292 réponses à ce sujet

[Jadebaby]

This is stupid.

Tali and Garrus L.I was the fans idea.

Fallout 3 changed their ending.

_____________
That is all.
______________________
___Hold___The___Line___

[thedude2086]

Games have more in common with works of literature than a priceless painting in the Louvre. There is precedent in literature and in the gaming industry that support the people wanting a different ending, and the authors giving the people want they want. If they don't want to have this discussion in the future, perhaps game makers should realize that the fans are the ones paying their salaries, so it would do well not to anger your fan base.

[Ianamus]

If Bioware's idea of "artistic vision" is an ending that completely contradicts the rest of the game, gives no closure for any choices or characters, and is almost exactly the same depending on what choices you made, then I honestly don't care if its the ending they want. 

Was it there "artistic vision" to have Jessica Chobot in the game? No, IGN almost certainly influenced their decision there, but that's never mentioned. Garrus and Tali were made romance options because fans liked them- and they have become the two most iconic and popular characters in the series. 

It's not about wanting a "Disney" ending. To be honest, Shepard becoming space Jesus and the Normandy landing on Eden, with people turning magically into utopian half-machine hybrids is far more "Disney" than anything I could have imagined. 

It's not about "artistic vision", or even a "happy" ending either. It's about Bioware writing an ending that is just bad, and they are running out of excuses. 

Modifié par EJ107, 19 mars 2012 - 11:57 .

[chcknwng]

MassEffected555 wrote...

anexanhume wrote...

http://www.theverge....-ken-levine-sad

Game makers, not game players, should retain control over the games
they make and how they end, a panel of developers said during a weekend
talk at the Smithsonian to celebrate the new exhibit, "The Art of Video
Games."
"If computer games are art than I fully endorse the author of the
artwork to have a statement about what they believe should happen," said
Paul Barnett, senior creative director at BioWare-Mythic. "Just as J.K.
Rowling can end her books and say that is the end of Harry Potter. I
don't think she should be forced to make another one.
The comment came at the end of a nearly hour-long discussion about the future of video games which took place in front of a live audience at the Smithsonian American Art Museum last week.
Following the discussion, audience members were given the opportunity to ask questions. A man named Sam asked:
"What do you think of the whole idea where community has influence on
making game story like for Paul with BioWare ...," he asked, referring
to the "current fiasco going on right now with the Mass Effect ending."
Some gamers are upset over what they believe was an unsatisfying
ending to the Mass Effect trilogy, a series that promised gamers an
ending that was in part shaped by the choices they made over the course
of playing the three titles.
Barnett's response was met with loud applause that overwhelmed Sam's response.
When the applause died down Ken Levine, founder of Irrational Games,
added that he wanted to address the question as well because, Levine
said, "I think this is an important moment."
"I think if those people got what they wanted and (BioWare) wrote
their ending they would be very disappointed in the emotional feeling
they got because ... they didn't really create it," he said. "I think
this whole thing is making me a little bit sad because I don't think
anyone would get what they wanted if that happened."

So what does everyone think? Will the ending not be 'true' if it is engineered by the fans? If so, how is that different than the feedback loop Bioware used to write subsequent games, such as including Tali and Garrus as romance options?

This is what's confusing me. Are WE trying to make a new ending or are we trying to allow Bioware to fix their ending?

I really don't want to be involved if WE are trying to make the ending. 

Neither do I. But I do think some fans want to make a new ending.

[Panicomatic]

Doctor Moustache wrote...

Theres a difference between an ending that disappoints some people (which will always happen) and an ending that is fully ridden with plot holes, inconsistencies and broken developer promisses.  I consider these endings more of a literally broken segment of the game then just a disappointing bit of writing.  Developers patch broken games. 

I love Levines work, but I think hes painting this far too black and white without any context of just how ****ed up the endings actually are.  Its like having a book and the last few pages look like they were typed by a dyslexic person.  Yes, its seriously that bad. 

