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Mass Effect Fans Donate $80,000 to Charity to Help Change the Ending of Mass Effect 3

If Bioware decide to change the ending to appease the fans, they might as well throw out any shred of credibility they had.

You make a 'Director's Cut' of a film to show what you originally had in mind for your vision/show a different interpretation.

Making a change to please your fans is shameless pandering, and an acknowledgement of your own failure as storytellers.

Well to be fair that was transparent enough from just watching the ending. It's objectively terrible.
 

HK-47

Oh, bitch bitch bitch.
If Bioware decide to change the ending to appease the fans, they might as well throw out any shred of credibility they had.

You make a 'Director's Cut' of a film to show what you originally had in mind for your vision/show a different interpretation.

Making a change to please your fans is shameless pandering, and an acknowledgement of your own failure as storytellers.

Uh oh Bethesda. They are onto you! And I can tell they are failures at storytelling just by watching the ending again.
 

d0c_zaius

Member
Just because Destructoid said that doesn't mean that's what's happening. This was the biggest way to get Bioware to know they're serious. People bitch on the internet all of the time and nothing really happens, but this is something meaningful.

this is really becoming crazy...almost cultish
 

2th

Banned
this thread delivers. This is what people get for supporting the shit hole developer that is bioware.
 

Cagey

Banned
If Bioware decide to change the ending to appease the fans, they might as well throw out any shred of credibility they had.

You make a 'Director's Cut' of a film to show what you originally had in mind for your vision/show a different interpretation.

Making a change to please your fans is shameless pandering, and an acknowledgement of your own failure as storytellers.

Ahem.

As someone said on Twitter...

Changing your art because your heavily invested fans request it? LACKS INTEGRITY.

Changing your art because your bosses or company want to make it more profitable? INTEGRITY.
 
Just because Destructoid said that doesn't mean that's what's happening. This was the biggest way to get Bioware to know they're serious. People bitch on the internet all of the time and nothing really happens, but this is something meaningful.

Yeah, it just proved that people are willing to spend at least $10 on a new ending.
 

FStop7

Banned
Fans of the Mass Effect Franchise recently donated $80,000 in a two week timespan to help increase awareness about a movement to help change the ending of Mass Effect 3.

Kind of shuts down the "entitled babies" accusations, doesn't it?
 

traveler

Not Wario
Utterly amazing. And ridiculous. I cannot fathom the mindset that would make one a fan of this series' story yet somehow find the ending of ME3 so godawful you would want to pay money to change it. What exactly did these fans think of the first two games' stories?
 
Proud to be a part of it.

We're the entitled ones. Yup.

Utterly amazing. And ridiculous. I cannot fathom the mindset that would make one a fan of this series' story yet somehow find the ending of ME3 so godawful you would want to pay money to change it. What exactly did these fans think of the first two games' stories?

We're raising awareness. BioWare's got enough from my CE.
 

Shepard

Member
Well to be fair that was transparent enough from just watching the ending. It's objectively terrible.

The main problem with you is that you think you are "the ultimate majority of the consumers", when, mixing some neogaf posters, some bioware forums posters, random internet guys, you got, what, 3% of the game's players? And yet you think the developer should change the game's ending based on what you think. smh (to be clear, I don't think changing it was going to be ok even if you represented 99% of the gamers)
 
Kind of shuts down the "entitled babies" accusations, doesn't it?

I would think that asking for it to be changed period makes them entitled babies.

Everyone wants games to be taken seriously as art.
But then they don't like something, and they try to get it changed.
It does not matter if video games are an interactive medium.

We're raising awareness.

... of what? That people have different opinions? Please, above anything else, don't act like you are "helping other gamers".
 

XiaNaphryz

LATIN, MATRIPEDICABUS, DO YOU SPEAK IT
Utterly amazing. And ridiculous. I cannot fathom the mindset that would make one a fan of this series' story yet somehow find the ending of ME3 so godawful you would want to pay money to change it. What exactly did these fans think of the first two games' stories?

For the most part, people are fine with the stories in the rest of the games and even the rest of ME3. It's just the ME3 ending, really.
 

MechaX

Member
Making a change to please your fans is shameless pandering, and an acknowledgement of your own failure as storytellers.

