However, this post is unique. It was accepted (by a site that shall go unnamed) and published, then yanked offline because the site owner was unhappy about the “bad comments” it was receiving. Since I wasn’t able to see the comments before the article was removed, I can only assume he meant that the commenters disagreed with my post, which is often a key indicator of success in an opinion piece.

Anyway, it’s old news by now so I’m not going to shop it around. Instead, I’ll post it here for you guys to read. Feel free to argue about it in the comments—I promise not to unpublish it.

Is EA Really America’s Worst Company?

Forgive me for being a little late to the news, but it appears that EA was recently named “Worst Company in America” by the Consumerist. The title was earned through an elimination-based tournament in which site visitors could cast a vote in various matchups—Chase vs. Bank of America, AT&T vs. Verizon, etc. Think of it as the NCAA bracket, but for villainous corporations. After all the votes were tallied, EA stood as the lone victor and was promptly declared king of all that is wrong with the world.

Here’s an official quote from the announcement:

After more than 250,000 votes, Consumerist readers ultimately decided that the type of greed exhibited by EA, which is supposed to be making the world a more fun place, is worse than Bank of America’s avarice, which some would argue is the entire point of operating a bank.

Here’s the big problem with this award—it’s total bullshit. EA is certainly a terrible company; they treat their customers poorly, price gouge their games and turn amazing studios into boring sequel factories. They also pull hilarious stunts like this. But are we seriously pretending like being jerked around by on-disc DLC is somehow worse than Bank of America illegally evicting thousands of homeowners? Does a rushed Dragon Age II really land EA at the same “awfulness” level as British Petroleum, who in the two years since dumping millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico has reaped billions in profits but done absolutely nothing to make its operations safer?

Seriously?

Yes, it’s fun to have a laugh at the expense of EA—they’re bastards, and there’s no arguing they aren’t. The absolute worst company in America, though? No way. After all, they’re just a video game publisher. No matter how sneaky they may be or how sinister their business practices, people have the option of not purchasing their games (or not playing games at all).

Some companies are not boycotted so easily. Here’s a quick list of companies that have more crooked business practices and a far greater negative impact than EA, but are much harder to avoid in daily life:

• Monsanto
• The United States Postal Service
• Phillip Morris
• Halliburton
• Wal-Mart
• Facebook
• Time Warner
• Johnson & Johnson

EA even mentioned a few of these offenders in its (admittedly snarky) response to the award:

We’re sure that British Petroleum, AIG, Philip Morris, and Halliburton are all relieved they weren’t nominated this year. We’re going to continue making award-winning games and services played by more than 300 million people worldwide.

I’m not defending EA– I agree that they’re among the worst in the country, and they’re definitely the worst in the games industry. But the company makes a good point in its slightly sarcastic reply—at the end of the day, all they really do is make video games.

Video games are serious business to us gamers, but they’re not that big a deal in the real world. Giving EA the “Worst Company in America” award only makes sense if its actions are detrimental to the country and its citizens—not a bunch fanboys who can’t see through their nerd rage.

Take a step back and really give it some thought. Can you really tell an illegally-evicted family that your day-one DLC is the worst thing a company has ever perpetrated?

For the most part, it was.

Fans of the series (and followers of gaming in general) have probably noticed the recent caterwauling of Mass Effect players who claim that the ending of Mass Effect 3, which is effectively the ending of the Mass Effect saga, simply doesn’t cut it. Reasons vary from one person to the other, but thousands of players have expressed their discontent. Protests have cropped up and petitions have been signed, all in the hopes that Bioware will give the ending a second try.

Now that I’ve finished the game myself, I think I can join the conversation. And my opinion is fairly simple: Minus a couple of major problems, Mass Effect 3’s ending is exactly what it should have been.

*Spoilers Ahead*

First, let me tell you a little bit about the way I played Mass Effect. I started with the original, and went full Paragon all the way through. I saved Wrex, I protected the Council, I did every loyalty mission and I destroyed the Collector base. My Commander Shepard was an upstanding, level-headed individual that never once punched a reporter in the face. When Mass Effect 2 ended, my entire crew was intact. When it comes to Mass Effect, I am nothing if not a completionist.

