Craig Will Blog

@puffkix

I think that is the great thing about video games. Unlike a book, movie or cd, video games are constantly being updated already. Practically every week I log into XBox Live or PSN to play a game and have to wait several minutes while an update is applied. The medium already has a system in place to do a very similar thing to what Shakespeare did. Very much like a play, it would be impossible to remove the memory of the previous version, but with an update it could be replaced.

Now, while Valve chose to do just that to change the ending of Portal (to suggest Portal 2, not out of fan pressure), the unfortunate reality is that not everyone has an internet connection, and while the updates available over XBox Live and PSN are very useful, I can't help but wonder about the experience of those without. I have played games that were clearly rushed to completion, and then patched to be playable after launch. Without an internet connection, such a game would simply remain unplayable.

So, although video games provide a very unique method of revising a completed, published work, the realities of the world in which we currently live make it a less than ideal situation. Unfortunately, the alternative that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle used isn't terribly appealing either. After all, a novel is only a few dollars while a video game is $60. Buying a new book to see Sherlock Holmes come back to life might be acceptable, but I don't think fans of Mass Effect will spend $60 just to see how the writers explain away their mistakes. (i.e. Oh, he fell of the cliff, but he caught on a ledge just a few feet down.)

I suppose that's why they went with the Extended Cut DLC idea. For those who liked the endings that were provided, they can ignore it. For those who hated them, they can download the EC and see (hopefully) how the indications given by the events in the original ending should be perceived differently without changing them. (i.e. Joker wakes up from a nightmare where he turned coward and ran from the final battle.) For those who don't have an internet connection? Well I suppose they weren't really going to get anything, and they're not likely to be participating in the Retake movement anyway.

@T_Dawg

No offense taken. It's true that has been the counter-argument I've seen popping up when somebody tries to defend the ending to Mass Effect (or any commercial video game).

One thing that I wanted to talk about from your last post about Shakespeare's play revisions is that changing scenes/lines/etc. in a play is a little different than changing them in a completed and published work. An ongoing play is a living entity and is in essence is a liquid experience that lives on as a memory for those that witnessed it while a published work is a bit more solid. Of course a published work can be modified and reprinted but that doesn't erase the tangible earlier editions.

I'm not actually arguing against your point, the analogy made sense and I definitely got your point, I just feel that there is a fundamental difference between a live performance and a recorded production.

@puffkix

I do agree that the cost would indeed be significant, but would it be greater than the loss of sales incurred from leaving the fans upset? It is, as it has always been, for Bioware to decide. At least their fans care enough to give them the option.

(I meant no offense citing the lack of precedent, but that is the go to counter-argument to the point I was making, and I had forgotten that you had already established your position against it.)

@T_Dawg

I do like your analogy to a fast food burger but I would also compare the cost and amount of work required to replace a burger versus rewriting and recoding parts of a game, they aren't quite on the same level. That said, I do see the similarities.

As far as the art argument goes, I touched on this in the article:
"...like summer box office hits, are designed with the bottom line in mind there isn’t really any precedent being set besides giving consumers what they want."

@puffkix

In regards to your last point, neither I, nor the majority of the Retake movement (yes there are people who joined the cause simply as an excuse to hate, but this is the internet; you've got to expect some people to do that.) are "telling" Bioware anything. We are simply making Bioware aware of the problems we had with their commercial product, and asking them, most of us politely, that they fix what we see as a problem with the game. We are providing for them an alternative to simply losing our business.

As an example, if you went to a fast food restaurant and asked for a cheeseburger without ketchup, but you got a cheeseburger with ketchup, you have several options. You could eat the burger that you were given, and then stop frequenting that particular restaurant. You could eat the burger and forgive them, continuing to east there in the future. You could throw it away in disgust, never to return. Or, you could take the burger back up to the counter, and ask for them to fix it; how they handled your request would determine whether or not you were willing to return to the restaurant. The Retake movement has simply chosen the later option.

Now, before you bring in the whole "art" matter, citing that the video game is art while the burger is just food, keep in mind that this is commercial art. It is done as an attempt to make money, not please the artist. That means that it has more in common with the burger scenario than it does with the guy painting whatever he fancies in his own basement. To make it more clear, imagine a person you hired to paint frescoes upon your wall. You told him up front that you wanted a nature scene, but he painted a city scene. Do you not have the right to complain?

More to the point, this kind of thing happens all of the time, and it certainly isn't unprecedented as those in the media would have you believe. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle brought Sherlock Holmes back from the dead due to fan pressure; he may not have rewritten the end of the book in which Holmes died, but he did completely alter the perception of those events in his sequel. William Shakespeare, one of the greatest English writer of all time, frequently rewrote portions of his plays after only a couple of performances, fixing parts that the audience disliked and sometimes even changing things during a performance (I have no evidence to the changes during the performance, but it is suspected that he did and was not an unheard of practice during the era).

With that being said, I do not condone any action that is destructive to Bioware. Any rating that I have provided has reflected my view of the entire game, of which the ending is a part. To do anything else, would be to betray the trust that Bioware has put into its fans, and even though I feel that the ending provided and, more importantly, Bioware's initial reaction to the complaints has wounded the fans trust in them, that is certainly no reason to act in kind.

As a person who makes his living writing works of fiction, I would be overjoyed to have such loyal fans provide me with such honest and heartfelt feedback. I also would never cite "artistic expression" as an excuse for a poorly finished work. To me, that seems a cop-out, a way of extricating oneself from an uncomfortable position without admitting that you are wrong. I, and I hope Bioware, understand my role as a provider of commercial art well enough to know that entrenching oneself into a belief in your own greatness is the surest way to end up in the poorhouse.

"...they ran out of time (or money) and took the lazy way out."

Absolutely.

I sincerely appreciate the thoughtful discussion - proof that you aren't a "fanboi" - and have thoroughly enjoyed debating this without it devolving into name-calling, something that is rare from what I've seen other places I've looked on the internet.