@Bwast said:

@SpaceInsomniac said:

@Bwast said:

They're not misleading people exactly but they are telling half truths.

Half-truth's aren't misleading, then? Care to argue that point a bit more. I think that might be fun.

Yeah, you're right, it's misleading. I just didn't want to be dismissed immediately or get Bioware defense responses by throwing around that kind of language. I've gotten into too many arguments on this site over that company and the only thing it accomplishes is make me look like a guy who likes to argue over trivial shit for basically no reason.

I'm glad to hear you somewhat backtracking from your original statement. The ad was clearly misleading. The point of debate should be if it was meant to be insulting or not.

Anyhow, I stayed away from the internet until I finished the game myself, and I ended up hating the ending without anyone else influencing my opinion. I'm sticking with that opinion, I'm still upset with BioWare, and none of that is going to simply change due to which way the wind is currently blowing.

If you are still buying EA or Bioware games then you deserve it. I stopped at Dragon Age. Maybe someday you fellows will also "click".

I salute whoever in EAs marketing who came up with that. That is perhaps the best spin on any quote ever in the video game industry.

It is misleading, but there isn't anything untrue in the statement or the context it is used, they don't say that the reaction was because people loved it or anything. They just say that there was a reaction and quite a big one at that.

I salute whoever in EAs marketing who came up with that. That is perhaps the best spin on any quote ever in the video game industry.

It is misleading, but there isn't anything untrue in the statement or the context it is used, they don't say that the reaction was because people loved it or anything. They just say that there was a reaction and quite a big one at that.

Heh, that's pretty funny. It reminds me of when Jeff said something along the lines of "If you're invested in Mass Effect, you need to play this game. That being said, it's also those people who will be most disappointed". If you haven't experienced the ending, it's language that's pretty vague, but makes complete sense afterwards.

From a marketing perspective that is one truly brilliant spin.
As someone with (what i hope) is at least a semblance of a normal moral compass this is of course kind of disgusting.
 
It's all fine and good to say: it's marketing, that's nothing new
But such apathy is not everyones cup of tea.
Sometimes shitty things need to called what they are and brought attention to.
To try (however insignificantly) to discourage such things in the future.
 
Also a great PR move on the part of Entertainment Weekly would be to publicly ask EA/Bioware to remove the quote.
It would be free publicity and good publicity at that.
Dissatisfied Bioware fans would apreciate i'm sure.

I'm Commander Shepherd and this is my favourite marketing on the Citadel.

"mass effect 3 will leave you indifferent" -Me

At least in my opinion. I haven't played it. Not sure if I will. Got a longish list of games I wanna play and ME3 is on the low end of that list. Maybe they can put that on the back of the box.

Wow, you know that this email probably has nothing to do with bioware right?

@Benny said:

Wow, you know that this email probably has nothing to do with bioware right?

Not being directly outputted by Bioware doesn't mean it has nothing to do with Bioware.

@whyareyoucrouchingspock said:

If you are still buying EA or Bioware games then you deserve it. I stopped at Dragon Age. Maybe someday you fellows will also "click".

lol... but ME3 is a fantastic game.

whatever. all companies do this.

I think it's fantastic, actually. They managed to turn a negative into something positive, and they did so without telling a lie.

@Kazona said:

I think it's fantastic, actually. They managed to turn a negative into something positive, and they did so without telling a lie.

That skill is useful when doing marketing. Also very useful when talking to your girlfriend as I have found out haha.

@whyareyoucrouchingspock said:

If you are still buying EA or Bioware games then you deserve it. I stopped at Dragon Age. Maybe someday you fellows will also "click".

lol... but ME3 is a fantastic game.

Disgusting is the right word to use here. The marketing team are geniuses and it'd hardly be the first time a company has taken quotes out of context, but this is just plain dirty and misleading. It's hard to have any respect for a company that does this, but I'd like to think it's entirely EA at fault.

@Benny said:

Wow, you know that this email probably has nothing to do with bioware right?

Not being directly outputted by Bioware doesn't mean it has nothing to do with Bioware.

I don't really see it as much worse than ads that say things like "10 million copies sold" or whatever; music ads that start out by telling you that it's "the number 1 album." Quantitative information about a thing has no bearing on whether I'll enjoy it or not.

Although I agree that it isn't often you see a negative reaction being used this way, I don't think it's a deliberate jab, it's just that marketing people see high numbers as a positive thing. If anything, you could say that they're acknowledging that everything else to do with these games has been received really well, I think it's fairly obvious that the ending wouldn't have got that reaction if everything else hadn't been pretty damn good

@Bell_End said:

@whyareyoucrouchingspock said:

If you are still buying EA or Bioware games then you deserve it. I stopped at Dragon Age. Maybe someday you fellows will also "click".

lol... but ME3 is a fantastic game.

Yeah, it really is. But wait, are we all still holding our hurt butts and pretending that the final five minutes ruined 29.9 other absolutely amazing hours of gameplay? Is that still actually the cool thing to do? Fuck me, anyone who is still bringing out their pitchforks and declaring BioWare to be the anti-Christ need to chill out.

EA.

@SpaceInsomniac said:

@Bwast said:

@SpaceInsomniac said:

@Bwast said:

They're not misleading people exactly but they are telling half truths.

Half-truth's aren't misleading, then? Care to argue that point a bit more. I think that might be fun.

Yeah, you're right, it's misleading. I just didn't want to be dismissed immediately or get Bioware defense responses by throwing around that kind of language. I've gotten into too many arguments on this site over that company and the only thing it accomplishes is make me look like a guy who likes to argue over trivial shit for basically no reason.

