Gamefront on why the ASA sided with EA.

http://www.gamefront.com/mass-effect-3s-advertising-was-never-the-issue/

Posted on June 15, 2012, Phil Hornshaw

Here’s something that needs saying, because it’s apparently back on everybody’s radar: Players who felt misled about Mass Effect 3 never thought it was about the advertising. It was about misleading statements made by the game’s developers.
So all the journalists who are reporting on the ruling of the UK Advertising Standards Authority finding that Electronic Arts’ advertising on Mass Effect 3 is not misleading, and relating it to the larger debate about the game’s ending — you’re missing (and have missed and continue to miss) the point. Especially when you’re using that ruling as some means of demonstrating that EA and BioWare were in the right with Mass Effect 3 and that the fans who were upset were wrong.
That’s the coverage I’ve been seeing lately, anyway. A lot of stories running down the facts, then throwing in a little bit of journo editorializing roughly of the opinion of, “Well, I’m glad this controversy is over and I hope those noisy nerds sit down and shut up next time.” Worse is what’s going on in forums and comments, where the opinions are less thinly veiled or polite. That’s where pro-ME3 ending folks are using the ASA ruling as full-on proof that their beloved developer and publisher were right and those uppity, angry fans were just a bunch of basement-dwelling jackasses who would never have been happy.

The adults have spoken, this viewpoint declares. Stop crying, play the games you’re given andlike it.
The ASA deals with advertising messages. This is a really important distinction to make. In EA’s advertising for Mass Effect 3, all that was discussed was this statement: “Your choices affect the ending.” And that’s certainly true — while players might not be happy with the diversity of those endings, you can’t deny that, as the ASA rules, they are thematicallydifferent. Even if they are, largely, effectively the same. But EA said multiple endings, and three slightly different, thematically disparate endings qualify.
EA is in the clear here. But then again, nobody was ever saying EA lied to anybody. They were saying BioWare did.


The transgressions in how Mass Effect 3 was represented to players as opposed to what they were actually sold, the snake oil salesmanship of it, was never done in the advertising — it was done in preview coverage, with statements from actual developers of the game. You can easily look back at scans of a massive Game Informer preview of Mass Effect 3 and read the quotes. Here’s a good one from a Game Informer feature from Mass Effect 3 Director Casey Hudson, regarding the complexity of endings in ME3 as opposed to ME2:
“Yeah, and I’d say much more so, because we have the ability to build the endings out in a way that we don’t have to worry about eventually tying them back together somewhere. This story arc is coming to an end with this game. That means the endings can be a lot more different. At this point we’re taking into account so many decisions that you’ve made as a player and reflecting a lot of that stuff. It’s not even in any way like the traditional game endings, where you can say how many endings there are or whether you got ending A, B, or C.
“It’s more like there are some really obvious things that are different and then lots and lots of smaller things, lots of things about who lives and who dies, civilizations that rose and fell, all the way down to individual characters. That becomes the state of where you left your galaxy. The endings have a lot more sophistication and variety in them.”

There’s no denying that Hudson’s characterization of the endings is definitely not what was delivered. And there are statements all over the Internet from Producer Mike Gamble and Hudson discussing just how grandiose the endgame of Mass Effect 3 would be. We’re not talking about developers missing the mark on a feature or talking up an idea that falls flat when it’s actually played out — we’re talking about things that these guys told players would be in the game, which are not in the game. Arguably the biggest and most important Mass Effect 3features were discussed at length, ad nauseum, and don’t appear in the shipped product. That is, was and continues to be the Mass Effect 3 ending debate, and to characterize it as anything else is disingenuous, misleading or just plain dumb.
So no, EA is not guilty of false advertising (unless you want to start talking about whether video game journalism is actually advertising, but that’s a debate I don’t think we can have right now because the truth will make me cry), because EA never put anything false in its advertising. Simple as that. But fans didn’t just pull this notion of 16 endings out of the air — they got that from BioWare. They didn’t go into Mass Effect 3 expecting vastly different endgame experiences because they dreamed it up — they got that from BioWare. They weren’t disappointed at the non-resolution of the galaxy because they’re overly invested nerds whose expectations were upset — they got those expectations from BioWare.
I can’t understand why anyone, journalist or fan, would imply that gamers shouldn’t be upset about that, regardless of what one random government authority thinks about an issue that really isn’t related to the central debate at all.

And I can't understand why EA and Bioware think that siding with "journalists" that in fact are marketing tools, trying to sell advertising space on their sites are their allies and more important than the players.

It's the question I had no answer until now: After a drop of 42.16% on their negotiable shares value from January 3rd to June 15th, how can they still believe that to ally themselves with a money sink, AGAINST their money source is a good plan?

They have their irrelevant ruling, we have ours. The UK may have determined it to not be False Advertising the the BBB did, so just counter with that. Don't let them forget that we have some ammunition of our own stored back here.

As far as I know only 3 people complained to the authorities about ME3's false advertising.

And though most of us think those ads are misleading we don't really care about them.

Ads being acknowledged as appropriate does not mean that the ending isn't badly written and a complete opposite of what we were promised by the developers.

You know you have failed when you need an official ruling about advertising your game.
EA might have wan this but it is essentially a huge PR loss.

oh ASA.....ASA...you betrayed us UK gamers......hang wait a second...have any of you ever seen a video game....I SAID HAVE ANY OF YOU ON ASA SEEN A VIDEO GAME.....may want to turn your hearing aid up.
from that sentence you get why this ruling means nothing. we have this thing in the UK were we have people who have NO knowledge on the subject, have no idea how the subject works yet have the power to make decisions on the subject. its like having someone who has never seen an orange before and demands they all be purple.

The Gamefront article is a good one - one of a handful of editorials that actually understands the issue. I especially like this line:

" ... you’re missing (and have missed and continue to miss) the point. Especially when you’re using that ruling as some means of demonstrating that EA and BioWare were in the right with Mass Effect 3 and that the fans who were upset were wrong."

That more or less sums up IGN and Gamespot and Kotaku and the rest of the muppets who never took the time to understand the specifics of the situation because they were too busy rushing to their computers to hammer out the article they wanted to write instead of an article that actually addressed the issues.

It's because a certain eye candy journalist with incredible "integrity" licked a video game product to earn credibility. EA obviously knows how to market it's games. You put a video game "reporter" who's only job in real life is to look pretty in front of a camera, into a game, and have said persons employer give an "unbiased" review of your products. . . Or I'm completely missing something.

My "integrity" fills a G-cup...will someone pay me to be useless eye candy? I can write and I actually play video games to boot!

@ Jessica Holt

500 war assets for you.

Why not 9000?

Can I just have Jessica Chobot's job instead? It's not like she's done anything to deserve it, and I can actually, you know, form coherent sentences and tell the difference between a PSP and a lollipop

Incidentally, why are there so many superficial airheads named Jessica?

I never felt lied to, but that may just be because I avoided reading anything about ME3 prior to release in order to avoid any potential spoilers. I'm not holding the line because I felt mislead, I'm here because the ending just plain sucked, and I know Bioware is capable of better.

So if I buy a bunch of advertising for tuchanka and I put palm trees and big blue lakes on the poster and I open my wallet and pay for it, it's not false advertisement?

That was cruel in more than one level. Laughed A LOT. IGN and Bioware brought that upon themselves.