I'm getting tired of the hyperbole being thrown around about Bioware and "art"

[girzwald]

I did not like the ending to Lost. I wasn't the only one. With the amount of people see it I bet you I wasn't the only one either.

Chances are more people will have seen and been disappointed with that ending that they did with ME.

So where is the petitions to get the ending changed?

That is my entire problem. It isn't about artistic integrity. It is about Gamers being unable to accept their position as audience.

If we find it al right to bully a creator into changing their creation to fit our sensitivities then where is the end to that?
If we say yes to this then we say yes to change any works to fit our preferences. Should we remove violence from Mortal Combat to satisfy a more squeamish part of the potential audience?

No
It has to be the original creators choice to change it. Everything you produce will have consequences, how you deal with that should be your choice. You may want to reconcile with your audience, then it is your choice. As it should be.

For some reason Games seem to put themselves and their medium of choice in a special pen where they have influence over the Artist because they have influence within their creations.

Gamers position as audience is to be entertained. People may write or make video games for themselves, but the audience, or more accurately "customers" want entertainment. And if you promise an epic story where YOU have a "mass effect" on the universe, and then all you deliver is the same ending with 3 different colors....you have at best, failed, at worst, lied to your audience. So, the people who forgot their role in this is not the audience, its the entertainers.

Its pretty much why tons of paintings go unnoticed, shows get canceled, and garage bands break up. You may think you are awesome, your circle of friends may think they are awesome, you may even be awesome in a sense. But none of that makes a lick of difference if the audience doesn't like it. Again, an audience isn't there to service the entertainer and lap up whatever crap may spew from their heads. The entertainer is there to service the audience.

So, if someone wants to be an artist and make stuff they like but nobody else does, they can be. Just don't expect a fan base to form or for an existing one to not get pissed when they preorder what they expect to be an epic masterpiece and it turns out to be crap.

Then that still begs the question.

Where is the petition to change the ending to lost?

It is the same problem, different audience.

Unless you want to argue you have more right to change video games than you have other mediums your whole point falls flat.

How do you know there wasn't a petition? TV watchers and producers and a different breed then PC gamers and producers. Also, changing the ending of a TV is much harder, if not impossible. They'd have to get the entire cast and crew back together and make a new ending.

And sorry, my point does not fall flat even if there was no petition to change the ending of lost. Something happened in one instance but not before in another, therefore its never valid? That's piss poor logic.

 

[Murmillos]

As opposed to taking the writers and programmers off of the other projects they've been working on, and re-hiring the voice actors?

You don't even need the original team to create a new ending. It would be best, but anybody with working knowledge of the code can go at it. Heck, just need a few people who know the in's on the job with a lot of other people who know how to do what their being asked of. Yet most everybody is still around doing DLC and bug work anyways. So some of the DLC's get pushed back a month or two.. that would be the least of their worries in wanting to fix this debacle.

I'm sure a few of those external named voice actors may be a pain to schedule up again, the majority of the voice actors are BioWare or game centric voice actors and can be easily obtained again.

 

[Murmillos]

Because all the points you made can be said about video games so we should expect the same behaviour. Or at least the same thing should be justified. So unless there is a difference then between the 2 mediums we just got a double standard.

There is a very clear difference between the 2 mediums.
1, Lost was passive entertainment. They told a story, you watched what they produced. You had no input into the direction of plot points or development of the main character. There was no promise to what watching the show would do, nor was there any promise to what the end would be.

2, ME1 - ME3 is interactive entertainment, where you were given control of plot points decisions and the development of the main character (in a pre determined range). You were also informed that making key choices with in the context of the gameplay would drastically change the very ending.

Both endings sucked, but one medium obviously mislead their fan base into believing something that didn't occur. Even when that medium was already in the process of being finalized for being shipped.

 

[Teh Jammah]

CBA to read the whole four pages of the thread to see if anyone's made this point yet or not. So this may be repetitious.

