Search Results for: BioWare

Critical Thinking: Creative Control in Game Development

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The controversy over Mass Effect 3’s ending is long-since dead and gone, but the lessons learned from it – both by fans and by developers – still resonate within the community even now, more than a full year after the fact. For those of you who need a bit of a refresher, things kind of went something like this: Mass Effect 3’s ending was rushed and awful. Fans expressed outrage that it was rushed and awful, and demanded that Bioware changed it. After one of the biggest media frenzies seen in the games industry, Bioware eventually acceded to its players.

Critical Thinking: Player Agency and the Illusion of Choice

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Last week, I examined the concept of branching narrative in the context of gaming. Working from an interview with TellTale Games and using The Walking Dead as an example, I came to the conclusion that, ultimately, the choices themselves don’t matter. What’s truly important is that you make your players invest themselves in the dilemmas you’ve presented them; make them think and feel and agonize over which choice is the right one. If you can’t do this, it doesn’t matter how many different paths your story gives the players – they aren’t going to care.

Emotional investment is only part of the equation, however. Once you’ve got the players caring about their choices, you have to show them that those choices actually made a difference. Perhaps even more vital to any good narrative is player agency: essentially, allowing the player’s actions to have a real, noticeable impact on the world around them – and demonstrating to them that impact.

Six Games You Might Not Know Were Spiritual Successors

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See, sometimes an honest-to-god sequel simply isn’t in the cards. There are many reasons for this. Perhaps the studio that originally made the game is now defunct, and the rights are lost – in this case, the only choice is to create something entirely new. Perhaps the developer has already told the story they wanted to tell, and feel that it’s time to move on to something new – all while retaining the feel of the series they’ve come to know and love as much as their fans.

Or maybe they were just inspired by someone else to make something grand. Whatever the case, there are quite a few games out there which draw heavy inspiration from – and are considered successors to – the games of yesteryear. Some you might know better than others.