Review: Mass Effect Datapad

You can't "win" Mass Effect 3 without playing an online game. Either you have to play many, many bouts of ME3 multiplayer, or play many, many bouts of Infiltrator, or play Datapad. Datapad is the free iPhone/iPad app that Bioware is releasing so no one can say you have to pay extra in order to win ME3.

Datapad is a Farmville-style app, where you send space fleets on "missions" to raise galactic readiness. You quickly find out that in any of the five quadrants there are 3 missions that never change. Yep, same star systems, same description, same rewards. You have to send your fleets to do those missions over and over to get galactic readiness points. And when I say over and over, I mean literally dozens and dozens of times to get your galactic readiness to where you can get the best ME3 ending.

Which means, of course, that you have to check your iPad or iPhone constantly in order to make sure fleets aren't sitting still. Just like Farmville, the game intrudes into daily life. It will take days of playing Datapad constantly to get your readiness up. I've been playing constantly for two days and I've improved my galactic readiness by 5%.

This is not a game. No one would actually play Datapad if they weren't trying to avoid having to play Infiltrator or ME3 multiplayer. Datapad is a chore.

It could have been given a little flavor with trivial effort. Just write different missions for different star systems. And with a tiny bit more effort, there could have been jeopardy. (Your starfleets can be "crippled" but they fix themselves in an hour, which is tedious but hardly alarming.) But they didn't want to. Bioware/EA don't really want you to play Datapad. They want you to buy Infiltrator for $7, or play ME3 multiplayer (which requires an Xbox LIVE Gold membership). But they want to pretend that they're not forcing you to buy something.

So Datapad is free. And it's worth every penny you pay.

PS Aside from the Galaxy at War "game" on Datapad, you can also access the game's codex, in case you didn't read it in-game, and you can check a Mass Effect twitter feed.

PPS The programming itself is terrible. It keeps losing login information. It keeps claiming that my iPhone is not connected to the Internet. You have to hit the touchscreen repeatedly to get it to respond. No pinch-to-zoom. Incredibly slow to reload. It is a badly, badly made app. .

PPPS It's only free if you're playing the game on your first profile. You'll need to buy a second online pass if you're playing the game on a second profile.

PPPPS: Increasing "bonus readiness" seems to be the fastest way to increase readiness.

Mass Effect 3: A Broken Single Player Game

I have now played through every mission available to me in Mass Effect 3, accumulating allies for the big fight against the deadly galaxy-obliterating Reapers.

Unfortunately, due to really cheesy marketing ploys by Bioware or EA, I haven't actually "won" the game. To get a semi-happy ending, I have to boost my "galactic readiness." This can only be accomplished by:

a. Playing lots of battles in multiplayer mode. This requires a Gold membership in Xbox LIVE. Also, you have to use the online access code you get in the game box, which means if you kid wants to play on his profile, he has to buy another access code. And, of course, you have to like multiplayer. I don't.

b. Buy an iPad game called Infiltrator and play it lots. This costs $7, plus you have to have an iPad. And it's a pure shooter. If I wanted a pure shooter, I'd play CALL OF DUTY.

c. Play an iPad game called Datapad. Datapad is free, but boring. You send out missions and they complete in real-time, hours and hours later. Not a lot of work, but not a lot of fun, either. I figure it will take at least 10 days of attending to Datapad to get my galactic readiness up.

All of these methods require you to invest hours in them in order to get your galactic readiness anywhere near where it needs to be.

Boo, I say. If I buy a single player game, I don't want to have to play multiplayer. I don't want to play online. Bioware/EA are basically selling a broken single player game that can only be repaired by playing online. I feel betrayed and angry. Boo.

And Here's a Little More About Contrast

Here's a little bit more about the game I've been working on... Incidentally, that's not a shadow of the player character running up a bridge. That's the player character, shifted into shadows, running across the shadow of a bridge.

Registered?

Q. Should I put "WGA registered" on my title page?

I don't think so. I've never seen a script from a professional writer that had that on the title page.

As I've mentioned before in my FAQ, I believe it is more important to copyright your script than to register it with the WGA. It costs the same, but the Library of Congress copyright carries statutory damages if your copyright is violated, while registration only provides some evidence that you're the original writer.

But if you must register the script, there is no need to put that on your script. It sort of says, "Hey, if you're planning to STEAL my VALUABLE SCRIPT, you CAN'T, because it's REGISTERED! You BASTARD!!!!"

It just looks amateurish.

(More posts about copyright here.)

Releases and Rights

Q. I just wrote a spec coming-of-age film script based on an experience from my youth. As this is based on a true story, do I need to get releases signed by individuals portrayed in the script? How is this usually handled in scripts like 'Erin Brockovich,' etc.? Thanks for your thoughts!!

Depends on how faithful you are to what happened. If people and events are recognizable, and especially if you use real names, then you'll need releases. ERIN BROCKOVICH would have needed the rights from Erin Brockovich, and releases from the main characters in the film (the lawyer she worked for, etc.). They could also use anything that was in the trial record, as court documents are automatically public domain. (I think. I'm not a lawyer.)

If you are writing a story inspired by true events, you should be okay. I doubt Richard Linklater bought the rights from his high school stoner friends to put characters loosely based on them in SLACKERS.

Also, realistically, it depends on how pissed off people are going to be. If you're really ripping someone a new one, you might want to lawyer up. THE INSIDER probably had a lawyer or two closely vetting the script.

Mass Effect 3

I'm about a ten hours into Mass Effect 3, the latest in the hit third-person RPG/shooter franchise from BioWare, and I'm a little frustrated. The shooting is fun. The story has twists and turns.

It's the characters that bug me. They're not a lot of fun.

Okay, granted, Earth has just been attacked by the Reapers, a race of superpowerful robots intent on destroying all organic life in the galaxy. That does tend to make everyone a tad sad, and a tad focused on fighting for survival.

But isn't there room for a few surprises?

Where's the guy who's just broken up with his girlfriend, and is crushed by that, even though she's still alive? And he knows his loss doesn't compare to the millions who are dead, but damn it, it still hurts?

Where's the girl who's inexplicably happy, because her massive Ponzi scheme was about to collapse, and now that everything's life or death, one con that got out of control doesn't matter any more?

Or the dude who is just a wee little bit happy that his ex-wife was incinerated along with New York?

Where's the character who really, really wants to get himself killed, because life is not worth living, and, if you take him on a mission, he does?

We care about characters because of their flaws, as I said in my MIGS talk. The people you spend most of the time with have no flaws.

Look, I love shooting evil spider cyborgs as much as the next guy. But BioWare is known as a game writer's (relative) paradise. Do all the conversations have to be this sad and grim? Couldn't they be a little less predictable and a little more, well, human?

Rehearsals

"The rehearsal is the work. The performance is the relaxation." -- Stanislavski, quoted by Michael Caine in the NPR Fresh Air podcast.

Contrast Game

Here's the teaser trailer for Contrast, the awesomely fun game I've been working on as Narrative Designer. It's a platformer where you travel places by shifting in and out of the world of the shadows on the wall. It's being announced at GDC in a couple of hours.



More about the game on 1UP.com.