Mar 21, 2012

Why I'm Glad BioWare Might Change Mass Effect 3's Ending For the Fans

Mass Effect (2007)

Today people got angry about Mass Effect 3—for a new reason.

Today, people said that the people making the game were doing something "dangerous."

"Respect lost," one fan said.

"This is dumb" another complained.

"Backpedalling"

"This is absurd"

"You think we could work in porn?"

Oh, that last one wasn't about Mass Effect 3. It wasn't part of this new anger that was sparked when the co-founder of the studio that made the game said his team is working on some sort of clarification (modification? change?) to the controversial ending of the game.

These were all things people Tweeted at me after we reported that BioWare was reacting to complaints about their ending and introducing something in April—new content—presumably, that would improve the game's conclusion.

People were sending some of their anger my way, because I shared my own opinion on Twitter: "And there was hope that maybe video games can truly be interactive…"

That's right. I'm all for BioWare doing something with the game's ending, and not just because they want to. I'm glad they seem to be making some sort of change because players of the game have asked them to.

Before today's anger came the anger about the ending. (See the endings here. Warning: they're full of spoilers.)

Many people complained about the Mass Effect 3's conclusion because they felt it was abrupt and distressing, that it didn't properly pay off this multi-year saga and didn't let players feel closure with the many characters they'd adventured with across three games. They say it throttled the series' trademark freedom of choice.

Now people are complaining that, if BioWare messes with that ending, the company is surrendering their artistic integrity.

Readers have told me that this is a slippery slope. They've said that acquiescing to fans—some of them rude or overly entitled—who petition and Tweet and make a huge commotion about how a work of fiction ends undermines BioWare's position as independent-minded creators.

"It's not about which ending we get," an aspiring game designer named Jason Ragatz wrote to me on Twitter, "it's about the total disrespect and destruction of the artistic integrity of gaming's best."

BioWare is failing to stand their ground, I've seen people say. They're doing something we wouldn't respect—or even expect—in other forms of entertainment. Among the comparisons I've seen: What if the people who made The Sopranos buckled and changed that series' notorious ending? Shouldn't the creators of Lost have undone that series' notorious final season? Should the Mona Lisa get a boob job just because some viewers of the painting loudly demand it?

What if, indeed?

What if games weren't movies, TV series or paintings? What if, I keep saying—even to some of my Kotaku colleagues who shout at me that I'm out of my mind—games were interactive? What if they were truly interactive?

I don't consider the content of video games to be sacrosanct.

I love video games. I respect their creators. And I do not consider those feelings to be inconsistent with my belief that games are malleable works that benefit from improvement and transformation. Look, I'm the person who thinks it's kosher to listen to podcasts while playing repetitious parts of video games, so be prepared to not take me seriously, if you haven't reached that point yet. I'm also a person who has seen games patched and tweaked for years. I've seen games modified when re-issued. I've seen series upon series designed to take into account fan feedback. Games are often not static.

More than one smart game developer has described the medium as a conversation between game players and game creators. The devs make a game. We play it. We react. The devs make a new game that answers those players and so that cycle continues. That conversation doesn't—and for a long time hasn't—occurred simply between the release of one game and the next. It's happened during the lifespan of a game. It happens with MMOs. It happens with shooters. It happens all the time.

I struggle to see what's invalid about a game developer hearing a complaint from its fans and reacting. But it's about the story, people have said to me. You can tweak the balance of a shotgun or maybe open the ending of a game up so players can do the sidequests, but story is different.

I disagree, and I do not buy the argument that story, often considered one of the least game-like elements of a video game, deserves to be treated differently than the elements of a game that are integral to making it a game.

Caveat: We don't know how BioWare is going to change their game. If they flip their story around, if they decide to end their narrative differently, I do think they'll look silly and I'll wonder how they could have abandoned in weeks a plotline they developed for years. But if they tweak it. If they add to it. If they show us some extra scenes. Then what problem will there be?

And if they present an entirely new ending… will we say they've lost their standing as artists? Or will we recognize them as artists of a malleable medium, artists who could create a cool new ending every other month if they had the time, the budget and the desire to engage with their fans that way?

