You confuse me with someone else. Someone with competence. Someone I've never met.

home ask rss DW LJ twitter plurk cfud about me

I said I wasn’t going to get into this on tumblr… 

Apparently I lied.

I am getting slightly irritated by the opinion I continually see popping up in the ME fandom that ME3 is going to suck because of the story and combat modes, particularly because these modes are intended to draw in new players. But ME3 should be for the old fans, they say. For the ones who have completed the first two games!

While it is obviously important to please long-time fans, that’s not really all that’s involved. Part of the reason those modes are being included is because Bioware noticed the completion rates for the games were much lower than they would like. This is not only an attempt to bring in new consumers, but to encourage people to finish on their own terms. I… don’t really see anything wrong with that, especially as use of these modes is entirely optional.

I think people forget how many new fans are created through later installments. You don’t need an “I completed all the games so far” badge in order to play the latest game in a franchise, and damn good thing too, because otherwise many people wouldn’t get into the franchise. It often happens that someone plays the latest release and enjoys it and so goes back and buys all the earlier material — in fact, in some cases this is the only way they would have done so. I know people who would never have played ME1 if not for ME2, and I myself would have never played Dragon Age: Origins if I hadn’t fallen in love with DA2. (In fact, I completed Origins based solely on the fact that DA2 had gotten me invested in the world, as I didn’t like the DA:O gameplay. So if I had gone in the correct order, I would never have completed DA:O or bought DA2, which would have been a shame, considering how much I adore it.)

So, the new installments have two jobs — to please the longstanding fans, and also to bring new ones in. I’m not saying ME3 is going to succeed at this. I don’t know. But I do find all the automatic negativity directed at marketing towards new players kind of frustrating, particularly since the opinion seems to be “if they aren’t already enjoying it — if they aren’t already the kind of gamer we are — then they’ve missed their chance.”