16 réponses à ce sujet

[I_Raps]

I'm referring to both the urgent Code of Conduct popup and and the intermittent site shut downs.

[MokahTGS]

The Code of Conduct stuff is in regards to the deplorable behavior of some community members toward a female employee at Bioware. The site hiccups could just be maintenance.

[kamal_]

Not so much this site as one individual Bioware developer.
http://kotaku.com/58...ll-her-a-cancer

Cancer was the nicest c word they used, and it progressed to irl stalking.

[I_Raps]

That goes along with my thinking - that the someone who was banned is now doing DDOS.

[I_Raps]

p.s kamal_

Thanks for that link. I had no idea... I should get out more.

[painofdungeoneternal]

definitely having issues of some sort...

And i can say that while some might not like Jennifer, she sounds like many of NWN2 players who have posted here over the years from the brief comments. Ideally bioware has a large variety in points of view to support the large variety in players points of view so the finished product does not just appeal to one group. It is lame when some portion of the player base decide their way of having fun is the only valid way of having fun.

[Dann-J]

One of her ideas (being able to fast-forward through combat) would have been quite welcome on the overland map in Storm of Zehir. Especially when you could slaughter the encounter monsters with minimal effort, so transitioning between encounter and overland map took longer than the fight itself. I'd have given my right plum for that feature at times...

[Kaldor Silverwand]

Harassment and stalking are definitely bad things and anyone doing so is waaaay out of line and should be stopped of course. However having read her interview and the posts by DocSeuss it would be disingenuous for me to say that I disagree with his points or his choice of analogy. Here are two of his statements that sound very similar to my own writings here and elsewhere about Obsidian and NWN2:

(Bioware) is now more interested in telling linear stories with the illusion of choice (your choices have but one consequence, thus making it illusory) than it is making good rpgs, like it did back when it was making things like Baldur's Gate.

and

(The game writer) wants to tell stories. She wants you to listen to those stories. ... Once upon a time, Bioware made RPGs that let players change the world based on their actions. Nowadays, their writer philosophy has shifted. No matter what you do, the outcome is always going to be the same.

I think these are spot on. Where I do not agree with DocSeuss is that his scope is too narrow. A single writer is not the cancer he describes. The cancer is the philosophy she has and unfortunately this is a tumor that has already metastasized. This has been a trend in the gaming industry for years and is, I believe, a direct side-effect of the influence of console games on the computer game market. The console games are designed for high octane spurts interspersed with movie-like conversational rest periods leading to a pre-ordained explosive finish. It is like running wind sprints. That's fine for what it is, but computer games used to be far more flexible than that and offered more pacing and choices than they do now. Essentially you used to be the story but now you are only told a story.

NWN2 reflects that, as does SWTOR. This was my biggest gripe with the NWN2 OC and MotB.

Regards

[Dann-J]

I think MotB was an improvement though, since it frequently gave you a choice of two possible alternatives (which is slightly better than one). Like the OC though, most of those alternatives ultimately took you to the same places. At least the two endings were quite different in MotB.

I did thoroughly enjoy an evil plot path with some meat on it for a change. The evil ending was very cool. Even Kelemvor seemed a bit nervous about you.

[M. Rieder]

I wonder if the requisite resources for producing an RPG that will be taken seriously has necessitated the reduction in plotline branches.

[NWN DM]

M. Rieder wrote...

I wonder if the requisite resources for producing an RPG that will be taken seriously has necessitated the reduction in plotline branches.

That and these days developers don't see any profit in putting out a product that will have the staying power of a NWN (and to a lesser extent NWN2) - all they're interested in are immediate sales carrying through @ 11 months until the next iteration that is 90% the same game comes out at full price instead of as an expansion pack as it should be.

IMO of course.

Modifié par NWN DM, 13 mars 2012 - 02:54 .

[MasterChanger]

I care about good gaming a lot. I care about human beings more. Unless a game writer actively encourages hatred of particular groups of people through his or her writing, they deserve some basic respect.

Making analogies that a person, or even their perspective, is like a disease is just wrong -- even if you think that person's ideas are harmful to gaming. There is enough actual harm people do to other people in this world that we should not unleash our harshest language against a game writer.

