To Mass Effect 3 players, from Dr. Ray Muzyka, co-founder of BioWare | Hacker News Reader

To Mass Effect 3 players, from Dr. Ray Muzyka, co-founder of BioWare

blog.bioware.com

42 pointsprotomyth27 comments

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.

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.

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.

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.

Casey Hudson 17.05.2011 http://www.pcgamer.com/previews/bioware-on-how-your-choices-... "More personal or more moral choices about how to deal with things… those things will ultimately affect part of the end game, which is pretty amazing." "If you really build a lot of stuff and bring people to your side and rally the entire galaxy around you, and you come into the end game with that, then you’ll get an amazing, very definitive ending."

Claim unwavering dedication throughout all three games would allow the most hardcore fans to get an "amazing" ending and then not delivering?

It wasn't so much that. The issue was that Bioware promised something completely different than what was delivered. It was like being given a trailer for Inception, then finding out the movie you were actually seeing was Toy Story. It's still a great movie, but it wasn't what I paid to see. The game itself is a fantastic game - I'd give it a 9/10. But buying one product and being given another is just shady business.

Spoiler warning: This is the comparison of endings http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPelM2hwhJA

Not to mention there was proposal of story DLCs before the release of ME3 that caused further dissonance (nickel and dime perception): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRRpGlmtws8&feature=g-al...

I feel really, really bad for all the coders and artists that contributed to that project over the past several years to have it all thrown away on those supremely lazy ending cutscenes.

  "... 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."

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.

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.

I actually felt the same way about ME 1. I didn't find the game deep or compelling.

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.

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-... 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ri0vrJ-y2zM 4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSfcWr5jxac&feature=relat...

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.

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.

So if I take on a commission to paint something for you, and once I deliver it you decide you wanted a different expression on the face, and I then change it, does that mean that my painting wasn't art in the first place?

If I'm in a band, and I make some music and the fans don't like the buzzsaw sound, and I then remove it and remaster the track, does that mean that my song wasn't art in the first place?

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.

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.

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.)

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?

Picture being excited to watch Return of the Jedi and seeing how the Star Wars saga comes to a conclusion.

Instead of the Death Star being destroyed, the Imperial assault on Endor being stopped, Vader's redemption, etc., the story goes off on a wild tangent for the last 10 minutes and brings no conclusion to anything. Did the Rebels on Endor survive? Did the Death Star get destroyed? Did Luke defeat Vader and the Emperor?

Too bad. You never get to find out, and there's other non-sensical scenes with an ending on a different planet with zero relation to anything that's happened in the Star Wars universe to date.

That's Mass Effect 3's ending.

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.

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.

Are you asking about the actual ending or is this a thinly vieled way to say "video games are for kids"?

I wish the guys from Battlefield or CoD paid this much attention to fan response...

You could say the same about 99% of the stories that hit HN about upset customers, poor support, bad interfaces, unfair license agreements, sexist language, or whatever. Why is this a big deal?

Customers are unhappy. The why is only important to the extent that it lets you figure out how to fix it. It's a mistake made over and over and over by companies dealing with unhappy customers: "Hey, this isn't that big a deal - you guys shouldn't be that upset!"

This doesn't work; you can't argue a customer out of being unhappy, and trying to do so makes it worse. The more the customer thinks that you don't understand and sympathise with his complaint, the harder it is to make them happy. (And this is just as true - if not more so - when the complaint really is ridiculous.) Bioware has a very loyal fanbase; it's an incredibly valuable asset, and they need to keep them happy, no matter how silly the complaints may be.

tl;dr: It's a big deal because Bioware thinks (probably correctly) that a critical mass of customers think it's a big deal. And that's all that matters.

Sooooo...

You've got a software product that you promote as having feature foo.

You sell 900,000 copies at ~$60 apiece, plus DLC, plus premiums for collectors. Many of these are pre-orders.

Users discover there is no feature foo, but rather feature bar. Feature bar was not what was described – feature foo was, and was a selling point of the product. The nature of game sales leaves customers with no easy recourse, as returns are not generally permitted.

Tens of thousands of customers, feeling deceived, revolt.

Help me find the silly in there.

Is it in the $58,500,000 in sales?

The huge customer volume?

The dubious marketing and business practices?

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