BioWare Supports Beleaguered Writer

[Seraphna]

It's cute how many people keep saying she did anything to Mass Effect when she has had no part in the writing of Mass Effect whatsoever. The OP even states it.

 

[Tanakh]

Yes but (correct me if I'm wrong) didn't you say that you liked the Orzimar section of DA:O. I think that section shows that maybe it won't happen all the time, but a deeper understanding of the other elements on the part of the writer doesn't mean they can't contribute something good to a game. By the way, did you get my PM about newspapers? Was it what you were looking for or do you wan more info on them? They all have websites if you're interested.

Yeah, it's not needed and i did like Orzimar (again exept the paragon itself and what happens in the anvil room), but it helps a lot, like having the chef in charge of soup coordinate with the one in charge of the main dish, it's not required but by gooly one would be mad not to.

Also yeah, trying to find the Independent's politic section.

 

[Quazimofo]

i think its the whole letting people skip action sequences thing. it probably is hitting that gamer nerve that reacts to anything that may "dumb down" or "over simplify" games.
though i kinda like the idea, it certainly helped me get through LA noire (i got stuck on the rooftop gunman bit, went back and beat it later but at the time it just bugged the hell outta me)

If anything their behavior suggests developers should be dumbing games down as low as they possibly can.

thats the irony of it isn't it? so many act like children desiring to be treated as intelligent adults.

 

[Ayjona]

I really couldn't care less, I get told to GTFO, im not going to read his post, simple as that.

Except he told you to GTFO towards the END of his post...

See what I did there?

This user made some good points. I'm not quite sure why he received an infraction, unless the Escapist moderators did not read his post thoroughly.

Nope that is the whole story. Its is basically the Internet yelling "STOP NOT LIKING WHAT WE LIKE (insert appropriate derogatory insult). YOU ARE A HORRIBLE PERSON SO STOP EXISTING."

Thats it. Some gamers needed a new target to hate on so they attacked her. This is because us gamers contain the biggest, self entitled whiners on the Internet. I don't know any other community that feels as self entitled as gamers, and it makes me sad to see this. It slowly kills my hope in humanity. To be honest there is no reason to hate her just because she doesn't like video games. I don't hate people because they don't like tomatoes and I do.

Yeah. It's peculiar. Always figured gamers to be (comparably) soft-spoken, cautious to enter into confrontation, and sometimes almost docile in their lack of agressive social behaviour (traits which are often far more positive than the opposite, so I place no negative intrinsic values in the definition). It is a stereotype, oh yes, but one I've found to hold true for many encounters with real-life gaming afficionados. Online, however... if someone had told me 15 years back that gaming forums were to eventually be commonly known as some of the most vitriolic places on the net, I'd have smirked at the notion.

Perhaps people like us should just stay out of gaming forums altogether

 

[draythefingerless]

Again, you misinterpreted. She said she has a hard time getting interested IN playing it.

Oh did I now? And it is entirely outside the realms of possibility that you may have misinterpreted it I suppose?

See the difference between "Getting interested into playing it" and "Liking playing it"?

She didn't said she likes game as long as they have a good story. She said she hardly get INTERESTED in playing one if it doesn't have a good story.

Which also doesn't mean she hates games. "I can't get interested in a game that doesn't have a good story" does not mean "I hate games". It just means that if it doesn't provide a good story she finds it hard to get interested. I really don't see how that's a bad thing. And again this is what she said:

While I enjoy the interactive aspects of gaming, if a game doesn't have a good story, it's very hard for me to get interested in playing it.

Nowhere does that say she hates gameplay (in fact it says "I enjoy the interactive aspects of gaming"). Yes, she says it's her least favourite part of it, but that does not translate as "I hate videogames".

And that can be summed into the "story" part of the game. Character interaction/development/plot isn't gameplay. It is what we call "story", atleast in videogames.

Actually in videogames least of all can character interaction/development and plot be considered purely story. In films and books yes, but in games I control the character interaction. The dialog, the choices that effect the story later on. These are made by me playing the game. To me something happening because I chose to say something is just as much gameplay as something happening because I chose to shoot someone.

