The Mass Effect 3/BioWare Thread

If you really want a reaction from EA over this, gather up some of the insulting tweets by Bioware employees and email them to EA's human resources and marketing people, along with some text about how you're insulted, how you're surprised EA would let these people make such comments, and how you're considering never buying another EA game if that's how they treat their customers.

I won't bother; I'm getting pretty bored of Hepler. Deflecting all criticism as sexism (or racism, or any other ism) is the intellectual equivalent of shoving your fingers in your ears and yelling I'M NOT LISTENING.

 

While that definitely has some to do with it and she should have held her tongue and not stoop to their level, quite a few of the tweets thrown her way seem to be blaming her entirely for the failures of Bio's last few games, even blaming her for stuff in games she didn't even work on (like Mass Effect). Even more so on that reddit witch hunt mob against her a few days back. A lot of customers are certainly growing angry at Bio, understandably so, but they're targeting the irrelevant people and by doing so attracting a lot who are only interested in trolling. When (if) they wise up and start placing the blame on the ones who really did fuck everything up, no one is going to take them seriously because of stuff like this.

 

None of those people attacking her are interested on fixing anything. Like I said, they don't give a rats ass about Bioware or its future or any other company's future.

Hepler started to get attention a while ago when DA2 was released. Her tendency (which is not limited to her, by the way, given how any sort of criticism on the Bioboards results in DING DONG BANNU!) to regard any sort of criticism as personal attacks and deflect it with sexism has gathered her more hatred than most people on Bioware. She painted herself as a target with her poor public relation skills in a business that has a known rabid sect of followers. What stirred this latest attack was her own doing on Twitter, where she probably expected to have Chris Priestly cracking down on anyone that dared to insult a Bioware employee.

If this guy:



... had exposed himself as much as Hepler did, it would have been him and not Hepler to take the heat.

It doesn't really matter who says what. Hepler made herself a target to the interwebs by not playing smart on an environment she has no control whatsoever.

 

The bashing of her over ME must be due to those infamous fake pics. LOL!

 

Someone should invite that sugar unicorn dude who's commenting on that destructoid article over to 'dex, he's a bro.

 

The game industry teaches people that game developers are all geniuses, and that gaming keeps getting better year after year. There are no problems with this vision as long as people are satisfied with the games being released. But when a game comes out that's less than satisfactory, the cracks start to show. This is why people can so vehemently defend Bioware; they're constantly being told by the gaming media, advertising, and other fans that Bioware has great writing and their games are the best rpgs evar. When a game comes out that is definitely not a good RPG, a portion of the fanbase has this illusion shattered for them and they instantly become bitter trolls who can't stand change or don't understand Bioware's "VISION" in the eyes of the faithful.

Hepler is just the unlucky recipient of this pent up anger. Even those who have recently abandoned Bioware probably still love their earlier games (I can sympathize; I really liked BG1 and BG2 but everything they've done since then has paled in comparison). So they look for a target; a scapegoat they can blame for the decline. And then Hepler makes stupid comments about how she hates gameplay, and how anyone who doesn't love her work is either sexist or homophobic, like she's some kind of writing god and all who criticize her are heretics who should be shunned from society if not burned at the stake. I can understand the anger coming from these people.

The problem with all this anger is that Bioware won't understand where it's coming from and just dismiss it as mass trolling, as if thousands of people have nothing better to do than try to hurt their feelings. Good game developers listen to criticism; they recognize that anger has a purpose, and people are only angry because they care about the game in question. The worst reaction from fans is silence - it means they just don't care. But I digress. The devs at Bioware have surrounded themselves with a cult of faithful sycophants and any criticism is dismissed by dozens of loyal posters. Jokes about ding dong bannu aside, the worst part of that forum isn't the overzealous moderation, it's the echo chamber effect where any voice of dissent is shot down by other posters. It's demoralizing to post legitimate criticism only to be called a troll, or have all your carefully thought out points be called wrong for stupid reasons. Why even bother posting criticism when the reaction is universal? Then the disillusioned forum goer will either slip back into the fold, or flee to /v/, the Codex, or other sites where their opinion won't be so universally rejected. The Bioware forum goers probably think they're perfectly reasonable people, too; they are only sticking up for the best rpg developer evar. Bioware can do no wrong, so anyone who tries to criticize them is either mistaken or just a troll. If you think they've made a mistake, just look at all these posts by people who disagree with you!