Customers sometimes are right (and, yes, I know, sometimes they're also obnoxious). We don't speak with one voice at Kotaku, and some of our own writers have bristled at the manner and the merits of the change-the-ending campaigns. (We've also published writers' takes both for and against the current ending.)

Artists don't lose their shine in my eyes if they decide that they care to entertain their audience by sometimes changing their work. Artistic integrity may be a virtue, but humility is not a vice. Nor is it a vice to be willing to change positions, to bend or to adjust or to evolve or to improve. That is something I cheer in my game developers as much as I do in my political leaders.

I understand the frustration I saw on Twitter today. There are game creators from whom I wouldn't expect the kind of note that BioWare sent today. I would never expect Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto, for example, to hop online, apologize for not meeting his audience's standards and then promise a tweaked Bowser boss battle for Super Mario Sunshine. I expect some game creators to hold steadfast, to say, "This is my creation and I want it to stand as is, perceived flaws and all." Today we learned that that's not BioWare's philosophy.

One of the pre-eminent game development studios dedicated to player choice is now clearly established as a studio of updatable work. To me, it fits.

None of us can fully judge BioWare's decision to clarify or modify the ending of Mass Effect 3 until we've seen what they'll do. (And not without knowing their business plan—a BioWare spokesperson declined to comment today when I asked if this clarified ending content would be paid or free. More details in April, he said.)

What we can decide today is the limit of how flexible we want the people who make our games to be. Do we want patches and updates? Do we want multiplayer tweaks? Do we want improved graphics? Do we want new quests? Do we want them to let us romance a character they didn't initially let us romance? Do we want them to let us play an alternate ending? When do we want game developers to listen to us? And when do we want them to refuse to react?

I think people want to know that the thing they've played is the thing. They want to know they played the Mass Effect 3 that counts, the one that was intended, the one that may have been hard to swallow but was seasoned that way intentionally.

I believe that the Mass Effect 3 that BioWare wants us to play is a changing creation, something that is more organic than The Sopranos, Lost or the Mona Lisa—something that's more ephemeral, that doesn't exist just at one moment in one way but has had its own life and experienced its own changes.

For me, games are a malleable art. That's why today's Mass Effect 3 news didn't distress me at all.

Mar 21, 2012

Ms. Effect: The Rise of FemShep

Mass Effect (2007)

Her name is Commander Shepard, though her friends call her anything from Jane to Shiva to Lydia. She's one of the most popular heroines in gaming history; a three-time galaxy saviour who takes no crap and wouldn't be caught dead in a chainmail bikini. To most, she's a long-haired redhead, but she's been seen trying other colours and styles. To some, she's a diplomat, to others, a ruthless, trigger-happy bitch.

And if she didn't already exist, BioWare would never have created her.

It's no secret that BioWare has always considered 'FemShep' (the one and only time I'll be using that ghastly nickname) a mere alternative to Mass Effect's real hero - the grizzled male Commander Shepard seen in all the adverts and on all the game boxes.

They provided one because one was expected, but aside from recording a couple of romance scenes and a few alterered pronouns in conversations, then tweaking some armour designs to give them a bit more space here and here, she was a very half-hearted addition. The female Shepard very obviously uses male motion capture data for instance, which reached its ultimate nadir with the Kasumi DLC for ME2, when she gets a slinky dress to wear, but promptly loses the ability to sit down without putting on a show.

'Ms. Effect: The Rise of FemShep' Screenshot 1

Garrus and Shepard together in ME3 is a classic failure of gender coding and mo-cap in action.

Mass Effect 2 in particular showed off a depressing lack of interest. For instance, when pressed as to why it didn't offer gay relationship options like in Dragon Age 2, BioWare's response was simply that Shepard is heterosexual by design.

That would be perfectly valid... except for the fact that Shepardesses had been able to have a lesbian fling with not only their PA, but no fewer than four yes-they're-female asari babes by that point. Only in the romances was there any suggestion that BioWare saw her as anything other than a man in a woman's body, and it wouldn't be until Mass Effect 3 that both Shepards could bat for either team.

