The Big Picture: Mutants and Masses

[RJ Dalton]

I don't know, in that "you're doing really good" at the end of the video, I'd have included that picture of the starving African kid being watched by a vulture just for the sake of reinforcing the point.

Totally agree with your point about Mass Effect. I haven't played the games myself, but, as a creator, I don't want to live in a world where I have to change my vision of my own works just because some fans raised a fit.
Would have liked more ripping on Mr. Bay, but under the context, I guess that wouldn't have been appropriate.

 

[Coldster]

Thank you Bob. I liked your Game Overthinker episode about this and your similar Big Picture video today. It's good to see that someone like you is not bitching about the Mass Effect 3 ending in a melodramatic fashion like most of Bioware's "fans". In fact, NO ONE in the professional gaming community such as Yahtzee and the Escapist staff has agreed with all these so called "fans". It's relaxing to know that the people who are heard, are the ones with reasonable mindsets.

 

[Terminal Blue]

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.

And you'd be perfectly within your right to do so. Unless you released a trailer which showed a bunch of completely different scenes, or something like that, you've made no specific claim about the product so you can do what you want. Hollywood routinely pulls this kind of shit by making "slow" genre movies look like action or horror films in the trailer.

Fans would complain. They might boycott your products and long term it might be better for you to apologise and do something to win back their trust because otherwise your career is over, but they do not have the right to make you change your product. Liking something is not owning it.

That was Bob's actual argument. Anything you added to that argument is just you.

God, it feels like you could just fight this one forever. I give up.

 

[ryo02]

"This story arc is coming to an end with this game. That means the endings can be a lot more different. At this point we're taking into account so many decisions that you've made as a player and reflecting a lot of that stuff. It's not even in any way like the traditional game endings, where you can say how many endings there are or whether you got ending A, B, or C." - Casey Hudson, ME3 Project Director

ending A B or C is exactly what we got.

we were lied to why wouldnt we have a problem with that? why wouldnt we ask for ending options we were promised I.E. not A B or C.

 

[Negatempest]

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

Whoa, whoa, whoa. You are totally off the mark their about da Vinci. Let us say that da Vinci was paid by the church to make the last supper. If the church does not like they way they made the last supper than they can have him change it. da Vinci is Bioware. EA is the church. The consumer (you) are the individual who goes to the church. You are NOT the church. (You) did not put in any money to commission ME3. (You) put in money to purchase a copy of the art to make up for the money that the Church (EA) spent into commissioning the game. You may make complaints about the art, but in the end (EA) has the last say, not (You).

 

[MovieBob]

I love how people justify their rage saying that "Bioware promised us."

 

[Najal]

The whole Mass Effect thing reminds me of Conan Doyle killing Sherlock Holmes in "the last problem" and then bowing to public pressure and bringing him back. If the fans hadn't stood up for what they wanted, we never would have gotten The Hound of the Baskervilles.

I think fans should be able to talk to the developers, and give their opinion on where they want the franchise to go; Bioware have said they want as much. As for this whole "you can't DEMAND they change the ending" argument, no of course, they can't demand anything and they have no bargaining chips other than not buying more games.

However, it would be foolish for Bioware from a business point of view not to listen to their customers.

Fans don't want the ending "changed" they want it improved. There's a difference.

 

[hermes]

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!

Of course you would. Then people would complain about it, even ask for their money back... and that would be IT.

No threats, no lawsuits, no "Ohhh... Saxnot lied to us", no "We DEMAND that you change the ending, because WE know better". Nothing of that is excusable (especially the threats part)

 

[Taunta]

Lots and lots of pages of people missing the point.

Listen people. Bob never said you weren't allowed to think the ending was bad. You can think it, and criticize it all you want. But figuratively throwing it back in the developer's face and demanding that they got it wrong, do it again is when you cross the line.

If you think Bob is misrepresenting the reason why you're mad about the ending? Then good for you. He's not talking about you. He's talking about the very real portion of people that feel entitled to a new ending because they didn't like it.

Continuing with the Choose Your Own Adventure books analogy, the funny thing is that even then, you don't have any control over the book, the author does. Sure, you can choose the ending and the character's choices, but you still don't have complete freedom. You can't make up your own ending, you have to choose from the options given to you. So no, you don't have creative control over a Choose Your Own Adventure series, as much as the game wants to give you the illusion that you do.

The artist is allowed to make whatever decision they want to regarding their own work. It's okay if you don't like it. That kind of stuff happens. It's not okay to demand that they change it because you don't like it.

I didn't like how poorly M. Night Shyamalan mishandled Avatar: The Last Airbender. Am I upset? Yes. Did I pay ~$15 to see that movie and get burned on my investment? Yes. Do I wish that he handled it better? Yes. The problem is, I didn't say that shit out loud. I'm not about to write him any angry letters about how I'm entitled to a better adaptation.

 

[The Great JT]

This is the last time I'm going to say this, but the only thing I want from any sort of re-done ME3 ending is closure. That's it. That's all. Nothing more, nothing less. Please stop lumping me in with the idiots who are filing lawsuits with the FTC.

As for the Platinum Dunes-made Turtles movie that's on the way, I really do hope it's good, not for the sake of, "I grew up watching Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles as a kid," but for their sake. I mean, they have to hate the fact nobody likes their remakes of Nightmare On Elm Street, Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Friday The 13th, but any of the Transformers movies they've made. I mean, does any filmmaker like making bad movies?

Spoiler: I mean, other than this guy.

Ed Wood, for the clinically stupid.

 

[Wicky_42]

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.

Whilst the extents some fans have gone to to protest against Bioware's ending may well be too far, from his video I took away that Bob was happy for Bioware to do absolutely anything they wanted, and people should shut up about seeing a story that they had sculpted for years brought to a shallow, unfulfilling close. As Bob complained about Bay and his treatment of the Transformers IP, Mass Effect fans complain about the ending for the game.

