492 réponses à ce sujet

[TheRealMithril]

Art is whatever you want it to be, art is boundless. However, it is not immune to critisism or beyond reproach. The starving artist need better remember that.

[ParagonGreg]

Da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa over another painting. The Mona Lisa was the "new ending." Da Vinci new that some work, though "artistic," works better just covered up.

[Subject M]

FosterBr717 wrote...

As an author I would never change the ending to one of my stories, simply because of dissatisfaction from readers. It's MY story and I have the right to any creative freedom I choose. If someone doesn't like it, they don't need to read MY story. It doesn't give them a right to force ME to change the ending to MY story. Even if it is a bad ending, it's still MY bad ending. Go read someone else's story if you want a differnet ending.

Just my two cents. You guys are opening up a can of worms with creative story telling. Now anytime someone is dissastified with a book, movie, game, or song, they'll try and sue them to change it. "No, thank you" is what I say.

Creative freedom > Pleasing the masses

But this is an interactive medium. with more then one writer. Spanning over 3 games. You realise the diffrence?
You know,I am too a writer. I make free form RPG stories and helps writers with ideas and internal logic of their stories. I have changed my RPG scenarios and systems many times, because I have recieved feedback givien me better ideas as well as better satisfying one of my main goals with my art: To satsify the players.

[Taltherion]

FosterBr717 wrote...

As an author I would never change the ending to one of my stories, simply because of dissatisfaction from readers. It's MY story and I have the right to any creative freedom I choose. If someone doesn't like it, they don't need to read MY story. It doesn't give them a right to force ME to change the ending to MY story. Even if it is a bad ending, it's still MY bad ending. Go read someone else's story if you want a differnet ending.

Just my two cents. You guys are opening up a can of worms with creative story telling. Now anytime someone is dissastified with a book, movie, game, or song, they'll try and sue them to change it. "No, thank you" is what I say.

Creative freedom > Pleasing the masses

As a musician who only plays as a hobby and does not have to pay the bills with music, I agree. But the whole argument here misses some points:

- promises and advertisement said something about the ending that was not delivered - that in itself is enough reason to be dissatisfied (imagine marketing for your story telling the reader something that your story does not deliver / live up to)

- Does Bioware / EA really want us to "read other stories"? Take our ball and leave?

- Artistic integrity is nice if you can afford it ... if I buy and read your story and I don't like it, I'll not buy one of your stories again ... and: in analogy to DLCs ... you indeed ARE trying to sell updates to your story, additional pages ... games / DLC I believe are a bit different from books, music and movies.

- How many hours and what part of myself do I put into reading a story? How many hours and emotions were put into "my" Shepard?

[Alex_SM]

FosterBr717 wrote...

As an author I would never change the ending to one of my stories, simply because of dissatisfaction from readers. It's MY story and I have the right to any creative freedom I choose. If someone doesn't like it, they don't need to read MY story. It doesn't give them a right to force ME to change the ending to MY story. Even if it is a bad ending, it's still MY bad ending. Go read someone else's story if you want a differnet ending.

Just my two cents. You guys are opening up a can of worms with creative story telling. Now anytime someone is dissastified with a book, movie, game, or song, they'll try and sue them to change it. "No, thank you" is what I say.

So it's wrong to change because of the dissatisfaction from the readers... but not to change it for your editor demands?  Do you design your story using market researches to appeal the largest crowd possible? It has thigs added because of publishers demands (kinetc, multiplayer)? 

It's cool to change because the boss demands it, but not because your readers demand it? I would say the right think is exactly the opposite. 

[Kajan451]

jaysabz wrote...

Listen, I haven't even finished the game yet, been travelling, but please read on.

I am sure it has been said already, but why don't you finish the game before you want to join the discussion?

[Teddie Sage]

Mass Effect 3 isn't a piece of art. It's a VIDEO GAME. Get your facts right. Ugh. I hate it when people can't make the difference anymore.

[Kalas82]

jaysabz wrote...

Listen, I haven't even finished the game yet, been travelling, but please read on.

I do check IGN's mobile site from my phone here and there and have learned about this "uprising" to change the ME3 ending.

