1655: Tease Me, Tease Me, Tease Me… Actually, Don’t

I’m not entirely sure how I got onto EA’s mailing list, having not played any of their games for a substantial period of time, but I do know all it took to get me to immediately unsubscribe: this email.

Said email came from BioWare, a company whose games I used to happily purchase “day one” when they came up, but whom since being absorbed by EA a few years back have become increasingly disappointing — to such a degree that now, when they send me a “teaser” email like this, I don’t find it exciting, I instead find it bothersome.

This isn’t exclusively directed at BioWare, of course. I have very little time for teasers anyway these days, and their use in the increasingly sprawling marketing campaigns for big-budget games is getting to a stage where they simply dissuade me from wanting to check the game out rather than intriguing me.

I started feeling this way while I was working in the games press. Teasers are infuriating to receive as a news writer, because more often than not there’s absolutely nothing to write about. As a general rule, I avoided writing about them altogether unless there was enough intriguing material therein to spin a story out into at least 300 words. In most cases, there wasn’t, and inevitably there were plenty of other more interesting things I could write about on any given day, so I was inclined to write about those instead. I can’t help feeling that this is the precise opposite of what whoever came up with the teaser campaign may have had in mind when they lovingly constructed it.

Now I no longer work in the games press, teasers are even more irritating. They clutter up news sites who are less discerning about what they cover than I am — the above email has likely been spun into at least one “BioWare is Working on Something” story somewhere on the Internet by now — and, when I have neglected to unsubscribe from a company’s newsletters and promotional emails like I had apparently done with EA, they clutter up my inbox, and believe me, that doesn’t need any help filling up with crap.

What I find somewhat hilarious is when mobile and social game developers decide to do teasers for their upcoming games. As much money as these types of game inevitably make at the hands of stupid people, I simply can’t take them seriously; nor can I believe that anyone could possibly get excited about the prospect of a new mobile game from notorious free-to-play conmen like, again, EA, King or numerous others.

I long for the days gone by, when protracted marketing campaigns simply didn’t seem to happen. You got previews in magazines, sure, but these actually told you something about the game. Like, you know, its title — something which the BioWare email conspicuously fails to mention. (I don’t know if the video gives any more information because I didn’t watch it. Instead of watching it, I unsubscribed from EA’s mailing list. Good job, there.) Or details about what kind of game it is. Or a bit about the story. Or anything.

That anything is how you get me interested in a new game — not waffling around the point with vague, pointless emails that tell me nothing. Show me something interesting — show me a reason to care, otherwise, spoiler, I won’t give a shit.

#oneaday Day 802: On ‘Entitlement’, and How the Games Industry May Have Brought This on Themselves

Yet another op-ed discussing the controversy of Mass Effect 3’s ending dropped today, this time from Gamesindustry.biz. In it, author Rob Fahey notes that “the advent of the Internet generation has done something deeply unpleasant and disturbing to the word ‘fan'”, going on to describe how the word has gone from meaning “I like this, it speaks to me on some level, I enjoy it, and I’m willing to spend money on it and advocate it” to “I like this, and thus it belongs to me, I own it, and I deserve a say in its future and its direction.”

I don’t argue with Fahey’s key point here — that there are people out there who believe that they should have a say in the way their favourite franchises are run — but I do object to several things about this article. My main point of contention is that the tone of the piece is yet another example of the games press being unnecessarily confrontational towards members of the public, lumping everyone who disliked Mass Effect 3’s ending together into one homogenous group. In reality, it’s rather different — while it’s true that there are people who have gone to the extremes of setting up petitions and complaining to official bodies over the ending, there are also people out there who dislike the ending because it’s badly written, because it feels half-finished, because it feels like an excuse to tack on the obnoxious “Hey! Buy DLC!” dialog box after the ending, and many other valid reasons to say it is a bit poo. (I’m paraphrasing from discussions with several friends and podcasts I’ve listened to here, as I have not played the game and, as you likely know very well by now, will not be doing so.)

Fahey does, however, then touch on an important subject which I believe is what has led us to this whole mess in the first place over the course of the last few years.

“Game companies are excited, delighted, by the idea of having loyal fans,” he writes. “Game companies have engaged with their fans, closely and directly. They nurture their communities. In BioWare’s case, and God knows they’re probably regretting this now, they openly talked about how important fan feedback is to them, about how Mass Effect was a series driven by its fans. It’s become a creed, a mantra. The fans are important. We love our fans. We listen to our fans. Tell people that often enough and they start to believe you — and on the Internet, there are a whole lot of people who don’t need much of a push to believe that they’re important and must be listened to.”

