my answer is going to most likely be simply not buying / playing games. there is plenty in life to keep ourselves entertained that does not require the massive outlay of funds that gaming is starting to demand. If the companies push customers too far there will be more of us that just stop buying completely.
It felt like all the actions my character had taken, all the things I had done, were completely meaningless. The game felt empty and pointless. The ending to a series like this Matters! It matters a lot. For years we have been hearing the Bioware line concerning mass effect series, how our actions would have deep and significant impacts on the storyline. And then we reach the end to find out that was pretty much all a lie. We were deceived. False advertising, no sense of closure, hit out of left-field by a completely unexpected curve ball, the list goes on. People have a right to be pissed. I hope the upcoming DLC which adds to the game addresses these concerns. If it does not I will be much more hesitant about spending money on bioware products in the future.
I must say, you are mistaken Laura. The audience matters. This is obvious to anyone who makes money off their product. The idea however is not to give the audience what they expect, that would be boring. But to give them something they will mostly enjoy. This does not mean the ending must be 'happy' or 'sad', but a production and ending which makes the audience content is a very worthy goal. Art does not exist in a vacuum. It is not only to beheld by its own standards. To put it quite simply, Bioware is selling a product. There are certain expectations the customer has of this product. If those are not fulfilled for the majority of purchasers then there is a problem. To put it another way, I loved the mass effect series. The first two games I have played at least 5 times each, all the way through. Doing everything in them. The third one I have only played through once. This was because, to me - the ending was really really bad. It made little sense in relation to the rest of the series, it did not give any sense of closure or completion. It felt like it was tacked in from something else entirely and made me literally shrug my mental shoulders and say to myself - "what the heck was that? Is that really the end? What a load of ****!!".
Game developers want you to keep spending money on new games. This is also why games are getting shorter. Companies want to keep their greedy fingers in your wallet. They do not want you to keep playing old games for long periods of time because they don't make money from that. (Note to Gamespot Staff: If i could have simply put manual carraige returns into these posts I would have left it as one larger post instead of having to split it up like this. For some reason the posting system is globbing all my text together and removing all carriage returns. Please Fix this)
Why do you think so many games don't allow direct connections to your friends anymore? Games do not have to go through company servers for connections - All the software is still there and could easily allow direct connections to your friends - if the developers want it to. But the manufacturers set it up so you must connect through their services on purpose so you have to buy the new game when they turn off their company servers.
The industry mostly doesn't care about preserving games for posterity. They only care about how much money they make. If its not making them money, they throw it out. And if you can't play it anymore - all the better. It just means you have to go out and buy the new one.
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