If your worth as a story-teller is the subject of debate as opposed to how much money you are going to make, it is the mark of a rare storyteller to show humility and keen-notice of criticism. It takes an exceptional storyteller to know when to keep something as is for the sake of preserving their own "art" and one that tries to think of things from another angle in the sense of "those points are valid; that really doesn't make sense."

Alternatively, the ending has so many factual issues that thinking it would be acceptable in the first place would already be a marking of failure as a storyteller, so now we're in a Catch-22.
 

Antiwhippy

the holder of the trombone
Just because Destructoid said that doesn't mean that's what's happening. This was the biggest way to get Bioware to know they're serious. People bitch on the internet all of the time and nothing really happens, but this is something meaningful.

That is exactly what is happening though. They are donating to raise awareness for their agenda, using it as a tool that just sidetracks away from the charities original intentions. It's good that money is going into a worthy cause but I think they should use a different way to express their cause.

Didn't read the destructoid article.

Also are people really citing portal's retconned ending? That was a totally different situation that was used to hype and set up portal 2. Not because people forced a change because they thought the ending to portal was shit.
 

jediyoshi

Member
Oh come on, man, this is a stupid fucking stance.

Look, I can see wanting a game changed for more clarity or more put into it, because you bought into it and so you have a right to complain about the product you god. But you're just demanding that they admit what they wrote was shitty? What the fuck.

Wat, developers being self critical isn't a rarity or anything. Everyone hated Halo 2's ending and Bungie said it was shit, rushed and that they were disappointed in it in interviews.
 

Rezbit

Member
Believe it or not Forbes has been knocking it out of the park with their coverage on this fiasco, even highlighting how awful the "normal" gaming media has been during this.

Forbes has pretty much become the de facto best gaming website :\. Some of the coverage from these dedicated sites has been absolutely disgusting, especially in terms of their language and attitude toward many fans. Jim Sterling is a troglodyte. Appalling journalist.

Do you guys realize that people complained less about The Godfather part 3?

Yeah, but in truth the internet wasn't around then either. People also didn't put 150+ hours into the Godfather trilogy and didn't have the director making promises about the outcome.

No doubt some fans lost their shit over the ending, but for the most part most comments I've seen, particularly on GAF, have been very reasonable. There's so many people being really cynical and abrasive to the people questioning the ending. There's no need. So some dudes want the ending changed and gave 80k to sick children. I don't see how that warrants abusing others.
 
The main problem with you is that you think you are "the ultimate majority of the consumers", when, mixing some neogaf posters, some bioware forums posters, random internet guys, you got, what, 3% of the game's players? And yet you think the developer should change the game's ending based on what you think. smh (to be clear, I don't think changing it was going to be ok even if you represented 99% of the gamers)

I think over 4000 people donated to the charity so that seems to be a good sampling size.
 
Well, charity is cool. I find this whole business about the ending to be...well, I won't say it. It's already been said. But charity IS cool. So I'm fine with this. Good on ya, you crazy screwballs.
 
Donating is fine, and should be encouraged. But donating just to prop your cause as "not being entitled and whiney"? Donate to donate, not to make your agenda look better.

I don't give a rats ass why someone donates to any charity. I also don't care weather Bioware changes the ending or not. I just think people have a right to complain when they feel they've gotten a shitty product or service and I also think Bioware has a right to ignore those complaints or take them to heart. All these "artistic integrity" arguments just ring hollow to me when it comes to something as mass produced as Mass Effect.
 

tearsofash

Member
It was pretty bad, but there's no conative responses elicited on my end. Wish they had elaborated, explained, and brought more closure to a series I was so heavily vested in.

Then again, Evangelion's og ending didn't bother me either. I had the same complaints, but it's not my place to want to change it. The revised ending was amazing though, and they charged for it.

Charity is charity. Whatever. Helping people is good. If it means I can play more ME I'm down.
 
I would think that asking for it to be changed period makes them entitled babies.

Whether they do it or not doesn't really matter. At this point, no one really has the confidence that BioWare could tack on some end game cutscene and make it all better. That's the kind of space magic the game ended on in the first place.

What this is doing is just raising awareness, and making sure that the next company who pulls a fast one on loyal fans would think twice before they do it.
 

AniHawk

Member
Making a change to please your fans is shameless pandering, and an acknowledgement of your own failure as storytellers.

they should acknowledge their own failure as designers, since kinda the big bullet point to the series and the reason why it was interesting as a trilogy was that your decisions carried over from game to game and were supposed to have an impact on the final outcome. instead the writer man thought he was making art or something.

also, the game being apparently rushed probably didn't do it any favors.
 

