You’ve seen reports of Mass Effect 3’s ending being disappointing to many fans. Game Informer and Kotaku reported this weekend that a Mass Effect fan is so upset that he filed a complaint with the FTC and the Better Business Bureau.
After reading through the list of promises about the ending of the game they made in their advertising campaign and PR interviews, it was clear that the product we got did not live up to any of those claims,” El_Spiko says. “This is not somethign [sic] I was happy to do, but after the terrible ending that was in no way the product that had been advertised to me and the lack of any kind of response from Bioware/EA to address this, I felt it was one of my only recourses.
I like my video games, I like them a lot. If a game doesn’t live up to my expectations I’m definitely disappointed. Maybe even a touch sad, bummed that I wasted a hard earned $60. Would I ever take my compaint through a legal route? BioWare promised to deliver an epic trilogy to it’s fans, and I feel it did just that. Filing a legal complaint based on you not getting it doesn’t seem fair. M.E. 3 is based on choices, you save and interact with thousands of races, and when the game ends you make one final choice. Wasting the FTC’s time (whether or not you think they serve any purpose) with a video game false advertising complaint is ridiculous. If these accusations are valid then every game on the market is guilty of criminal intent. No game has ever fully lived up to it’s advertising guise to everyone. Let’s take Elder Scrolls for example, one of the most popular RPG’s on the current generation of consoles. I hate them, they are in my opinion boring beyond belief. Their commercials promise me excitement, adventure, and hours of entertainment, I got 1 hour before turning it off and giving it to a friend. No game is objectively perfect, if a game studio could create a game that every single human being alive liked then everyone would play video games. You are not entitled to having a game run exactly the way you prefer because you’re a fan of the series. Being a fan doesn’t give you creative license over a title, the developer owes you gratitude for supporting them, but that is all. Expecting anything more removes the artistic side from games. If you want to play games that try to cater to the masses and read minds buy a Tony Hawk game, I think those are still be siphoned for cash.