Pachter: The Doctors Left Bioware Because of Whiners Like You
I really like Michael Pachter. He’s right (or at least pretty close) on a lot of his analysis. Even when he isn’t, he usually gives some sort of explanation for why he expected whichever industry move or trend to work out the way it did.
The only criticisms I really see much of are:
- He said something less than glowing about a game I have an unhealthy obsession over, and therefore I think he sucks.
- “Oh, but he said X would Y the first quarter of Z and it didn’t.”
- Accusations of trolling, hatin’, or some other concept the 14-year-olds that fill most sites’ comment sections have trouble grasping the meaning of.
And as for the accuracy one, he’s just an analyst. Of course he’s going to get some of them wrong. Sorry to employ a sports metaphor on a videogame blog, but Miguel Cabrera lead all of Major League Baseball this season with a .330 batting average, as well as 44 home runs and 139 runs batted in on the way to the first Tripple Crown in 45 years. In other words, he’s pretty damn good at hitting a baseball.
But notice that .330. That means that the single best batter in the highest profile league of his sport only got a hit an average one time out of three up to the plate over the course of this season.
Accuracy is relative.
I bring all this up because Pachter is getting a little bit of heat for comments he made in his most recent Pach Attach video on GameTrailers. In it (if you haven’t watched it embedded above already), Pachter says that there’s a very good chance that the whining about Mass Effect 3 not having a happy enough ending for some of its fans may have been the straw that broke the camel’s back for Bioware founders Dr. Ray Muzyka and Dr. Greg Zeschuk, spurring on their departure from the company, and quite possibly the videogame industry altogether.
It’s fine to be unhappy with the ending to a story, whether it be from a book, movie, videogame or whatever. But starting petitions demanding the ending be “fixed”? Fucking crybabies.
And if the doctors are done with gaming for good, I can’t say I blame them. Why pour years of your life into something when all you get back from it is comment sections and forum threads full of people spewing vitriolic bullshit that just boils down to them not getting the exact ending to your story that they wanted.
After the sale of Bioware a few years back, these guys are set for life. If I had that kind of cash I’d look for a more rewarding use of my time than trying to please fanboys too.
And that’s the saddest part of this whole deal. Bioware won’t be the same without those guys, and as we’ve already seen some of EA’s influence popping up, things are only going to get worse. There are some incredibly talented people working at Bioware. I’m just worried that their talents will go to waste on tacked on co-op missions, or a driving level featuring a soundtrack from some shit band like Linkin Park. Not that EA would ever do something that phenomenally stupi… Oh.
Editorial, Article Tags: Bioware, Mass Effect 3, Michael Pachter, Pach Attack
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This article would be better if it included Rays tweets which said outright said the guy who talked about them leaving due to fans was “Ill-informed”. Also, he basically denied it being anything to do with fans. Why would Pachter come out and say it was when one of the actual doctors has come out and said it wasn’t.
Also the ending was absolutely fucking atrocious. Personally, none of it was even aimed at Dr’s it was more thrown at Casey Hudson.
This wasn’t just one tiny group, this was actually a pretty large group of people who had actual logical reasons for the endings being bad as well. Saying “people spewing vitriolic bullshit that just boils down to them not getting the exact ending to your story that they wanted” is missing a big point, this wasn’t about wanting a specific ending this was about wanting an ending that made any sense.
Also, don’t say that and then also act like that towards EA and Linkin Park, who I don’t really like, but we have zero idea how that will actually work out. What’s wrong with a band writing a song for a game? Bands do it for Movies all the time.
The continued existence of Linkin Park is reason enough for me to hate that idea.
Ray Muzyka: “I respect/revere fans, because they speak with deep, honest passion. Journalists speculating on ill-founded rumors should reassess approach.”
“Good websites demand clarity and credibility lesser ones enable ill-informed individuals to make stuff up about other people.”
https://twitter.com/RayMuzyka/status/251808651671642113
in relation to this Mass Effect controversy.
Well put, Ben. All signs pretty neatly point to this being part of a prearranged deal between the Docs and EA to steward Bioware for 5 years, after which they are stepping out of the industry due to a non-compete clause. Afaik, most criticism was of the twin brosefs, Casey and Mac, who took the carefully crafted ME universe (remember when we cared about the Rachni??) and continually pushed for it to be more and more of a Hollywood archetypal glory orgy. Did anyone ever complain about the ending not being happy? Wasn’t the issue that nobody had any @(*&ing clue what was going on??