PLEASE, PLEASE, Please do not change the game's ending (sight unseen for me) just because of these protests! 

If you do, where do we go from there??

We live in such a self-entitled "please me" society these days.  BIOWARE, you made these games.  I understand the need to please your customers - I myself am in the service industry.  But PLEASE do not fold to the demands of the loud social networking / internet crowd.  It will set a dangerous precedent.

Even within the realm of video games... NOOO... we want character "X" (FFVII) to live...

...NOOO... we want character "X" to survive in Halo Reach....

Where will it stop? 

DO NOT alter your art.  Look at the state of the Star Wars series with all the crappy revisions over the years.

Tell your player base to "DEAL WITH IT" ... 

I've read TONS of books that I hoped ended differently.  I never wrote to the author of a book and demanded he or she rewrite the ending to meet my demands.

On that topic, one very good author wrote a book about that situation.  It was Stephen King, and the book was "Misery".  The woman found her favorite author crippled and kept the author all locked up and in his bed and would re-break his legs b/c she was never happy with what he was doing with her favorite character.

Dont' fall down this wormhole, BIoWare.   Please don't.  You made the art which is Mass Effect 3.  Don't alter it due to some loudmouth advocates.  Not all video games are "art", but the Mass Effect series certainly is.  To quote a line from my favorite movie, Rushmore... "nihilne sanc­tum est"...  "Is nothing sacred?"

Do the right thing, BioWare.

A big fan of yours for years....

Jason

So you haven`t seen the ending and you want to talk about something related to it? Seriously, wtf.?
There are some basic rules to discussions, you know..like knowing what you are discussin....
The Ending isn`t bad because it did something with the chars the community didn`t like, it`s bad because it`s riddled with space magic everywhere, plotholes over and over, no logic at all...it`s bad because it`s literaly that..bad writing.
Get a clue and then start making a statement..holy christ.

As it stands now, Shep is Jesus, has killed nearly every culture in the galaxy (or doomed for extinction) and the whole gamemechanic (galaxy-at-war and war-assets) is pointless.
Oh and we got a god-child-ai-vi-plot-making-right-tool-thing which wields it`s wand and Adam and Eve start life again....wtf.?
Even fan-fiction from a 12year old girl couldn`t be that bad.

It just makes sense, even for Bioware/EA, to get this mess sorted out..that`s called marketing..keeping a franchise name alive.
The only thing that`s alive right now is ME3s bad fame, ending related wtf.-ness. Which is a PR-Desaster even for future content....and that`s a fact, there are two things floating around within the gaming-community right now, the funny MP-mode and the epic failure that was the ending...it doesn`t matter where you look..you can`t escape it.

And yes, art is subject to change, happens over and over again..and there is BAD art and art which is considered worthwhile..if games are any of those is still subject for discussions.

Dear TE i don`t want to give an aggressive impression, i don`t want to attack you..but you just got no clue what you just wrote there..like the autor who wrote the ME3-Ending.

[hwf]

Art cannot be made.

You make a product. Be it a painting, a piece of music, a sculpture - whatever.
Whatever your client and other people see in that product will determine if it is art.

Take Rembrandt van Rijn for example, a master painter from the Dutch golden age.
One of his biggest paintings is the Night Watch - a painting commissioned by a subdivision of the local firearms guild, the city guard if you will, of Amsterdam.
The painting was commissioned by this company with the order to "make the company look awesome so we get more recruits" (paraphrased).

Back then it was just a poster to inspire new recruits - some company members were very upset with Rembrandt because they couldn't be recognized in the painting.
Right now, several hundreds of years later, we consider it art.

Modifié par hwf, 24 mars 2012 - 02:09 .

[Dalako]

Bioware can keep their artistic integrity. I will keep my hard-earned money.

I was told vastly different endings and consequences. I was told there would be closure. Neither happened. That's blatant mismarketing. Even disregarding the ending's general crappiness, that's enough of a reason to demand a different ending to a franchise I've invested a lot of time and money in.