I'm glad to hear you somewhat backtracking from your original statement. The ad was clearly misleading. The point of debate should be if it was meant to be insulting or not.

Anyhow, I stayed away from the internet until I finished the game myself, and I ended up hating the ending without anyone else influencing my opinion. I'm sticking with that opinion, I'm still upset with BioWare, and none of that is going to simply change due to which way the wind is currently blowing.

By that logic, any back of the box quote is misleading. Heck, it'd be misleading even if they put the entire paragraph they pulled that quote from on the add since that paragraph could easily be taken out of context without the rest of the article surrounding it.

Applying your logic to marketing it would boil down to every piece of marketing being disgusting because it is misleading the consumer with half truths.

I mean, fuck, these kinds of things happen even outside of marketing. Ever been to court? Quotes from letters and shit get used out of context there all the time.

Do I think that it's (morally) right? No, I don't. But if you're going to call out Bioware (or EA) on this, then you should call out every ad, commercial or whatnot that's been thrown your way and be equally disgusted by those. As it stands you just come across (to me) as someone who is trying to find any reason they can think of to be angry at Bioware.

The quote is not a lie. And any intelligent consumer will see the ad and figure out why ME3 has been so heavily talked about. If they don't, and they buy the game based solely on the ad, then they are, quite simply, idiots and they deserve to be mislead.

@dagas: You must teach me this skill, oh great one!

@Sooty said:

@Bell_End said:

@whyareyoucrouchingspock said:

If you are still buying EA or Bioware games then you deserve it. I stopped at Dragon Age. Maybe someday you fellows will also "click".

lol... but ME3 is a fantastic game.

I thought it was pretty poor coming from 2, no idea how it's scoring as high as that game. Not a terrible game, but uhh, it's not on the same level.

i thought it had the great gameplay the second had and a great story like the first. i didn't like the story of the second so much and the first had pretty weak gameplay imo.

ok the ending might no be what i expected it to be, but that did not ruin the hour and hours of great gaming it gave me.

Do people not realize that of course they would use a quote like that even if it wasn't originally intended to be complimentary.

Its marketing 101.

@AjayRaz said:

props to whoever gave the green light to that

God you people are fucking children.

@Sooty said:

@Bell_End said:

@whyareyoucrouchingspock said:

If you are still buying EA or Bioware games then you deserve it. I stopped at Dragon Age. Maybe someday you fellows will also "click".

lol... but ME3 is a fantastic game.

I thought it was pretty poor coming from 2, no idea how it's scoring as high as that game. Not a terrible game, but uhh, it's not on the same level.

i thought it had the great gameplay the second had and a great story like the first. i didn't like the story of the second so much and the first had pretty weak gameplay imo.

ok the ending might no be what i expected it to be, but that did not ruin the hour and hours of great gaming it gave me.

@Brodehouse said:

God you people are fucking children.

Made me smile :D:D:D

EDIT: In all fairness, this IS a video-game enthusiast website. A majority of them probably ARE children.

Hahaha that's actually funny.

@Sgykah said:

Damn you Bioware! Stop giving us free content for a multiplayer the fans never, ever wanted (although quite a few have begrudgingly agreed that it's pretty decent).

Dopamine. It's called Dopamine.

@Sooty said:

It's even more of a corridor shooter than 2 was

Really? Maybe it's simply a matter of time but I can't remember a single firefight in ME2 that didn't take place in a small area. Granted some of the actual spaces may have been large, but the amount of real-estate you had to maneuver in was always pretty small. By contrast I can think of a handful of really open arenas in ME3 like the one with the Banshees and the one with the Atlas Mechs at the school...?

K now I would love to work in EA PR again, that's brilliant

Clever girl.

There's no such thing as bad press.

Haha nice! Whoever did that should get a raise. Great spin on the whole situation.

Nicely done. Nicely done.

Shitty, but damn you gotta respect that marketing.

Heh, this just in, marketing. Nothing that everyone doesn't do already.

Besides, it's kind of hilarious.

That is fucking hilarious.

Well, at least they'll dodge the Better Business Bureau with this.

@Sooty said:

It's even more of a corridor shooter than 2 was

Really? Maybe it's simply a matter of time but I can't remember a single firefight in ME2 that didn't take place in a small area. Granted some of the actual spaces may have been large, but the amount of real-estate you had to maneuver in was always pretty small. By contrast I can think of a handful of really open arenas in ME3 like the one with the Banshees and the one with the Atlas Mechs at the school...?

@JeanLuc: Most people I know, like in person, have no problems with the ending. The palette-swapped CGI cutscene was a little lazy, but the ambiguity was really fascinating. As they've said on the Bombcast, the fact that fans are reacting with such vigor is a testament to their love for the series and the narrative--it is something that should be advertised. It's sort of akin to the bizarre ending of The Blair Witch Project, except, sci-fi.

So mass effect 3 is john cena.

That's nothin new, movies do that on boxes all the time. Still is kinda gross though.

That's kind of gross.

To me, EW's statement is a more polite way of saying 'fans of the series have kneejerk bandwagon reaction to game, worthy of anything 4chan'.

@project343 said:

@JeanLuc: Most people I know, like in person, have no problems with the ending.

Interesting. Everyone I know in person hates the ending. Not saying you and your friends are stupid, its just funny is all.

That's fucking evil. Evil in a way I respect, but evil nonetheless.

@Sackmanjones said:

Well played Bioware… Well played… Also it's not false!