In all honesty, I doubt he's had anytime to beat ME3 and probably has no idea what the ending is. 

[nevar00]

Total Biscuit wrote...

Nu-Nu wrote...

JK Rowling wanted to kill off Harry Potter but she didn't because people begged her not to. That reference fail. Fans can influence an author's decision.

She was also going to kill Ron off too, but realised that it would be pointlessly miserable, everyone would hate it, and that she was just doing it to shock, and pretend to be clever, rather than because it was actually a good idea, so chucked the idea out entirely. 

...so basically what happened in the Mass Effect 3 ending, right?  Except even worse so: I don't remember having to make decisions in Harry Potter and expecting an ending based on the cumulative impact of my decisions.

[Fireblader70]

Sepharih wrote...

Fireblader70 wrote...

The film industry makes changes based on test screenings all the time (I'm in that industry, so I know). It usually turns out for the best - 'Wrath of Khan' was originally going to kill off Spock, but the fans intervened. 'The Dark Knight Rises' recently made Bane's voice clearer for the audience to understand, after complaints. They turned out for the better.

Just about every film that's at risk of losing so much gets test screenings. Why should video games be different? At the end of the day, Bioware isn't making the game for themselves, they are making it for the audience. It's a technique that's been highly successful in the past, and I think it should be implemented in this industry much more often.

There's no use saying 'oh, it's art, so it mustn't be changed' if no one likes the damn thing. There would be no point to the product in that case.

Essentially, the only precedent developers have to fear is that of keeping their promises. That is the crux of this problem - not just 'oh I don't like the ending'.

I agree with you in essence, but your examples aren't very good (Spock WAS killed off in Wrath of Khan and this was later retconned in sequels, and TDKR isn't released yet...so I wouldn't make assumptions yet).
I also think testscreenings can do harm as well...but that they do have a place.

Sorry, just needed to point those things out.

I suppose I should have made things more clear... the original ending for 'Wrath of Khan' was a lot more final than what ended up in the cinemas. Spock was still killed off, but more hope was given for him to return in the next feature film (kind of like Shepard breathing in the ME3 ending, but not quite the same).

And as for TDKR, I don't see how making Bane's voice clearer can be a negative (although, granted, it probably won't be by much).

[GorrilaKing]

Sherlock Holmes.
Great Expectations.
Fallout 3

Just a few examples of this exact thing...authors changing the endings/fates of their stories and characters due to fans begging them to. And each time, the end result was better than before.

[RedShft]

Luigitornado wrote...

Except buying a video game isn't the same as ordering fast food.

I fail to see a difference. 

There is a product to be sold to a consumer. The consumer has expectations about the experience when consuming the product. If the consumer likes the product, they would buy more, and praise the product. If they don't like it, they will make their reasons known.

In the end of the day what matters is money and sales. Money and sales are derived from customer purchasing and THEIR SATISFACTION.

Levine can take the "Game is Art and it would destory my vision to deal with those scummy customers" but in the end, this just sounds like arrogance.

Customers DESERVE respect because of their wallets, if you don't respect customers, you should expect to be out of business very soon.

[Mitra]

Oh yes, I make art myself and there is little to nothing artistic at the "end" they forced us to go thru and the feedback is important, pretty much as the naked art itself.
I love feedback in my line of work. I am afraid of critic itself as it has it's own meaning that suppose to run thru deepest levels of the artistic product itself. But a "good" critic can move a mountain.
When you see that people invest time and money in your artistic product, hell, I know how it feels to see satisfied faces. If there are no satisfied faces, then that product loose it's own point of existence and can't be representative as it was meant to be in the first place.

All thou art itself can be watched and processed thru a lot of various instances, the "public" is more important part of the process and as that, having satisfied public, is something every art should tend to.

This ending, not endings, is nothing more then the pure lack of art. It's just a forced situation with lack of real true options to complete a great story that was something special in every bit until last few minutes.
Emptiness and pointless is not art.

