'“We know the thousands of customers who pre-ordered Anthem have some concerns, but we are confident this collection of words scrawled on a conference room board will be a revolutionary third-person shooter experience when released at the end of the week,” said director Jonathan Warner, who shared a progress update with players by sending out a screenshot of an email chain that ended with an agreement to call the game Anthem.'
"Stop complaining and attacking studios just because a game isn’t everything you want. Developers put too much stock in making games enjoyable and playable as it is. Planning to make something as profitable as Anthem was supposed to be and is a huge undertaking, so at least give them credit for trying. BioWare had 18 months to build a game that would sell millions of copies based on the goodwill they built up, and they hit it out of the park. You may not understand Q4 projections, but they do. Anthem is a game that exists and is funding [EA] CEO bonuses, and by that measure, it’s been a huge success."
brendoelfrendo 60 minutes ago [-]
The Onion is funny, but not exactly kind here. I would recommend Mark Darrah's post-mortem on Anthem; he's not an unbiased source (he became an executive producer on the project part way through development, and I think he does try to let himself off easy in his retelling of events), but it's pretty clear that mismanagement--both within Bioware and especially from EA--set Anthem down a track that was hard to recover from. Development goals, gameplay design, and even architectural decisions were constantly shifting until late in development, leading devs to constantly rework the game as new requirements came and went.
The game _was_ forced to release in that financial year, but as Darrah eloquently puts it: "There was no point in delaying because that team didn't have another year in them"
burningChrome 49 minutes ago [-]
Seems Anthem is gone, but not completely?
From the same post-mortem video:
former BioWare executive producer Mark Darrah revealed that internally at the studio, the shooter had code for local play and private server use until a few months before launch. Presumably, it's still there to be "salvaged and recovered."
"Anthem actually had the code for local servers running in a dev environment right up until a few months up to launch," Darrah commented. "I don't know that they still work but the code is there to be salvaged and recovered."
I mean, most likely it just means they could run servers locally for development, that's pretty standard. I used to work on The Division and every dev could trivially spawn local servers for testing, I basically had it set up so every time I ran the client my own server started in the background. That was "local play" since the architecture of the game is fundamentally centered around all the gameplay systems running on the server. If(or rather - when) their public servers go down, the same statement could be made - that there is code in there for "private" or "local" play. But in reality it's just about running the servers locally, "salvaging" is just having access to the full source code, which is not something Ubisoft would ever do, just like EA wouldn't(I would love to be surprised though!).
hbn 38 minutes ago [-]
Both articles GP linked were jokes pointing blame at the mismanagement
aresant 2 hours ago [-]
BioWare shutting down is sad, but it’s really a classic ship of theseus situation.
There are a handful of notables still there but the majority of the teams that made the classic Baldur’s Gate, KOTOR, and Mass Effect disappeared a long time ago through natural turnover and a couple of brutal rounds of layoffs.
The silver lining is that the talent didn't vanish and we have teams like Archetype working on Exodus, Stoic with The Banner Saga, or offshoots like Yellow Brick and Beamdog.
beloch 6 minutes ago [-]
When EA bought Bioware in 2007, people said they'd run the studio into the ground. It took two decades for that to happen and they released some pretty awesome games in that time. However, a studio that used to hit everything out of the park did become one that missed a lot in recent years.
Going forward, I hope Bioware's people land great new jobs, and here's hoping some of their IP gets picked up by other studios. Mass Effect in particular is a fantastic creation that a lot of people would love to spend more time in.
so-gala-massey 1 hours ago [-]
BG1 & 2 were clearly labors of love. You could feel it in the game play. But the 90s were a different time before gazillion dollar budgets and expectations.
zem 39 minutes ago [-]
wasn't bg3 pretty universally praised too?
nrjames 37 minutes ago [-]
That was developed by Larian, not Bioware.
zem 30 minutes ago [-]
ah, didn't realise that!
hbn 38 minutes ago [-]
Yes but Bioware didn't make it
hinkley 14 minutes ago [-]
Larian hasn’t broken our hearts, yet. And they’ve made overtures that they will avoid doing so for at least another game or two. But eventually people will retire and then who knows.
cherrychon 18 minutes ago [-]
Nope. I won't even put the bear scene up... Fuck prudes, but why include that sorta thing in the launch event?
Anyway... They baited you w/ Chapter I & then the rest was mediocre @ best.
+Look, I'm an otokonoko, so I love lewd stuff if it's well made... Even if it's just fan service. But all the male chars taking it as consent just when you agreed 2 things like 'target practice involving bows'... Comes off creepy af ~desu~
Just let female chars do it. They allowed 2 be creepy, cruel & demanding if it suits their character.
++Hordes of normalhags playing 'white male knights' or whatever... As soon as 'cw' stuff of kind comes along, I'm out. Bleh.
Then there is aDnD 5, RTwP (Which, apart from Paradox Games, is always a bad if not terrible solution).
Then there is what I call the 'Cyberpunk 2077 effect'. Where ppl assume you mean that particular game, but you actually mean the Genre. Like a good ImmSim in that particular Genre?
>Peripeteia
But it's kinda annoying if you know what I mean?
Take care. And control, kind stranger!
blanched 13 minutes ago [-]
I'm having a lot of difficulty reading this and I'm not sure if it's because of the style or the terminology.
I don't mean to be patronizing but did the formatting go wrong here?
gambiting 15 minutes ago [-]
Dude, are you ok?
AlexandrB 1 hours ago [-]
I think the best way to keep quality up is to stay small. Supergiant Games is a great example of this approach. Once you have a massive publisher and expectations to ship AAA (or, heaven forbid, AAAA) games it's usually just a matter of time.
hinkley 8 minutes ago [-]
We should learn the lesson of John Carpenter. Some people have a medium that they’re brilliant in, and the scarcity of resources is part of what makes them brilliant. Give them an infinite budget and things go to shit.
Timur Bekmambetov might be a more recent example. The Night Watch movies were wonderful. Then he made Wanted, which was expensive dross. The best thing about that movie is that he put a couple actors from Night Watch as supporting cast in it. He’s done one or two things since that rate mention, but going Hollywood made him worse, not better.
hx8 41 minutes ago [-]
It's surprising what a small team can accomplish, but there are some projects that need a large team to be feasible. It would be nice if there was a clear path on how to grow a game studio and continue to deliver quality.
hinkley 6 minutes ago [-]
It’s too bad Spore tanked so badly. He thought he had a solution to the high production values issue, but it panned out so poorly that nobody has tried since.
