chemiclord wrote...
One thing to change a game mechanic.
It's entirely another to completely change how you want to tell a story because some fans complain.
To the latter, I'd tell them largely what Bioware told them. "Don't like our story? Then find someone else who tells the story you want to hear. We're not changing it to suit you. Deal with it."
Uh, problem with that is both a problem for the company and the fans, mostly the company. Adopt the attitude that your game, your product is set in stone and you will at some point find you can count the number of people playing it on one hand.
When you create a series of games, you are making an unspoken promise, especially when a sequel is meant to carry along the story line from the previous game. Change that and you have broken the lore of the game that you supposedly hold dear. You have also abandoned the reason why people play your games in that series. As well, actually promise fans things and then not deliver on them and at the very least you better open your mouth and talk with them and tell them why. Fans that keep buying are entering into this kind of contract with you-they love your product/your story and you as a business person treat them with decency.
What Bioware did goes so against what any story teller will do, it goes against all logic, it goes against fans and it negatively affects sales. None of these things are smart moves.
No one said people did want to hear the story Bioware told-people loved 99% of the story Bioware told. Bioware had an audience that was there for them no matter what-an audience that was theirs to lose. They also had a fanbase demographics that would be the envy of any company since ME did not just appeal to teenage boys (no offense to teenage boys) or to Americans (I am an American) or to just men (I am not a man). I have been amazed at the diversity of its fanbase. Bioware also enviably had fans that weren't silent when they didn't like something. I've played all 3 PS3 games of Resistance, which got steadily worse and Resistance 3 was bad. I didn't care so I never complained. Companies generally actually do not like customers who don't complain if they don't like something. You can't learn what you did wrong if people just walk away and decide never to buy your product again.
ME was a story, that we loved. Bioware screwed it up, not fans. When you write a story (even a story in a game), you have to have some idea how you want to end it. That helps to build your roadmap. As a writer you build hints as far as the ending (for any quesions that need answers), and you just keep building them. The ending is the place where you say what it all meant and you tie up everything-explain it all. The ending is based on the story set before the "reader" or player. When they get to the ending, they should be saying the ending explained all the questions they had. It shouldn't be explaining questions you never thought of. It should be tied back to all those hints and clues within the game. It is the main part, the most important thing in the whole story because it tells the reader or player why they were doing all that they did.
In an ending you do not create situations or artificial things that the hero must pick from in order to conclude the story. You follow the story you created. These endings just dump a new character (he's the thing they needed to hint at all along in ME) onto players and expect people to accept him. Since there's no foreshadowing of him, there's no reason to care one way or another about him. He wasn't a part of the story. And the choices that are there have absolutely nothing, zero, zip, zilch to do with all that we did in 3 games. Someone pulled them out of their assets. They are there for only one reason-to funnel players into 3 (or ugh 4) endings.
What was promised was that at the end of ME3 this kind of thing was unnecessary. No sequel so the endings could vary wildly. The ending should also have developed naturally from all that the player did before.
And your idea that it's ok to just tell people (fans) to go away is just so great. That's really the mature way to deal with things-get people's money, ****** on them, then tell them they are all wet.
If people consistently did that Superman would still be dead and there would be a lot of angry Harry Potter movies demanding their money back for the Deathly Hallows Part2. No DVD sales of the movie and so on. Originally the movie makers had decided to kill off Harry, contrary to the book. Fans found out and got mad. Warner Brothers, I think it was, decided to be adult about it and didn't start bad mouthing fans, they released the Harry lives ending and sold a lot.
And George Lucas is evidence that creators of a work are not always right. Very few Star Wars fans thought he made the right decision to use new graphics in the movies, but that was his decision. People were not running out to buy the Star Wars DVDs because he would not allow the originals to be released on DVD.
Bethesda got criticized for not leaving Fallout 3 open ended for free roam play like they did Oblivion. They didn't throw a fit and get mad at fans. They changed it and one of the devs in an interview when asked what he might do differently or change if he made the game again or made new games said he would never end the game. He admitted his mistake and was man enough to learn from a mistake.
Casey Hudson was fond of repeatedly saying in interviews that the ME stories were as much the fans stories as Bioware's and that the stories were a collaboration between fans and Bioware. Apparently he never meant that and for some reason you think that's ok. Every single game company out there all but demands fan feedback-why if not to learn what they might change. Bioware/EA even have the most persistent connection to fans to data mine how fans play the game-they have the ability to know everything we do in these games. Why do that if they don't care what we think?
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