This is correct, but it is not the fault of the fans themselves. Rather, this situation has been exacerbated by the direct engagement with the audience that Fahey notes above. Fahey does concede that the industry has “forgotten that creativity isn’t about the audience, first and foremost, it’s about the creator” but seemingly shies away from what has actually caused this problem.

Two words: social media.

In BioWare’s case, their seemingly exemplary social media strategy of direct, personal engagement with fans has actually turned out to be their downfall. Let’s take a look at a bit of background to this.

For starters, a while back the company’s own social media coordinator Erika Kristine took the bold step of providing an open link to her own personal Facebook profile. Fans were able to befriend her and talk to her directly — though, disappointingly, as an attractive female, many of the comments she ended up getting on her page and photos tended to be of the “ur so beautiful” creepy variety rather than people wanting to engage with her. Perhaps unsurprisingly, her personal Facebook presence appears to have vanished, to be replaced by a “fan page” which hasn’t been updated since November of 2011. The damage was done, though — longtime fans knew that Erika, a human being, was in charge of BioWare’s social media, and thus opened the gates for “negotiation”.

Then there was the FemShep incident. What was previously a quirky subculture of the Mass Effect community — the cultish love for the female incarnation of Commander Shepard, voiced by Jennifer Hale — was adopted as a marketing tool by EA and BioWare. We started to get promises of FemShep trailers, FemShep art on the box, FemShep this, FemShep that. The whole thing came to a head with the odious “beauty pageant” public vote where subscribers to BioWare’s Mass Effect page on Facebook were able to vote on which of a variety of computer-generated hotties — very few of which are actually possible to create using the in-game character creation tools — would become the “official face of FemShep”. When the community objected to the fact that a “predictable” blonde, blue-eyed FemShep was winning the competition, the company opened another round of voting, this time providing a choice of hair colours for the same model FemShep. (We ended up with a redhead — a decision I applaud, but that’s beside the point.)

These aren’t isolated incidents, and they’re not limited only to BioWare and EA. Most major game publishers these days have hopped on the social media audience engagement bandwagon and regularly post questions, invite feedback and hold votes for everything from which athlete should be on the front cover of this year’s Madden game to what colour Serah’s panties should be in the inevitable upskirt scene in Final Fantasy XIII-2. All right, I made that last one up, but given that Konami promoted NeverDead with an interactive picture where the game’s heroine Arcadia stripped off more and more clothing as more people Liked the page, it’s not beyond the realm of possibility. This revolting marketing ploy has thankfully disappeared now the game’s page has moved to Timeline view.

Given the way developers and publishers interact with their fans, though, is it any wonder that some have started to feel like they have the right to exert some degree of “crowdsourced control” over their favourite franchises? If they can influence what FemShep looks like, why can’t they influence the ending of Mass Effect 3?

In short, the industry has backed itself into this corner and no amount of complaining about how “entitled” the more vocal fans are is going to change that. These fans may well have a sense of entitlement, but that has come from somewhere — it hasn’t just appeared from thin air. And no-one seems willing to acknowledge this fact, perhaps largely because it’s much too late to do anything about now. Pandora’s Box has been opened, Liked and Shared with eleventy bajillion people around the world, and it’s going to be very difficult to close it again.

In order to fix this, developers and publishers need to take a step back from their audience, to stop engaging with them quite so directly and to stop soliciting feedback on every little irrelevant detail of, say, how many tassels there should be on the new Assassin’s Creed dude’s hoodie. If developers don’t want a repeat of this whole Mass Effect 3 fiasco, then they need to stand back behind a barrier that carries a big sign reading “Look, chumps, we made this, and we hope you enjoy it. You’re free to not enjoy it if you so please, but it is what it is — finished, complete, tied up with a pretty pink bow. If you enjoy it? Great. We’ll keep making more if you keep buying them. If you don’t like it? Don’t buy it, then we’ll know we need to do something else.”

“This isn’t a situation that’ll change overnight,” concludes Fahey’s piece, “not least because immense inertia defines the role of ‘fans’ in our industry — but it’s important for game creators to realise that things don’t have to be this way. Engagement with fans doesn’t have to mean letting the lunatics run the asylum, or even giving them the impression that they’ve been given the keys to the office.”

