Gamers Launch Harassment Campaign Against BioWare Writer
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I bought Mass Effect 2 almost six months before it got into my list of games I was playing, because I love the story. I play the Halo series over any other FPS because I love the story. I don't play CoD anymore because it voided the use of story almost a decade ago.
What I hate is seeing moronic, misogynistic, homophobic, redditards do this to a woman who's likely being part of the driving force for making Biowares female characters "real".
[strike]We've recently seen Doublefine raise millions of dollars by offering to create a story-driven game.[/strike]
Edit: I agree with kevingadd below.
I loved Mass Effect I & II as well, but lets name their problem: they are padded with boring gameplay. Most of the fights are utterly forgettable (corridor, enemies, your gun, their gun, repeat, end dialogue), the Mako was the worst vehicle ever driven in a game and firing probes on planets - no word about that. When the gameplay actually worked and was interweaved with the storytelling (for example the possibility to skip parts of the boss fight by Mass Effect I by convincing Saren of his evil), it was truly great. I think its time that Bioware managed to cut back on meaningless fights and only allowed interesting battle situations (for example, the ascend to the final fight in Mass Effect I - it was quick, great layout and it had a story to tell: our heroes climbing the final mountain). I wouldn't want to skip them, but often it felt like "and now kill 20 enemies, because its a shooter we play, here!". Especially in Mass Effect 2, where sidestories all followed the same scheme.
Oh, about the female/male stuff: I think Mass Effect and Dragon Age are the only franchises that take relationships and gender seriously. I never played the romances in Mass Effect II because I didn't want to break my promise from the first game and the game took note of it - now, thats decision making.
Also, I think that any story involving dragons has been told to death.
> Also, I think that any story involving dragons has been told to death.
Agreed, but so has every film plot involving racing cars or stealing cars but people still go to see them. I think the problem is that when you appeal to 90% of people, you're stuck eternally trying to appeal to the same people.
I don't get what the difference is between a Krogan and an Orc.
Being a writer, I know I could write a story where I could literally switch terminology and it be either a sci-fi or fantasy.
What really gets me is I can never get my wife to sit down and watch more than an episode of BSG, Stargate or something else, but over 3/4 of the movies she picks to see are sci-fi. So I spend a lot of time pulling my hair out on TV choices but for a film I don't even have to ask what it is (although I should keep track of when the damn twilight movies come out as I get sidelined every time).
We actually watched more thoughtful things like Blade Runner and discussed the film afterwards. Half-SciFIs like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind which have a more subtle use of SciFI-topics are also good. Its best if you can say "hey, you just watched a SciFI movie" without her realizing that at first. Firefly is also good, because there is not spaceship-shooting-at-things stuff. As my girlfriend is a suspense fan, Alien will be up next :).
And yes, I know half of the story of DA because my girlfriend is far ahead of me :).
Off topic, but have you played either of The Witcher games, especially the second one? They really focused on story and it worked really well. The Witcher 2 is, IMHO, one of the better story-heavy games released in recent years and the graphics and action happen to be fantastic too.
But seriously, we deserve it. For some people gameplay = combat; not the experience lived with it and at the core of this problem lies fps-ification of everything. Gone the days of Monkey Island and Beneath a Steel Sky. We need oodles of guns and/or breasts in our games. No need to think or read, we need blamming! If it's medieval we need badass swords and breasts; if it's modern we need guns and ammo and breasts! Story? What do you mean "story"? Who needs story when you have enemies to turn into offal.
It is sad to see this train of thought is dominant in gamers nowadays.
It may be true that Modern Warfare and Gears of War are absurdly profitable franchises - that's why BioWare is slowly turning Mass Effect into those games - but that doesn't mean that other types of games aren't popular, or that the average gamer only wants to play those games. You need only look at the most popular games on Steam to see evidence otherwise.
An important thing to consider, though, is whether Hepler's agenda - admirable though it may be - is actually right for Mass Effect or any of BioWare's games. If BioWare's customers want games that are heavy on gameplay and not story, trying to build a pure story game is probably unwise, unless your goal is to drive away all your existing customers and try to find new ones. You can do that, but it's usually not a good business strategy, and my wager is that EA shareholders wouldn't approve of it.
If you look at the trajectory of BioWare's games, over time, they've shed their gameplay sophistication, branching paths, and depth in favor of accessibility, action, and high production values. The emphasis on shooting men with guns (or, in the case of Dragon Age, stabbing men with swords) came along with that because those themes are wildly successful in modern sci-fi/fantasy films and test well with focus groups. When BioWare's remaining fans (not to mention former fans who were driven away by the new focus) hear a BioWare staffer calling for the games to have less gameplay, they're going to see that as someone driving their games further away from the classics that many people remember BioWare for - like Baldur's Gate. And it's no surprise to see a negative response for that.
As far as the content of the actual community response, I don't think it even bears mentioning that the sexism is unacceptable. Unfortunately, the community as a whole will likely never move past this, because games are popular with youth and the emotionally immature instead of just with adults.
HN discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3618301
From the article: But more importantly, she’s talking about making games more inclusive and suggesting that people play games for different reasons and in different ways. This is at the heart of why the misogynerds are so angry: the industry is changing, it’s been changing for a long time, and it’s no longer the sole domain of misogynist nerds like them.
We have a writer with a high degree of influence on a game development staff, claiming that she does not enjoy playing games.
