The BioWare and Mass Effect Thread!

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Some of the comments are encouraging, though.

Mandatory

It wouldn't surprise me if these feminazis started their own version of the Codex dedicated to "smart" games like DA:O and ME, while calling themselves the last bastion of true RPGs.

They'd call it RPG Watch

Nah, they're more focused on feminism rather than game genre. The zillions of feminazi gaming blogs are to them what the Codex is to us. Even better than the Codex, actually. A true hivemind. Though they may dwell on different servers, their minds resonate as one.

Reading those things I really feel old...new age "RPG Fans" crying for BioWare to give them back their "basement dwelling old-school RPGs", like ME 1 and DA: Origins...



It's like a Golden Spiral of RPG Decline.
[reminder: photoshop something smart based on this]

One of us? (marysue)

• Anonymous
  Personally I share the harassers opinion, regardless of the excess of their actions. The fact is that Brandes Hepler is in fact a pretty bad writer who chose the wrong medium to express herself, and then tries to justify her point of view by pulling the “womanhood” argument in what I actually consider to be a fairly offensive and cliched view of women in general, or by making poor comparisons with other media that don’t relate at all.
• 
  
• To make things clear let’s try to evaluate what’s really going on in here with all the insults on her twitter: These people are not hating on her because she’s woman. There are plenty of women working for the game industry (including writers) who are frequently praised even by die-hard gamer communties: think about Amy Hennig, who wrote for the universally praised Legacy of Kain series; think about Mary deMarle who was a lead writer for the Deus Ex and Myst franchises, both of which are venerated by the same hardcore gamers which are now targeting Hepler.
• 
  
• Now let’s take a look at Hepler’s own arguments, and try to make some sense out of them. She claims she dislikes playing the games, which is already a controversial claim by itself. Writing for a medium you don’t enjoy or don’t understand is the first major step to do it wrong. Any writer who calls him/herself a professional must acknowledge the demands and limitations of the medium and adapt his/her style to it. This explains why writing a book is substantially different from writing a script for a movie, just like the former is substantially different from writing a script for a TV show. If don’t acknowledge these particulars and limitations, and instead prefer to complain about them, then you’re bound to commit mistakes, even if you’re the most talented writer that ever set foot on the surface of the planet. Complaining is exactly what Hepler does, when she mentions ridiculous features like a skip combat button and procceeds to compare it to the fast foward option of a DVD player. First of all, videogames are not films (even though she likes to act like they’re the same) and second, if you wanted to establish a comparison, books and movies are probably the worst two you can pick. This is because videogames derive from a completely different branch: board games; RPGs, and in particular Bioware RPGs, are even more associated to board games since their gameplay derives directly from Dungeons and Dragons rulesets. Now when you play a board game, you don’t do it for the story, you do it for the challenge of the gameplay. The same thing could be said about videogames. If you suddenly want to skip the most interactive and defining parts of a genre, for the sake of the story, combat for RPGs, puzzles for graphic adventures and matches for turn-based strategy games, you might as well be watching slideshows or movies instead. Plot acts as a complement to video games, and not the other way around. If you don’t have time to grind through combat or upgrade your party, because you have to take care of your kids (something that men do nowadays as well, by the way), then you should be reading books instead. Major game companies frequently adapt the game plots to prose and publish them either in novel or comic book format, which is good news to all the gameplay haters. Perhaps Bioware should assign Ms. Hepler to write these instead.

O dang, son, ice cold burn.

Another hepler thread where Xor's post was quoted http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/13/index/9371574/3

Where the fuck is hoopy when you need him, now I'm going to look like some sort of asshole

Mass Effect is supposed to be pretty easy even on Veteran, I think it's actually p. hard to die on the lower difficulties

that combination of likes and dislikes is a clearly woman thing, I don't get your point

and please don't make me regret not posting a disclaimer about what I mean with "woman thing", bro

tell me more about jan-u-wyne feminists being reasonable people, ignore this if I interpreted wrong

Saying that is like saying we're genuinely racist or anti-semitic(only mentioning this because of the massive kyke butthurt @watchwitz), a lot of the people writing to her are trolls, and making sexist comments doesn't automatically make them woman/sex-haters