So basically, the state of things at Bioware are the result of the game industry's masturbatory self-praise and rejection of any meaningful criticism, and Bioware won't learn anything from this because of how sheltered they've made themselves. As their games continue to decline in quality, their audience will grow smaller and their reputation with gamers will suffer. If Bioware wants to save themselves from being assimilated by EA, they need to hire some better writers, hire some community managers to assess criticism from fans, and generally work on restoring their reputation for good RPGs rather than the action/dating sims they're becoming known for. I doubt that'll happen, though.

 

I don't think he's even a real person. Can't find anything about him.

 

If the topic ever comes up on BSN, I'll be sure to copy+paste this.

 

He's been discussed here before; I'm pretty sure he worked on TOR. Which should help explain the state of that game.

 

srsly?

that might get you di bannu

 

Xor
Great post and I agree completely. While this lynching of Hepler may have a negative effect for legit criticism towards Bio, it's understandable why it happened. Throw around as much arrogance and smugly veiled insults at your customers as some Bio devs do, and eventually people are going to snap.

Bio would do well to take notes from guys like JE Sawyer or Avellone, who actually take and encourage criticism, no matter how vitriol it is. Unfortunately, guys like them are the exception in the game industry.

 

Seeing MCA's name mentioned in this thread makes me want to cry. He is so the opposite of Derpler. You are spot on.

 

Yeah, except their audience does in fact grow larger.

 

And in that time a large anti-Bioware movement has popped up. You can't mention Dragon Age 2 on most gaming sites without people openly criticising it. That never happened before. There are people on places like Kotaku laying into the different game-modes of Mass Effect 3. The tide has turned.

 

They've been actively alienating their traditional fanbase for a few years now. I don't have access to EA's marketing data, but it's probably safe to assume that ME2 created some new customers for Bioware with its action focus. I would hope it did, anyway; that was the entire point of changing the game's style. Only time will tell if these new customers stick around and become Bioware's new audience. My argument is that they probably won't as Bioware's reputation decays, since they're new to Bioware games anyway and don't have as much emotional stake in the company. And as Bioware continues to alienate its long standing fans by shifting away from RPGs, pretty much the only people they'll be left with are the romance-obsessed types.

 

This is like that thing I was talking about. Game journalists cannot into meaningful criticism.

 

Thanks for the video, reminded me who the hell this vagina-in-game-industry is. She's the "crazy fuck against the wall" one, now I remember...

She's the one that made me start thinking of Bioware writing sessions as something like this:

 

Well, it's just natural, since he is older and has more experience than the other designers...

 

While MCA is the opposite in terms of talent (as far as the game industry goes), I'd say Sawyer is the opposite personality-wise. Robotman tries to be very objective about games and is happy to rip on his own work if he thinks he can make a good point. He invites open and frank discussion about his games and responds to criticism with detailed responses (if it's well thought out). Just check out his Formspring.

Another part of the problem re: Hepler is that in general, BioWare doesn't promote an open and frank discussion with players regarding elements of their games. While there's certainly no onus on the developers to respond to tl;drs point by point, the notion of DISCUSS!ing elements of game (design) at length with your community goes a long way in soothing alot of angst that would otherwise turn out messy as we've all seen.

John Epler is someone who does encourage such dialogue and while he gets a lot of flak here for being a cinematics designer, he is someone who discusses at length areas of BioWare's game design, especially regarding the parts he's involved in and isn't afraid to admit where he's fucked up. Maybe he flies under the radar, but he doesn't get (nor deserves) the same kind of anger that Gaider or Hepler gets.

It doesn't really help that the fanboys/girls of BioWare are incredibly insular and react so sharply to any negativity (valid or not), which is reinforced by the mod team. The only recourse that critics have is to go for Maximum Damage!, which makes them look like dicks and only solidifies the illegitimacy of their arguments in the eyes of drones and devs.

I can't count the amount of times threads have been derailed or locked on BSN from seemingly legitimate (but negative) topics but are spammed by fans who are annoyed at "seeing this thread again" as feedback ought to be contained in the few BioWare designated threads. It makes posting criticism feel like a futile endeavour (it certainly has for me).

Also, someone made a thread about Hepler. Giving it 30 more minutes before it's locked.

 

It hasn't turned soon enough - maybe if the game is a DA2 level debacle, but i doubt that.
(well, we all know that it's story is utter shit, but the audience doesn't care - they only see it when it's really obvious, like recycled maps).