Art is something beautiful, a gift that gives us, usual mortal people, satisfaction of being privileged to be alive. It moves masses, change their lives, make them feel good by giving them the chance in participating in something that is maybe even bigger then themselves in their own prospective.

Hope that BioWare will see it. We where all small parts of something great, of it's heart.
Hope that heart will beat again.

[Cigarette Smoking Man]

Ken Levine, with Bioshock, used his game to make distinctive statements about the player and the world he created and a whole bunch of other gibberish you get out of political philosophy books. What lacks at the center of Ken Levine's argument is that even in the realm of other games, Mass Effect and Bioware operate outside his form of narrative. He can make those statements because there is a barrier between player and character on screen. Is there investment? Sure. But that role for the player is pretty passive in narrative.

Compared to Mass Effect or Dragon Age, which, you know, take the player and put them in such an active role in a narrative he or she can choose along a slight path line, well, it because a lot different. Players take a much more active role in shaping the content within those games, whereas Levine and studio is more shaping the world and making you respond to it.

There are players, given this emotional resonance, that got to the end of the line and got an extreme shift in narrative that jarred them, and, for quite a few players who actually played ME because it empowers them as players, it really hit them hard and in a very depressing manner. Not just because of, you know, death and all that, but because the journey feels meaningless now.

People going into insane detail on what they want will be disappointed, because Levine is right there. But going for what the games have been good at? If the players have choices, hell, to win or lose even, that will satisfy those players, because unlike any Bioshock game, it means that the player can create a new narrative from their experience, whereas his artistic statement is always going to be the same and always have the same linearity.

[BrotherFluffy]

anexanhume wrote...

http://www.theverge....-ken-levine-sad

Game makers, not game players, should retain control over the games
they make and how they end, a panel of developers said during a weekend
talk at the Smithsonian to celebrate the new exhibit, "The Art of Video
Games."
"If computer games are art than I fully endorse the author of the
artwork to have a statement about what they believe should happen," said
Paul Barnett, senior creative director at BioWare-Mythic. "Just as J.K.
Rowling can end her books and say that is the end of Harry Potter. I
don't think she should be forced to make another one.
The comment came at the end of a nearly hour-long discussion about the future of video games which took place in front of a live audience at the Smithsonian American Art Museum last week.
Following the discussion, audience members were given the opportunity to ask questions. A man named Sam asked:
"What do you think of the whole idea where community has influence on
making game story like for Paul with BioWare ...," he asked, referring
to the "current fiasco going on right now with the Mass Effect ending."
Some gamers are upset over what they believe was an unsatisfying
ending to the Mass Effect trilogy, a series that promised gamers an
ending that was in part shaped by the choices they made over the course
of playing the three titles.
Barnett's response was met with loud applause that overwhelmed Sam's response.
When the applause died down Ken Levine, founder of Irrational Games,
added that he wanted to address the question as well because, Levine
said, "I think this is an important moment."
"I think if those people got what they wanted and (BioWare) wrote
their ending they would be very disappointed in the emotional feeling
they got because ... they didn't really create it," he said. "I think
this whole thing is making me a little bit sad because I don't think
anyone would get what they wanted if that happened."

So what does everyone think? Will the ending not be 'true' if it is engineered by the fans? If so, how is that different than the feedback loop Bioware used to write subsequent games, such as including Tali and Garrus as romance options?

I'd argue that so much of the game is already engineered by the fans.  We play our Shepards the way we want to.  As I've mentioned before, if this were a game like BioShock, for example, where the story is fixed and linear, I wouldn't be complaining about the ending.  Casey Hudson that he considers the game "co-created with the fans."  As co-creators, doesn't that make it our work as well?

[Johnnycide]

Lianaar wrote...

As others said: if the ending is changed, what's up with people who bought the game already and liked it? 
Then they would be cheated. Then they need to make a movement to anti-change the ending and return to the original? Then what? 
What if the numbers are equal? And I am not speaking of this very game, I am speaking generally.