Would still fuck, you're being faggots.




























































also

ignoring the mention of Uncharted... what the fuck did Deus Ex really have female writers? the one that's over a decade old, in case any of you faggots think it's about the new version, I mean fuck people here are already referring DE:HR as Deus Ex, and they probably played the original why does this shit happen, it should be a fucking bannable offense, so heretic it is... I mean, the guy said pre-herples games then he mentions DE:HR what what disregard this

by the way, some biowaste in that thread said derpler is allegedly being phone harassed, what

I'm guessing this is either fake or overblown, but that's definitely crossing the line, not that it stops me from enjoying this delicious new shitstorm

If it takes a hoopy to make you look like less of an asshole, what do you reckon that implies?

I like The Sims 2 and hate Mass Effect. Please explain why I should have a vagina. Thanks, by the way, for falling right in line with those who've turned it into a sexist issue.

Did you read the part about the disclaimer

having long hair, for example, is a woman thing, at least where I live, do you understand now


what I said about looking like an asshole was a way of saying I am not a misogynist or a anti-feminist or whatever it is people see hoopy as(regardless of being right or wrong, or of how much bullshit he supposedly pulled) because to some people it would look like I am defending misoginy, or whatever

oh. This kind of defeats the point of me bitching about disclaimers.

Clearly, you should prove you are NOT a female by showing tits or GTFO.

Thank you.

I dunno bro. I enjoyed Sims 2 more than Mass Effect too, and I've got some pretty bangin' tits if you ignore all the hair.

Sorry, Sacculinae do not possess mammary glands.

Let me put it this way:

I like playing The Sims 2 more than Mass Effect because:

(1) The Sims 2 is actually fun to play whereas Mass Effect has terrible gameplay and Mark Meer.

(2) I'm a woman.

Please explain why you would automatically assume (2) rather than (1).

Edit: Fuck it, this is getting too GD.

Just meaningless lulz comments, brolina, you're gonna end up like Hepler if you take it too seriously.

The Sims 2 is exactly what is killing great games. People are more interested in Social media than actual game-play. This allows social aspects of game to grow but then destroys development of game mechanics. Mass effect is an exact result of that: Focus more on relationships (deviant too) than the game-mechanics.

Reddit and 4chan should keep this up and go after new targets like Walters,Hudson,Gaider,etc.

The Sims is fine. You build a bloody house and people live in it. Sometimes 'God' murders those people in convoluted house related ways. Its mechanics worked fine.

Mass Effect on the other hand is what? A shooter? An RPG? A space opera epic movie? Its dialogue was bad, its worlds were empty, character builds were essentially pointless and its shooting was awful, except when you abused it.

Shitty design is what kills games. What you're saying is like claiming that Tetris is the cause of the downfall because it's a simplistic casual game that would end up spawning shit down the line and mini games in our beloved genre. Quit being a histrionic dumbass.

?

And why do people accept shitty design my inane friend? Because they are getting something else.

What exactly do you mean by this with regard to The Sims 2? Genuinely curious.

Except the game mechanics in Mass Effect 2 are actually better. Mass Effect was always popamole at heart, and judging by sea's review, it's one of the few things that Mass Effect 3 does right.

Edit:

So ... people are accepting shitty design because they're getting something with better gameplay?

I posted a comment on that Mary Sue site:

You are blaming shitty design decisions in one game on another game that made design decisions that suited its own purposes. The blame lies not with the Sims, but with the developer who made those decisions.

Why does the consumer accept those poor decisions? Ask BSN. However, you are accusing a game like the Sims as if it engineered the RPG audience to demand relationships in their games. On the contrary, I think it's Bioware that sought to capture the Sims' audience by imitating, poorly, games that appeal to casual gamers. You're faulting a game for revealing to a dev that a casual audience existed? What kind of non-logic is this? Quit being a moron.

An analogy for you, Captain: 'This mandatory stealth section in my shooter sucks. Therefore Thief is the worst thing that ever happened to gaming!'