Gamers: Bunch of Bitchy Little Girls

Note - If you have an issue with my use of the term "bitchy" in this blog, please see my disclaimer at the bottom of the article.

I must admit that I've yet to play the Mass Effect series. Sacrilege I know, but the lack of Eyefinity support, and a backlog of Eyefinity-capable games meant that Mass Effect would simply need to wait. I still followed the development of all three games, and the efforts of the WSGF community to implement proper Eyefinity and Surround support (successful I might add).

Apparently the ending wasn't up to snuff, with reactions ranging from "soul crushing" to incomplete. One common complaint was that for all the myriad of choices available during the series, the final installment basically shoehorned you into one of a few endings. Now, I'm not surprised that gamers may be disappointed with such an ending, but I was surprised at the level of the response - message boards lighting up, online petitions and donation drives. I guess I shouldn't be shocked at anything when the Internet Rage Machine (IRM) starts up.

During the time of this brouhaha, I was running marathon sessions of Burn Notice to catch up in preparation for the Season 5 DVD release and the Season 6 premier. Being a Bruce Campbell fan I instantly loved the Sam Axe character. While watching the opening sequence on Netflix for the several-dozenth time, his line, "You know spies, a bunch of bitchy little girls" struck a cord. Is that what gamers (and really, all geeks) have become, a bunch of bitchy little girls?

When something doesn't go our way, or we don't get exactly what we want, is our first response to fire up the IRM and start launching online petitions? In the past few years I feel there has been a drive to give developers more creative freedom and more control over their creations. I believe this has manifested itself in a growing backlash against the big studios (who are seen as stifling creative freedom), and the emergence of indie and small dev studios.

But what happens when a studio such as Bioware (which has a history of ground-breaking, quality titles) delivers a game it feels meets its creative intentions, but fails to meet the expectations of its most vocal fans? Do they honor the creative direction of the developer? Oh hell no. They fire up the IRM and basically force Bioware to come out with the Director's Cut.

I'm not saying that people shouldn't have been dissatisfied with a sub-par ending. People had invested a lot of hours into the game, and they wanted a "satisfying" return (the ending) on their investment (the hours played). I'm glad that BioWare did resist the urge to give an "everything comes up roses" ending, where there was no loss and no sacrifice. I think going that route would have been an even bigger disservice to gamers.

Looking at larger geek culture, the masses rose up several times over Star Wars. First it was with the changes that George Lucas made to the Original Trilogy. In my heart of hearts, I will always believe that Han Solo was a genuine scoundrel, and that he shot first. But what if that was never Lucas' intent? Shouldn't he have the freedom to reset Han's misinterpreted characterization?

What if he thought the initial characterization was too harsh, and that he had attempted to soften in in later movies, and made the final change in his new edition of Episode IV? I'm not saying I agree at all, but shouldn't that be his choice? The fanbase (and society in general) rose up again with Episode I, and Lucas seemed to listen enough to basically write Jar-Jar out in the subsequent films.

Even here at the WSGF, we're prone to bitching. When a game doesn't support Eyefinity or Surround, we raise whatever clamor we can. We wish more people would listen to us. Case in point, I really wish BioWare would fix Eyefinity/Surround support in ME 1 & 2. Maybe we'll get that in a Collector's Edition Trilogy or something. I'm not even saying all the bitching is bad. I guess I'm just saying that as a gamer-geek culture, we seem to be prone to it.

I wonder though, what would be the fanboy reaction to The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings (LOTR) if they were released today? The Hobbit was written long before LOTR, and was not initially conceived as an intro or prequel to LOTR. The Hobbit was regarded as a children's book, and was almost universally lauded.

In the original book Gollum is a much different character. Gollum willingly bets his magic ring in the riddle game with Bilbo. Note that it wasn't yet even conceived by Tolkien to be the "One Ring". At the end of the scene, Gollum and Bilbo part ways amicably. Only after beginning to write LOTR (and the Silmarillion) do The Ring and Gollum become the characters we know them as today.

But, how would todays geeks have responded? Would we have fired up the IRM to protest the change of the characters and tone of the book? Would we have cared, since it was only considered a "children's novel"? How would people react today if J.K. Rowling went back and made major revisions to the early Harry Potter novels to better suit ideas she had along the way?

How would gamers have reacted to EA if the new endings had made substantive changes to the story? Maybe the issue isn't that changes are made, or that they are demanded? Maybe it's the way in which they are done. I don't know anyone who complained about the special effects in Star Wars being cleaned up with modern technology, and I think most people were willing to accept the updated explosions and such.

But, I think the outcry over Han's transformation was driven by both character-driven and technical issues. Not only were many upset to find the characterization of their favorite scoundrel drastically changed, but they were also upset with the way in which it was done.

The unnatural jerking of Han's head to dodge the laser bolt from Greedo was just poorly done. In a movie known (then and now) for it's technical marvel, this change stood out like a sore thumb. Take the similarly poorly executed "Noooooo" from Darth Vader on the Blu-Ray release. Do people really care that George Lucas decided to add this outcry from Vader-come-Anakin? Or, were they more outraged about the fact it was recorded poorly, and mixed into the overall dialogue and soundtrack worse?

Compare these examples to the changes in the Hobbit, which were deftly executed. Tolkien wrote the change into the story. The Hobbit was originally billed as the memoirs of Bilbo's adventure. The original version of the story was written as Bilbo lying to Gandalf, embellishing the story in his favor (with Gandalf supposedly being suspicious about the telling of at least this turn of events). The change supposedly came about from Bilbo confessing the deception to Frodo, who then went back and edited his uncle's manuscript. This literary slight of hand was quite "meta", and a very genius way of executing the change.

I'm not saying the bitching is inherently bad, whether it's on bad changes made or changes wanted. We are the consumer and should make our voices heard. I just hope that our self-entitled geek culture doesn't forget that the artist has their voice as well. And, I hope that we don't get to a point where we spend more time and energy bitching about the games we play, then actually playing games...

Disclaimer - I had the idea for this blog entry (content, title, sweet Bruce Campbell reference) long before the recent instances of neanderthal gamers crawling out from under their rocks. My use of the term "bitchy" is not meant to be any degradation of women, women gamers, or specifically any of the women in games and media who have recently been attacked. Please note my use of the word "women" verus "female". I hate the current pop-culture use of the word "female" to refer to women and girls. That being said...

I mean to use the word in the sense of "hateful, mean, snide, vicious, malevolent", as in to "bitch and moan", or more effectively to compare behavior to that of my daughter when she does get her way - my four year old drama queen who throws herself on the floor and starts with the gnashing of teeth.

Granted, "bitch" does have a feminine meaning and could be considered an inherently loaded word. I could have used the more masculine "bastard", but it just doesn't have the same ring. It also wouldn't let me use a sweet quote from the inherently fabulous Bruce Campbell, and that really was the swing vote.