Out of Pod Experience

The Mass Effect 3 controversy seems to echo some aspects of the Incarna controversy:

• DLC/MT - milking customer money after the customer pays for the product (Day one DLC, multiplayer "pack" purchases)
• Trivialization of customer opinions (dissatisfied players labeled a "vocal minority")
• Unfulfilled expectations (viewed as "broken promises"). See the compiled "list of lies".

... And others. Of course, it's not the same situation. Eve is a subscription based game, and unsubscribing does actually have an effect, whereas ME3 is an one-time purchase, which means that it's harder to vote with your wallet if you already bought it. Eve is also a game based on iterating content (hopefully responding to player feedback), and ME3 is a single player game that technically doesn't iterate its content. However, with the ubiquity of the Internet, many companies are expected to at least iterate on products to fix bugs that arose after release.

More interesting is the PR response of CCP vs the PR response of Bioware (also see the Mass Effect twitter). ME3 players have as little reason to believe Bioware's :words: now as Eve players had to believe CCP's :words: last summer. However, I feel that CCP has redeemed itself in the eyes of most of its players -- by listening to player feedback and putting out the content that people actually wanted (thanks, CCP).

Bioware's approach of defending their "artistic integrity", and maintaining that the customer will understand the "art" once it is explained better, is both pretentious and condescending. I don't think it's going to work out for them.

However, this seems to be an interesting parallel to consider in this evolving world of game development. What do you think?

Don't worry, I'm sure our resident 13 yo 'investor' will be by shortly to spam you with random youtube clips that he will signify as proof while calling you a biodrone for whatever reason.

Ooh! Another parallel!

"Biodrone" <--> "CCP fanboi" or "CCP alt"

There are always some who do not get what they wanted. Those who did have no reason to complain and so you only get to hear the negatives. Anyone who wants to point out the positives is "pissing into the wind". One cannot compare the complaints of offline players with online players without finding some irony in it. Online players want to own the game and want to tell the maker how to run it, and offline players, while they own the game (or a copy of it) want to tell the maker to produce more and for little to no charge. It is like they want what only the others can have and generally what is not available to them. The truth behind it is that people care about the negatives as little as they care about the positives. You have a better chance of determining how much people love a game by the amount of their complaints than by the positive things they say about it! For instance, try finding a game review you can associate with. They almost never exist. Or try to find one that did not give at least 75 out of 100 - or - find one that actually got the full 100 or only 10! It is a twisted world all a round made by mad gamers. All you can do is to buy a game and see for yourself. If you like it then you keep paying for it and if not then you move on. Do not get caught with wanting more what is obviously not available. Buy something else instead.

Angry joe is a bit of a whiner...

CCP deserves some credit yes, they swallowed the apple last summer, and have done well by EVE since. It takes a man to admit you were wrong, and that deserves some respect.