Hepler herself said that is story, in the very own quote you used.

Playing the games. This is probably a terrible thing to admit, but it has definitely been the single most difficult thing for me. I came into the job out of a love of writing, not a love of playing games. While I enjoy the interactive aspects of gaming, if a game doesn't have a good story, it's very hard for me to get interested in playing it. Similarly, I'm really terrible at so many things which most games use incessantly -- I have awful hand-eye coordination, I don't like tactics, I don't like fighting, I don't like keeping track of inventory, and I can't read a game map to save my life. This makes it very difficult for me to play to the myriad games I really should be keeping up on as our competition."

Really? Where does she say that, I don't see any reference to character development or interaction here, not even a vague allusion.

You keep picking the same two words. Two words I already explained their purpose and meaning. You keep hitting the same key, to no avail.

What two words are you talking about here? You're misuse of "actually" in the parenthesis?

Go search in the video game industry who likes it. Most people who play on videogame industry LOVES videogames. Hell, even most CEO likes videogames because people found video games studios because they got a few friends together and decided to make video games. Only extremely huge company have CEOs that don't care for videogame.

And? SO she doesn't LOVE videogames. She does LOVE writing and she's a writer, good enough for me.

And you forget one thing. The only think intrinsically bounded with video game is gameplay. There is no video game without gameplay. There are hundreds of games without story. Hell, there are even games without sound or graphics. But there's one thing that video games never lacks, and that's gameplay. A video game without gameplay isn't a video game. It may be a story, a music, a interactive program. But not a video game.

Yes but it still might not be a very good videogame. Putting a video camera into a sensory deprivation tank for two hours might still produce what can technically be called a film, but it won't be very good. Plus Heavy Rain and L.A. Noire would like to say hi. Games based mostly on those character interaction things you said weren't gameplay. Interrogation and questioning witnesses (character interaction) was one of the most important gameplay elements of L.A. Noire.

Is it that hard to acknowledge that you are wrong? If it is, you can simply not quote this with a answer, I don't need a declaration of how you were wrong.

Please, if you're going to act all high and mighty at least proof read your post so it's not full of typos.

actually Hard Rain and LA Noire have gameplay. Hard Rain has a choice mechanics system, as well as character movement, world interaction, and quick time events. Wich btw, are very bad fucking game mechanics, and that is why a lot of people hate that game(not to mention the idiotic story). LA noire is muuuch more obvious. you can choose to solve crimes and look for clues using the game mechanic, explore the world using the movement, participate in shooting and chase challenges. really, if you say story is more important in a game than gameplay, youre being an idiot. if you say you prefer playing games for the story than to actually play them, thats fine, but dont go messing priorities. you wouldnt have mass effect or any RPG, OR ANY GAME, without gameplay, good or bad. what is essential comes before what is important.

Gameplay is player interaction and choice with the virtual software with the express purpose of entertainment.

 

[chiefohara]

I'm not gonna question Helper's ability to write in this thread, I will however question not only her's, but Aaryn Flynn's response to it. Flynn, in defense of her told several people to fuck off and called them 'fucking morons' (He didn't even have the hindsight to delete the tweets.) and Helper believes that the hate stems from jealousy and hate toward her career and vagina for some reason :/ I really wish I was making that up too. I don't care what the fuck anyone does to you. You're representing a business and if you're gonna throw a hissy fit like that as soon as someone insults you, you should be fired ASAP, especially if you're gonna start PR nightmares like Flynn did.

Not only that, but if you're in the entertainment business, regardless of position, isn't one of the key rules to 'think before speaking?' I don't know why she was surprised at the outrage. Gamers getting mad because you believe that skipping the part of the medium that defines it would be best? Who would have guessed! If you don't like the gameplay, you're working for the wrong industry.

Some of those insults included people asking her if she killed herself yet.

Im not surprised Bioware supported her. Most reasonable people would do the exact same thing in the face of such mindless childish abuse.

 

[draythefingerless]

Again, you misinterpreted. She said she has a hard time getting interested IN playing it.

