Aliens: Colonial Marines writer discusses ?change the ending? petitions

The controversy that the Mass Effect 3 ending has sparked has also gotten other people in the game industry riled up as well. Mikey Newman, one of the lead writers for Aliens: Colonial Marines, said that he doesn?t believe that players should be entitled to change the way a game is made. He didn?t specifically mention Mass Effect 3, but everyone knew what he was talking about.

Newman was asked about taking on the challenge of the iconic Aliens material and bringing it to the game and he said, “Don’t break it. Don’t do the thing that makes people write petitions on the internet.?

He went on to say, more seriously: “You have no right to petition people in art. You don’t, I don’t give a sh*t. That’s on me, that’s not Gearbox, that’s totally me. You have no right to petition artists to change their art.

“You can not like it, you can not buy it, [and] you can not enjoy it, that’s fine. Bitch all you want, [but] you cannot petition them.”

Newman is not alone in this either, BioWare-Mythic senior creative director Paul Barnett also said recently that players aren’t entitled to demand control over how a game should end, while BioShock creator Ken Levine said he was saddened by the whole Mass Effect 3 affair.

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