[Lugaid of the Red Stripes]

Slightly off-topic, but a while back I read a really interesting article about the old choose-your-own-adventure books.  The interesting thing was, that initially the books were really complicated, with many different branching plotlines.  As the series progressed over the years, though, authors wrote simpler plot-trees, with only a few major branches.  The explanation was that the authors were coming to find that to keep the books interesting, they needed to write more detailed characters and stories, and it was just impossible to write a complicated, branching plot that also had naunced characterization. 

Leaving aside whether depth is better than multi-linear breadth, it seems to me that the same pattern is at play with the cRPG's.  As the genre develops, and writers try to top themselves, they do so by writing stronger stories, even if that means that they have to sacrifice some player choice to get there. 

[Kaldor Silverwand]

MasterChanger wrote...
Making analogies that a person, or even their perspective, is like a disease is just wrong 

I don't agree. There is nothing wrong about using an analogy, even a cruel one. They are always inaccurate to some degree, but can be very helpful at drawing out similarities.

If people are going to be thin-skinned then they shouldn't voluntarily use the internet as a medium to communicate their ideas. No one forced her to do the interview or to say what she did. And she acknowledged as she said it that she probably shouldn't. She chose to do so anyway.  I have no issue whatsoever with people taking her to task for what she said. Harassing her or stalking her is another matter and one that should be taken up with appropriate authorities. But censorship is a problem mistakenly believed to be a solution.

Regards

[painofdungeoneternal]

Not helpful

It is logically wrong to attack the person instead of the ideas, even great ideas can come from idiots, and even smart people can be off base. Saying a person is a disease, or just comparing them to one because they disagree with you - well that is just lame and is really beneath civil discourse, and a sign your own arguments are based more on how you feel.

You can call her ideas stupid, and pick apart why, but the minute you stop focusing the argument on the ideas and aim at the person in any way shape or form, you are off base. Even though this seems to be routinely done on the media, the real thing that suffers is the good ideas which can come from anywhere.

I am pretty sure what is happening in video gaming is not due to developers like her, but self inflicted since so much more is spent on consoles by us gamers. Those companies who don't listen - well they are making about as much money as us players doing this as a hobby. And when it comes to the end of the day a company has to focus on things that help sales.

Note that i've been on the other end of things, where the minute i said i ran a PVP server everyone closed their ears despite the fact what I do on that server is close to PNP, and that i actively set up features to support other play styles. Or when i said i focused on NWN2 and not NWN1, absolute venom despite the fact i love that game as much as any in those forums.

The only real cure for the disease would be for customers to actually buy games like NWN2 and Baldur's Gate to the same degree they buy those linear games which seem so despised, and not getting rid of employees who i am sure are not getting paid enough for the long hours and stress they have to deal with.

[Artemis Absinthe]

painofdungeoneternal wrote...

[..]
The only real cure for the disease would be for customers to actually buy games like NWN2 and Baldur's Gate to the same degree they buy those linear games which seem so despised,  and not getting rid of employees who i am sure are not getting paid enough for the long hours and stress they have to deal with.

I absolutely agree with that


But I have to say that, while is true that if your arguments are valid there's no need to attack a person directly (that is rethoric, not discussion), if everytime you use a methaphor or an analogy, you deserve to be burned alive because automaticaly you're very a bad person, or the people in black suit and earplug suddenly appear, then this is just censorship. This is the Internet, everyone will say everything he want, and has the right to do it. Forum moderators exist for that reason.

As Kaldor said, if you're going to use the Internet as a medium, and allow comments, or discuss it in a public forum, then, love, be prepared to be annihilated, it's just how the thing works. Get a body armor (metaphorically speaking) and just reply. If you can't because you're too sensitive, then, use another way, not a blog or a public forum.

I didn't read the whole discussion, nor the whole interview, nor I want to, somehow, defend anyone of the people involved in this thing. I just want to say that, IMO, it's ethically wrong to say "We will close every discussion in wich is discussed about the company, because of some idiots that didn't were educated properly".

The use of the word "disease" or even "cancer", may be used metaphorically, by someone who can do it (like Kaldor did in his reply). There's no need of a 3 digit IQ to understand that. 




Of course, when it begins irl, with stalking and harassing, hey, just call the police... or get a gun. You can in the US, right ?


But this is just my opinion, of course, it may be wrong.

Modifié par Artemis Absinthe, 13 mars 2012 - 08:11 .