If his comments were limited to purely to the types filing lawsuits then fine, but the campaign to have the ending changed or extended is still valid; gaming is an interactive medium, people want to have their say. It's not like people have just spent one and a half hours watching thin exposition over explosions, they've spend in the region of 100+ hours being the main character, being told that they are changing the game world with their actions. Should anyone be surprised that they seek to change the ending by their actions too?

I think fans are entirely within their rights to petition and campaign to have the ending changed, or at least expanded and explained. I've seen the footage and it's quite disappointing for the media setup that preceded the game's release. Of course, that's an opinion, and Bioware's well within their rights to stick to their guns but that's not what we've been hearing from their announcements - they don't seem to know whether they intended to make a fuss for publicity or whether they're disappointed by the outcry, whether they're going to change the ending or sell a new one, or just sell more DLC to expand on it. They've not come out conclusively defending the ending as the one that they really wanted to do, as the one that wraps the series up.

Also, you have to remember that games are a medium where the product is never necessarily final; patches and DLC, mods and expansions - game worlds these days are mutable, currently so publishers can squeeze games out on time before they're quite finished, or so they can continue making money off a released product. Isn't it about time that fans were able to harness these publisher and developer-centric mechanics and turned them to their own use?

 

[Terminal Blue]

Bioware lied about Mass Effect 3's functionality by claiming that your choices throughout the game would have impact on the ending, when really your choices had absolutely no impact.

One more time.

Saying that Mass Effect 3 would cure cancer or enlarge your penis, or making a quantified statistical claim about its effect, would have been a 'lie'.

Some marketing people making a vague assertion that it would "reflect your choices" is not a lie. It's an implication, at best. Advertisers and marketers do that all the time by telling you that if you use a certain product your skin will appear visibly clearer or your hair will be up to 15% shinier.

The purpose of advertising is actually to imply things while saying absolutely nothing legally binding. Bioware was not the first company to do this, they will not be the last.

This is grounds for being disappointed in a product, it's even grounds for asking Bioware to change it, but it's absolutely not grounds for believing that you have an inherent consumer right to have it changed to meet your expectations because you bought the original product. That's the line Bob is talking about which you don't cross.

 

[Taunta]

The whole Mass Effect thing reminds me of Conan Doyle killing Sherlock Holmes in "the last problem" and then bowing to public pressure and bringing him back. If the fans hadn't stood up for what they wanted, we never would have gotten The Hound of the Baskervilles.

I think fans should be able to talk to the developers, and give their opinion on where they want the franchise to go; Bioware have said they want as much. As for this whole "you can't DEMAND they change the ending" argument, no of course, they can't demand anything and they have no bargaining chips other than not buying more games.

However, it would be foolish for Bioware from a business point of view not to listen to their customers.

Fans don't want the ending "changed" they want it improved. There's a difference.

That's the difference that I think Bob got at, but didn't explicitly say. I'm sure lots, if not all people who didn't like the ME3 ending wished that the ending would have been better, and I'm sure Bioware has gotten lots of constructive criticism regarding their game. There's still a big difference between silently wishing and angrily demanding.

Because even when people offer constructive criticism, the artist can still make a decision as to whether or not they want to listen to it. It's really constructive suggestions, not demands.

 

[Negatempest]

"This story arc is coming to an end with this game. That means the endings can be a lot more different. At this point we're taking into account so many decisions that you've made as a player and reflecting a lot of that stuff. It's not even in any way like the traditional game endings, where you can say how many endings there are or whether you got ending A, B, or C." - Casey Hudson, ME3 Project Director

ending A B or C is exactly what we got.

we were lied to why wouldnt we have a problem with that? why wouldnt we ask for ending options we were promised I.E. not A B or C.

Depends on how you want to take the quote.
Most people are taking it as ending options 1) 2) and 3).

The other way endings went in the past was: Rainbows and Unicorns ending A). A lose or two ending B). Everyone dies ending F). ME2 actually had this type of ending.

If you took it one's own way, than the former would have you feel betrayed by the quote. If it is the latter than Bioware was true to their word.

Always in the point of view.

 

[Klitch]

Whoa, whoa, whoa. You are totally off the mark their about da Vinci. Let us say that da Vinci was paid by the church to make the last supper. If the church does not like they way they made the last supper than they can have him change it. da Vinci is Bioware. EA is the church. The consumer (you) are the individual who goes to the church. You are NOT the church. (You) did not put in any money to commission ME3. (You) put in money to purchase a copy of the art to make up for the money that the Church (EA) spent into commissioning the game. You may make complaints about the art, but in the end (EA) has the last say, not (You).

So nobody pre-ordered Mass Effect 3? For some reason I seem to remember doing that...

At no point did I say that consumers should get final say over artistic content (or any product for that matter), but let's continue with the da Vinci analogy. Say he was commissioned to paint the Mona Lisa and behaved like a modern game company. He would triple his agreed-upon time frame after being paid (pre-orders for Duke Nukem Forever?)...well he actually did that one, paint a picture of a a different woman (false marketing), give you the "finished" painting and then charge for him to finish drawing the face (DLC), and then make you re-purchase the painting after you have seen it three times (DRM). The man would have been lynched.

I'm sorry but no amount of "get over it" or "move on" or "geez put your energy into something important (by my definition of the word)" is going to make me feel like it's alright for game companies to hold 100% of the rights for their content. They cannot flat-out lie to us and then not expect us to take it personally.

Edit: Just to make it perfectly clear, I don't want a new ending. I take Shamus Young's viewpoint: this ending is horrible, but this is the ending they wanted and now they have to stick with it.