Forgeties79 41 minutes ago [-]
It helps when you have a hit like bastion be your financial foundation and you don’t have AAA aspirations though. A lot of those deals with publishers and such are because it’s that or the game never gets made (or worse, never finished). And despite how much folks scoff at AAA’s, idk man, it’s fun to play a tentpole title. It was fun to get excited for Ace Combat this year. I can’t wait for the new Metro game (I would say they’ve exited AA territory).
kar1181 30 minutes ago [-]
The first dragon's age was absolutely ace too.
hinkley 5 minutes ago [-]
I never played Diablo more than the demos but loved Torchlight, which was substantially the same team as the first Diablo game. But Runic got tired of making Diablo XX over and over again and eventually folded. I briefly tried to cyberstalking the team to figure out which studios they ended up at, but didn’t dig deep enough to come up with any suggestions.
cherrychon 12 minutes ago [-]
True dat. DLCs worth every penny & then the modded content... Ohoho!^^
Prolly the last good, genuine CRPG from teh Warez of the Bio!
idrathernotsay 9 minutes ago [-]
Dragon Age 2 got a chilly reception at launch but has aged well considering what came after and is definitely worth a playthrough, doubly so with mods
kar1181 6 minutes ago [-]
I got on with 2 the worst of all of them. Well like most people didn't play Veilguard but of 1-3, 2 was hard work.
Hamuko 2 hours ago [-]
Is the talent not vanishing backed up by data? The gaming industry has always been an extremely brutal industry, and I wouldn't be surprised if the low wages, long hours and zero job security permanently burn out some of the talent.
aresant 2 hours ago [-]
I don't have inside knowledge but have followed Bioware (given how many of their games live rent free in my head)
1 - 2017 they cut from 500 -> ~350
2 - 2023 went from 350 -> 200 that included a bunch of very senior people including the OG writer of Baldur's gate Lukas Kristjanson
3 - Early '24 cut down to 100 skeleton crew as the writing on the wall for DA Veilguard sales materialized (sold about 1.5m vs 3m projected)
jonaustin 54 minutes ago [-]
And veilguard was an abomination of corporate groupthink based on some perceived cultural zeitgeist. I couldn't finish it the dialogue was so painfully cringe.
torginus 10 minutes ago [-]
Weird, I have a friend who's a hardcore DA fan, and he liked it, but told me it's very different.
Tbh, I think the issue is that old RPG designers understood players have very different values and goals, hell they even wrote some academic articles on it:
The devs of today played the games of yesterday, and felt that the game catered to them, and then sought out making a game like that, but they didn't put in the effort or consideration to appeal to other kinds of players.
And turns out there's economics involved - while people playing shooters want to shoot people in general, RPG players are a diverse bunch with different needs, and if you don't scratch the itch of a certain subgroup, that's part of the audience gone.
Which results in a bomb - a game made for 20% of the playerbase will sell 20% of the copies, and will be a flop.
mjr00 1 hours ago [-]
Note that the 1.5m number given for Veilguard was for the vague term "engagements" rather than sales, so there's additional padding going into that figure.
Halo went from <200 people making a game from scratch to >2k people making the same game on an engine (without multiplayer) - so the design scope is even smaller now.
I don't get how you can lower the scope, have 10x the staff, and still overwork yourself - I mean, I certainly think it's possible, but that speaks of colossal mismanagement.
I mean the graphics got better (not that anyone cares, people still play old games, if graphics were a true differentiator, people would say new games are better because they look better, but they don't).
This is very hard to explain - and so expensive it's actively killing the industry.
ramesh31 2 hours ago [-]
>The silver lining is that the talent didn't vanish and we have teams like Archetype working on Exodus, Stoic with The Banner Saga, or offshoots like Yellow Brick and Beamdog.
This is generally the case in the games industry. Great dev teams seem to function more like bands than companies. For however you feel about the latest iterations, the first Call of Duty was an absolute revelation to the FPS genre that we never would have gotten without the EA firing of the MoH team.
bathtub365 37 minutes ago [-]
And then they moved on to make Titanfall 1 and 2 after the founders were unceremoniously fired by Activision, which were also great games
da_chicken 2 hours ago [-]
That is true, but by that logic EA ought to have stopped being a completely awful around 15 years ago. It's especially egregious when you consider why Electronic Arts was founded. Activision's origin and reputation when they were bought out are similarly dark.
The analogy would be more easier to swallow if it wasn't always used as a mask for enshittification.
nemomarx 2 hours ago [-]
There's no rule that says it has to be a positive or negative change overall, just that the people involved are always changing. if they had found the right new talent bioware could have pulled it off too maybe, it just wouldn't be the original bioware either way
slg 2 hours ago [-]
One of the notable ways BioWare pushed the industry forward was the ability for the player to initiate a romance storyline with any one of a variety of in game characters. That often included the option of romancing characters of the same gender. I point this out because the Saudi Investment Fund bought EA a couple months back and they obviously have very strong opinions on those sorts of relationships. Are these two connected? I don't know, there are plenty of other potential reasons to close a studio, so probably not. But these are now the sort of questions we have to ask ourselves anytime EA makes a decision like this.
flumpcakes 2 hours ago [-]
I'm going to hazard a guess and suggest that the Saudi Investment Fund is invested in many things that would not be considered polite in Saudi society.
slg 1 hours ago [-]
Sure, but when one of these investments makes moves that, perhaps coincidentally, make them more polite in Saudi society, it brings up questions regarding the motivation in a way it wouldn't for some other owner.
m4rtink 17 minutes ago [-]
Japanese games very often have this - IIRC in Harvest Moon you even die if you don't get married i0 IIRC 3 yearse. Not to mention dating sims being mainly about this.
taurath 2 hours ago [-]
Though I think that will absolutely be a factor in future releases for EA for the reason you describe, I think the larger factor was that Bioware wasn't able to succeed in pushing out games that sold well enough, and that is not necessarily entirely on the studio.
AAA games in general have been having massive problems with over-management, where you have hundreds of stakeholders for a game. The second there is proven money in a franchise, massive structures of managers start to meddle in everything, demand day and date release promises, and get involved in everything from creative direction to engineering to resourcing. You end up with thousands of people in the credits for games made by a team of 100 artists and programmers.
The same thing has been happening to big budget movies and prestige TV shows, to the point that everything becomes this sort of neoliberal corporate soup that reflects the culture of the company. Game studios become victims of their own success. In the same way enterprise software becomes consultant feature slop soup, media becomes focus grouped appeals-to-no-one ultra high production value shovelware.
Creative studios stop producing art or meaningful experiences and start producing content.
pinevale 2 hours ago [-]
BioWare hasn't published a successful game in a very long time. Their last releases were Anthem (2019) and DA: Veilguard (2024), both of which tapped into the studio's reputation but underperformed in the long haul. Veilguard was also so "meh" against the backdrop of Baldur's Gate 3 that it probably harmed the brand and the franchise more than if it never came out.
They basically used to make amazing games in the 2000s and never quite lived up to that reputation again. Whether the acquisition by EA was the cause or the symptom of the decline, I don't know.
kzz102 19 minutes ago [-]
Yeah, while it's sad they are gone, the reality is that they have been zombies for a long time.
santoshalper 2 hours ago [-]
Don't forget ME:Andromeda (2017). The truth is that it has been almost 15 years since Bioware made an even arguably great game.