His conclusion here is valid — this is exactly what game creators need to do. You can’t crowdsource a big-budget game and expect it to come out coherently, so don’t encourage people to think that’s an option. However, the fact that some people have already come to that conclusion thanks to social media oversaturation doesn’t make them “sociopaths”, as Fahey calls them — it means that they have been brought to that conclusion via precedents set by the people they are complaining to. Similarly, those who simply dislike the ending on the grounds that it’s just not very good — particularly when the rest of the series is used as a yardstick to measure it against — aren’t being “entitled” or “sociopathic”, they’re just rather unfortunately finding their opinions lumped in with those who are taking more extreme arguments.

I hope the industry learns from this experience, but I have a suspicion it won’t.

#oneaday Day 786: On Endings

I’m not going to discuss Mass Effect 3‘s ending here, largely because, as you all know, I have not played the game, nor will I be doing so. I have, however, been reading up on it and I understand that it is SUPER-MILD SPOILER rather bittersweet — or just plain bitter, if you prefer to look at it that way. /SUPER-MILD SPOILER

There’s been a ton of coverage regarding fan outcry over the ending. For the most part, those complaining about the ending (and even, in some cases, petitioning BioWare to change it) have been held up as figures of ridicule, the exemplification of that overused and increasingly meaningless word “entitlement”. Some professional industry commentators have even taken to insulting and verbally abusing people who believe that the ending is “wrong”, with one notable example referring to anyone who had criticised either Mass Effect 3‘s controversial DLC strategy or its ending as “whiny fucking babies”. (That netted an instant total loss of respect and an unfollow from me, incidentally, not that the person in question likely cared.)

Other outlets took a slightly more measured approach to criticising this group, noting that forcing BioWare to change its creative work according to public opinion rather than steadfastly sticking to the ending it chose to write would cause Mass Effect to cease being art and to simply be another product. (I would argue — and have done — that it’s already there, but that’s a whole other issue.) Meanwhile, articles like this one, that offer a well-considered message of support to disenfranchised fans, are rather more rare.

I’m not quite sure where I stand on the debate. From what I understand of the ending, the thing that people are most upset about is the fact that it appears to render most of the decisions made throughout the course of the entire three-game series completely irrelevant. Given that this “decision-making, choose-your-own-adventure then deal with the consequences” nature has been a key selling point for the entire Mass Effect series, I can see why people would be pissed off about it. And if this truly is the case (still haven’t played it, remember) then I’d be inclined to come down on the side of supporting those who are upset at the ending.

On the flip side, I have nothing against a bittersweet ending. In fact, some of my favourite endings over the years have been bittersweet ones. (Spoilers ahead. Highlight the text to read it. Mobile users, copy and paste the white text into a note or something.) Take Conker’s Bad Fur Day, for example, where despite kicking all kinds of ass throughout the course of the game, culminating in an epic battle spoofing Alien, Conker’s girlfriend, whom he has simply been trying to make it home to for the whole game, is still dead. Or Final Fantasy XIII-2 (another game which saw a bit of fan upset regarding the ending, though not to the degree of spawning a petition) where Serah dies in Noel’s arms, having suffered a vision just like all the Yeuls the duo had seen throughout the course of the game — a possibility which the game had set up and repeatedly reminded the player of throughout. Or To The Moon, where the old man dies and it’s still massively upsetting despite the fact you’ve known for the whole game it’s going to happen. Or how about Persona 3 (I haven’t played FES yet so don’t spoil it if I’m wrong here!) where it’s rather strongly implied that the protagonist dies peacefully on the school rooftop surrounded by his friends. Or Persona 4, where after spending a year with people, building up close friendships, solving a series of horrible murders and eventually saving the world, you have to leave them all behind by getting on a train and not looking back. I even loved Fallout 3‘s original ending, where the player character dies a horrible, painful death in a radiation-filled room while saving everyone else. Or… you get the idea by now, surely.

I liked all of those endings. I thought they were effective and, in many cases, quite moving. I think the difference we’re seeing with Mass Effect 3, however, is that the ending is being seen as rather at odds with the way the rest of the game — nay, series — has played out to date, and fans feel that they are being cheated out of the choice of ending that they want, deserve, whatever you want to call it. Of course, there is a very complicated flowchart in a ring binder somewhere in BioWare HQ that maps out all the possibile decisions players might have made over the course of the three Mass Effect games, and attempting to untangle that in order to produce an ending that would satisfy everyone would be absolutely impossible.