But for all those whose position is 'Oh it's art! It's ART dahlings! Would you ask Davinci to add new details the Mona Lisa?'... Davinci didn't scribble a note on the Mona Lisa saying the renaissaince art equivilent of...

Spoiler: Congrats, a winner is you, now go buy our upcoming DLC

... yeah, can't slap an 'art' label on that. Art and blatant profit-mongering have nothing to do with each other.

 

[Savagezion]

Someone still needs to define "art".

Then they can follow it up by defining "artistic integrity".

'Cause those terms are becoming pretty damn meaningless.

Art: A creative work that often does, but doesn't have to, involve expression of its creator.

Something only the artist will ever know so it doesn't matter:
Artistic Integrity: How true the work stayed to the original intention of creating the work.

Now, at any rate Bioware has constantly said that player feedback is HOW they make their games.

"And, to be honest, you [the fans] are crafting your Mass Effect story as
much as we are anyway."

I could quote a dozen more statements just like that one. That one, and many more, were made before the release of Mass Effect 3. Why is this suddenly a bad thing for the industry? Before ME3's release everyone was praising ANY developer that would include player suggestions. Mass Effect 2 removed the Mako because people hated and they were praised. Mass Effect 3 announced they were taking out the scanning system because people didn't like it, and were praised. Mass Effect 3 decides to tailor the ending because a large amount of fans are upset, they are ruining the industry?

The people who refuse to acknowledge what is going on here are complete imbeciles who talk out their ass. Most of whom don't even know how to describe what such a large amount of people are upset about. They'll be bitching in a few years though when you don't get to see the end of a game unless you buy it through DLC. Then, after its too late and nothing can be done about it, they'll think its bullshit and want to whine about it.

 

[Savagezion]

The people who refuse to acknowledge what is going on here are complete imbeciles who talk out their ass. Most of whom don't even know how to describe what such a large amount of people are upset about. They'll be bitching in a few years though when you don't get to see the end of a game unless you buy it through DLC. Then, after its too late and nothing can be done about it, they'll think its bullshit and want to whine about it.

Ahh, yes, the good old "slippery slope". Haven't seen much of that since it led to the Vietnam war...

What the hell are you talking about? You seen it today already, when you read the first post with Bob's message in it. Bob is claiming this will "set a precedent that will set the industry back 10 years" via "slippery slope". Like I said, talking out their asses.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

Because all the points you made can be said about video games so we should expect the same behaviour. Or at least the same thing should be justified. So unless there is a difference then between the 2 mediums we just got a double standard.

There is a very clear difference between the 2 mediums.
1, Lost was passive entertainment. They told a story, you watched what they produced. You had no input into the direction of plot points or development of the main character. There was no promise to what watching the show would do, nor was there any promise to what the end would be.

2, ME1 - ME3 is interactive entertainment, where you were given control of plot points decisions and the development of the main character (in a pre determined range). You were also informed that making key choices with in the context of the gameplay would drastically change the very ending.

Both endings sucked, but one medium obviously mislead their fan base into believing something that didn't occur. Even when that medium was already in the process of being finalized for being shipped.

That isn't a good enough reason to believe that you should have that kind of influence over the medium outside the game.

Just because you get a choice in game doesn't mean you have power outside. You need to show me how having choices within the bounds of the write gives you power over the writer for that to be of any significance. Only real power you have is to not play. The same as the movies.

The more likely scenario is that the nerd culture is more obsessive and doesn't have a real clue of its own significance in the scope of things (The star wars outrages being an example of similar behavior but different medium).

What you're talking about now is no longer whether adding DLC to change Mass Effect 3's ending would artisically bankrupt the series, but rather are derailing the thread by attempting to convince everyone here that gamers are over-entitled, self obsessed twats.

