Should bioware do one final shepard game?

Or Planescape:Torment, since it looks like we're using a definition of fan success which doesn't require that a lot of fans exist. (Again, this might not be the question KaiserShep asked.) I suppose Kingdoms of Amalur might qualify too, although less of a success.

Not really an "either or" thing. You argued that brand damage an observable metric. If a series just doesn't release another entry, there's nothing to measure. If a series is "run into the ground" there have releases with observable effects.


People were "having fun" with gifs of a woman holding a pistol backwards and that weird walk and "my face is tired"? I don't believe you. Receipts on any of this claim (that a game being technically bad will increase sales), please.

Pretty sure you're trolling, but:

Cool. So what? The manual tells what these are for. Whether or not you think the icons themselves make sense has no bearing on how well the dialogue matches what they're supposed to represent. You're losing the plot again. You said the tone symbols' "descriptive capabilities are garbage." I pointed to an explanation of each, along with a conversation that shows them, and argued that the symbols do indeed describe the dialogue lines they're applied to.

So Bioware can measure the brand damage of Mass Effect?


Receipts? Receipts? Do you expect me to go out on a Saturday and ask all the people I know, if they kept the receipts from a video game they bought 3 years ago, so I can scan them and upload them on a forum, because I am having an argument with some rando? Are you mad, or trying to see if you can get me committed? Because in either event, one of us would belong in the nut house.


The art is trash. I shouldn't have to consult a manual to understand what a picture is supposed to convey. This shouldn't be a Rorschach test. Wait a minute.



Is this whole conversation you passing me through a psych eval test?

Absolutely. But I can't give it a pass. Which is why I turn it off, every time.

That's going to be too late.


How about this article? Or maybe this article? Or this article? Or this? This maybe? How about this?





I'm on to you.

There are things they can do, to turn things around, hook the public and look to the next title with reserved optimism, instead of eagerly anticipating the next meme. Bioware knows better than I what it is they should do. They just have to do it.


Uh ... sure. Even Andromeda had interest. We have interest, I know a lot of places that have interest in ME. How many of those places, by ME, mean Andromeda or Andromeda 2? How many of those places mean Ryder, or New Protagonist? How many of those places mean Peebee, or New Eyebrowed Asari? Many? Most? All?


That's ... moving the goalposts. You asked controversial, I gave you controversial. I guarantee you, that even bad reviews and memes sell games. It's how a certain someone got elected President. Don't underestimate meme power.


I think it is safe to assume that, if I have a problem with them, then other people have problems with them. While I do like to consider myself "special", yes, even in that sense sometimes, I doubt I am that much "special".

I agree.


Well, that further causes brand damage. Alright, car analogy time? I'm making a car analogy, because it is something that can be technically bad and causes bad PR, that is really putting people off. So, a few years ago, VW was involved in a scandal, where they basically lied about car emissions. How many people do you think realized their new VW had that problem? How many people cared? They just wanted to get a VW, so they got a VW. Didn't read on the scandal, weren't informed their VW had an issue and only, probably, found out about it after the fact. The thing about brand damage, as established, is that it won't show itself in the damaged product's sales, but it will show itself in the purchases of future products. It hurts trust and reliability. Similarly to Andromeda, the bad PR of the reviews had little impact on sales, of the specific title. Not that it didn't have an impact on sales, but it did nothing to hurt pre-orders and people who just waited 10 days to get the game, because it was the end of the month and they waited to get their next paycheck, first. If the damage made by reviews and memes staved off people from buying Andromeda, these people won't be willing to go for the next title, unless that title does something that really hooks them in. As for the people that did buy it and disliked it, it's even worse.




Of course there are people that would vote for him, regardless. The vast majority of the people that voted for him, did so with full awareness. But a lot of them did so for the memes.


I will continue to have a problem with the icons, regardless. At least I found out that huge pauldrons knight is actually hands crossed knight. If anything, it was an educational experience.

We saw with Andromeda. You can do worse than once dead, apparently. We shouldn't strive for it, though.

This is amusing. Do you really think this or are you just striking back against "cuckmann"?

Seriously though, what do you recommend they do to remedy the problem?

The discourse around the game is a mess. Gamers fixating obsessively on politics they dislike and hiding it behind hot takes ("the worst story I've ever seen"), SJWs fury-wanking over gamers, Sony fanboys blinding praising the game and dismissing all criticism because of it (and blaming it all on gamers/"alt-righters"), most negative (or let's just say mixed) reviews suspiciously lacking a score, journalists hitting at Naughty Dog for different reasons, Sony developers trying to set the tone of discussion for the game...

There are like 5 sides and all of them are stupid. I've seen a few non-hyperbolic comments but not much.

...but to bring it back 'round, I think this is an example of controversy selling for the game. From what I've read it's very mechanically polished, so on more "objective" axes it's a strong product. Impossible to say how the controversy has affected things in hard numbers, but it seems like it's doing very well.

I don't even like TLOU2 and I feel the war is stupid. Politics can really distort a person's viewpoint on a product. That being said Shep's story is done, I see no more stories with him.