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

[MightyRabbit]

I pretty much agree with OP. Obsidian releasing Broken Steel didn't set a horrible new precedent, and I really doubt ME3's ending being changed will. Every other medium has gone through the "Death of the Author" phase. Besides, fan input changes what the next entry, the next DLC, the next patch will include. And editors, producers, executives, actors, directors, writers, designers, fans so many people are involved with altering a work before and after its release.

And with people like Grey Carter and Moviebob being so down on the ending being changed, I am getting pretty annoyed. I like and respect both of them as content creators and as people in general, but I think the backlash to the backlashhas also gone too far now. It's gone from being the voice of reason to an overly critical, hyperbolic and reactionary voice.

This whole ugly mess is really unfortunate. Mass Effect 3 was a great game, and I hate to have all this spoil that.

That said I'm excited about getting a new ending too.

 

[Karnesdorff]

More on topic, as other have said, I doubt so many people would be wanting DLC to change the game if Bioware hadn't made it part of its marketing strategy to sell DLC that changes its games post-release.

ME2 for example, has a fair bit of story DLC that changes both it's own story and ME3's when you get to it - a lot of the time giving you a better option later than you would have had without it (for example, if you have the ME2 Kasumi DLC, in ME3 and either/or choice becomes an 'all of the above' gain).

K.

 

[Karnesdorff]

Wait, what? I'd confidently say about 75% of that stuff isn't in the game.

Eesh, you're right. I just took a closer look. A lot of that stuff ISN'T in the game.

That's good to know. Even though I knew I'd 100%'d the game before the final mission I needed a quick trip to the ME Wiki to double check I hadn't just accidentally messed it all up.

That image is riddled with inaccuracies, for example, you can't even go anywhere immediately before Earth, the last two missions are played back to back, Harbinger hits you no matter what, the Geth never fall under Reaper control in the final battle, there's no fighting on the Citadel, etc, etc...

Good lord, the more I look at that image the more I see it's either a blatant fabrication or a wish list for what the ending should have been like. I'd have been happy with the ending that's on that flowchart

K.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Now I have problem with improving it. It is the method I am against.

Well, you've clarified. I've clarified. We will, at the end of all things, have to agree to disagree. I hear that you don't want art being dictated by consensus. I hear that, I respect that. I feel that a product that allows for parallel endings will not and cannot be harmed by adding more, especially when the ones originally on offer suffered from...let's call them "serious quality control" issues. I know you don't like fans being noisy and demanding, but in an industry where the critics are in bed with the developers, I think the fans NEED to be noisy and demanding if they don't want to utterly voiceless.

Let's see what they end up doing with this hypothetical DLC. My guess is if they improve the game and satisfy the bulk of their critics, all this controversy will wither up and blow away, and we'll be back to clawing at one another over $10 DLC.

 

[Karnesdorff]

I think it breaks the "My right to extend my fist stops before your face". I dont think "the very nature of the medium" is a good enough excuse to demand things. I dont see why it should be differentiate from other mediums just because of our lvl of involvement within the product. There is no question the JK Rowling get to decided how/where to take Harry Potter no matter how much the public feels attached to it.

And here we see why 'Games are Art' has a long way to go, too many people clamouring for it are still comparing games to other mediums, rather than being confident enough in gaming to allow it to form its own artistic tropes. I reckon Terminator 2 would be a terrible novel, but you know what? WHO CARES? It's not a novel, it's a film and secure enough in its nature as a film to not worry about being judged by another media forms standards.

Games, apparently, aren't.

K.

 

[Mike Richards]

None of this matters because the whole debate is more or less irrelevant. The real issue boils down to this: THEY WILL NEVER MAKE EVERY SINGLE PERSON HAPPY NO MATTER WHAT THEY DO, NO ONE CAN.

An ending to a series like this will always piss off a lot of people because everyone is going to have their own ideas about how it should end. If Bioware changes it now all they'll be doing is choosing which little fractured part of their fanbase they don't want to enrage and by doing so piss off everyone else.