Oh did I now? And it is entirely outside the realms of possibility that you may have misinterpreted it I suppose?

See the difference between "Getting interested into playing it" and "Liking playing it"?

She didn't said she likes game as long as they have a good story. She said she hardly get INTERESTED in playing one if it doesn't have a good story.

Which also doesn't mean she hates games. "I can't get interested in a game that doesn't have a good story" does not mean "I hate games". It just means that if it doesn't provide a good story she finds it hard to get interested. I really don't see how that's a bad thing. And again this is what she said:

While I enjoy the interactive aspects of gaming, if a game doesn't have a good story, it's very hard for me to get interested in playing it.

Nowhere does that say she hates gameplay (in fact it says "I enjoy the interactive aspects of gaming"). Yes, she says it's her least favourite part of it, but that does not translate as "I hate videogames".

And that can be summed into the "story" part of the game. Character interaction/development/plot isn't gameplay. It is what we call "story", atleast in videogames.

Actually in videogames least of all can character interaction/development and plot be considered purely story. In films and books yes, but in games I control the character interaction. The dialog, the choices that effect the story later on. These are made by me playing the game. To me something happening because I chose to say something is just as much gameplay as something happening because I chose to shoot someone.

Hepler herself said that is story, in the very own quote you used.

Playing the games. This is probably a terrible thing to admit, but it has definitely been the single most difficult thing for me. I came into the job out of a love of writing, not a love of playing games. While I enjoy the interactive aspects of gaming, if a game doesn't have a good story, it's very hard for me to get interested in playing it. Similarly, I'm really terrible at so many things which most games use incessantly -- I have awful hand-eye coordination, I don't like tactics, I don't like fighting, I don't like keeping track of inventory, and I can't read a game map to save my life. This makes it very difficult for me to play to the myriad games I really should be keeping up on as our competition."

Really? Where does she say that, I don't see any reference to character development or interaction here, not even a vague allusion.

You keep picking the same two words. Two words I already explained their purpose and meaning. You keep hitting the same key, to no avail.

What two words are you talking about here? You're misuse of "actually" in the parenthesis?

Go search in the video game industry who likes it. Most people who play on videogame industry LOVES videogames. Hell, even most CEO likes videogames because people found video games studios because they got a few friends together and decided to make video games. Only extremely huge company have CEOs that don't care for videogame.

And? SO she doesn't LOVE videogames. She does LOVE writing and she's a writer, good enough for me.

And you forget one thing. The only think intrinsically bounded with video game is gameplay. There is no video game without gameplay. There are hundreds of games without story. Hell, there are even games without sound or graphics. But there's one thing that video games never lacks, and that's gameplay. A video game without gameplay isn't a video game. It may be a story, a music, a interactive program. But not a video game.

Yes but it still might not be a very good videogame. Putting a video camera into a sensory deprivation tank for two hours might still produce what can technically be called a film, but it won't be very good. Plus Heavy Rain and L.A. Noire would like to say hi. Games based mostly on those character interaction things you said weren't gameplay. Interrogation and questioning witnesses (character interaction) was one of the most important gameplay elements of L.A. Noire.

Is it that hard to acknowledge that you are wrong? If it is, you can simply not quote this with a answer, I don't need a declaration of how you were wrong.

Please, if you're going to act all high and mighty at least proof read your post so it's not full of typos.

actually Hard Rain and LA Noire have gameplay. Hard Rain has a choice mechanics system, as well as character movement, world interaction, and quick time events. Wich btw, are very bad fucking game mechanics, and that is why a lot of people hate that game(not to mention the idiotic story). LA noire is muuuch more obvious. you can choose to solve crimes and look for clues using the game mechanic, explore the world using the movement, participate in shooting and chase challenges. really, if you say story is more important in a game than gameplay, youre being an idiot. if you say you prefer playing games for the story than to actually play them, thats fine, but dont go messing priorities. you wouldnt have mass effect or any RPG, OR ANY GAME, without gameplay, good or bad. what is essential comes before what is important.

Gameplay is player interaction and choice with the virtual software with the express purpose of entertainment.