Without getting into spoiler territory here, though, I feel it would at least have been possible for there to be one or two alternative ways for the saga to end besides those which are already there — and which are, from what I’ve read, relatively similar in their execution, if not their consequences and eventual outcome. It seems very strange for BioWare to do this given that they’ve been so good at endings in the past — look at the variety of ways Dragon Age: Origins can conclude, for example, whereby the player is pushed towards the final battle of the game, making it seem like a linear run to the finish, but is then thrown a number of massive decision points that significantly affect exactly how the ending goes down. The outcome is the same in each case, but the means by which it is achieved is enormously different — and, more to the point, is dependent on player choice as well as how they have played their character up until that point, factors which Mass Effect fans feel that the trilogy’s conclusion is not taking into account.

Basically, I can see both sides of the argument here, though both sides also have a lot to learn about respectful debate. Many in each camp are making valid points which then have all credibility removed when someone causes things to descend into name-calling and hair-pulling. A debate over something like this should be interesting and exciting, not leaving everyone involved and any onlookers feeling faintly disgusted and ashamed. A game provoking such discussion should be celebrated; instead, this whole episode is proving to be something of an ugly blot on gaming history.

#oneaday Day 704: Old Republican

I caved and picked up the new Star Wars MMO The Old Republic this week. This despite never having really been that into Star Wars (certainly nowhere near as much as my brother and his kids, anyway) and rarely having the patience to see MMOs through to their endgame.

You know what, though? The Old Republic does one hell of a lot of things right, and might just be the big shakeup that the stale, overcrowded genre needs.

By far the best addition to the whole experience is the fact that plot is delivered with some degree of effort, rather than through static text boxes. One of the things which always bugged me about World of Warcraft was that there was this huge, epic storyline going on, but you wouldn’t have known it. Text boxes do not make for good interactive storytelling. Interactive cutscenes with dialogue choices, however, do — particularly given the innovative implementation of “multiplayer conversations”, where each “response” is rolled on by all party members to see who gets the chance to say their piece. It sounds odd, but works really well in practice, and is certainly a far more elegant solution than what Guild Wars did by only having the party leader visible in cutscenes.

It helps that it looks like being an interesting story (or, indeed, stories) too — I’ve only played as a Jedi Knight so far, but already the things I’ve been doing could have been straight out of a new single player Knights of the Old Republic game. This is very much a Good Thing, and the fact that you can have a completely different experience and story by playing with one of the other classes is also a Very Good Thing.

The game doesn’t break completely with established MMO conventions, however. We still have a hotbar filled with abilities with cooldowns. We still have clearly defined party roles. We still have vendor trash, skill trainers, flight paths, rested XP, Elite mobs and all the other shenanigans we’ve come to associate with the genre. And while it would be nice to see a little more originality in some of these aspects, what we haven’t seen before is the combination of these game mechanics with strong storytelling. And, unlike most MMOs, where the mechanics are very much at the forefront, here — at least early in the game — the story is very much front and centre, making you feel, as the marketing says, like you’re in the middle of your own personal Star Wars saga.

It’s ironic, really, that out of all the recent “new” Star Wars material, it’s not the movies that were the most worthwhile things. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that the Episode I-III movies were some of the worst things to happen to the franchise. Conversely, the Old Republic series has been one of the best things to happen to the saga, plot holes relating to the fact that the galaxy has been using the exact same technology for thousands of years notwithstanding. And the new game certainly has the potential to create an enormous expanded universe over the course of its lifetime. Will it ever eclipse the movies themselves, though? Probably not; the movies have a considerable head start on the game, after all. But there’s so much potential here for BioWare and LucasArts to explore, and I for one am actually quite excited to see how it all develops. It’s a very strong game now — where will it be in ten years’ time? You only have to look at how far World of Warcraft has come since its 2004 release to see how much one game can evolve. And if The Old Republic is starting from such a strong beginning, I can’t wait to see what the future holds.

This likely isn’t any consolation to players of Star Wars Galaxies, which shut down earlier this week. But despite the fact that The Old Republic is far more focused on the heroic side of things rather than, say, being a dancer in a cantina, it’s an authentic-feeling Star Wars experience that makes good use of both its multiplayer mechanics and BioWare’s considerable chops in the storytelling department.

In short, if you’ve been considering trying it for yourself, then don’t hesitate. Give it a try; you won’t be disappointed.

#oneaday Day 686: The Times, They Have Changed

Been playing a selection of games recently. Besides the bullet hell joy I mentioned yesterday, I’ve also been playing L.A. Noire on PC and Neverwinter Nights 2 along with a bunch of emulated games that were absolutely totally positively legal to download. Between these games, I’ve been getting a pretty diverse gaming experience, and it’s also allowed me to reflect on how much gaming has changed over the years.

