Mass Effect 3 - - - - Part 13

Personally, I really like how Bioware interacts with their fans, but even I can admit it isn't the best idea.

 

Granted.

 

I find that BW (and most game devs who interact with their fans on such a level) are almost desperate to be liked. This results in one of two things....

The first type is someone like Jessica Merizan (BW's community outreach director), who just tells people what they want to hear. At first I thought her handling of the Retake ME3 movement was great. She was being calm and patient and respectful. Then I realized, she was just telling people what they wanted to hear. Some of her tweets are so misleading it isn't even funny. When one person complained about the Normandy's fate, her response was, "Well you better go and save them with the EC then," (or something to that extent). Two or three days later it was announced that there would be no added game play to the EC. It is like she is so scared of pissing anyone off that she will stretch the truth (if not outright lie) to tell people what they want to hear.

The second type is Casey Hudson, Mac Walters, etc. They initially promise gamers everything under the sun. Then when they are called on their "lies," (whether validly or not), they turn on their fans like sharks, saying that it is their vision, the fans are just being entitled cry babies, etc. The second that they feel even slightly threatened, they become the same type of internet trolls that their worst fans are.

This is the problem with the gaming industry as a whole. A lot of producers, designers, etc...are gamers. They are just as big of nerds and geeks as us. As such, they act just like us. Which can be cool at times, but at other times is totally unprofessional and off-putting.

I think that EA/BW and all studios really need to take a lesson from the ME3 fallout. One of the biggest reasons that it spiraled out of control is that there was so much of a mixed response due to the fact that BW had a hundred different people speaking on their behalf. You had Hudson, Walters, Merizan, and so many others speaking for BW rather than one unified response. To make matters worse, EVERYONE was saying different things. Merizan was trying to appease fans, Hudson/Walters were going on the attack, insulting the fans personally through Twitter, etc. They were also doing it through so many different mediums. There was Twitter, the message board, interviews, etc. This all added to the fan frustration.

A mess of that proportion would never happen in the film industry because they allow professionals to handle P.R.. Developers today, almost want to be as big of celebrities as movie directors. But they aren't ready for any of the backlash that comes with that. Gaming studios need to start hiring proper P.R. people rather than just letting the devs speak for themselves. Moving forward, they need to realize how important a unified message is. If I were running EA, the first thing I would've done following the ME3 debacle would be to order all BW staffers to shut down their Twitter accounts, delete their message board accounts and do no interviews without EA's approval. The gaming industry needs to learn from Bioware's mistake and adopt a proper P.R. model moving forward.

 

Agreed, but as a point of accuracy Walters and Hudson never went on the attack - they were probably the only one's to do the smart thing as you suggested and go totally mum when the situation began to erupt into something larger.

But yes, certainly most of the aggravating factors as you said erupted from a confused and frankly useless PR response that failed to circle their wagons properly and poor forum moderation.

 

^^ In my opinion, Walters and Hudson being MIA only makes the situation worse. They started- first by being budy with the fans like Matt said- and then promising them the moon when it comes to ME3. What the fans ultimately gets is a great game indeed, but not the one that BW had promised them.

And when the fans wants some answers, those guys went MIA.

I dunno...but it seems like a dumb move to me. They need to at the very least makes a direct statement about the whole situation and not dancing around the issue. The fallout from ME was not only because the fans was dissapointed by the end product, it's because they didn't get any real answers from all parties involved.

 

There were only 3 statements needed imo:

We are collecting your feedback and preparing an announcement/ We are making the extended cut/ Extended cut will be available on the following date.

Keep it straight forward and simple.

Which is why like I said in the first place, I'm not a fan of being buddy buddy with your fanbase because it limits the ability to easily bottle up when one needs to.

 

@ Matt

Couldn't agree more. The whole thing was really a PR nightmare. The whole situation could have been diffuse, in my opinion, with a proper PR handling.

As far as jessica, i don't think i can really blame her for her twitter comments and whatnot prior to the EC. I don't think that she knew 100% how the EC would have turned out. BW just fed her scripts to say to the fans.

 

I think there should be a respectable distance between fans and the devs, personally.

As far as statements from Hudson and Walters... i meant that they should have made one just as the s-storm began. The fans felt slighted because they didn't get what was promised.

 

That's what I said.

