Creative Control

Throughout this semester the roles of author and audience have been contemplated and criticized.  Is the author’s intention and background important to understanding the text?  Does the audience take on the part that the author creates for them?  What does the reader bring to the text?  Does the reader have a certain screen?   Does the author put up a certain screen?  Who has the power, and who appropriates the text?  Who really decides the course of action?  It could be the author who wants to persuade or show a certain point of view.  Or, it could be the reader who decides to read a text a certain way.

I’m not a gamer, but apparently there’s some controversy with the videogame Mass Effect. Bioware, a company, promised gamers that they would create a trilogy of games where the decisions a gamer makes in the first game would affect the play in the second game which would then affect the play of the third game.  Supposedly in the end it didn’t matter, and the ending of the third game was massively disappointing.  People felt lied to.   They wrote in to Bioware demanding and petitioning for a new ending.  Bioware decided to give the people what they want in the form of an epilogue that would answer more of the open ended questions. As an outsider, this seems to take the roles of author/audience to another level. 

I think that telling the creator to change the ending is taking away from the original art.  The lines seem to be blurred anyhow, because I’m sure money is the huge motivator. So, Bioware may be concerned with revenue above a creator’s original work.  Also, giving gamers certain decision making abilities may also give them a sense of ownership of the game.  They want to see their hours of gaming and decision making pay off.  I wonder if this is a newer concept or if even as recent as 100 years ago, that author found themselves being petitioned to change the endings of their books because their fans didn’t agree with the ending.  I feel that a creator has every right to create a text a certain way, and the reader (whether they like it or not/agree with it or not) must accept the text as it is.  By this I mean that the reader should accept that the text is worded a certain way, but the reader still has the power to interpret the words a certain way.  I suppose both the creator and the reader have power, but the power is limited.