Quote:
Originally Posted by cDnStealth
That's great and all and I am one of the hugest supporters of the idea that games are an art form but we're in a completely new territory here when it comes to the Mass Effect franchise and gaming in general. Bioware encouraged players to take the story and make it their own. Your quote is invalid because when you play a game you cease being a "spectator" and become a "participator." They took a game that was designed to make the person playing it be a participator and then, all of a sudden in the last 5 minutes, switched it to make them a spectator.
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No, the fact that you get to make choices within the narrative doesn't change the basic relationship between the artist and the audience. The basic principle is exactly the same as it is with all drama. Players are making demands that the artist presents them with different choices. I understand why people insist that it doesn't apply in this instance, but it remains fully in force. It's convenient to brush aside an idea that clashes with your position, but honestly you just can't.
What should make people worried is not some abstract discussion about artistic integrity but the question whether or not they are in fact "in such a spirit that [they] cannot receive any artistic impression from it at all," because as Wilde states later, it is only they who suffer. Apart from any substantial critical discussion, this should be a real concern in an atmosphere with is overwhelmingly negative, prejudiced, and where people are making demands of the game developers.
Although it has been remarkable how dismissive the discussions I've read have been about the concept of 'artistic integrity', as if it's some quaint notion that you can condescendingly deride. That's pretty interesting in itself. Like it's somehow pretentious even to suggest that those who write the drama are the authors, those who get to decide what it contains.
The audience can reject the work but they don't get to exercise authority over the work.
When it comes to aesthetics, Oscar Wilde isn't just any dead Irishman. If he says that "popular authority and the recognition of popular authority are fatal" to art, perhaps it's something we should seriously consider. His view is that those artforms that audiences are most interested in are the artforms that are most in danger of being corrupted by the "#### heads" like Yahtzee Croshaw somewhat trollingly calls them. You can't get away from the fact that when it comes to the work he produces, the artist is the only authority.
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/arti...Gets-An-Ending
I don't really have a problem with Bioware improving their game because of critical fan reactions, but I don't think the fans are in the right state of mind to receive what Bioware will offer them, because once you start to make demands the relationship between the storyteller and the audience is destroyed and no ending will feel like a proper ending. If there are going to be any victories for the activists, they will be hollow ones. You won't get closure or any kind of catharsis unless you give the artist back his right to dictate what the story is. This is a subtle point but important. You can come up with a better ending in your head, you can write fanfiction - but you won't get a
real ending unless you accept that Bioware are the ones who decide, finally and absolutely, what the ending is.