Saturday, April 7, 2012

Art vs Money and Customer vs Consumer/Fan


Teenage Alien Ninja Turtles and a Mass Effect 3's story so full of plot holes leaves current, new, and old fans of the movies and games upset over the last few months. However, should writers cave when customers question the premise behind a movie or the ending to a video game created by a person that many believe is representing their artistic feel?
The whole point of a person enjoying the story is to have a satisfaction of the ending of the movie, book, or video game, but how can a business or movie producer argue against what is not an opinion of the loyal fans, but a simple fact? Imagine if the X-men movies depicted the X-Men as aliens instead of humans who are mutants. They would lose the humanity that Stan Lee gave them or the children who can some how relate to one of the X-men would lose interests?


When does a person draw the line simply for creating a piece of art to trying to put more money in their pockets? Michael Bay says fans of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles need to take a chill peel, because they haven’t seen the script? However, isn’t common sense more logical then a bunch of words on paper that could destroy what some kids grew up with? How can we not argue that TMNT should not be aliens from another world? Plus if a past writer of TMNT were helping Michael Bay. Why would they allow him to change the main theme behind the story? It’s no different than if Iron Man was an alien instead of a human in the movies (Iron Man & Iron Man 2).
Being an aspiring writer myself, I know the rules and laws behind the simplest of things, but some writers and artists forget this and allow themselves to be gorged in money instead of making true art. Bioware for example, argues that they have created a piece of art and the founders of Bioware agree with the writers and graphic artists that helped created Mass Effect 3. However, a reader of a book when finished doesn’t want a sense that they were ripped off because the story of the book has too many plot holes or questions unanswered.

Eric Kain; Forbes Magazine, “The gaming industry, and gaming media, is wrong to label upset consumers as ‘entitled’ or ignore the investment of fans beyond simple spending their hard- earned cash.”

What happened to the simple term of customer and why call us consumers? It almost sounds insulting that business look at us as consumers or fans instead of valued customers. We may play video games, watch movies, and read books, but we are customers to these video game developers, movie producers, and writers. Has the greed of money gotten so bad that business has forgotten we are customers or do they simply look at us as consumers who simply consume what they put out? Plus I can consume a sandwich, but I can’t consume a book or video game!

People like Drew McWeeny (HitFix) go as far as to say:

Drew McWeeny; HitFix, “They don't "owe" you anything. They make a product, and then you decide if you're going to pay for it. Since many of you think it's okay to download anything you want for free, even that second step isn't a guaranteed part of the process anymore. But it's a very simple transaction. They make. You consume. … Even so, you are not actually owed anything beyond whatever entertainment they produced for you in the first place.”

How can he say they don’t owe their loyal customers a story that is finished (ME3) and doesn't contain plot holes? You play a game or read a book you want the story to be complete and leave no questions about characters or plot. So again, how can he say Bioware doesn’t owe them anything?
Why is he accusing a large number of people of pirating as well? Can he prove that everyone who complained about the Mass Effect 3 ending pirated the game? He is making claims based soli on his own opinion without any real facts to back up his claim.  Drew used it as a scapegoat to make everyone who was complaining about the ending of the game seem guilty for pirating the game, but it is people who bought it that is complaining!
He sounds like a little kid backed into a corner who needs to protect his teddy bear (Bioware) from its customers. Plus he also used the word consume when referring to a product, but you can’t consume a video game as it is not food. It’s a wonder he has made it this far in life with such greedy perspective on life.

Brendan Deneen; Ardden Entertainment LLC, “While I think there is a lot of merit to the idea of listening to the core audience of any given franchise. I think "caving" too much to what fans want can lead to a watered-down product.”

However, the fans have a right to complain when the developer gets lazy and produces multiple endings that are cut, copy, re-paste, and re-color. Not to mention if these big company business owners did a lick of research, they would also know the many plot holes throughout ME3’s ending. So why call it ‘caving’ when they did a mediocre job in the first place or how about that disc locked content EA and Bioware both deny, but have been proven?
When did half ass unfinished stories with plot holes at every turn, a re-colored and pasted ending, and changing the main theme behind an iconic turtle become art?

Video Version

*Warning the video version is quite vulgar and contains profanity.



Coming Soon!

References

Stechgnotic, The future of story telling has arrived [Web log comment]. Retrieved from http://techgnotic.deviantart.com/art/The-Future-of-Storytelling-Has-Arrived-293860261?utm_source=elnino&utm_medium=messagecenter&utm_campaign=040312_NET_Storytelling&utm_term=image

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