I never said it was all they had. I just said character interaction was a huge and important part of the gameplay because you said character interaction isn't, in fact, gameplay. I also never said that story was more important than gameplay. Or am I just misinterpreting what I'm saying?

player interaction with characters is gameplay. character interaction independent of the player is just a story creation element. you can even NOT have characters in a game.

 

[mattaui]

You know, I really rather prefer people who aren't into games to be the ones doing the writing, the art and the music, as they have precious little to do with the game design. Her mistake was, yes, ever saying such a thing (and definitely that retort was out of line, if very funny), but unfortunately she was giving the rabid backbiters on the Internet too much credit by assuming they'd stop and think about it, and then stooped to their level.

It's the game designers and lead coders that need to be immersed in gaming, since they're the ones (primarily the designers) that will be guiding the artists, writers, musicians and so on. If any of them produces something that doesn't fit with the design of the game, they'll change it. The writer, even the lead writer, isn't going to be making actual gameplay decisions.

I think a lot of this comes from the mistaken belief that even the lead writers for a game are responsible for the gameplay itself.

 

[ThunderCavalier]

*throws in my two cents*

Hepler is a bit of an idiot and I do not agree with her opinion whatsoever and, as a designer in a video game industry, an industry with a rabid fanbase, she should have paid more attention to what she was saying.

However...

Internet, you are stupid. The only real blunder I can think of that BioWare has made in the past few years is Dragon Age 2. TOR, while I don't care for it, is amazing, and Mass Effect and Dragon Age have been, for the most part, excellent. BioWare hasn't been 'dying', nor does the recent events that they've shown show that they are dying (although the From Ashes DLC pack may show that Activision is forcing them to nickel-and-dime some content). Plus, it's one idiot. An idiot that the company itself has shown that they have some respect for. Leave an honest opinion, don't insult the company that has given you video gaming brilliance these past years, and GTFO.

Please. Show that the average Internet user has an IQ above 99.

 

[Silenttalker22]

For the record, I loved Dragon Age 2. Not as much as the first, but I still loved it. And I thought Legacy was amazing.

Silly Zero, don't you know that "Good, but flawed" = "Abomination". DA2 was so bad that most of its detractors can tell you what they hated about its ending. Showing that it was so awful that they willingly played it for 50+ hrs.

Nerd rage is a hilarious facet of the net that eludes me. I talk exactly like this in real life, and I know nerd rage people don't really describe everything imperfect irl as a cataclysmic failure, so it mystifies me. If I read inane exaggerations like those though, the person's opinion is automatically entitled to less weight.

 

[IronicBeet]

For the record, I loved Dragon Age 2. Not as much as the first, but I still loved it. And I thought Legacy was amazing.

Silly Zero, don't you know that "Good, but flawed" = "Abomination". DA2 was so bad that most of its detractors can tell you what they hated about its ending. Showing that it was so awful that they willingly played it for 50+ hrs.

Nerd rage is a hilarious facet of the net that eludes me. I talk exactly like this in real life, and I know nerd rage people don't really describe everything imperfect irl as a cataclysmic failure, so it mystifies me. If I read inane exaggerations like those though, the person's opinion is automatically entitled to less weight.

Some people like to play through a whole game to see if it picks up at any point. They also tend to give it a chance if they enjoyed the previous game. If not one of those two, they might like to know what they're talking about when they tell someone they don't like it. I, however, couldn't play it for more than an hour before I got bored as hell and wondered why every professional game review site was giving it excellent reviews. Just because someone feels betrayed that a game series has been dumbed down by the company they used to love doesn't mean they're nerd-raging, it means that they're experiencing buyer's remorse. The bitterness tends to last longer, especially, when they see on the company's forums that any post saying anything negative about the game is dismissed as "trolling", and that people have entitlement issues for not being okay with a game's flaws being addressed incredibly poorly and then ignored thereafter.

 

[chiefohara]

Having read the entire thread up to this point, i've come to one conclusion.

Im going to buy one of Hepler's books, i don't care whether its good or not, buying her book is the biggest FU i can give to all the mindless little scumbags who felt they had the right to harass her because they didn't like a fucking computer game.