I took the same attitude when I played Mass Effect 3, doing everything I could imagine to get a good ending. I visited the Citadel after every mission, talked to my crew, scanned every system to 100% and completed all of the side missions I could find. I united the Krogan and the Turians; I made peace between the Geth and Quarians. Despite my efforts, I failed to reach full military strength. After 35 hours of gameplay and finding every resource I thought possible, my Effective Military Strength landed at around 3,700—pretty far below the rumored 5,000 needed for the “perfect” ending. I must have missed something, but I can’t imagine what.

Since I couldn’t find any more side quests or resources, I figured that I was as close to a good ending as I could possibly get via the single player content. So, I headed to the Illusive Man’s base and staggered, bloody and beaten, to the finale.

When you reach the end of Mass Effect 3, you are given three possible choices, each of which varies slightly based on your EMS:

• Control Reapers, Shepard dies, Mass Relays destroyed
• Destroy all synthetic life, Reapers/Shepard/EDI/Geth die, Mass Relays destroyed
• Combine synthetic/organic life, Shepard dies, Mass Relays destroyed

With one major exception (which I’ll get to later), Bioware got this part right–none of these options are immediately obvious as “good.” It makes sense that the answer to a galactic crisis wouldn’t necessarily be sunshine and rainbows, and it’s fitting that the final decision of the franchise forces the player to take hard stock of what’s really important. While some players have argued that it’s unfair to end up with three choices that don’t reflect the decisions you’ve made before, this argument is a fallacy.

When you consider the three options, you’re mentally and emotionally experiencing every decision you’ve ever made. Those choices may not manifest in the “decision chamber,” but they are present in how you go about deciding what to do next. If you hated the Geth, you probably didn’t mind destroying all synthetics. If you sided with Cerberus and the Illusive Man, controlling the Reapers makes sense. If you were moved by Legion’s humanity and the evolution of EDI, controlling or destroying synthetic life probably made you sick to your stomach.

The decisions you’ve made and the allies you’ve found have an immeasurable impact on the emotional resonance of each of the three available paths, and in that Bioware has created something unlike anything ever seen before. It is a brutal, difficult choice only because no path is right; no path is “good.” All three options challenge you to rise above your individual motivations and choose what is truly best for the galaxy. The only things that make one option seem better than the other are the loyalties you’ve formed in your mind and your emotional attachments to completely pretend in-game characters. This, in short, is incredible.

So the choices, at face value, are a success. The problem lies in how they play out.

For example, I’m a full Paragon character, yet for some reason I have to complete a Renegade action to stop the game from ending. This is patently unfair. Luke Plunkett (writing for Kotaku) summed it up by saying that it felt like Bioware suddenly changed the rules of the game, and I’d have to agree. I absolutely hate that I had to take a Renegade option at the last minute—not because it was Renegade, but because it wasn’t an option at all.  Apparently, some players have a Paragon conversation choice just before this happens, but despite playing completely Paragon in all three games, mine was greyed out. Once again, I cannot fathom what I missed.

Bu that’s just my personal nitpicking. The broader problem is the enormous plot holes created by the ending. Why is Joker suddenly flying away in the Normandy with my crew? What happened to the enormous fleet of ships flying around Earth—the Normandy crashed, so wouldn’t the other ships? Speaking of which, don’t the Quarians live on ships? Are they all dead now? What of the Reapers? I saw them fly away (I chose the Synthesis path), but does that mean we’re all buddies now? None of this makes any sense, and Bioware doesn’t seem to be in any hurry to explain.

The great majority of these plot holes are caused by what I consider to be the primary failing of all three endgame choices: The destruction of the Mass Relays.

Being unable to save the Relays feels almost like a flat-out betrayal–it makes everything you’ve done to that point completely moot. Why did I go about brokering a peace with the Quarians and the Geth if they’re never going to see each other again? Why does it matter if I stop the Reapers from ending civilization if the act blasts everyone back to the Stone Age? What, exactly, was the point of everything I’ve done in the last three games?