Yet despite these shaky foundations, somehow she works, and she works damn well. She's hands-down the fan-favourite Shepard, even if most players still opt for the male default, and one of the best heroines around. The irony is that much of this feels like it's down to BioWare's apathy. In not particularly trying to create a great female character, they lucked into producing one of the most enjoyable ones around.

There are good reasons for this. Writers (of both genders) often struggle to write good female characters, at least in part because so many of them have been done badly. One of the biggest hang-ups is that 'male' is traditionally treated as as the generic template, with female-ness treated as something extra. Look at cartoon animals. More often than not, the males will simply be shown as funny animals, while the females are identified with bows, dresses and breasts.

'Ms. Effect: The Rise of FemShep' Screenshot 2

Hopefully the next great heroine won't need the word 'Fem' in front of her name so people know who she is.

The same applies throughout the English language. The word 'hero' conveys nothing specifically about the subject being a man - and of course, 'heroes' can be a group of either. 'Heroine' on the other hand is explicitly femine. All this leads to the unfortunate, but all-too-common double standard that while a man gets the luxury of being a collection of assorted, variably important traits, a woman is a woman first, and her traits defined through that lens.

At least part of Shepard's appeal is that she doesn't suffer from this. She is a woman, and that plays obvious roles in her relationships and the occasional ill-advised alien quip, but it's her other traits that take centre stage - her strength, her resolve, her commanding presence, and her status as Earth's greatest champion.

Her heroism is direct and active, and refreshingly free of being shoehorned into a direct mothering role like her obvious sci-fi sisters Ellen Ripley and Samus Aran. Her achievements are recognised as the sum of many years of hard work and raw talent, with her gender never treated as a limiting factor. She's not simply the right woman for the job. She's the right human being, full stop.

Would any of this have worked so well without Jennifer Hale breathing life into the character? Possibly, but there's no question that BioWare lucked out by bringing her on board. Divorcing gender from character is no better than obsessing over it - whatever we are, it's a core part of our identities. With a simple pronoun-swapped script, it's very common to end up in what's often referred to as 'man with breasts' syndrome. It's not only writers who bring cultural baggage to their work after all.

'Ms. Effect: The Rise of FemShep' Screenshot 4

It's not quite over yet, of course. There's still some ME3 DLC coming, which might even fix that awful, awful ending.

Hale's acting does far more than just give Shepard a female voice. Her performance both grounds her in the Mass Effect universe and adds an emotional core that picks up where the script might have stumbled. You can hear both the smirk as Shepard teases her crew and the knives in her voice when she demands respect from bulletproof lizards twice her size.

She has drive, fears, passion, regrets, high-points, low-points - in short, everything you want from someone in her position, and everything you'd expect from someone with the weight of a whole galaxy on her shoulders. She may not have been written with the idea of creating a Strong Female Character, but that doesn't mean she isn't a strong female character.

So with all this good stuff going on, why is it hard to imagine BioWare and all its in-house talent choosing to create Shepard in her current form? For starters, it's impossible to ignore that when it finally accepted they'd created something special and beloved - a powerful, non-sexualised, mature hero for a modern sci-fi story - its first response was to throw a beauty contest. This already painful face palm gets even more bruising when you factor in that not only had they previously made the rather huffy point that
only 18% of players were playing as a female Shepard, simply having that stat suggests they already knew what hair people gave her.

Even if you just write this off as marketing nonsense though, the Mass Effect series' design priorities shine through with a quick glance at the rest of the female cast. Don't get me wrong, I really like most of them. They're fun to spend time with, well-written in their own right, and with great story arcs spanning five years of epic action. Pretty much any other sci-fi game would be lucky to have them.

'Ms. Effect: The Rise of FemShep' Screenshot 5

Wouldn't it be great if you had the authority and gravitas to Renegade Interrupt people who annoyed you? Oh yeah! Bam! Right in the face!

They're not however cut from anything like the same cloth as the default Commander Shepard, which becomes even more noticeable when you compare the male version to the likes of Kaidan, Jacob and Vega. For starters, none of the boys are introduced wearing anything as silly as the bubblegum pink armour we first see Ashley wearing on Eden Prime. Nor are any a counter to the male gaze focused world that leaves 'perfect woman' Miranda spending much of her time giving the camera free arse-shots, EDI ultimately rocking a new 'I Can't Believe It's Not A Sexbot' body, Diana going from embedded reporter to beddable love interest in zero time squared, and the asari... my god, just everything with the asari. They're a species whose Saturday jobs consist of 'stripper' or 'psychic super-commando', and who can't even get a break when turned into Banshees. It's bad enough being zombified by evil Lovecraftian space robots without being sent into unholy battle with super-sized breasts and glowing blue nipple pasties.