ToucanLoucan 2 hours ago [-]
Andromeda had a lot of good in it, tbf. Their big mistake there IMO was hard-resetting the universe the way they did. Like I was excited for more mass effect but I fell off that game so hard. Mechanically it was solid but I just… didn’t care.
Anthem frankly killed them. A live service looter shooter which were already out of vogue by the time it was released. Obviously made by marketing entirely, no soul whatsoever. They never recovered from it.
asanineassasin 7 minutes ago [-]
They where by than "owing the don" as in there existence was company internally subsidized and you do not recover creative control from that. And those external management initiated "next shiny thing" chases kill you.
krabizzwainch 2 hours ago [-]
I will always defend Andromeda as not being as bad as everyone said. I enjoy going back and playing it, and they were a few better writers away from having a really good game. I cared more about the Irish redhead copilot than about any one of the actual companions.
pepperoni_pizza 42 minutes ago [-]
Yeah, Andromeda has some cool ideas (the whole Remnant thing felt like a very classic Scifi mistery) but it was stuck in classing BioWare cliches with companions loyalty quests and romances, the main character being weird chosen one, the main plot was dumb and it was barely a Mass Effect because of the disconnect from the main universe and missing some of the favorite Mass Effect things (like the Geth).
It might have been successful if it weren't a Mass Effect. Or maybe not, who knows.
keyringlight 32 minutes ago [-]
I think a large part of the issue is that the sum total of ME trilogy is a hard act to follow, without aiming to sound hyperbolic it's a very bright light that outshines a lot. Anything trying to be a sequel has a difficult balancing act of being familiar versus being different and bringing new ideas in.
swiftcoder 1 hours ago [-]
> I cared more about the Irish redhead copilot than about any one of the actual companions
This squares with Joker being a fan-favourite character in the main trilogy
LaurensBER 1 hours ago [-]
> Mechanically it was solid but I just… didn’t care.
This is a great summary of the entire issue with the game.
I really tried to like it but it didn't inspire any enthusiasm. I didn't really care for the plot, the stakes seemed so low compared to the previous title and none of the races/planets really scratched that explore itch.
pixelpoet 2 hours ago [-]
I got married in Ultima 7.
slg 2 hours ago [-]
There's a reason I used the admittedly nebulous phrase "pushed the industry forward" rather than a simpler "introduced" or "invented". BioWare was certainly not the first with this sort of thing, but they popularized it and it was clearly impactful to a bunch of people. For example, you can hear about the impact directly from the mouths of some of BioWare's former employees. [1]
Yes, I heard about that too! I really hope he does at least one more truly great Ultima, and he can name his price as long as it really is a proper spiritual Ultima 7 / Ultima Online successor.
idrathernotsay 13 minutes ago [-]
Garriott is a crypto bro, all in on genAI and (IMO) has done nothing noteworthy since selling off the IP. I wouldn't get your hopes up
HWR_14 9 minutes ago [-]
He was the first high-net-worth individual to pioneer space tourism.
deadbabe 52 minutes ago [-]
People got married in Ultima Online to real people.
AlexandrB 2 hours ago [-]
This is a reach. Not because the Saudis don't want to influence the direction of games, but because Bioware has had such a run of embarrassing flops over the past decade that I'm surprised they stuck around this long. Peak Bioware was probably Mass Effect 2 and it's all been downhill from there.
maxlin 2 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
john_strinlai 2 hours ago [-]
>take away bandwidth needed for more important things
in a game that already has romance options, adding a same sex romance option is not taking away bandwidth. and i cannot imagine how it would "soil" an entire franchise. just don't choose the same sex romance option if you don't want to. easy.
collingreen 1 hours ago [-]
They aren't confused about how difficult it is to avoid same sex options in game. They spelled it out clearly - they decided "mainstream appeal" should not even bring up the option and doing so is probably pressure from people they don't like ("activists").
Karens aren't misunderstanding how to mind their own business or live-and-let-live; they are trying to enforce what they see as (or wish were) social norms and don't give a damn about the perspective of the folks on the receiving end of their chirping.
ainch 2 hours ago [-]
Not sure what what specific claim you're making. Do you think gay romance 'soiled' Mass Effect?
swiftcoder 1 hours ago [-]
You know, the neutering of same-sex romances in ME: 2 (due to an extended right media campaign), is one of the most universally decried changes, in a game that was otherwise considered an improvement on the formula
JohnMakin 2 hours ago [-]
I am still extremely bitter about how BioWare, in my opinion, ruined the dragon age franchise. While not "truly" turn based, dragon age origins and dragon age 2 had the spirit of it, and felt like a party-based tactical RPG. Then out of nowhere, the studio decided to abandon that with inquisition and turn it into an action/adventure style of game. I had never really been so bitterly disappointed with a game release.
After that I knew they were done. ME3 was the last good game they released, imo.
unsnap_biceps 2 hours ago [-]
They wiffed on ME3's ending.
xen0 2 hours ago [-]
To be fair, ME3's ending was doomed before that game started.
I'd place it around the start of ME2.
rl3 2 hours ago [-]
ME2's ending was just terrible. The boss fight was ridiculously cheesy.
In contrast, ME1's ending may have well been a master class in game cinematography and writing.
jasomill 1 hours ago [-]
The entirety of Mass Effect 1 was a master class in writing, from the opening cinematic to the ending credits, that more than made up for somewhat janky (though nevertheless entertaining) gameplay.
xen0 1 hours ago [-]
Much of ME2's story is terrible (some of the side character stuff is delightful, but the 'main quest' is a train wreck).
My point was that ME3 was doomed because ME2 utterly failed at bridging the gap between the strong start of an epic that was ME1 and what should have been the conclusion in ME3.
In fact 'fail' may be generous. I don't think it even 'tried'.
trey-jones 3 minutes ago [-]
I always thought this was a hot take but I agree!
iugtmkbdfil834 1 hours ago [-]
True.. it is genuinely hard to deliver on that kind of a build up.
ishouldbework 2 hours ago [-]
At least you can pick the color filter to apply to the ending.
autoexec 2 hours ago [-]
The studio's biggest sin came before that when they used DLC to paywall off major parts of the story in ME2. Anyone who didn't fork over even more of their cash got an incomplete game and a plot that made no sense.
nfw2 2 hours ago [-]
they could go from infamously bad ending to one of most creative endings ever by just saying indoctrination theory is correct
LinXitoW 1 hours ago [-]
Ironically, the gameplay is what meant I only managed to get through DAO and DA2 with a bunch of cheats. Realtime with pause is a horrible monstrosity. It combines the worst parts of action and turn based.