The original endings need not disappear. Here's a radical idea: player choice. Menu option: retain original endings, or alternative endings. There. The original ending is still there. Lots of people have seen it. Some (a minority) may even prefer it. Everybody wins, I'd think.

[PaddlePop]

TheRealMithril wrote...

Art is whatever you want it to be, art is boundless. However, it is not immune to critisism or beyond reproach. The starving artist need better remember that.

Amen!

[Oldbones2]

Man I sure am glad you haven't finished the game before you talk about the ending.

I mean it's not like you'd want to poison your own entitled whiny opinion with something stupid like looking at both sides of the argument or trying to at LEAST get all the facts.

THAT would be stupid.

[SomeKindaEnigma]

OP... finish the game first then come back with that same sentiment.

[Kajan451]

FosterBr717 wrote...

As an author I would never change the ending to one of my stories, simply because of dissatisfaction from readers. It's MY story and I have the right to any creative freedom I choose. If someone doesn't like it, they don't need to read MY story. It doesn't give them a right to force ME to change the ending to MY story. Even if it is a bad ending, it's still MY bad ending. Go read someone else's story if you want a differnet ending.

As an author i can see where you are coming from, but thats not true. Thats the kind of stance you take when you plan to be a little Elitist who is perfectly content to have no readers at all.

As a writer you do write a story, but you don't do that for your own benefit, you do that for others. You don't need to write down your story to appricate it, its already in your head and you already know the story before you even wrote it.

There is a reason why, when you read to your children at the bedside you let them pick the story and have them interject and maybe alter the story, so they enjoy what you are telling them.

Its the traits of a good storyteller to have the dignity, humility and selfrespect as a storyteller to listen to what your audiance wants.

That goes for Musicans as well as Painters or any other Art form. Michael Angelo didn't just decide he'd go ahead and paint a cathedral dome. He was told to do that. And the person paying him for his work surely told him what he wanted to see up there and Michael Angelo listened, because he wanted to be paid and he wanted to have another job after he painted that dome.

Same goes for Sir Athur Conan Doyle. He hated Sherlok Holmes. He truely despised his creation. He killed his character and when he did, he was out of a job. He finally gave in and let him survive because he couldn't pay his bills anymore.

Sylvester Stallon.. he wanted to be a character actor. He wanted to do serious stuff. In his interview to Expendable he admitted that it has killed his career because he didn't want to act in Rolls his fans wanted to see him.


You can run around and be an elitist Artist, believing you are better than your fans, but in the end its the fans that pay for your art and its them who let them tell you stories to them.

Same with Pen&Paper Roleplaying, if your the storyteller. If you do not listen to the people you play with, if you never listen to what they want, they move on, they don't let you be the storyteller anymore. No matter how great you think you are.

When i am writing, and i admit, i am by no means famous, but i don't write for myself, i tell a story to other people. Not the story i want, but the story they want to hear. Thats what a storyteller does. You don't go about and be an elitist snob assuming that "THIS IS ART" (in a 300 voice) and assume a "eat or die" attitude. Thats the way you'll run out of people wanting to listen to what you are having to say.

Its why Authors in the past, changed the endings of their stories. Its why people who thought they'd be better than their fans realized that this very stance cost them years of success.


If you are a writer, musican or really any artist that has an audiance you have to give your audiance what they want or they simply leave. They don't care about your lofty ideals about how this might be art and what an amazing artist you are and how your work should be in a museum.

And a piece of mind as closing word:

"Art is a title given by the audiance not by its creator."

[TheRealMithril]

FosterBr717 wrote...

As an author I would never change the ending to one of my stories, simply because of dissatisfaction from readers. It's MY story and I have the right to any creative freedom I choose. If someone doesn't like it, they don't need to read MY story. It doesn't give them a right to force ME to change the ending to MY story. Even if it is a bad ending, it's still MY bad ending. Go read someone else's story if you want a differnet ending.

Just my two cents. You guys are opening up a can of worms with creative story telling. Now anytime someone is dissastified with a book, movie, game, or song, they'll try and sue them to change it. "No, thank you" is what I say.

