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Newly Saudi-owned EA shuts down Bioware

arthwollipot said:
Do you really think that a few bad releases means that they can never do good again?
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I really think that they weren't showing any signs of changing course from the policies and practices that produced three duds in a row.

arthwollipot said:
ETA: Anyway, ME: Andromeda was actually really good.
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Andromeda was actually widely regarded as a commercial and entertainment failure. Finding the handful of people who liked it doesn't change the fact that it's rightly considered part of Bioware's failure as a studio.
 
theprestige said:
Andromeda was actually widely regarded as a commercial and entertainment failure. Finding the handful of people who liked it doesn't change the fact that it's rightly considered part of Bioware's failure as a studio.
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Actually the reviews on Steam are "mostly positive". That it was buggy on launch doesn't change the fact that tons of people like it. It's not even an Unpopular Opinion on /r/masseffect.
 
The Great Zaganza said:
That is mostly due to Rarmageddon, caused by most RAM being reserved for AI GPUs.



I recently had to build a new PC, and RAM was by far the most expensive single component
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We've recently been installing locks on some industrial computers that run some of our systems because workers were stealing the ram out of them.
 
arthwollipot said:
Do you really think that a few bad releases means that they can never do good again?

ETA: Anyway, ME: Andromeda was actually really good.
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Problem is that budgets have grown so much that one bad release (note bad release not bad game) can sink a developer, it's akin to the old Hollywood studios who were only ever one blockbuster from bankruptcy.
 
Game software companies are very much like film studios: you don't expect everything that's not just one in a series to be a hit.
Games are definitely an art form (or some are), and it is of great benefit to keep some Creatives around, not just code monkeys.
Before Pixar became Pixar, it was a bottomless money sink, using cutting edge hardware to try new stuff.
The new generation of hardware will require time, money and freedom for game developers to explore the potential.
VR will be a big thing once money and time is made available to do it right (the Steam Frame seems to be on the right track).

It is incredibly short-sighted to not retain experienced game developers.
 
theprestige said:
I really think that they weren't showing any signs of changing course from the policies and practices that produced three duds in a row.
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It didn't help that they were making the games they were told to make.

Something similar happened to Arkane Studios when they were acquired by Microsoft. Arkane Austin, the studio that developed Prey and the Dishonored games was put onto developing a live service, co-op shooter called Redfall. It bombed and they were shut down in 2023. Arkane's main studio in Lyon closed this year when Microsoft cancelled the Marcel's Blade game.
A studio renowned for very successful and popular first person RPG adventure games forced in to making games live service co-op shooters that rarely make money.
 
The Great Zaganza said:
Game software companies are very much like film studios: you don't expect everything that's not just one in a series to be a hit.
Games are definitely an art form (or some are), and it is of great benefit to keep some Creatives around, not just code monkeys.
Before Pixar became Pixar, it was a bottomless money sink, using cutting edge hardware to try new stuff.
The new generation of hardware will require time, money and freedom for game developers to explore the potential.
VR will be a big thing once money and time is made available to do it right (the Steam Frame seems to be on the right track).

It is incredibly short-sighted to not retain experienced game developers.
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EA has pretty much always expected its games to be hits, and if they are not it is the development team's fault. Not the execs who greenlighted the games, or more usually who told the development team what they had to produce, on what budget and the real biggie for EA, when. Hitting the quarter's target was all the senior execs were really concerned with because that was what their bonuses and stock options were based on.
 
Layoffs and closures at EA were inevitable after the buyout. The new owners have £20 billion they borrowed to pay for the deal. They have to make it back. Closures, layoffs and more live service games and micro transactions is the future.
 
Darat said:
EA has pretty much always expected its games to be hits, and if they are not it is the development team's fault. Not the execs who greenlighted the games, or more usually who told the development team what they had to produce, on what budget and the real biggie for EA, when. Hitting the quarter's target was all the senior execs were really concerned with because that was what their bonuses and stock options were based on.
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I always liked Yahtzee's take on what EA does to game developers in his revie of Anthem. You only need to watch the first minute.


EA has been drunklenly buying and slashing companies long before they were bought by Saudis.
 
ea has licensed sports games market cornered, which means player names and team logos. they don't need to make good games, but that model doesn't really work with a lot of the other ip and studios they've acquired over the years. you'd think that would be obvious, but this happens again and again when major publishers buy out studios and run them into the ground
 
i don't really play sports games. but there's a lot of people out there that only play sports games.
 
Andy_Ross said:
It didn't help that they were making the games they were told to make.
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I don't think that's entirely fair. Mass Effect: Andromeda, sure. By all accounts that was a C-suite Special. Wrong platform, wrong engine, wrong gameplay for a Mass Effect game. But the suits wanted to run some kind of b-school strategy on a successful franchise, and... well.

But Veilguard? Dragon Age was a popular and successful title. People who bought the first two games were ready and waiting to buy another one. It made perfect business and artistic sense for the EA suits to tell the Bioware devs to make another Dragon Age game. And in fact Bioware had no problem finding devs that were quite happy to work on Veilguard. These weren't oppressed wage slaves being exploited for labor on a game they didn't even like or believe in.

@arthwollipot , if the folks who made ME1 and ME2 said, "sorry about Andromeda, it wasn't really what we had in mind, give us another chance", I'd give them another chance. But when it's the folks who made Veilguard, and they're saying, "Veilguard was some of our best work, and it's not our fault nobody liked it, and we would have made a great ME4 if we'd had the chance", well. Fool me once, as they say.


I think the problem with the AAA games industry is not that the suits are running the show. Sure, everyone hates microtransactions and live services. But players have shown a remarkable willingness to put up with that nonsense, to put up with being milked like cattle, if the games are there.

I think the problem with the AAA games industry, the reason it's been publishing dud after dud lately, is because the creatives are running the show. The suits don't know from videogames. All they know is that historically, if you throw time and money at the creatives, and let them cook, they'll make you a hit game every three years or so. But the timelines have gotten longer, the money's gotten bigger, and the games have gotten less and less popular. Just throwing resources at the creatives and letting them run the show doesn't work the way it used to, not in the AAA space.

Indie game Slay the Spire 2, dropped the same week as Marathon, a AAA title from Bungie studios, the makers of Halo. STS2 did triple-A numbers, and outperformed Marathon across the board. Hours watched on stream, concurrent and max player counts, and of course the big one - game purchases. This with a game built by two guys in a cave with a box of scraps (relative to a legendary AAA studio like Bungie).

If the suits want to pursue a business model where they just throw resources at creatives and let them cook, then it needs to be on a small scale. Small teams, small budgets, see what shakes out. This year wasn't so great? There's always next year. But when your business plan is to give the creatives $300 million and seven years, you really need to have someone in the room who knows better than to let them come back with Wolverine. Or Concord. Or, in Bioware's case, Veilguard.
 
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