I’m unhappy with my ending not because it was bleak, or because Commander Shepard died, but because the three choices I’m given render all of my work in the previous games completely meaningless by severing ties between the galaxy’s civilizations. I spent hundreds of hours scanning planets, gathering resources and acting diplomatic, and none of it counted. And not only did none of it count, but the ending I did get is so littered with inconsistencies and unanswered questions that it left me staring at my television in shock.

Why isn’t there at least one option that preserves the Mass Relays? Saving them makes Shepard’s sacrifice meaningful. It allows for peace and unity in the galaxy, even if only for a fleeting moment. It’s not ideal—Shepard still dies and the universe changes forever, but it’s a fitting, challenging end to an incredible saga. Most of all, it gives players hope for the future of the characters and societies they’ve come to love.

I don’t want to say Mass Effect fans deserved better, because we don’t “deserve” anything. But those of us who poured our time, sweat and tears into this franchise certainly expected better. We expected that our decisions would count. We expected to see what happened with our crew and the civilizations they represented. And we expected that somehow, some way, Commander Shepard could save the day and stop the galaxy from becoming a collection of isolated planets.

Perhaps that’s the real problem here: At the end of the day, we believed too much in Shepard’s message of hope and determination. We believed that with hard work, unfathomable sacrifice and the support of characters we cared about, we could save the galaxy. As it turns out, our fate was sealed from the moment we stepped on Eden Prime.

And that is the saddest realization of all.

PIPA, essentially the Senate’s version of SOPA, has also been delayed, with Senate Majority Leader Harry Red claiming that he’d like to “resolve” the public’s issues with the bill before proceeding. So, for the time being, it appears that the most direct threats to a free web are off the table. However, seeing these bills knocked back into committee brings little comfort to those who follow politics and tech and even less to those who work in either.

Here’s why: The main problem with both SOPA and PIPA isn’t that they strangle the web at the behest of a few billion-dollar entertainment industry lobbies. This is certainly a concern, but it’s not the primary thing about which we should be concerned. The main problem, as I see it, is that the United States Congress apparently has no idea how the Internet works.

One need only look at the numbers to see how clueless Congress was on this issue. Before the blackout protests, SOPA and PIPA had an alarming 80 Congressional supporters and only 31 opponents. After the protest, the supporters dropped to 65, and the opponents jumped up to 101. While some of the new opponents had no previous stance on the bill, a shockingly large number had already spoken in support of SOPA/PIPA.

This means one of two things: Either the congressional representatives in question were swayed by the entertainment lobby, or, more likely, they simply signed onto the bill because they thought it sounded good. The responses out of Congress this week have been ridiculous, with several representatives grumbling about having a “talk” with their people so they’re more careful about what they let them sign –whatever happened to reading legislation before you put your name on it? From an outsider’s perspective, it’s hard to escape the feeling that many of SOPA/PIPA’s supporters in effect had no comprehension of what they were supporting.

The biggest issue with SOPA isn’t its wording. It’s the incompetency of the people that created and supported it. How can we expect our government to move nimbly and intelligently when a concept as basic as the Internet continually eludes them?  As long as Congress fails to understand the web and how it functions (at least in a basic sense), they will continue to write and promote damaging legislation that threatens the freedom of information we’ve all come to love so much.

The Internet won’t be safe until current congressional reps take a few community college classes on the Internet, or until we vote some more tech-savvy people into office. I’d recommend the latter.

If you want to get involved in the fight against SOPA/PIPA, which is absolutely still in progress, check out these resources:

• Information on H.R.3261: Stop Online Piracy Act  
• Information on S.968: PROTECT IP Act
• Electronic Frontier Foundation: Stop the Internet Blacklist Bills
• American Censorship: Write Congress Now

My name is Mike Foster, and I’m a video games writer. I do features, reviews, columns, opinions and guides – you can hire me! Anyway, this website is still young, so thanks for bearing with me while I get it all sorted out.

Sorry, nothing to see here!