Anyone else who is disgusted by this mindless drivel that people are spewing at her. Feel free to do the same thing.

 

[Silenttalker22]

For the record, I loved Dragon Age 2. Not as much as the first, but I still loved it. And I thought Legacy was amazing.

Silly Zero, don't you know that "Good, but flawed" = "Abomination". DA2 was so bad that most of its detractors can tell you what they hated about its ending. Showing that it was so awful that they willingly played it for 50+ hrs.

Nerd rage is a hilarious facet of the net that eludes me. I talk exactly like this in real life, and I know nerd rage people don't really describe everything imperfect irl as a cataclysmic failure, so it mystifies me. If I read inane exaggerations like those though, the person's opinion is automatically entitled to less weight.

Some people like to play through a whole game to see if it picks up at any point. They also tend to give it a chance if they enjoyed the previous game. If not one of those two, they might like to know what they're talking about when they tell someone they don't like it.

Yah I anticipated someone would say that. I also don't believe for a fraction of a second, that even half of the people (dozens on this site alone) who called it a 'failure', 'garbage', 'Worthless', all have the absurd life of luxury that lets them waste 50 hrs of their life on something they genuinely loath, instead of doing something fun or productive. If they are, then they don't really belong chiming in on a discussion with us sane people.

 

[Imp_Emissary]

These snotty little entitled brats disgust me I can only hope this is just a phase and they grow the fuck up.

People don't "grow up", they just learn how to "act" in public. Also there's a funny thing about communicating on the internet. You can be in "public" online without anyone actually seeing you and there are hardly ever any serious consequences if you are inappropriate.

Your discretion of them is quite true, but as for your hopes for them to become better with time......Well don't hold your breath, or do. No I'm not trying to be mean! You won't die if you hold your breath. You'll just pass out and start to breathe involuntarily. Or not.

I'm not a doctor. I'm just some, guy...Ruler of the planet Omicron Persei 8!

 

[IronicBeet]

For the record, I loved Dragon Age 2. Not as much as the first, but I still loved it. And I thought Legacy was amazing.

Silly Zero, don't you know that "Good, but flawed" = "Abomination". DA2 was so bad that most of its detractors can tell you what they hated about its ending. Showing that it was so awful that they willingly played it for 50+ hrs.

Nerd rage is a hilarious facet of the net that eludes me. I talk exactly like this in real life, and I know nerd rage people don't really describe everything imperfect irl as a cataclysmic failure, so it mystifies me. If I read inane exaggerations like those though, the person's opinion is automatically entitled to less weight.

Some people like to play through a whole game to see if it picks up at any point. They also tend to give it a chance if they enjoyed the previous game. If not one of those two, they might like to know what they're talking about when they tell someone they don't like it.

Yah I anticipated someone would say that. I also don't believe for a fraction of a second, that even half of the people (dozens on this site alone) who called it a 'failure', 'garbage', 'Worthless', all have the absurd life of luxury that lets them waste 50 hrs of their life on something they genuinely loath, instead of doing something fun or productive. If they are, then they don't really belong chiming in on a discussion with us sane people.

...Did you just say that people with nothing better to do with their time than to play through games so they can complain about them shouldn't be discussing video games on the internet?

 

[Warachia]

-snip-

So, i am wrong and are unacceptable and he is right because in your opinion saying that she would like videogames to have a gameplay skip button is better represented by:

"I prefer story to gameplay."

rather than by:

"I prefer that videogames have no gameplay"

Gotcha, that makes sense.

Except it does. Here, I'll break it down further for you, saying that you prefer gameplay to story implies that you understand both need to be in there even if it isn't your thing (the gist of what she said), saying that you prefer videogames that have no gameplay implies that you have no idea why the gameplay is there in the first place and think that there shouldn't be any gameplay (exactly what she didn't say or mean), and don't try to pull out some bullshit by saying that your phrasing of the words was interpreted wrong, you need to think about what you are saying from several angles before typing the cliffnotes of what somebody said, otherwise the meaning becomes twisted.