Some people liked it, some people didn't, that's how it been since the beginning of storytelling, but the people who hated it always end up being the more vocal of the two whether they're the majority or not. Rewriting it now will just play favorites at best, and no one will ever be able to change the fact that someone is always going to be disappointed. They might as well just leave it be, cause clearly that's what they wanted to do.

 

[Abedeus]

1: Conan Doyle did not go back to the book after he finished it and wrote it a new ending. He just ret-conned the entire thing in a different book. That is not what people who demand a change to the ending want. What they want is to have Conan Doyle go back and rewrite the ending to the book.

I think if it was possible to "patch" or create a "DLC" for a book, he would. Technical limitations of the medium.

None of this matters because the whole debate is more or less irrelevant. The real issue boils down to this: THEY WILL NEVER MAKE EVERY SINGLE PERSON HAPPY NO MATTER WHAT THEY DO, NO ONE CAN.

An ending to a series like this will always piss off a lot of people because everyone is going to have their own ideas about how it should end. If Bioware changes it now all they'll be doing is choosing which little fractured part of their fanbase they don't want to enrage and by doing so piss off everyone else.

Some people liked it, some people didn't, that's how it been since the beginning of storytelling, but the people who hated it always end up being the more vocal of the two whether they're the majority or not. Rewriting it now will just play favorites at best, and no one will ever be able to change the fact that someone is always going to be disappointed. They might as well just leave it be, cause clearly that's what they wanted to do.

You are wrong at so many points I don't even know where to start...

How about the fact that ending has so many stupid plotholes and inconsistencies that it barely looks like something Bioware would make? Plotholes you CAN'T logically explain, like why did the explosion start from a Mass Relay that was destroyed in Arrival? Why did Joker run away from the fight, and how did he get teammates who were down there fighting with him? Teleportation?

 

[Yearlongjester]

Wasn't it Dickens who wrote some of his works piece by piece, so he could gauge the audience's reaction and adjust his story accordingly?

Yeah, that obviously didn't work out for him.

Yes it's not the same thing, just pointing out that Dickens was successful because he was an amazing writer, and one that listened to his audience. One could even say they helped write the story with him, much like we've done with Mass Effect.

So if Dickens pulled out a random twist ending that didn't gel with what had been established previously without any sense of closure for the galaxy and the characters we've grown to know and love, the audience would in the right to be upset. And if Bioware would like to retain their fanbase they'll probably rewrite the ending.

Oops the analogy broke down. Too bad.

 

[Lytrise]

The idea that art is somehow an unequivocal expression of its creator, and that it is blasphemous to change it because of commercial disapproval seems extremely silly to me. Just think back a few centuries, art was a luxury, and it was commissioned and created to the specifications of it's buyer. Back then if the buyer did not like the artist's interpretation of his demands do you know what the artist did? He changed his art so he would get paid. Somehow this didn't prevent painting or sculpture from being considered high forms of art and expression, even if it was tailored to the wishes of it's buyer.

Commercial art and commissioned art is still like this, you are creating it either for someone specific or a group of someone specific. It?s known that it might be changed several times before it?s accepted. I don?t really know how they could afford to not change things and still expect to please their audiences because the whole idea that it?s art as in similar to fine art would imply that it wasn?t something produced with the masses in mind and it wasn?t meant for wide consumption.

 

[anthony87]

What I'd like to know is this obsession that so many people have with "art".

What's wrong with the people who love and respect gaming simply loving and respecting it? What's this desire for all the people of the world who don't give two shits about gaming to recognise it as art?

 

[Karnesdorff]

None of this matters because the whole debate is more or less irrelevant. The real issue boils down to this: THEY WILL NEVER MAKE EVERY SINGLE PERSON HAPPY NO MATTER WHAT THEY DO, NO ONE CAN.

An ending to a series like this will always piss off a lot of people because everyone is going to have their own ideas about how it should end. If Bioware changes it now all they'll be doing is choosing which little fractured part of their fanbase they don't want to enrage and by doing so piss off everyone else.

True, when a series ends there are always people saying this or that should have happened differently...

however...

