Rev Dark Wrote:BA asked (without the support of Face, Murdock and Hannibal)Okay, first, I'm just going to make a note that I'm arguing for the sake of arguing - I'm personally ambivalent about the 'Change the ending bit' - though I do fall in the 'the ending kinda sucks' camp.
Rev? Are you, by perchance, a Linux user?
Only when the painful necessity arises. At some point I will upgrade to Linux Guru;but I have other more pertinent skills that I am sharpening. Maybe on my next PC.
I am not sure what the thrust of the question was; but I will take a stab at it.
Open source software as Art as it pertains to the Mass Effect Mass Butthurt.
If you are a contributor to an open source software project; you are an artist in regards to that project. Not unlike some of the Renaissance Master's schools - where a painting might be signed Titian, but Titian just oversaw the process, did some sketches, and perhaps painted the odd ankle of broad buttock (it is after all Titian; the joy of base-minded art students and the bane of prudish art teachers.) You are still and artist and you still have stake - and more importantly a say in the product; you are part of the creative process.
That doesn't really apply to Mass Effect. You are a consumer (unless you worked on the product). Every choice you make was designed by the artists responsible for creating the experience. There is no mechanism for busting out of the shell and ad-libbing new lines, or having Sheppard drop space skivvies, smear Space Hamster marmite over the now exposed galactic genitalia and invite the all tentacle Martian rugby team over for a nosh. You are not part of the creative process - you are making choices within the system that someone else's creating process built.
You may have a lot invested in your personal space avatar, but it is in the actions allowed to you by the game. A creative process you were not part of.
However, you did accede that someone could have a lot invested in their personal space avatar - which in itself is a personal stake. Now, I'll admit that it's not a _real_ creative stake, but I think that it _does_ give the illusion of such. And I don't think that many consumers of the game really make a distinction between the two. As such, their reaction is an emotional one. And so for those so invested, the demand 'Change it!' probably doesn't seem very ridiculous at all. On top of which, in no other media is such a change really possible. Nobody is seriously going to believe that an author is going to rewrite the ending of their book and republish it, nor does anyone think that anyone's going to re-assemble a movie cast to reshoot the last scene. But it's clearly _possible_ to patch a video game until it works better - and so come the demands. I think this is simply human nature reacting to the state of the media rather than a deficiency in those people demanding the change. For one, I don't think any of those same people would actually go about demanding the same change in any other media.
Also, those same consumers don't perceive a game as 'art' but rather perceive it as a product. And in their view, the product is defective - and thus should be fixed.