Cagey

Banned
They are the kind of people that entitle the developers into feeling that they're entitled to making shitty endings.

Enable, not entitle, but yes.

I would hope that those lining up to criticize gamers that criticize BioWare for the ME3 ending understand this point.

But they won't.

It's more fun to sit back and attack other people's character (selfish whiny babies!).
 

Shepard

Member
I think over 4000 people donated to the charity so that seems to be a good sampling size.

4000 isn't representative of anything in a 3 million world (that's what I heard the first shipment was, correct me if I'm wrong but I'm sure my point still stands.)
 
What this is doing is just raising awareness, and making sure that the next company who pulls a fast one on loyal fans would think twice before they do it.

Again, I ask you: raising awareness of what? For who?

Because when you say things like that, it just makes me think you're a patronizing jerk.
 
Imagine if this many people were mad at Metal Gear Solid for its story.

MGS4's terribleness was the result of an auteur bending to the whims of a fanbase. Mass Effect on the other hand is perhaps one of the most cynical, designed-by-committee series in existence.
 
Damn, this is the worst backlash I've ever seen to a game's ending. Currently playing through ME3 now and I've already set my expectations super low after reading about how terrible it is.
 

Derrick01

Banned
fh what exactly?

4000 consumers personally invested enough to care = average opinion?

hell no

That's just 4000 people who decided to donate, not everyone who hates the ending. I didn't donate and I despise how they handled the ending, and how they lied about how the ending would be in interviews before the game came out.
 

Gestahl

Member
Damn, this is the worst backlash I've ever seen to a game's ending. Currently playing through ME3 now and I've already set my expectations super low after reading about how terrible it is.

Just keep in mind that none of your choices will matter and don't, uh, don't grow attached to anything or anyone in the game or series, and maybe you won't outright hate it.
 
MGS4's terribleness was the result of an auteur bending to the whims of a fanbase. Mass Effect on the other hand is perhaps one of the most cynical, designed-by-committee series in existence.
didn't kojima bend to the wills of his staff? He said the ending was their idea.

anyway this whole thing is sad, if the ending is shitty then fucking leave it. It is what it is.
 
Damn, this is the worst backlash I've ever seen to a game's ending. Currently playing through ME3 now and I've already set my expectations super low after reading about how terrible it is.

It will probably save you. If you don't see the problems in the ending, don't think about it. It becomes worse with time and thought.
 
4000 isn't representative of anything in a 3 million world (that's what I heard the first shipment was, correct me if I'm wrong but I'm sure my point still stands.)

You do realize when they do exit polling, for elections and such, that don't poll every single voter? Surely if people loved the ending they would be on the internet posting about how great it is (and there are some people). However when you look at fan reaction it has been overwhelmingly negative.
 

MechaX

Member
The main problem with you is that you think you are "the ultimate majority of the consumers", when, mixing some neogaf posters, some bioware forums posters, random internet guys, you got, what, 3% of the game's players? And yet you think the developer should change the game's ending based on what you think. smh (to be clear, I don't think changing it was going to be ok even if you represented 99% of the gamers)

For the sake of argument, let us assume that the Charity is not a representative sample.

This isn't so much of a problem of "just a bunch of forum posters" being up in arms about things. You go to any other major community outside of GAF and Bioware's forums like IGN, Gamespot/GameFAQs, Something Awful, various individual and smaller forums, etc, and even with some degree of overlap, you have a fair amount of people being concerned about things. Even for a small frame of reference, look at GFaqs, in which at least 30k people do agree that there is something wrong with the ending as is. And even going of anecdotal accounts like facebook and what-not, and now areas like Forbes giving some insight, saying that it is only like 1% of the people who bought the game is pretty disingenuous at best.

Psychological or academic studies do not become less valid simply because they could not gauge the entire population in question. Instead, there is enough support that there is a very good chance that there is a somewhat consistent sentiment and concern.

True, I can concede on the notion that not everyone wants it changed. But I think the most pressing scenario here is that we could possibly have a significant number of people who just found it problematic in general. If Retake ME3 is the only outlet to really show this notion, despite how less-extreme arguments may also be accompanying the concern, I'll take it.
 
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