Usually, those dissenters disagree with each other as much as the canon ending, because as they were following the story their 'head canon' took a different turn from the real canon, and where that turn was is not the same for even most of them. This isn't like that. Have you not noticed that pretty much everyone who talks about the ending homes in on the same problems?

When the fans not only say your ending sucks, but all of those who say it sucks agree what makes it suck...well if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck...

K.

 

[Something Amyss]

There is no question the JK Rowling get to decided how/where to take Harry Potter no matter how much the public feels attached to it.

If you ignore the outraged reaction from a lot of fans that kind of mirrored the Mass Effect controversy, you're exactly right.

Of course, selectively ignoring the portion of an example that makes it not work is kind of disingenuous, but whatever floats your boat.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

You might as well have said "I reckon Terminator 2 would be a terrible painting".

Well, it's no DaVinci, but it's not a velvet Elvis either.

 

[Something Amyss]

True, when a series ends there are always people saying this or that should have happened differently...

however...

Usually, those dissenters disagree with each other as much as the canon ending, because as they were following the story their 'head canon' took a different turn from the real canon, and where that turn was is not the same for even most of them. This isn't like that. Have you not noticed that pretty much everyone who talks about the ending homes in on the same problems?

When the fans not only say your ending sucks, but all of those who say it sucks agree what makes it suck...well if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck...

K.

And when it's around 90% of people agreeing, overall.

 

[Lytrise]

What I'd like to know is this obsession that so many people have with "art".

What's wrong with the people who love and respect gaming simply loving and respecting it? What's this desire for all the people of the world who don't give two shits about gaming to recognise it as art?

There isn?t anything wrong with just liking gaming for gaming. As for the other, It probably has to do both with the sheer amount of art that goes into said game making and also perhaps the desire to be taken seriously in the realm of other media types such as movies or music. In the end ?this is art? undoubtedly comes up in most any creative field. I?m not sure if that helps to answer your question but I tried.

 

[Karnesdorff]

That makes no real sense.

You might as well have said "I reckon Terminator 2 would be a terrible painting".

Method of consumption is a completely separate issue to method of creation.

At no point in a Harry Potter book, can I decided I don't like the way the story turned out when it went down this path and go back a few pages and suddenly change what happened. In a game I can.

My point is simple. If games are to be art, it has to have it's own artistic tropes. You are simply falling into the trap of hanging onto the coat-tails of older forms of art rather than thinking about how this form can find its own way.

EDIT: To clarify, in a book I cannot change the ending or the way a plot unfolds, in a game I can. The Mass Effect series sold itself on 'choice' to have that taken away by an entity that was up until five minutes before the end credits are due to run and forced to accept one of its three options, at the end of a trilogy that had been up until this point about getting yourself into impossibly difficult situations and beating the odds is a failure of storytelling, the shift in tone is out of place.

BTW, since I've got your attention, would you like to comment on that flowchart you posted as evidence 'your actions in ME3 count to the ending you get!' that anyone who had played the game can tell you is utter nonsense?

K.

 

[anthony87]

What I'd like to know is this obsession that so many people have with "art".

What's wrong with the people who love and respect gaming simply loving and respecting it? What's this desire for all the people of the world who don't give two shits about gaming to recognise it as art?

There isn?t anything wrong with just liking gaming for gaming. As for the other, It probably has to do both with the sheer amount of art that goes into said game making and also perhaps the desire to be taken seriously in the realm of other media types such as movies or music. In the end ?this is art? undoubtedly comes up in most any creative field. I?m not sure if that helps to answer your question but I tried.

Well it's a hard question to answer.

I think the real reason it gets to me though is just the general attitude of the people who are so desperate for the whole world to think of games as art.

Seriously, throughout all the different ME3 ending threads as well as threads like this I've seen around two dozen posts all from separate people saying how the people who didn't like the ME3 ending didn't like it simply because they're all to stupid to see the "art" in it.

Bollox, if that's the kind of attitude it takes for games to be art then I'm perfectly happy with games staying as they are. I'd rather a enjoy a medium for the sake of enjoying it rather than being a stuck up **** who has to over-analyse every little facet of something.