shygravel wrote...
...
Furthermore: If this was a movie or a book or a play, I'd be far less crushed by the endings. Why? Because those mediums aren't interactive. I don't go to a movie expecting to be able to make the choices for the protagonist. I don't read books expecting to choose what characters make it and which don't. I accept what the author/director/etc presents before me because I knew I was only along for the ride the whole time -- I may not agree, I may not like it, but I knew what I was getting into.
Mass Effect is interactive entertainment. It is artful - it is often heartbreakingly artful - but it was never presented as a static show of the developers vision. All along we were told it was story that would fluidly change from player to player based on their choices. To have any sense that those choices mattered ripped away at the end leaves me feeling manipulated and lied to; it makes all the time I poured in feel retroactively cheapened. Part of the very art of Mass Effect was the wonderful personalization/customization Bioware wove and enabled and in the end the 'art' shifts context. For some of us it's just muddled and lost.
...
Cut the quote down a bit again to save space (and make it clearer what I'm replying to
)
I just wanted to say that there is also an element of audience involvement in the media you listed, especially in films and plays. Films are routinely screened for a test audience "focus group" to see how people react to it. Many, I dare say most, films go into a re-edit after these screenings to adjust things that are not having the desired effect or commented on negatively. Even endings have been edited or re-shot based on feedback from focus groups.
The best example for plays is actually Shakespeare. There are multiple versions of many of his plays because he edited them according to what was working/not working for the audience (and of course he had to make some changes here and there based on political climate changes, but that's another topic entirely). A great many poets and playwrites adjusted their art to better fit the desires of their patrons or audience.
For books of course, there's the already frequently mentioned Arthur Conan Doyle and his Sherlock Holmes stories where he un-killed Sherlock based on popular demand (and the literary world is unanimously thrilled that people talked him out of quitting the Sherlock Holmes stories).
Even painters have adjusted their paintings (including painting over things they had originally painted) because their patrons had different preferences.
So really, the desire and request for a change on a consumer-oriented artistic product is not as "new" or "out there" as people are making it out to be, but games are a "new" kind of consumer-oriented artistic product in the grand scheme of things. They're complicated... a little bit book, a little bit painting, a little bit play/movie and then you throw in the direct involvement of the audience in shaping the experience...
Even newer is the ability to change the product on a large scale after it has been delivered through the internet and DLC and the more prevalent use of expansions. Add in the fact that people are by nature inclined to resist change and you've got the situation we have now.
There is nothing wrong with the idea of the audience requesting change, not even anything really new about it if you look at older media, but it's new in this newer medium because it's only recently even become possible.
Back in the day of King's Quest 1 it was already amazing that the little square pixel dude actually walked where you wanted him to go (so that you could basically solve puzzles as intended because something as complex as choice just wasn't really an option yet). Adding content was really not realistically doable and the direct interaction allowed through the internet and forums like these today just didn't exist on a grand scale.
Still, even then people made it known when they felt a beloved franchise had strayed, but it could only effect the next installment in the series.
Today real time feedback and the capabilities for real time adjustment on a large scale (both possible because of the internet) create entirely different possibilities. The question is, will Bioware overcome the very human tendency to fear change, or will they be the forerunners of a change that almost *has* to happen (because the audience-feedback-based alterations exist in all the other media as well, but it's actually even easier to do with games...)
Ce sujet est fermé
Retour en haut