Creative freedom > Pleasing the masses

As if it would be the first time an author changed his ending due to critisism.. It's not. That 'can' is already open for hundreds (if not thousands) of years. That argument is sheer nonsense.

But you're right, people can read something else... as can buyers of a video game buy other games from other companies. But BioWare is a business, with mouths to feed. They do care that people buy *their* games, and must for this reason listen to critique. Sticking your head in the sand, or use your 'imaginary critique shield' doesn't work.

I am so sick and tired of the argument that consumers should shut up and like it... no.... no .... no... We are consumers of a product. Period. We have every right to complain when a product is not satisfactory. Still, BioWare can choose to ignore the complaints, it is in their right. But they would ultimately suffer for it.

[SimonM72]

Whats with all the circular arguments?.

Wide ranging endings respective of our trilogy decisions were promised - PROMISED! - multiple times by both Mike Gamble and Casey Hudson.

You simply cannot get around that, and those broken promises are still to be even addressed yet alone fixed.

Modifié par SimonM72, 24 mars 2012 - 02:25 .

[Emoclew]

 I understand how Bioware thinks this is art, it's a beautiful trilogy. 
But the difference is that "Artists and Authors" don't ask our opinion.They don't sell us interactive books where our choices matter.  They don't promise their next books endng will not end a certain way....Then turn around and do exactly what they say they wouldn't do. Thats not art thats being deceitful.  
Honestly, it pisses me off they are even useing this as a excuse. Oh well. 

Bioware can hold to their "art", but the fact is they will lose fans and money (which is the bottom line anyway).  

Modifié par Emoclew, 24 mars 2012 - 02:33 .

[Tooneyman]

Dear everyone,

I am an artist. I believe all of you should never critic, slander, insult, or put my work down in anyway. I'm the greatest artist in the world. I've established a reputation among many great companies and throughout the world. I'm perfect in every way. Your little people would never understand my magnificence. Now do yourselves all a favor and let me enjoy my artist integrity because my work is godly and all of you have nothing to say about it. "Now move along because your holding up the line."

Sincerely,

The guy who thinks he's always right.

.... See if that actually was me. I would have probably committed suicide. Crap in all honesty. I love when people give me constructive criticism. I really do listen to what people have to say to me and always try to improve my product or project I'm working on, because everything I do it. It just gets better and better. Now at some point I have to say enough is enough, but I try my hardest to get things right with how I want it at the same time seeing what other people think too. Artist need to find that balance otherwise they really can't strive.

Holla!

[Emoclew]

Tooneyman wrote...

Dear everyone,

I am an artist. I believe all of you should never critic, slander, insult, or put my work down in anyway. I'm the greatest artist in the world. I've established a reputation among many great companies and throughout the world. I'm perfect in every way. Your little people would never understand my magnificence. Now do yourselves all a favor and let me enjoy my artist integrity because my work is godly and all of you have nothing to say about it. "Now move along because your holding up the line."

Sincerely,

The guy who thinks he's always right.

.... See if that actually was me. I would have probably committed suicide. Crap in all honesty. I love when people give me constructive criticism. I really do listen to what people have to say to me and always try to improve my product or project I'm working on, because everything I do it. It just gets better and better. Now at some point I have to say enough is enough, but I try my hardest to get things right with how I want it at the same time seeing what other people think too. Artist need to find that balance otherwise they really can't strive.

Holla!

Exactly...!!

[Accism]

FosterBr717 wrote...

As an author I would never change the ending to one of my stories, simply because of dissatisfaction from readers. It's MY story and I have the right to any creative freedom I choose. If someone doesn't like it, they don't need to read MY story. It doesn't give them a right to force ME to change the ending to MY story. Even if it is a bad ending, it's still MY bad ending. Go read someone else's story if you want a differnet ending.

Just my two cents. You guys are opening up a can of worms with creative story telling. Now anytime someone is dissastified with a book, movie, game, or song, they'll try and sue them to change it. "No, thank you" is what I say.