 

To clarify, when I say Hudson and Walters, I more mean their defenders and surrogates. Ray Muzyka, for example, the founder of Bioware. He was one of the big "It is their artistic vision so quit whining," types. Hudson and Walters did not say anything themselves, but they certainly had proponents from Bioware and the production team speaking on their behalf. I just can't remember their names.

Which further shows the need for a strong PR presence within the company. Merizan basically became the face of the ME3 team during the **** storm. She shouldn't have been in a position where she did not fully know what was going on or how to best answer without deceiving their consumers. A strong PR manager would've realized that.

That being said, some of her stuff was oddly specific. Too much so to just be saying the script. I feel like she just really wanted everything to go back to how it was pre-ME3 when BW still reigned as king of the geeks so she said anything that she thought people would want to hear.

 

You'd be better off just saying BW then certainly, singling out Walters and Hudson for something they themselves did not do or say is kind of disingenuous.

 

^^ The whole thing is just sad. if you go to the BSN, almost all the posters there are haters.Makes going to that place just depressing. And to think that most of those guys used to be hardcore BW fans. I remember the Fallout 3 controversial ending too...and how the fans reacted to it, but then Bethesda came up with broken steel and all is well again.

When all of this is over and done with, what peope are going to remember is not going to be the 'controversial endings', rather, the fans reaction to it.

 

Just to point out as someone who frequents the place the BW forums have always been like that. Even in these threads, there were many references to the forums back in the ME2 threads as a pretty negative place. I had to sort of stop going for a while because the place was bumming me out during the ME2 release year.

They've actually kind of returned to normal in the last month or two.

 

^^ i've visited that place since ME2 ..on and off...and i don't remember that much negativity, honestly.

But you're right. Things there has slowly return to 'normal'

 

Yep, the EC did some pretty desperately needed damage control on that front.

At this point BW just needs to get to releasing good strong content on a consistent basis again. ME DLC has almost always been very good and what we've seen of Leviathan looks pretty solid thus far, its about consistency at this point.

 

42% Of Players Finished Mass Effect 3

News

on Aug 13, 2012 at 03:56 PM
6,543 Views

771
Saving Earth and stopping the Reapers didn't seem appealing for most gamers it seems. In its five months since release, BioWare says 42 percent of players actually finished Mass Effect 3.
... More

source: GI

well any that there will be a goty for atleast this final in stallment can forget it now. not that it was ever really gonna happen. but it would have been cool if it did.

 

I thought this was interesting info but the title is a bit sensationalist. ME3 performed at what is the average for a BW game.

EDIT: This makes that clearer: http://www.joystiq.com/2012/08/13/mass-effect-2-has-highest-completion-rate-in-me-dragon-age-seri/

Only 42% of players finished Mass Effect 3...

Which makes it the second most often completed game that Bioware has released...

In relation to BW's other games this gen: Mass Effect 2= 56%, Dragon Age 2= 41%, Mass Effect 1= 40%, Dragon Age Origins=36%

According to Melo the ME2 number spiked this year (as people prepped for ME3) so we don't know what the game's completion rate was naturally at (my guess is high 40's). EDIT: http://pc.ign.com/articles/111/1118657p2.html - apparently roughly half so I'd say my high 40's figure is right.

It was a big deal when Heavy Rain pulled off 72%, most people just don't finish their video games. Consider that only 10% (!) of players finished Red Dead Redemption. http://www.industrygamers.com/news/10-percent-of-gamers-complete-games-ndash-report/

It came in first place in CVG's user and critic poll last month.

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/360153/your-vote-review-the-best-games-of-2012-so-far/

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/360038/the-best-games-of-2012-so-far/?page=6#top_banner

That being said, I expect AC3 to end up taking it in most places anyway.

 

Leviathan's release date is on the 28th of the month, which is the week before I get back into the grind so for good timing.

http://blog.bioware.com/2012/08/15/leviathan-dlc-officially-dated/

 

If so few players are completing their games no wonder they said **** the ending! t:

 

Yeah, I'm pretty notorious for not finishing games.

Funny you should mention Red Dead. I've never made it out of Mexico.

 

When does Red Dead even finish? I stopped playing the game after you meet up with your son and do a bunch of boring side quests with your family.

 

Sometime after that.

 

The game more or less ends right after that.