This is the school of design a female Shepard would have emerged from, and in fact did. With that loathed beauty contest, we got to see exactly the kind of heroine BioWare would have given the series if it had known anyone was going to care about her. Surprising nobody, it turned out to be someone much younger and thinner, not to mention wearing rather more eye-liner, than the slightly butch, mature, scarred default of Mass Effect 2. She'd have been a perfectly acceptable heroine in many games, but a grizzled war veteran capable of tackling a charging krogan? Charitably, let's just say 'no'.

Still, never mind. It wouldn't have hurt for BioWare to stick closer to the character people made a connection with, just as it'd be appreciated to see both gender options as equal partners in their next RPG, and to be able to hold up their next heroine and say 'That's how you do it!' instead of 'Wow, that turned out surprisingly well, considering.'

What's important though is that however we got Commander Shepard, we got Commander Shepard. By hook or by crook, by accident and design, she's one of the greatest heroines in gaming history. Her adventures may almost be over, but as the end of Mass Effect 3 says, they've already made her a legend. May it live on for many, many years to come.

Mar 21, 2012

BioWare Is Working on a Modified Mass Effect 3 Ending

Mass Effect (2007)

Calling criticism of Mass Effect 3's ending "incredibly painful," the co-founder of BioWare, the studio behind the game, said today that changes for the game's conclusion are in the works.

He promises an update on those plans next month.

"Since the game launched, the team has been poring over everything they can find about reactions to the game—industry press, forums, Facebook, and Twitter, just to name a few," BioWare's Ray Muzyka said in a post on the company's official forums. "The Mass Effect team, like other teams across the BioWare Label within EA, consists of passionate people who work hard for the love of creating experiences that excite and delight our fans. I'm honored to work with them because they have the courage and strength to respond to constructive feedback.

"To that end, Exec Producer Casey Hudson and the team are hard at work on a number of game content initiatives that will help answer the questions, providing more clarity for those seeking further closure to their journey. You'll hear more on this in April. We're working hard to maintain the right balance between the artistic integrity of the original story while addressing the fan feedback we've received. This is in addition to our existing plan to continue providing new Mass Effect content and new full games, so rest assured that your journey in the Mass Effect universe can, and will, continue." [Emphasis added by Kotaku]"

Many Mass Effect 3 fans have been complaining about the game's ending just about since the game launched earlier this month. (See the endings here. Warning: they're full of spoilers.) They've complained that it failed to give the multi-game, multi-year saga closure. Opinions have been sharply divided, even among writers of this site. One writer was for it. One was against.

Some fans started a petition, imploring BioWare to change the ending. Others complained to the federal government.

Muzyka's statement highlights the conundrum BioWare faces: maintain the artistic integrity of their work or accede to fan demands. It's possible in an interactive medium that the two are not incompatible. That's what BioWare will have to figure out now.

Muzyka didn't just extend critics of the ending an olive branch. He also had a word for those who have gotten nasty:

"Some of the criticism that has been delivered in the heat of passion by our most ardent fans, even if founded on valid principles, such as seeking more clarity to questions or looking for more closure, for example – has unfortunately become destructive rather than constructive. We listen and will respond to constructive criticism, but much as we will not tolerate individual attacks on our team members, we will not support or respond to destructive commentary."

Muzyka's full note is worth a read. It's gracious but not a full acquiescence. It reads like the note of someone who's felt some hurt about this and wants to improve his team's game while maintaining a positive relationship with fans. Is there a way that everyone can win? We will find out in April.

We've been asking BioWare for at least a week to comment on the ending. We're happy to see them break their silence.

TO MASS EFFECT 3 PLAYERS, FROM DR. RAY MUZYKA, CO-FOUNDER OF BIOWARE [BioWare blog]