Creative freedom > Pleasing the masses

That's your perspective, and it's a perfectly valid one. But you have to realise that it is not the only one, and it is not the one BioWare themselves have. To quote Executive Producer Casey Hudson:

Player feedback such as this has always been an essential ingredient in the development of the series.
I am extremely proud of what this team has accomplished, from the first art concepts for the Mass Effect universe to the final moments of Mass Effect 3.  But we didn't do it on our own.  Over the course of the series, Mass Effect has been a shared experience between the development team and our fans—not just a shared experience in playing the games, but in designing and developing them.

You know, at this point, I think we’re co-creators with the fans. We use a lot of feedback.

To be honest, I think this is the more mature view. I am also a writer, and speaking personally I prefer to think that when I release a work I have at most partial ownership over it, shared with its audience. In my opinion creator and audience are equal partners. If it has a bad ending, it isn't just *my* bad ending, it's theirs too, and they have a right to have a conversation with me about it.  As mentioned previously in this thread this is in no way a new thing. Even Shakespeare(!) understood this, as he changed many of his plays after they were first performed, based on audience reactions to what they saw. I hope that BioWare will have the courage to do the same.

[Wrathra]

jaysabz wrote...

Well let me tell you, I thought the ending to Gears of War 3 was weak, but that was the ending....

Who the hell am I, or us, to demand that the ending is satisfactory?!

A dissatisfied customer?

ME is a game built on player choice. Bioware has claimed repeatedly that ME is a story that also belongs to the fans.  The ending was crap, went against their own lore and their promises, and was riddled with plotholes.

If Mass Effect was a strictly personal piece, then your argument would have weight.  It is not.

Mass Effect is a consumer product. It wasn't made to be put on a shelf so the designers can pat themselves on the back and talk about how awesome they are. They are paid for the product.  When movies suck, they bomb.  The movie makers can go on about their vision all they want, but if it sucks, they lose alot of money.   Can't pay for that house with street cred.

As an artist, you should be open to criticism.   I am a painter who works on commission, and I change my work when I receive negative feedback, because the end product is not mine.

[DeadLetterBox]

In the video game medium, art has the ability to evolve.

Refusing to change anything in this medium does not necessarily mean you are being true to art. Change can be good for art. Constructive criticism is absolutely good for art.

You want to see what happens to art when the creator is no longer subject to the pressures of his audience or anyone else to speak of? The Phantom Menace.

I rest my case.

[JonathonPR]

Cars are art but are also products made to be sold to consumers. When a car is advertised it must be done in a way that creates a reasonable expectation in the consumer. A concept car can be whatever designers want it to be. Production cars are made to fit consumer wants and needs. Mass Effect is a well made car. Unfortunately someone thought it would be great to have the horn and car alarm go off every time the driver puts the car in park. I want to go for a drive but at the same time I don't.

[Emoclew]

FosterBr717 wrote...

As an author I would never change the ending to one of my stories, simply because of dissatisfaction from readers. It's MY story and I have the right to any creative freedom I choose. If someone doesn't like it, they don't need to read MY story. It doesn't give them a right to force ME to change the ending to MY story. Even if it is a bad ending, it's still MY bad ending. Go read someone else's story if you want a differnet ending.

Just my two cents. You guys are opening up a can of worms with creative story telling. Now anytime someone is dissastified with a book, movie, game, or song, they'll try and sue them to change it. "No, thank you" is what I say.

Creative freedom > Pleasing the masses

My question is...have you asked your readers for imput? Have you told them all along that their choices in your book matter. Do you openly say how one of your book series will end only to do something totally different? 

I would venture a guess and say,  No you don't do that.  

If you did then you too would need to "please" your readers otherwise you would never get a book published and if you did no one would buy it, and sorry  Bioware/EA want the money. 

[FosterBr717]

A lot of you seem to have taken what I said, and assumed I meant that once a story is written, you should never change it. This is not true. No, if YOUR dissastified with your story, YOU can change it. If someone gives you a better idea, and you approve of that change, feel free to change it. All I'm saying is that you shouldn't be FORCED to change your ending just because people are dissastified. Obviously Bioware is satsified with the ending, so I don't feel they should be forced to change it based on other people's preceptions. If Bioware isn't satisified with the ending, then I'm all for them changing it.