Veilguard was my favority gameplay wise, but the writing... well you know.
hakunin 57 minutes ago [-]
Honestly, I've felt this way before (gaming since the 90s), but try watching somebody play RTwP a bit to get a feel for it. It can become very smooth and comfortable. The hardest part is to learn to trust the timings.
bigstrat2003 2 hours ago [-]
IMO the last good game they released was DA:O. ME2 was such a let down, with them removing the RPG elements from the gameplay and the main story being a mess which railroaded you into working with Cerberus. ME3 was even worse. While it's sad to see Bioware go, they haven't been making good games in quite a long time.
esseph 2 hours ago [-]
When Dragon Age 2 came out, Bioware was still running things day-to-day.
By the time of the next Dragon Age game, EA was deep in making decisions.
gambiting 2 hours ago [-]
I might be in minority but I really enjoyed both Inquisition and Veilguard.
idrathernotsay 16 minutes ago [-]
You're in the minority for Veilguard but Inquisition is their highest selling entry in the series
gambiting 10 minutes ago [-]
With Veilguard I really enjoyed the combat systems. It was fun progression and at the end of the game you were literally a demigod on the batlefield - it was super fun, and taking some of the toughest optional challenges was very satisfying. And the character storylines(especially Lace and Emmrich) were very very good and I enjoyed them a lot. The weakest point for me was the big bad villain, who seemed barely competent to do anything at all - but overall I really enjoyed it.
cjk 2 hours ago [-]
I enjoyed Inquisition and couldn’t stand Veilguard. But I also never played any of the earlier DA games.
taurath 2 hours ago [-]
I thought Inquisition was quite enjoyable but clearly showing EA's management structure and the story of the game's development and decision chains. It won GOTYs for a good reason because they really did take a huge swing at a massive world and for the most part they succeeded.
Veilguard was very poorly marketed to appeal to a neoliberal crowd as if the characters and identity was the primary draw rather than the core story themes (Wizards v Templars, Societal Order vs Individual Freedom, the capacity for evil and corruption of either side) and the world which was fascinating. I love me some inclusion and well crafted characters, but the focus on it to the exclusion of all else as a queer person it gave me the same ick as a corporate float at a pride parade.
AdmiralAsshat 2 hours ago [-]
It's not like no one saw this coming. Here's a comic from nine years ago:
The makers of Baldur's Gate, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Neverwinter Nights, Mass Effect, Dragon Age: Origins.
Sad, even though BioWare was dead already.
0cf8612b2e1e 2 hours ago [-]
Check the release dates on those games.
santoshalper 2 hours ago [-]
No doubt. It's been a very long time since Bioware was a great studio.
uberman 2 hours ago [-]
Check the release dates of their best games against the date of purchase by EA and then compare everything after than to everything before that.
LarsDu88 3 hours ago [-]
Let us not forget MDK2
wellthisisgreat 2 hours ago [-]
MDK, MDK2 are truly like nothing else out there.
Art
flumpcakes 2 hours ago [-]
Those games are so weird but stylishly alluring. I remember buying a big box of MDK and playing through the game in probably a day or two.
newsclues 3 hours ago [-]
Also Anthem!
kobalsky 3 hours ago [-]
Talent in western game studios just can't shake the startup mode. Try get a hit, try to get bought, cash out, run away.
Blizzard seemed to defy the stereotype but it died a long time ago, it's just a husk.
The contrast with japanese game studios is impressive.
the__alchemist 2 hours ago [-]
*US game studios. Continental Europe has been continuing to put out masterpieces. (Many countries: Poland, Croatia, Czechia, France, etc)
hbn 59 minutes ago [-]
BioWare is a Canadian studio
(But purchased by EA obviously)
flumpcakes 2 hours ago [-]
Why do you think that is? What would you consider a European masterpiece? And what would you consider something that falls short from outside Europe?
the__alchemist 2 hours ago [-]
European masterpieces, recentish:
- Talos Principle 2
- Expedition 33
- KCD2
- Anything by Arcane
- Anything by CDPR
- 007 Last light / Hitman
- Blue Prince
This is subject to taste, but the games I've been personally enjoying the most are almost all European. US games are comparatively mediocre. I don't have an explanation; only this observation. I was startled when noticing it.
Most recently, I'm loving Order of the Sinking Star, and that's from a US team. There's hope!
tsimionescu 38 minutes ago [-]
You're forgetting a few major ones:
- Baldur's Gate 3 (German)
- Disco Elysium (Estonian)
- Divinity: Original Sin 1 and 2 (same studio as BG3)
BG3 is notable for its gigantic success. And Disco Elysium is one of the best written games ever made, and it showed that you can have a fantastic RPG with no combat system whatsoever, while still having meaningful progression.
flumpcakes 2 hours ago [-]
> Order of the Sinking Star
I was going to mention this game as a counter point but then realised that if I am doing that it's kind of the exception that proves the rule.
I do wonder why this is, perhaps there's more money in the US to build bigger games with bigger teams and you just get the 'too many cooks in the kitchen' syndrome.
I must admit most AAA games from the US over the last decade have been underwhelming for me.
kridsdale1 2 hours ago [-]
Baldurs Gate 3 was made in Europe!
AlexandrB 1 hours ago [-]
The US gaming industry has serious Hollywood envy. There's a constant push to make games "cinematic" and put big name actors in leading roles. This not only bloats budgets but results in barely-interactive monstrosities where gameplay is just a bridge between long, non-interactive cutscenes.
It's ironic because Hollywood is not doing too well at the moment.
autoexec 1 hours ago [-]
I like "cinematic" games, and have never had a problem with long cutscenes as long as they told a good story. Games are a great medium for storytelling and cutscenes are better than delivering plot strictly by having players hunt for thousands of short snippets of text.
I'm far less impressed with big name actors and that seems like a massive waste of money. As long as the acting is good, and the voices aren't obnoxious, I don't care who the actor is. People might see a movie just because it has an actor they like in it, but I don't think that carries over too well to games.
AlexandrB 40 minutes ago [-]
It's definitely a balancing act. There are some great cinematic games (Last of Us), but it's also easy to put all the focus on the cinematic aspects and have a bunch of mediocre gameplay as filler in between. I don't understand why more games didn't go the Half Life 2 route and have the conversation/cinematic play out around you without taking control away completely.
autoexec 7 minutes ago [-]
That really is a good way to handle it, although it does open the door to miss certain things if players don't do what's expected. For example, in the opening chapter for the last of us you can miss the news report on the TV and the stuff going on outside through the windows before Joel comes in.
In one sense, that's perfectly fair. In life if you're looking at your feet or spending your time examining the walls you'd be oblivious to what's going on around you, and for non-critical things having a bunch of little moments that you can only catch if you're in (or looking at) the right place at the right time can improve replay value, but games would have to be careful to make sure that the important stuff can't be missed.
rossvor 2 hours ago [-]
If we are sticking to the CRPG theme. Then the Witcher 3 and Divinity: OG 2, BG3 and Disco Elysium would be the obvious choices. If you told me in beginning of 2010s all of the future hits in this genre will come out outside of US and Bioware/Obsidian will fade away, I would be quite surprised (but maybe shouldn't have, considering their owners and financial situations)
charm137 1 hours ago [-]
As many have mentioned, BG3, CDPR's Witcher and Cyberpunk 2077 franchise, Remedy's Control / Alan Wake franchise (both original IPs) to name just a few. DICE (within EA) comes from Sweden and it's responsible for EA's core Frostbite engine alongside its Battlefield franchise.
