There's a very simple solution for this member -- don't read the PMs. Don't go to the OGD, don't go to S&T, don't worry about it. To each his own, as they say; can't please everybody. I think you're doing an awesome thing by interacting with us (and we don't really thank you enough ).
Also, IMO the best benefit of it, beyond the clearing up of details about official story, is it gives us lots of stuff we can use for our fanfics. I know many of the questions I've personally asked you have been in light of helping me decide where I'd like to go in fan fiction, and that is awesome.
The member must have never heard of my favorite Greg sayings -- "Can't answer it" and "Wait and see."
That's what happens to wrong theories eventually anyways, whether it's cutting to the chase or whether it's later when it's disproven in the actual story. As the head honcho of the theories forum, I have seen no evidence that there's anything bad about this. This claim gets tossed around, but thus far nobody's ever explained why they say that, as far as I have seen. See below for why I think it's around.
Also, it feeds theories; helps us make better ones, etc.
And yes, listening to fans is not really a good thing.
To which we naturally must ask, if listening to fans is bad, then why does this person -- a fan -- want you to listen to himher? The claim inherently disproves itself.
Never heard of this guy, but regardless, celebrities don't know everything. I've gone over many times what's wrong with this sort of idea. In short, he's talking about the overall fact that you can't please everyone -- ironically cancelling out the very complaint this particular fan was making.
That doesn't mean there aren't many more fans who actually do appreciate the work you put into this -- and there are. I've seen many say so.
Vast majority of Bionicle story, in my observation, comes from the mind of you, Greg, and/or story team, not from fan input. I mean, seriously, the first S&T contest decided what? The alternate name of a semi-obscure slang? It made it into what? A line in the encyclopedia? That's hardly ruining the story, lol. And most other fan input is similar. And someone who doesn't know from hearing it on here that it was fan input probably wouldn't see anything different about it from other official content.
That said, when fans have great ideas that become major things, like making a Skakdi named Nektann who later becomes a set, it's awesome to see it used! This person might not like it for whatever reason, but heshe should take to heart the very fact heshe pointed out -- you can't please everybody.
In short, the truth is, IMO, "the customer is sometimes right" XD.
I agree wholeheartedly, Greg. In fact, I would go a lot farther and say that a theory that's proven wrong is still a great theory regardless IF it was well-supported by what evidence the theorizer had at the time.
Occasionally I give the "Gold Key to Nongu" award for theories, for using evidence and reasoning well and coming up with neat ideas that are actually plausible. So, when those theories get proved wrong, as inevitably most are bound to due to simple statistics, do I wipe them from the roster of Gold Key winners? Of course not. A good theory is not about whether it's right or wrong, but about whether it's well-thought-out.
Of course, it's awesome when we make theories that prove to be right. It can be a little dissapointing when they are proven wrong. But IMO to take it to the extreme of seeing your theory as "ruined" just because it was proven wrong, just means you came at it with the wrong attitude to begin with. I never place personal stock in my theories, because I'm smart enough to know it could easily be wrong.
In fact, I half expect my theories to be wrong as a general rule, and even half look forward to it! To reference the Mythbusters, they often say they love it when they're proven wrong. I'm with them.
A theory is very much like a Mythbusters test. When the results come back a way you don't expect, you don't cry about it, you adapt.
And again, this guy is missing, like so many people, the all-powerful fix of the fan fiction. Anything he or she doesn't like, he can change totally at will in his own imagination. He can put it out in our Library forum (or if it's an animation or game elsewhere, etc.), and maybe people will really like it!
I've seen many people's fanfics praised with the high praise "this is even better than how they did it officially", and even gotten it a few times myself. That's an awesome feeling when you get that praise. It's worth at least trying it, as long as you don't expect hundreds of replies, lol.
That wasn't Greg's fault though, all of that info was in the movie, and spoilers have been allowed for a while now so we'd know it all anyway even if he wasn't here.
Translation: It's bones's fault.
Please don't listen to him, Greg.
Waffles, if you don't like the contests, you don't have to participate. If you don't like fan contributions, you can imagine something totally different or just ignore it if it's small enough. I say it's better a producer of entertainment err on the side of listening to good fan suggestions and being open to fan input. Sure, a line needs drawn, and I say that having helped contribute to many canon things, and having had Greg turn down some of my suggestions too. It is important to have a line. But I think it's folly to make the line "no fan input".