Let’s focus specifically on Neverwinter Nights 2 for a moment. Structurally, it’s relatively similar to the RPGs we see BioWare coming out with today (despite being developed by Obsidian) but the pacing is completely different to what we see in something like Mass Effect or even Dragon Age, its nearest “modern” equivalent.

Remember the fantasy cliche of the lead character starting as a farmhand or something and eventually becoming some sort of godslayer by the end of the game? That’s pretty much what Neverwinter Nights 2 does. You start the game in a small wetlands village in the middle of nowhere, just as their annual Harvest Fair is taking place. And before anything exciting happens at all, you have to go around the fair, complete several mundane tasks and, in collaboration with your party members, complete a number of simple challenges to introduce you to the basics of combat, magic and the like.

It works well mechanically, but in terms of that immediate “BAM!” factor that draws you in to the game, it’s somewhat lacking. Gamers looking for some sort of immediate gratification or heroics will probably find themselves disappointed for at least an hour or two before Plot Starts Happening.

It was the same in the earlier D&D titles like Baldur’s Gate. The first couple of hours of Baldur’s Gate were spent inside the walls of Candlekeep, doing errands for wizards and clearing out basements of rats. RPG cliche stuff — and the sort of thing we don’t tend to find ourselves doing too much these days because people want to get straight to the heroics. And that’s fair enough.

What the snail-like openings for these games do provide, though, is a brilliant sense of unease once you finally get out into the world to embark on your quest. You may have been able to best the local hard men in the Harvest Brawl, but what are you going to do when something that actually wants to kill you comes lurching at you?

The answer, in all likelihood, is die. This particular breed of RPG isn’t afraid to kick your ass right up until about level 5 or so — only then do you start getting to a stage where you can hold your own in a fight. And you level a lot slower than you do in a JRPG.

This is something of a double-edged sword. On the one hand, early combats become an exercise in managing your very limited capabilities, and simple victories over wild creatures feel like you’ve achieved something. This is realistic. Imagine if a wolf attacked you right now. Would you be able to handle it? If you did manage to survive the encounter without your throat being torn out, you’d feel pretty badass, right? That’s what happens in Neverwinter Nights 2.

The flip-side to this is that the second your curiosity gets the better of you and you wander blindly through a door you perhaps shouldn’t, you’re immediately confronted by a dude who shouts “I AM AN EVIL WIZARD!” and promptly proceeds to obliterate you with spells you won’t be using for a good 40 hours yet. This, too, is realistic (leaving aside the whole “magic isn’t real” thing) but is also immensely frustrating, particularly as the autosave system in Neverwinter Nights 2 and, indeed, the Baldur’s Gate series is best described as “erratic” and “unpredictable”. It’s very easy to lose lots of progress because of one stupid act if you don’t get into the habit of perpetually whacking that F12 (quicksave) key when things start looking a bit hairy.

Is this good or bad? It’s certainly different. In playing Neverwinter Nights 2, I’ve had to adjust my mindset to a somewhat more “hardcore RPG” configuration. Rather than being able to charge in blindly to a situation, safe in the knowledge that if it all goes horribly wrong, I’ll simply resume from a moment before the fight and try again, I have to think. I have to pause. I have to strategise. I usually have to turn off the Party AI function because the other characters are overly fond of running in to the middle of a large group of enemies before getting their appendages hacked off within a matter of seconds.

It’s certainly a different approach. Frustrating AI aside, it makes you a much more cautious player, which is sort of fun. The Souls series is based on this concept, after all, though executed somewhat differently. It also means that when you do reach the high levels of badassdom, you really feel like you earned them, rather than the more gradual trickle-feed approach which JRPGs’ rapid levelling provides.

It’s an approach that won’t be to everyone’s taste — and those who crave the immediacy of modern games will likely switch off the game the first time they’re downed by a pathetic skeleton minion, never to return. But perseverance and patience are key, and once you get your head around that, there’s a rewarding experience to be had.

Neverwinter Nights 2‘s basic campaign is regarded by some as “not great” — particularly in comparison to its expansion packs, which are supposedly excellent — but I’ve been enjoying it so far. Already we have some strong characterisation in the party members — something Obsidian is always good at — and a few hints of what the Big Plot might be, though no sign of whatever the Big Bad might be as yet. I am still only on the game’s first act, however, so there’s plenty of time for epic stupidity to occur along the way, and I’ll be looking forward to it.

In the meantime, there’s bandits to kill, skeletons to shatter into pieces and zombies to get diseased by.