Quest for the Happy Ending to Mass Effect 3: The Challenges of Cocreation with Consumers in a Post-Certeauian Age

ABSTRACT

The controversy surrounding the ending of Mass Effect 3 serves as a case study of a company’s rejection of cocreation with customers. The game designers and players battled for control of the aesthetic space of the game. The company failed to resolve their conflict effectively, allowing players to use social media to transform tactical action into strategic action. This case study has implications for technical communicators who increasingly are collaborating with users in cocreative relationships.

KEYWORDS:

• Collaboration
• management practices

Notes

1. For examples of technical communication scholars’ interest in digital games, see DeWinter and Moeller (2014), Eyman (2008), Sherlock (2009), and Thayer and Kolko (2004).

2. During character creation, Shepard may be either a woman or a man. For purposes of this article, the feminine pronoun will be used when referring to Shepard.

3. When referring to in-game decisions, the term player-Shepard is used to denote the player’s choice as Commander Shepard.

4. Karpyshyn recently returned to BioWare in 2015 and is currently working on non-Mass Effect projects (Chalk, 2015).

5. In a publicity stunt, EA used weather balloons to drop copies of the game into random locations in several U.S. and European cities (Snider, 2012). Conceivably, the pollster using the pseudonym Martyr found one of these advanced copies, or obtained a game copy through some other method.

6. To reiterate, the final cinematic cut scene in Mass Effect 3 was the same, regardless of the “control,” “synthesize,” or “destroy” option that the player-Shepard makes.

7. According to Harmon, using his frequent pseudonym Takyris, BioWare writer Patrick Weekes had allegedly posted the following March 11 message on the Penny Arcade forums:

I have nothing to do with the ending … No other writer did, either, except for our lead [Mac Walters]. This was entirely the work of our lead and Casey himself, sitting in a room and going through draft after draft.

And honestly, it kind of shows.

Every other mission in the game had to be held up to the rest of the writing team, and the writing team then picked it apart and made suggestions and pointed out the parts that made no sense. This mission? Casey and our lead deciding that they didn’t need to be peer-reviewe.d [sic].

And again, it shows. (Harmon, 2012)

Harmon emphasized that the post, and all quotes taken from it and posted in other Penny Arcade forums and messages, had been deleted at the request of the author, who wished to not be quoted. Harmon did receive through an anonymous source a screen capture of the exchange between Takyris and other forum users, dated March 11–13. BioWare’s Chris Priestly also told Harmon that the posts were faked and were not in fact written by Weekes. Nevertheless, Harmon insisted in his article that “one trusted firsthand source” (para. 4) confirmed that the posts were by the user Takyris. Whether Takyris was in fact Weekes writing under his frequent pseudonym or someone who had hacked Weeke’s Penny Arcade user profile and posted the messages, is unknown.

8. El Spiko’s thread on the BioWare forums has since been removed by forum moderators.

9. Metacritic user ratings average for the Extended Cut is 6.4/10 for PC (Mass Effect PC, 2016), 6.8/10 for Xbox 360 (Mass Effect Xbox 360, 2016), and 7.0/10 for Playstation 3 (Mass Effect Playstation 3, 2016)

10. The mod is still available on nexusmods.com and other independent sites as well as on the BioWare forums. The MEHEM forum discussion is still active, with posts as recent as 9 February 2016 (MrFob, 2012).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Edward A. Malone

Daniel C. Reardon is assistant professor of English at Missouri University of Science and Technology, where he is the director of Composition and the Teacher Education Program Advisor. His research interests include writing program administration, education theory, and digital games theory.

David Wright is associate professor of technical communication and codirector of Technical Communication Programs at Missouri University of Science and Technology. His research interests include technology diffusion, medical communication, and smart technologies.

Edward A. Malone is professor of technical communication at Missouri University of Science and Technology, where he teaches courses in the international technical communication, technical editing, and the history of technical communication.