And if you think about it, fan input on some level is inevitable. Due to sales. Granted this affects sets a little more than story... but not only. The whole idea of not trying to please fans is fundamentally flawed.
But that said, this is certainly an issue it's worth discussing. As Greg says, this is largely something BZPers as a whole need to decide.
All I know is, when we started the first officializing contest on here, Treespeak in Metru Nui, it came from a fan idea, which Greg and I both liked, and BZPers as a whole loved it. These sorts of contests haven't replaced your building contests, your Artwork contests, even your expanded universe (multiverse now) contests that do NOT contribute to the canon. But they do compliment those contests well, in my opinion.
I knew you'd say that, Wrinkle, I just knew it.
I actually partly agree with you on that one. The Baterra revelation did come out a bit earlier than I wanted. Although, W, you know the only reason I knew about it at the time was because I read your blog, where you whined about it. I wasn't following the OGD at that point in time. So... touche or something?
Well, Aanchir, we didn't really have any errors. What we had was unexpected resistance to some of the ideas, as well as some better suggestions for the exact names (and, as you mentioned, not enough of a limit to the one power in Greg's opinion, which he awesomely fixed -- we did have other downsides to it, but we welcomed, of course, his addition). And we listened to what fans wanted about 'em.
(Although this reminds me I have yet to run the final change by Greg to the Vulture mask. Changing it to Scavenging with Vulture as a mere nickname... Mhm... )
There's no accounting for taste, as the saying goes. Neither Swert nor I had any way of knowing what fan reaction to those few masks among the whole would be, or that some would have a sudden reaction against the whole idea. But once that happened, we adapted to it.
I'd compare this to some shows like CBS's Numbers and the "next week on" ads.
My family has noticed a tendency in the ads for that and other shows to give away some of the key spoilers that don't show up in the show itself till about halfway through.
That does annoy me -- for example the recent one about the little girl that was kidnapped, the ad totally spoiled the reason she was kidnapped, but in the show they spent half the time trying to figure that out. If it were up to me, I would have a rule that only things revealed in the first few minutes of a show should make it into ads, at least clearly stated/shown.
But the point is, it's not up to me. The producers decide what is relevant to bring up in the "next week on" ads, and I make the choice to either watch those ads or not. I choose to still watch them because nine times out of ten it doesn't spoil too much for me.
They do tend to "lie" about what to expect by totally taking quotes out of context and implying things very wrong, but I'm onto that, and expect it, and it doesn't spoil anything, so oh well, yanno?
But if I ever got fed up enough with those ads, I could just stop watching them. It's my choice.
Also, I can now kinda put myself in Greg's shoes with the Multiverse.
I'm getting lots of fans asking questions about details of it. Granted, this isn't the same thing because the whole idea of the Multiverse is to be fan fiction with a lot of room for re-interpretation. But still, if someone asks me a question, I feel like Swert and I should make a good effort to answer it. The questioner is showing their support of what we're putting out and their curiousity about the world we've constructed with our imaginations, and that deserves rewarding, IMO.
That said, we do draw a line where we say "this is something we're not going to define or reveal". But Greg does that with official story too. So I personally see no problem.
And I only answer those questions in my free time. I always wondered how much time that sort of thing would take. The harder questions do take longer, as Swert and I have to discuss them and think them through. But the easy questions, the answers to which we've already planned, as long as we're not revealing future secrets, I see no harm in revealing.
That gives Multiverse fans more content to use in their fan fiction, and I say the same principle applies to official story.
Seeing it from that perspective makes me disagree with the PMer here even more. Of course, so far we haven't gotten any feedback like that for the Multiverse. Maybe if we do we might reconsider some of our practices. But I can now realize from experience that Greg sees something that PMer doesn't apparently see -- the desires of the fans who are asking the questions, and the effort they put into formulating intelligent questions that deserve answers.
There's my two cents on this. And thanks for doing a blog entry for it, Greg. Regardless of anybody's opinions on it, it's worth discussing.
K guys, Bonesiii dropped a five pager. No more point in discussing this, as everything that can be stated, has been stated. XP
But anyway, ditto.
