If you have been following gaming news in the past week or so, you must have seen the backlash against Mass Effect Andromeda, its facial animations and glitches. But is it as bad as people make it out to be?
Age of (Mis)information
We live in an age where everything can be tweeted or vlogged and shared with millions of people at the touch of a button. For this reason, it is no wonder the degree of some issues is blown out of proportion. Specifically for the latest addition to BioWare’s long-running series, I do believe the negativity is a bit too much.
Two Minutes Hate
Developers worked hard for 5 years to build an experience, a piece of art they are proud of, only to find that their work is reduced to dirt because of a few problems. Don’t get me wrong, I am not defending BioWare’s shortcomings, the bugs, the bad animation, the not-so-fresh gameplay experience; but at its core, Mass Effect Andromeda is still a good game. Simple as that.
Jumping to conclusions
Not only that, but, patches have already been released that fix the issues the community complained about little by little. The ever-increasing tactic of releasing games early and finishing or fixing them later is a large discussion for another time. For now, I’ll close with the following; it is the right of every customer to complain when the product they purchased is not what was expected. It’s just a shame that social media paints such a negative picture so quickly.
Bait & Click
Bad press sells, gets YouTube views up quick and there’s no way of knowing what will be in the spotlight once a game comes out. Sometimes, though, that bad press is justified; just look at how Mighty No. 9 turned out to be. Sadly, I believe it won’t be long before our most treasured franchises fade away because they didn’t get enough sales in those first crucial months when some of their less-favorable aspects were ‘trending’. Some games deserve the negativity, some don’t, but at the end of the day once you scare off investors, the chances of a game ever being released grow slimmer.