
To Mass Effect 3 players, from Dr. Ray Muzyka, co-founder of BioWare - protomyth
http://blog.bioware.com/2012/03/21/4108/
======
johnswamps
Here's a quick summary for anyone who is not familiar with the Mass Effect
series. Mass Effect is a 3 part RPG shooter series of blockbuster video games
developed by Bioware, which is owned by Electronic Arts. The first 2 games
were very popular and loved by fans. The 3rd and final game was recently
released. The majority of the story and gameplay were well received by pretty
much everyone, but many fans of the series are upset about how the game ended.
There's almost universal disappointment on on-line forums (though people who
liked it are probably less vocal). A couple of complaints are

1\. Despite the series being based on players being able to make different
choices that affect the story, almost nothing the player does throughout the
series affects the ending.

2\. Although players have a choice of 3 different options during the ending
affecting the fate of the galaxy, the only thing that changes in the following
cutscenes is the color of some explosions (green for one choice, red for
another, blue for the last)

3\. The ending felt like a deus ex machina and wasn't satisfying

Lots of fans have expressed their criticism on-line, with many hoping that
Bioware will "fix" the ending or release a DLC that alters or extends the
ending. This is Bioware's first response as far as I know.

~~~
danilocampos
Compounding the trouble, Casey Hudson, the series' mastermind, did _tons_ of
press wherein he describes the game as having several endings that will vary
significantly based on the player's decisions. He claimed that it wouldn't be
as simple as being able to say "I got ending A, B or C." So that sets
expectations pretty high.

The reality was that at the end of the game, you walk to one of three areas,
and then get ending A, B, or C.

~~~
Lazare
I think this needs to be pointed out and stressed, especially since it's
applicable to way more than just computer games:

Nothing makes your customers as upset as the feeling of broken promises. Don't
promise what you can't deliver.

~~~
SkyMarshal
Interesting problem. Everyone knows that intuitively, but people do it anyway.

Instead, how about: Don't promise any specifics until you've already
implemented them, and all that remains is debugging and optimizing.

------
alttag

      "... we respect your opinion and want to hear it."
    
      "We listen and will respond to constructive criticism ..."
    
      "Thank you for your feedback – we are listening."
    
      "Comments are closed."

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nazgulnarsil
A nice gesture but it's truly amazing what Bioware managed to accomplish with
a supposedly AAA title. The writing was so bad it overwhelmed any possible
positives the game had. I had to stop playing after a few hours. It sounds
like it was written by a grade schooler. Normally a statement like that would
be hyperbole but I want to emphasize that I mean it quite literally. I've
tutored middle schoolers on writing and they didn't produce garbage this bad.

~~~
moonchrome
I didn't even bother buying or even looking up ME3 after ME2 ending. Giant
captain terminator ? Genetic paste ? "Shooting the glowing circles" ? ME1 was
a solid game with a cool universe/lore and it looked like it could be a
introduction to a very interesting SF series and the story could go so many
ways. Then EA happened. And what they did with Dragon Age 2 was unbelievable,
even by EA standards. Bioware was once a great company.

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protomyth
I posted this one because it is an interesting response to customers who are
very displeased with the company's product.

This one is different in that it uses an appeal to the "critic" that acts as
an interesting deflection of the issue.

------
alttag
I've thus-far enjoyed ME3, but haven't yet completed it, in part because of
the time spent on multi-player (and I suspect most of the reviewers hadn't
completed it by the time their reviews went live, so that defense is less
compelling).

My complaint for ME3 thus far is not with Bioware and the story, setting, or
characters. Indeed, I appreciate the cameos and references to decisions in the
previous two games. It (almost) makes me want to restart the series with
different decisions just to see how ME 3 changes.

My complaint, however, is that EA (and I'm blaming EA because of pre-existing
biases) is the _commercialization_ of the game. Gamers are treated
increasingly like wallets to be harvested rather than fans to be nurtured.
Much as with Dragon Age Origins [1], DLC is used primarily as a way to lever
more dollars. Zero-day DLC with core story elements and tight game-integration
is unappealing and insulting [2][3][4]. Yes, it's a business. I get that. But
if EA keeps treating gamers like something to be scraped off the bottom of a
shoe (after paying, of course), customers will drift away.

ME was successful because of a following built over two episodes catering to
fans wanting a deep back story and role-playing experience. ME3—despite its
numerous exceptional qualities—is starting to feel like a bait-and-switch.

1: <http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/11/6/> 2:
[http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2012/03/10/the-
problem-...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2012/03/10/the-problem-with-
biowares-mass-effect-3-day-one-dlc-from-ashes/) 3:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ri0vrJ-y2zM> 4:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSfcWr5jxac&feature=relat...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSfcWr5jxac&feature=related)

------
surrealize
This post from Muzyka is pretty on point. Very little of the criticism I've
seen has been constructive. It's not clear what, exactly, people expected--if
the story DAG gets too big, you run out of dev, QA, and voice acting
resources.

Mass effect 3 as a whole does tie up quite a large number of previous story
threads (Conrad Verner, even!). But the number of earlier choices is just too
large to fit them all (or even very many of them) into story variations at the
"very end". So they decided to aggregate all those choices into the list of
units and resources in the galactic readiness screen.

------
MattGrommes
I haven't played the ME series but it's interesting that this fits in nicely
with one of the arguments against video games being art (brought up a year or
so most famously by Roger Ebert). That is, the fact that players can petition
the maker of the game for a new ending and get some kind of concession shows
that it wasn't Art in the first place. I'm not sure if I agree or not but this
is the first big event that's played right into one of Ebert's complaints.

~~~
ugh
This is fun! There have to be millions of definitions of _art_ , each one
weirder than the next.

Your definition seems to include bizarre sentences like “When the creators can
(maybe ‘sometimes do’ would be better here) change their work after they
released it, that work is not art.” Maybe you qualify sentences like that
further (and propel it to ever more bizarre heights) to only include changes
made because of public pressure.

Throughout history, many artists took commissions. The ceiling of the Sistine
Chapel was a commissioned work. Do you really want to tell me that if we were
to find out that Michelangelo was asked by the pope (the customer) to change
something after he finished and did so, the fresco would no longer be a piece
of art?

Stuff like that makes me never want to use the word _art_ again. Videogames as
works to be appreciated by others most certainly do not have to hide behind
any other works made for the appreciation of others.

~~~
MattGrommes
I think I assumed a little more than I should have about how much people would
know about Ebert's argument. No, the customer changing the art has nothing to
do with it. The audience complaining is what this was in reference to. The
argument Ebert made is that if the ending of a game is up to the player it's
not the result of an artist's vision. This is even one more step from that,
not only do your actions as a player affect the ending, the players don't like
the ending they got and the company is going to change it. I don't know how I
would personally feel about Michelangelo changing the Sistine Chapel in
response to tourists complaining about it, which is more like what this is.

Obviously this is not black/white and everybody has their own definition of
Art, I was just pointing out how this connects to the pretty major controversy
from Ebert's pronouncements last year.

~~~
ugh
You definition of art (and Ebert’s, it seems) gets weirder by the second. Now
we can add this deranged sentence to your definition of art: “If there are
different ways of experiencing some work, it’s not art.”

The justification for that kind of mindless definition just makes no sense at
all. The artist sets the parameters and all possible different endings (if
they exist at all, most games don't have something like that) are obviously
part of the artistic vision. Someone had to make those endings. The player
certainly doesn’t. Why can the artistic vision only encompass a single way of
experiencing a work? What’s the reasoning for that? Why can’t the artist offer
multiple ways of experiencing a work and let a player (in this case) pick?
Because doing stuff like that didn't used to be possible? Why add something as
ridiculous as that to the definition?

It boggles the mind.

(Oh, and I was picking the pope because he is the customer - just like in this
case customers of the game are complaining and potential customers say they
want things changed before they buy. Talking about tourists in this context
makes no sense at all.)

------
DamnYuppie
I find this whole thing to be beyond silly. Oh no the ending to a game wasn't
exactly like they wanted, the sky is falling....

I ask you how is this even remotely a big deal?

~~~
sanjiallblue
Why comment so condescendingly on a subject when you don't understand what
happened? Does it play to your own personal sense of delusional superiority to
think people overreacted to the ending "they didn't want"? You need to grow
out of that childish mentality.

What happened was that Bioware had long promised an ending that would reflect
your decisions across 100 hours of gameplay. They promised relationships would
be explored and closure would be brought to the series. They promised it would
not be an A-choice, B-choice, C-choice cookie-cutter ending, and it was quite
literally exactly that. This wasn't a product where people expected some la-
dee-da happy ending, they expected the same level of care and quality writing
to be carried through to end the series, and it all falls through in what is
the last 30 minutes of the game (that is not an exaggeration, the game de-
rails in the final segment completely).

To better understand this issue, you can watch videos like this:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6M0Cf864P7E>

It's not just that the ending was bad, it was because it was insultingly
offensive on every level as a fan and as a consumer of the medium.

~~~
DamnYuppie
I did play the game and I do know what happened. I also think everyone is way
overblown on this. IMO there are bigger fish to fry in the world then
complaining about the ending of a video game.