That's not what the discussion is about, and if that's the point that you're trying to push then you're really not adding anything to the discussion. Whether or not you like how the fans are acting has nothing to do with the topic of "art" at hand, and if you feel the need to continue propagating your opinion you should do so in a thread made for discussing that particular viewpoint.

 

[Justanewguy]

Then that still begs the question.

Where is the petition to change the ending to lost?

It is the same problem, different audience.

Unless you want to argue you have more right to change video games than you have other mediums your whole point falls flat.

You know...some of us did like the ending to LOST. In fact, more than half of the people I talk to who saw the show (which is not nearly as many as who've played ME3, though I generally have a young group of friends) enjoyed the ending. Maybe the difference is that LOST's ending wasn't uniformly hated?

 

[Something Amyss]

Still doesn't change a thing. Its not publicly owned.

There seemed to be a question to the matter, contrary to what you claimed. At least, as much a question in the matter as with Mass Effect.

So it kinda...Does change a thing. It's a valid example of the same thing that's allegedly happening with Mass Effect happening with something where there was supposed to be "no question."

You're using a fake example to try and differentiate between two media where the reaction is very similar. You can say "it goes to the nature of the medium" is wrong, but then you use an example that demonstrates the exact opposite of the point you go on to make.

Harry Potter is on the same side of the coin as Mass Effect, so saying "but it's different for other media because Harry Potter...." is flat out wrong.

 

[Something Amyss]

You know...some of us did like the ending to LOST. In fact, more than half of the people I talk to who saw the show (which is not nearly as many as who've played ME3, though I generally have a young group of friends) enjoyed the ending. Maybe the difference is that LOST's ending wasn't uniformly hated?

Yeah, the difference isn't one of medium, but of scope. Lost divided people. Mass Effect 3's ending doesn't really divide them; even if you don't agree on why, it was like 90% that agreed the ending was wrong.

If 90% of people hated Lost's ending, there would be a petition. what Draech seems to forget is this isn't unprecedented in terms of TV, either. Look at Dallas. I actually wrote up a list of a few examples a while back, but I forget where I posted it. Dallas changed an entire SEASON to a dream sequence to fix the death of a character because fans were outraged. And it was all over the media, too. The news covered it.

The other example I can think of right at the moment is Doctor Who. The fans wanted the Tenth Doctor back, and were royally pissed. Even without that 90% hate rating, it made waves.

Oh look, it happens in other media.

Feel free to use these if people keep forcing the point. It's not a "gamers only" thing.

 

[AgentNein]

Then that still begs the question.

Where is the petition to change the ending to lost?

It is the same problem, different audience.

Unless you want to argue you have more right to change video games than you have other mediums your whole point falls flat.

You know...some of us did like the ending to LOST. In fact, more than half of the people I talk to who saw the show (which is not nearly as many as who've played ME3, though I generally have a young group of friends) enjoyed the ending. Maybe the difference is that LOST's ending wasn't uniformly hated?

Just wish to point out that ME3's ending isn't uniformly hated as so many people like to believe. It's just that the haters tend to be the more vocal group.

 

[Murmillos]

That isn't a good enough reason to believe that you should have that kind of influence over the medium outside the game.

Just because you get a choice in game doesn't mean you have power outside. You need to show me how having choices within the bounds of the write gives you power over the writer for that to be of any significance. Only real power you have is to not play. The same as the movies.

The more likely scenario is that the nerd culture is more obsessive and doesn't have a real clue of its own significance in the scope of things (The star wars outrages being an example of similar behavior but different medium).

Then fine, its finally enough people banding together saying; "We collective agree that you short sold us on a story and have agreed that any of your future products are no longer of value until you correct it."
Its now up to EAWare to either laugh us off, or take us seriously because they don't want to loose that much potential revenue in future sales.
What we are doing is no different then from any other product or business that abuses its customers goodwill and finally feels the customers backlash of "once too many".
EA had this day coming; and it was going to take a very big game to cause it. ME3 was that catalysis.