I cannot point to the reasons as to why. Many of these teams are global teams - so a lot of the same problems apply: marketing costs/timelines, release-time crunch etc. The one difference I can point to is that perhaps executive payouts are not overly dependent on total shareholder returns.
mcmcmc 2 hours ago [-]
The Kingdom Come: Deliverance games from Warhorse Studios and the Witcher franchise from CD Projekt Red (both Polish) are excellent and have won a ton of awards
Lots of non EU games fall short, including several mentioned in this thread, e.g. Anthem
antiframe 1 hours ago [-]
> The Kingdom Come: Deliverance games from Warhorse Studios and the Witcher franchise from CD Projekt Red (both Polish)
Warhorse Studios is Czech; Slavs are not all alike.
4dregress 2 hours ago [-]
The Witcher 3, Any GTA game
santoshalper 2 hours ago [-]
CDPR is probably the flagship studio in Europe. Interestingly, they are probably the modern studio that most resembles Bioware in the 2000's.
izacus 2 hours ago [-]
Warhorse studios as well. Rebel Wolves. Machine Games. IO interactive.
The list is rather long.
Henchman21 2 hours ago [-]
Valheim, Enshrouded. Each sit at the peak of the genre, IMO.
loosescrews 3 hours ago [-]
Bioware had a string of hits before EA bought them.
Neverwinter Nights 2 was made by Obsidian, not Bioware.
And I would argue Obsidian was the better studio anyway. Besides NWN2, and moreso its fantastic expansion, Mask of the Betrayer, they also made the excellent Knights of the Old Republic 2, Fallout: New Vegas, and their own original franchises, Pillars of Eternity 1 and 2, and Tyranny.
pepperoni_pizza 37 minutes ago [-]
That was Obsidian.
uberman 2 hours ago [-]
... and then EA purchased them and forced the frostbyte engine and release cadence expectations and mechanics that worked for FIFA Ultimate Team.
Insanity 2 hours ago [-]
Blizzard is owned by MSFT now, so it did get bought out (back in 2022). So it fits the 'startup mode' model that I _think_ you're trying to say?
There's other studios that similar to Blizzard didn't get bought out early and published multiple hit games, like Insomniac Games.
anthonypasq 1 hours ago [-]
Blizzard has not been independent since 1994, but people on the internet love picking some arbitrary point in time when "Blizzard died" when in reality the timeline and quality of their releases has almost zero correlation with who they were owned by at the time.
ram1500natrluvr 22 minutes ago [-]
I like Jason Schreier's take that the end of Blizzard began as soon as WoW blew up in popularity.
"Imagine a Blizzard that never made or never found the success they did with WoW and continued on the path of boxed releases every couple years."
I did find myself rather salty back then that it felt like Blizzard abandoned anything outside of WoW until 2010. WoW wasn't something I ever grew an interest in, yet I played an absurd amount of SC and WC3. Then SC2 was a huge miss for me, as well as every game after it.
keyringlight 27 minutes ago [-]
Similar with Westwood (part of Virgin interactive) and Bioware (parceled up with Pandemic studios, owned by Elevation partners, who sold it to EA)
bigstrat2003 2 hours ago [-]
Blizzard effectively got bought out when they merged with Activision. It wasn't technically a buyout, but Blizzard quality was never the same after that.
goolz 1 hours ago [-]
Yep, and all these years later, we have lost so much. It may seem like such a small thing, but losing real GMs in WoW makes me really sad.
anthonypasq 1 hours ago [-]
Blizzard has not been independent since 1994, but people on the internet love picking some arbitrary point in time when "Blizzard died" when in reality the timeline and quality of their releases has almost zero correlation with who they were owned by at the time.
Henchman21 2 hours ago [-]
WoW Forever seems like they're at least attempting to try for the brass ring again. But it has such a "been there, done that" feel that I suspect its more to capture revenue from a new generation.
brailsafe 4 minutes ago [-]
[delayed]
D13Fd 14 minutes ago [-]
I just hope they sell off the IP rather than letting it stagnate further. There are other game studios out there who could do a lot with it.
Honestly I bet Obsidian is next, and I'm not sure I'll mind. I still love them for the great games they've made in the past, and still I buy their new releases, but they haven't been able to pull off a compelling game since Pillars of Eternity 2. That was 8 years ago.
nemomarx 10 minutes ago [-]
Isn't obsidian doing the new fallout? I think Bethesda might get the axe before them if anyone does. Or they'll get merged together and shook down for spare devs
sbodnar 39 minutes ago [-]
While we may be saying goodbye to BioWare, we can still enjoy the games through services like Good Old Games (GOG) who preserve the titles - BG1, BG2, KOTOR and more can certainly keep living on.
RIP to one of the best game studios.
sys32768 2 hours ago [-]
I am grateful they released the Mass Effect Legendary Edition, which was a sort of penance for Mass Effect Andromeda.
I never played Andromeda, and i often think that maybe i should, but there's just not enough time and too many good games to play.
everdrive 3 hours ago [-]
It's the new hot business model. Buy a very successful studio then liquidate it.
mosura 3 hours ago [-]
Bioware have not been very successful for a very long time.
Even in the good times their ability to create (and hide) black holes was prodigious.
Crusoe123 2 hours ago [-]
For EA this is modus operandi for a long time. I remember them buying the likes of Bullfrog, Westwood back in the 90s and then shutting them down a few years later.
HelloMcFly 3 hours ago [-]
Bioware hasn't been very successful - creatively or economically - in some time. I loved their heyday more than most, but they're far from what they once were.
mardef 3 hours ago [-]
The people who made everything we loved from BioWare left more than a decade ago.
BioWare, in the last 12 years, has released: Mass Effect: Andromeda, Dragon Age: Veilguard, and Anthem.
It's still painful to see the studio go away, but I sadly agree.
Agentlien 2 hours ago [-]
I was at another EA studio when BioWare released Andromeda and Anthem. Got to play an early closed beta of Anthem, heard lots of details about Andromeda's development as it was happening. As a huge fan of their games it felt crazy and very sad.
However, The Veilguard to me was amazing. I loved that game and it's my favorite Dragon Age.
hbn 48 minutes ago [-]
Veilguard is a serviceable action romp but it's not a Dragon Age game.
HelloMcFly 2 hours ago [-]
[dead]
angrydev 3 hours ago [-]
EA bought Bioware 19 years ago. Are you saying this was their strategy for two decades?
anthonypasq 1 hours ago [-]
cmon man, dont let facts get in the way of a narrative. just let gamers whine in peace
As someone who spent so much time in the universe of Mass Effect / Dragon Age, this is hard. I am almost grieving. The latest games of those franchises (Andromeda and Veilguard) could not live up to the expectations. They deserved a better ending.
I wish I had never seen the new ME teaser / trailer [1] out 5 years ago.
One of my favorite game companies ever. But it had already been "shut down" in practice after the acquisition.
eterm 3 hours ago [-]
Yes, the mourning for the company that made KOTOR and NWN was done years ago, it's effectively a completely different company now that's shutting down.
vkou 2 hours ago [-]
It wasn't shut down after the acqusiition, it's been dead and just shambling along as a zombie for nearly two decades.
The last impressive things they shipped were Mass Effect and DA:O. That was 19 and 17 years ago.
Everything since has been trend-chasing and running on creative fumes.
philipallstar 2 hours ago [-]
The good news is that Dragon Age: The Veilguard was made by, and for, modern audiences. The bad news is it sunk the company alongside Anthem.
eaisshutting 2 minutes ago [-]
Since the content of the story is negative, every article will start with a picture of a White character and not any of the modern characters, including this Verge article.
trentnix 2 hours ago [-]
"modern audiences"
I can't help but read that in the Critical Drinker's voice.
philipallstar 1 hours ago [-]
My favourite translation of the Bible is THE MESSAGE.
elktown 54 minutes ago [-]
Not every topic needs your reactionary grievances. So incredibly pathetic, both of you.
philipallstar 29 minutes ago [-]
Thank you for writing that in such a non-reactionary way. How's the view from the right side of history?
droptablemain 9 minutes ago [-]
Bioware's long death began when it was acquired by EA.
hbn 1 hours ago [-]
Damn, I have a buddy who works for them, he was working on the new Mass Effect. He just lost his mom very quickly a few months ago too.
He hosted a friend and I end of last year and gave us a tour of their offices in Vancouver. Hits close to home.
I had never played any Bioware games but after that trip it inspired me to finally get around to playing through the Dragon Age series, and I marathoned them all over the next few months. It wasn't hard to see the very steep decline in quality. Which is unfortunate cause they definitely had a lot of talent but were being sabotaged internally from executives jerking them around with trend chasing (for as bad as Veilguard was, it's surprising they cobbled something together that's at least somewhat cohesive when it was going back and forth between a single player and multiplayer game), as well as people being put in charge of major creative decisions that clearly had not earned that role.
barbazoo 3 hours ago [-]
> The company is also laying off around 400 staffers, Bloomberg reports, including around 50 at BioWare. The changes follow EA being taken private by an investor group led by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, Silver Lake, and Affinity Partners in a $55 billion deal that closed in August.
Never thought that Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund would shutdown the company that created so many childhood memories.
jasomill 2 hours ago [-]
Hopefully this opens the door for EA to sell off the Mass Effect IP to a company that's interested in making something other than a live service game.
swiftcoder 1 hours ago [-]
Fingers crossed, but it's weirdly uncommon in the games industry.
Apart from whatever the hell happened with Bungie's many changes of ownership, I can't think of many beloved franchises that have been successfully transitioned to new ownership...
ex-aws-dude 35 minutes ago [-]
Is that even a thing? I can't think of any case where company sold off game IP other than in acquisitions
science4sail 2 hours ago [-]
Sic transit gloria mundi.
I think that a lot of Bioware fans just had nostalgia though - their recent work doesn't seem to have been as well received as their franchise initiator games.
Night_Thastus 2 hours ago [-]
Bioware has been dead for over a decade. What we have now has just been wearing its name. Honestly best to just let it go.
milchek 28 minutes ago [-]
I suspect the economics and 'shape' of the gaming industry to change over the next few years. Currently we're in this strange place with game dev where a large portion of software engineers (majority?) are using LLMs and AI coding tools, but for some reason the gaming industry (or at least it's customers) are vehemently anti-AI to the point studios have to put out statements about AI usage to assuage the mobs online.
This will change. The silent majority of customers will vote with their wallets once they realise they will get a) more games and b) better games - because the barrier to entry has been lowered, the timeframes, resource requirements reduced, more unique IP or novel games, etc. Yes, there will be more slop/shovelware - that's bound to happen - but we will also get vastly more great games as well if we allow the industry to embrace AI coding and generative AI for assets to assist creatives and developers.
It is sad that EA announced they are choosing not to continue development of the next ME game. I'm sure there are many fans of that franchise here, I know I sank a lot of hours into the series (and the online co-op mode from ME3).
Maybe EA sell off the IP to a studio who can lean into fully AI assisted game development. There's a chance we'll get something decent - and hey, it can't be as bad as Andromeda, right?
samcolson42 27 minutes ago [-]
I think that the anti-AI stance from gamers online is really about art and art style, not about the code behind the game.
random_cat_8745 2 hours ago [-]
I gasped at the news but in retrospect, I'm not surprised... but as a huge Dragon Age fan, I had a bit of hope of a new Dragon Age game. This is a sad day.
Lerc 2 hours ago [-]
May all of those developers go off to create their own IP and, in turn, get acquired by EA.
It's like the cluttered overgrown forest that periodicly burns down to create space for new life.
EA is like a landowner who does no maintenance but loves to buy things that have been maintained because they look so good.
humanlion87 2 hours ago [-]
Really loved Jade Empire and Mass Effect. But they had lost their touch quite some time ago. Not surprised this was coming
AmazingEveryDay 2 hours ago [-]
The EA I remember was Racing Destruction Set, Pinball Construction Set, great stuff, lots of freeform playtime. Did they continue releasing that kind of stuff? Yeah I haven't kept up.
2 hours ago [-]
Mr_Eri_Atlov 3 hours ago [-]
Knights of the Old Republic will forever be one of my favorite games
RIP to an amazing creative group
nozzlegear 2 hours ago [-]
I know it's not Bioware, but Kreia from Kotor 2 is still one of my favorite characters from any video game franchise. I wish I could experience those games for the first time again, but as an adult.
i can assure you that the original amazing group has been gone for over a decade. modern bioware has only been good at dragging someone else's legacy through the mud.
make3 3 hours ago [-]
maybe obvious, but Baldur's Gate 3 is really that level (or better) of a game (recommendation)
serf 2 hours ago [-]
game to game, sure.
story to story, I disagree.
kotor was one of the first interactive media franchises to showcase that era in the Star Wars universe, and it was an era that's radically different than anything in the movies.
bg3 is a typical DnD setting + sex + lovecraftian elements and flayers sitting in for beholders to spice it up; and they were only there because during dev-time lovecraft was a huge gaming trend.
don't get me wrong; I love both of them, but the BG3 story was the one that ended up feeling like -- for me -- something that would have been a modpack for Neverwinter Nights.
shoobiedoo 1 hours ago [-]
Likewise. The bg3 story felt like a very long, strung out and milked dry "you have sickness x, go the hospital and figure out a treatment" level of depth
panzagl 2 hours ago [-]
> they were only there because during dev-time lovecraft was a huge gaming trend.
I guess you have the edition of Deities and Demigods where they were cut...
ninininino 2 hours ago [-]
In some ways yes, in some ways no.
To me at least, somehow KOTOR and KOTOR 2 made me care more about the characters and story than BG3.
BG3 has better systems and combat and gear and such, but for many the worldbuilding, story, quests and such of KOTOR have yet to be beaten. Bastia Shan, Carth Onasi, Visas Marr, HK47.
The story of Revan and its twists.
Perhaps its just nostalgia and many KOTOR fans having been at an earlier age when they played those Bioware games compared to DOS 2 and BG3 though. Maybe people who were teenagers playing Larian games feel as attached to the characters and story as those of us who were teens in KOTOR's heyday did.
Mr_Eri_Atlov 3 hours ago [-]
Oh it definitely is, but I played KOTOR dozens of times as a kid
ReptileMan 2 hours ago [-]
Their last really good game was Dragon Age: Origins. It is nice that they put the studio out of its misery.
ndesaulniers 3 hours ago [-]
Many great memories of KOTOR, Jade Empire, Mass Effect. RIP
walrus01 3 hours ago [-]
This comes not long after Sony basically killed Bungie. Destiny 2 is "done", and Marathon has an extremely low player count and is in the process of dying.
ErneX 2 hours ago [-]
Destiny will go on.
serf 2 hours ago [-]
by necessity of Marathon having turned out to be a flop.
ErneX 2 hours ago [-]
Yeah it did not do well, but it’s my favourite game of the year so far.
Onavo 28 minutes ago [-]
I see the acquisition by the Saudi government is going well.
aghuang 2 hours ago [-]
Always played BioWare's games including Mass Effect.
Such as shame.
150g2 54 minutes ago [-]
Industry of Scam. Industry of Spy.
pojzon 58 minutes ago [-]
I think its safe to say that its pure failed management from EA.
Bad decisions, mismanagement, greed.
Tho not the first aquisition I see nose-diving due to incompetent management.
shevy-java 2 hours ago [-]
People kind of predicted this, didn't they?
I guess in a way it was unavoidable. Still sad
though.
I miss many great companies of the 1990s.
AtNightWeCode 2 hours ago [-]
One of the few corps I applied for a job at that did not even reply. Also known for being a bit of a crappy employer as well even long before EA bought them. Many other studios was also out of line back then to be fair.
platevoltage 1 hours ago [-]
"EA is shutting down" would be a much more pleasing headline to read.
koziserek 3 hours ago [-]
They wrote on the flipboard: If GTA6 online next month... We'd better shut down the company
seattle_spring 3 hours ago [-]
End of an era, but the writing has been on the wall for a while now.
bluefirebrand 3 hours ago [-]
Bioware hasn't released a good game in over a decade, and Anthem was a low point for the entire game industry imo
I'm honestly surprised they lasted this long. Sad to see them go but only because they should have been way better
indy 3 hours ago [-]
Exactly, the Bioware that people love hasn't existed for a long time
Scummy EA. They really ruin the industry. They kill all the good stuff and promote the crappy yearly FIFA crap.
2 hours ago [-]
akimbostrawman 2 hours ago [-]
good day for gamers, bioware has been dead for a decade so it can finally rest in peace.
underlipton 2 hours ago [-]
There are dozens of better sites to use for something like this than Verge. They have horrid policies with regards to displaying sources, and put half their articles behind a paywall. At least use an archive service.
I think the core issue is bad writing. All of that other stuff is only a problem because it's written with the subtlety of a sledgehammer to the face. In many cases the writing reduces characters to their identity group instead of being believable humans with believable motivations.
bigfishrunning 48 minutes ago [-]
Bioware's downslide predates the "woke" narrative -- i don't remember Anthem being particularly woke, but it certainly wasn't the sort of game they should have been making.
platevoltage 59 minutes ago [-]
It's almost as if your little far-right bubble doesn't represent the entire industry.
2OEH8eoCRo0 3 hours ago [-]
The studio behind masterpieces like Dragon Age Veilguard and Mass Effect Andromeda? Sad day
izacus 2 hours ago [-]
I believe you forgot the massive hit that was Anthem.
baal80spam 3 hours ago [-]
You forgot /s, right?
Anyway - good riddance.
rjh29 3 hours ago [-]
For a site with users supposedly more intelligent than Reddit, HN's inability to detect sarcasm (or any kind of nuance) is always amusing.
https://theonion.com/anthem-developers-assure-players-whiteb...
'“We know the thousands of customers who pre-ordered Anthem have some concerns, but we are confident this collection of words scrawled on a conference room board will be a revolutionary third-person shooter experience when released at the end of the week,” said director Jonathan Warner, who shared a progress update with players by sending out a screenshot of an email chain that ended with an agreement to call the game Anthem.'
https://theonion.com/people-criticizing-anthem-don-t-underst...
"Stop complaining and attacking studios just because a game isn’t everything you want. Developers put too much stock in making games enjoyable and playable as it is. Planning to make something as profitable as Anthem was supposed to be and is a huge undertaking, so at least give them credit for trying. BioWare had 18 months to build a game that would sell millions of copies based on the goodwill they built up, and they hit it out of the park. You may not understand Q4 projections, but they do. Anthem is a game that exists and is funding [EA] CEO bonuses, and by that measure, it’s been a huge success."
https://youtu.be/CxwrCRdqZb8
From the same post-mortem video:
former BioWare executive producer Mark Darrah revealed that internally at the studio, the shooter had code for local play and private server use until a few months before launch. Presumably, it's still there to be "salvaged and recovered."
"Anthem actually had the code for local servers running in a dev environment right up until a few months up to launch," Darrah commented. "I don't know that they still work but the code is there to be salvaged and recovered."
https://www.windowscentral.com/gaming/anthem-is-dead-after-t...
There are a handful of notables still there but the majority of the teams that made the classic Baldur’s Gate, KOTOR, and Mass Effect disappeared a long time ago through natural turnover and a couple of brutal rounds of layoffs.
The silver lining is that the talent didn't vanish and we have teams like Archetype working on Exodus, Stoic with The Banner Saga, or offshoots like Yellow Brick and Beamdog.
Going forward, I hope Bioware's people land great new jobs, and here's hoping some of their IP gets picked up by other studios. Mass Effect in particular is a fantastic creation that a lot of people would love to spend more time in.
Then there is aDnD 5, RTwP (Which, apart from Paradox Games, is always a bad if not terrible solution). Then there is what I call the 'Cyberpunk 2077 effect'. Where ppl assume you mean that particular game, but you actually mean the Genre. Like a good ImmSim in that particular Genre? >Peripeteia But it's kinda annoying if you know what I mean?
Take care. And control, kind stranger!
I don't mean to be patronizing but did the formatting go wrong here?
Timur Bekmambetov might be a more recent example. The Night Watch movies were wonderful. Then he made Wanted, which was expensive dross. The best thing about that movie is that he put a couple actors from Night Watch as supporting cast in it. He’s done one or two things since that rate mention, but going Hollywood made him worse, not better.
1 - 2017 they cut from 500 -> ~350
2 - 2023 went from 350 -> 200 that included a bunch of very senior people including the OG writer of Baldur's gate Lukas Kristjanson
3 - Early '24 cut down to 100 skeleton crew as the writing on the wall for DA Veilguard sales materialized (sold about 1.5m vs 3m projected)
Tbh, I think the issue is that old RPG designers understood players have very different values and goals, hell they even wrote some academic articles on it:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartle_taxonomy_of_player_type...
The devs of today played the games of yesterday, and felt that the game catered to them, and then sought out making a game like that, but they didn't put in the effort or consideration to appeal to other kinds of players.
And turns out there's economics involved - while people playing shooters want to shoot people in general, RPG players are a diverse bunch with different needs, and if you don't scratch the itch of a certain subgroup, that's part of the audience gone.
Which results in a bomb - a game made for 20% of the playerbase will sell 20% of the copies, and will be a flop.
Halo went from <200 people making a game from scratch to >2k people making the same game on an engine (without multiplayer) - so the design scope is even smaller now.
I don't get how you can lower the scope, have 10x the staff, and still overwork yourself - I mean, I certainly think it's possible, but that speaks of colossal mismanagement.
I mean the graphics got better (not that anyone cares, people still play old games, if graphics were a true differentiator, people would say new games are better because they look better, but they don't).
This is very hard to explain - and so expensive it's actively killing the industry.
This is generally the case in the games industry. Great dev teams seem to function more like bands than companies. For however you feel about the latest iterations, the first Call of Duty was an absolute revelation to the FPS genre that we never would have gotten without the EA firing of the MoH team.
The analogy would be more easier to swallow if it wasn't always used as a mask for enshittification.
AAA games in general have been having massive problems with over-management, where you have hundreds of stakeholders for a game. The second there is proven money in a franchise, massive structures of managers start to meddle in everything, demand day and date release promises, and get involved in everything from creative direction to engineering to resourcing. You end up with thousands of people in the credits for games made by a team of 100 artists and programmers.
The same thing has been happening to big budget movies and prestige TV shows, to the point that everything becomes this sort of neoliberal corporate soup that reflects the culture of the company. Game studios become victims of their own success. In the same way enterprise software becomes consultant feature slop soup, media becomes focus grouped appeals-to-no-one ultra high production value shovelware.
Creative studios stop producing art or meaningful experiences and start producing content.
They basically used to make amazing games in the 2000s and never quite lived up to that reputation again. Whether the acquisition by EA was the cause or the symptom of the decline, I don't know.
Anthem frankly killed them. A live service looter shooter which were already out of vogue by the time it was released. Obviously made by marketing entirely, no soul whatsoever. They never recovered from it.
It might have been successful if it weren't a Mass Effect. Or maybe not, who knows.
This squares with Joker being a fan-favourite character in the main trilogy
This is a great summary of the entire issue with the game.
I really tried to like it but it didn't inspire any enthusiasm. I didn't really care for the plot, the stakes seemed so low compared to the previous title and none of the races/planets really scratched that explore itch.
[1] - https://blog.bioware.com/2022/07/15/bioware-developer-story-...
in a game that already has romance options, adding a same sex romance option is not taking away bandwidth. and i cannot imagine how it would "soil" an entire franchise. just don't choose the same sex romance option if you don't want to. easy.
Karens aren't misunderstanding how to mind their own business or live-and-let-live; they are trying to enforce what they see as (or wish were) social norms and don't give a damn about the perspective of the folks on the receiving end of their chirping.
After that I knew they were done. ME3 was the last good game they released, imo.
I'd place it around the start of ME2.
In contrast, ME1's ending may have well been a master class in game cinematography and writing.
My point was that ME3 was doomed because ME2 utterly failed at bridging the gap between the strong start of an epic that was ME1 and what should have been the conclusion in ME3.
In fact 'fail' may be generous. I don't think it even 'tried'.
Veilguard was my favority gameplay wise, but the writing... well you know.
By the time of the next Dragon Age game, EA was deep in making decisions.
Veilguard was very poorly marketed to appeal to a neoliberal crowd as if the characters and identity was the primary draw rather than the core story themes (Wizards v Templars, Societal Order vs Individual Freedom, the capacity for evil and corruption of either side) and the world which was fascinating. I love me some inclusion and well crafted characters, but the focus on it to the exclusion of all else as a queer person it gave me the same ick as a corporate float at a pride parade.
https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/7cxz4a/eas_graveyar...
https://web.archive.org/web/20230610092047/https://old.reddi...
https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcf.preview.re...
Sad, even though BioWare was dead already.
Art
Blizzard seemed to defy the stereotype but it died a long time ago, it's just a husk.
The contrast with japanese game studios is impressive.
(But purchased by EA obviously)
Most recently, I'm loving Order of the Sinking Star, and that's from a US team. There's hope!
- Baldur's Gate 3 (German)
- Disco Elysium (Estonian)
- Divinity: Original Sin 1 and 2 (same studio as BG3)
BG3 is notable for its gigantic success. And Disco Elysium is one of the best written games ever made, and it showed that you can have a fantastic RPG with no combat system whatsoever, while still having meaningful progression.
I was going to mention this game as a counter point but then realised that if I am doing that it's kind of the exception that proves the rule.
I do wonder why this is, perhaps there's more money in the US to build bigger games with bigger teams and you just get the 'too many cooks in the kitchen' syndrome.
I must admit most AAA games from the US over the last decade have been underwhelming for me.
It's ironic because Hollywood is not doing too well at the moment.
I'm far less impressed with big name actors and that seems like a massive waste of money. As long as the acting is good, and the voices aren't obnoxious, I don't care who the actor is. People might see a movie just because it has an actor they like in it, but I don't think that carries over too well to games.
In one sense, that's perfectly fair. In life if you're looking at your feet or spending your time examining the walls you'd be oblivious to what's going on around you, and for non-critical things having a bunch of little moments that you can only catch if you're in (or looking at) the right place at the right time can improve replay value, but games would have to be careful to make sure that the important stuff can't be missed.
I cannot point to the reasons as to why. Many of these teams are global teams - so a lot of the same problems apply: marketing costs/timelines, release-time crunch etc. The one difference I can point to is that perhaps executive payouts are not overly dependent on total shareholder returns.
Lots of non EU games fall short, including several mentioned in this thread, e.g. Anthem
Warhorse Studios is Czech; Slavs are not all alike.
The list is rather long.
(In no certain order)
- Baldur's Gate
- Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn
- Neverwinter Nights
- Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
- