to stop. If you can't back away from that kind of attitude, we eventually pass the point of having meaningful dialog on this topic anymore. Then neither side is listening anymore. Everyone has made up their mind about not only the ending, but about everyone who disagrees with them as well.

If you liked the ending, then everyone who didn't is a crybaby whiner who has nothing better to do than throw fits about video games. If you disliked the ending, then everyone who didn't is a judgmental douche that's either too stupid to understand why the ending sucked, or too far up EA/Bioware's a**es to acknowledge it.

There can be no middle ground anymore at that point and are no longer allowed to have different opinions. Then comes the name calling and things you generally see from 10 year olds.

Woow.... THANK YOU FOR THAT! You hit it so hard on the head that everything around it automatically nailed itself in perfectly.

by this logic, i should be allowed to create a saw remake which consists entirely of a steady shot of a field of grass where nothing happens for 2 hours.

what? you buy the ticket, you take the risk, right? don't try to limit my artistic freedom!

artistic integrity is important, true, but when you're working on a series consistency is just as important. a good sequel manages to keep what's good and improve what's bad about the previous iteration. in that regard, the ending of ME3 throws all consistency overboard to create something mediocre at best. that isn't artistic freedom, that's artistic failure

Damn you for also hitting it on the head. In case your wondering, I'm so happy that I had to add the word damn into this post twice, so thank you for writing that.

 

[Proverbial Jon]

Mass Effect 3 is not, nor does it contain, any creative risk.

It is a very well received, popular, triple A videogame franchise. Fans arguing about the appauling and lacklustre ending are not stifling creativity nor do we risk any other forms of art from evolving.

We are pointing out massive plot holes (Mass relays anyone?), calling out lazy writing (deus ex machinas do NOT make good endings) and ultimately chastising Bioware for not delivering on the product they promised us (Our choices don't matter). The well rounded arguments will give you a blow by blow account of the real reasons for this outrage and every one is justified.

Sure, filing a complaint with the trading standards agency is perhaps taking it a little too far but the rage itself can only be good for the industry. People care, people care a HELL of a lot. When you can't deliver to what seems like arguably the majority of the fan base, that's a big probelm that you need to know about.

 

[MovieBob]

And The TMNT movie was teid to the 2003 cartoon (the better one), not the other movies.

Look again. Splinter's memorabilia shelf at the end of the movie includes the time travel device from the 3rd movie; which was intended to tie the film to that series' continuity while borrowing some design and story notes from the 2003 show. The filmmakers said as much.