If more endings are produced, then we would actually be getting closer to the product we were promised. A game that has multiple endings based on the decisions you made. If you are content with the endings you recieved then that's the ending you should choose, having additional endings added does not or atleast should not remove you from being able to choose the current endings.

[chkchkchk]

It isn't like changing ME3's ending would be an unprecedented crime against art. Plenty of examples in this thread of art where a "bad" ending was later changed or expanded on.

BrotherFluffy wrote...

I'd argue that so much of the game is already engineered by the fans. 

This is true.  Doesn't Bioware collect information on people's play styles?  Weren't Tali and Garrus made romance options because they were popular?  Are fans "entitled" because they wanted to spar with Garrus?  Plenty of good things come from the relationship between artist and audience.  I've seen "participatory art" in art galleries.  It isn't like the artist is the beginning and end of art.  Art School 101.

Modifié par chkchkchk, 20 mars 2012 - 12:04 .

[GorrilaKing]

True and it bears repeating. We do NOT want to take anything away from those who liked the endings. We just want more options and more closure.

[Militarized]

Nu-Nu wrote...

JK Rowling wanted to kill off Harry Potter but she didn't because people begged her not to. That reference fail. Fans can influence an author's decision.

That's... not entirely true. Didn't she have the ending epilogue planned out from like the first book? 

She mentioned she toyed around with killing him and changing that but felt it wasn't right. Technically he does die in the book as well.  

[katanakage]

If Leonardo Da Vinci painted the background and body of the Mona Lisa, and then painted a smiley face were the head goes and punched a hole in the middle of body, would it still be considered art just because he's an artist?

Modifié par katanakage, 20 mars 2012 - 12:02 .

[dointime85]

As an amendment to my earlier post: I just looked it up: Bertold Brecht, one of the greatest German playwrights of all time, revised his plays based on audience reactions and encouraged others to do the same.

http://books.google....d=0CEAQ6AEwAzgK

[BARRAGE 74]

ThePanzer99 wrote...

I bought ME3 at best buy. Not an art gallery. Not the Louvre. Fricking Best Buy. Next to ratchet and clank. I respect game designer's abilities and creativity but Leonardo DaVinci they are not.

This

[Lianaar]

Su13perfitz wrote...
I never said BW would definitely go out of business. Also this one indicident is unlikely to drive them out of business but they certainly have lost money on it already. Moreover you forgot to understand that people can just leavethe market all together. I am stating that many customers are upset. If they continue to make more and more customers upset well you have no customers left. Also there are several limiting factors on game production. Do they have enough capital to make a game, can they make smaller games with more ROI, do they have technical skill required to make the game, do they have the time required to make the game. Also many games offer character driven stories with a lot of customazation bioware is only the most obvious in america to do this. Also games that feature the same writing tend to be on smaller scale due to tighter budget and time constraints.

BioWare wasn't always a big company. It started small too. Witcher (while I am not a fan of it) was made by a small company and could reach out many players.
And while yes, eg DA2 lost a lot of customers, please note, it also WON a lot of customers. It fully won me for DA  Way more then anything else.

I still stick to saying: it is ridiculous to consider people fully accept BW not making ME3, but they can not accept BW making this ME3. If they have the right to refrain from making this part, then they have the right to fill it with content they wish.

I don't expect BW to simply ignore the present events, I am sure it'll be responded to somehow. More then likely I will not be pleased with the outcome (part of it is that my personal opinion is that this is simply blackmail and I find it unethical. However this is my own personal opinion which matters little to nothing as it only affects my purchase decisions, and one person is not exactly important in the big picture). What is still interesting is how the future of video games will be shaped.

Now let's see the possible scenarios for BW not to change the ending AND not addressing the topic at all. Let's presume, they lose more customers, then what they gain. Let's presume worst case scenario for BW and pretend those customers they won and have are not secure purchasers, who they can count on with security for a return of their investment. What will then the market do? Will BW leave the market and say the investment is so insecure that they prefer a surely present return and do games that are less emotional invoking? Will other companies try to come up with games that fill this sector? Or will the game companies close together and say, while fans are important, the vision of the game companies too and they do keep a limit to which extent players can contribute to the game.

___________
To the person making the blank canvas analogy. Uhm, no freaking way. You can not compare a train travel where you pick if you turn left and right with the freedom of giving form of your OWN creativity and thoughts. What is your own to do is to switch out the computer in the last 10 minutes and then say: ok, now my ending comes and it happens this way. Then you used a white canvas. But as long as you are limited with the railroads BW set out for you (as is the nature of video games), you can not call yo urself the artist of the game. A more proper comparision would be a painting after numbers, where there is already a painting and you can decide to paint it with the colors given to you in different variations. But a painting of a house will not turn into a dragon eating sheep.

[bloodshed17]

If he were to play the first 2 games and the majority of the 3rd game, spend many hours investing in the story, the characters while becoming attached to some, and make countless decisions (some of them really hard) and then have the game end the way it did he may change his tune. Then again maybe he has and this is just his opinion. But I doubt it.

[Zulmoka531]

This kinda hurt the artistic integrity defense for me. But that's just my perspective on it.

[Tyrzun]

Luigitornado wrote...

Tyrzun wrote...

Ken Levine has now been put on my don't buy from him list. Congrats Ken.

When you go to a Burger place because they advertise selling you the best burger with all the trimming you want, you choose your trimmings. You place your order, give them your money and then... they serve you a taco. They then tell you their justification is they wanted to serve you a taco. How, dare you not enjoy their taco.

That's exactly what Bioware did. It's that simple. ANY other business such as a burger joint would be apologizing and giving you "FREE" stuff for the "mistake" of screwing up your order.

ME 3 was promised to have specific endings based on your ME 1 and ME 2 choices. Casey and Mike, both producers promised, and said giving you A, B, C generic endings would be wrong. They also, said all loose ends would be tied up.

Burger ordered, taco delivered.  It doesn't matter how good the Taco is, that's not the point.

Except buying a video game isn't the same as ordering fast food.

It's exactly the same.  You bought a product.  You are a consumer.  They have no "right" to give you something you didn't order.  All the people that preordered the game were told they were getting the burger and they got the taco.

Now, I would never turn this legal because it's NOT that big of a deal.  However, it's clear false advertising.  

If you were trying to say you "need" the burger no you don't.  Just like you don't "need" the game.  You have alternatives.  None of that has anything to do with the fact you were not given what you ordered and were told you were getting.

The artistic excuse is totall debunked.  Again, because you were promised no loose ends and multiple endings based on your choices in ME 1 and ME 2.  Specifally said there wouldn't be 3 generic endings etc...

False advertising and a lack of integrity.  You have the "right" and the "Freedom" to do anything you want.  That's not to say there won't be consequences to your choices and actions in the real world.  Welcome to your Mass Effect Bioware, now pay the price for you wrong choice.

Modifié par Tyrzun, 20 mars 2012 - 12:09 .

[anexanhume]

dointime85 wrote...

As an amendment to my earlier post: I just looked it up: Bertold Brecht, one of the greatest German playwrights of all time, revised his plays based on audience reactions and encouraged others to do the same.

http://books.google....d=0CEAQ6AEwAzgK

Interesting that you bring that up because stand-up comedy is an expression of that to the extreme. Complete re-hashing and re-formulation of jokes to acheive maximum audience response. The art does not exist without audience feedback changing it.

[L33tBadMofo]

Jade8aby88 wrote...

This is stupid.

Tali and Garrus L.I was the fans idea.

Fallout 3 changed their ending.

_____________
That is all.
______________________
___Hold___The___Line___

QFT