This to me is a PR failure. Some industries can get away with being indifferent to their work (e.g. no one cares if you love making widgets so long as they're good widgets), but entertainment products such as books, movies, and games are naturally expected to be "labors of love".
Can you imagine a studio director coming out to say that he doesn't watch movies? If she or anyone else on her team doesn't like their product, they ought to keep it to themselves for PR value alone.
> "What is your least favorite thing about working in the industry?
> Playing the games. This is probably a terrible thing to admit, but it has definitely been the single most difficult thing for me. I came into the job out of a love of writing, not a love of playing games. While I enjoy the interactive aspects of gaming, if a game doesn't have a good story, it's very hard for me to get interested in playing it. Similarly, I'm really terrible at so many things which most games use incessantly -- I have awful hand-eye coordination, I don't like tactics, I don't like fighting, I don't like keeping track of inventory, and I can't read a game map to save my life. This makes it very difficult for me to play to the myriad games I really should be keeping up on as our competition."
However the link to the real interview is dead[1]. The only posting available is a copy from the BioWare forum 12 months ago[2].
I'll admit that the long-form really softens up the impact. It give her nuance and personality, and its hard to shamelessly hate someone you understand unless ofcourse, you willfully choose to selectively remember the worst of what they say.
[1] http://killerbetties.com/killer_women_jennifer_hepler/?page=... [2]http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/141/index/6605174/
Also she didn't simply say she hated games she actually said "...While I enjoy the interactive aspects of gaming, if a game doesn’t have a good story, it’s very hard for me to get interested in playing it. Similarly, I’m really terrible at so many things which most games use incessantly — I have awful hand-eye coordination, I don’t like tactics, I don’t like fighting, I don’t like keeping track of inventory, and I can’t read a game map to save my life. This makes it very difficult for me to play to the myriad games I really should be keeping up on as our competition."
Finally her comment about wanting to skip combat was made in the context of her having a baby and simply not having the time needed to get through an RPG. She just wanted an option to follow the story of the game without having to dedicate month of her life (time she no longer had) to do so.
However, PR is like politics and if you remember the Obama campaign--opponents can make impact by dredging up old dirt about you from even 30 years ago.
Does she? From what I understand, she is a character and dialogue writer who handles relatively small portions of the games (from her BioWare Wiki bio: she wrote dialogue and characters for some of the zones in the dwarven city in Dragon Age). [For what it's worth, those sections happen to have been very well written.]
People are acting as though she's some pernicious influence at BioWare, holding everyone on the development staff in thrall to her agenda. It seems exceedingly unclear to me whether a) she even has an agenda, or b) she commands any significant influence over the design/gameplay elements of development.
She's a staff writer. She's not even a lead writer (or, if she is now, she certainly wasn't back in 2006). People have been attributing things to her that couldn't possibly have fallen under her scope (to wit: claims about her malign influence over Mass Effect, a series she hasn't worked on).
PR failure? Perhaps, but then, this never should have blown up the way it did. And it almost certainly wouldn't have, had the writer in question not had a pair of ovaries instead of testicles.
The level of furor would be the same were she a man, though the content of the flamewar would be much different since presumably males are insulted by different things than females and thus trolls have to tailor their speech for maximum impact.
Anyways, the reason I choose to frame this as PR struggle is that Bioware can take the highroad and have her publish another statement that clarifies her current thoughts on gaming.
The other option is to flame their own customers as misogynistic and leave FUD in the air about whether or not their games will be gutted for action content. I'd much rather they treat this as trolling, than as a civil rights crisis.
> I came into the job out of a love of writing, not a love of playing games.
She then goes on to enumerate the many ways she isn't good at playing games. I don't mean to be rude---but I doubt she plays very many games considering her dislike of them.
That said... if you want to say she may help move the industry forward I agree. Though story-driven titles are nothing new (see: interactive fiction for the deep end of that), its really rare to see an AAA title put so much emphasis on story.
That said, personally, I feel that the Bioware games of the past were more open ended than those of the current generation.
Ironically, by having more 'story' they've made it into less of a game---something akin to a choose-your-own adventure novel with inter-spaced action sequences.
you're so wrong. this has nothing to do with PR. people are not criticizing the game or Bioware because of this person. people are personally attacking and harassing a human being because of their remarks.
I can, and to give a tech example of this analogy, here's a quote from the guy who wrote the first version of PHP:
I really don't like programming. I built this tool to program less so that I could just reuse code.
Here's a HTML5 example:
I think having really low difficulty levels is lot better than taking the gameplay out of the game, of course you can do that too but you can't really call it a game then.
I really love Dragon Age Origins for it's synergy between interesting gameplay and story telling.
And why would that be a bad thing? No one would be forcing you to skip combat. Personally I'd love a feature like that. I obviously wouldn't use it on every level, but being able to skip that dull, tedious level I just can't get past, so that I can get on with the rest of the game (and story) would be great.
few games break this and offer you true sandboxy play, which I believe is a total break from an interactive movie-type play. you only know yourself and you have no objectives set apart from you set for yourself.
You can call it what you like, but the important point is this: will people pay money to play it? Interact with it. Watch it. Whatever. I don’t know the answer, but TFA makes a good case that this is about "making games more accessible and inclusive" i.e. making experiences that more people will pay for.
I think the combat in Skyrim is too easy, but from a social point of view it's interesting for this reason: It's over 100 hours of entertainment for less then the price of 2 movies.
Their attitude seems to be like someone who complains that a particular novel or TV program doesn't appeal to them, as if the writers had some sort of moral obligation to appeal to that particular person.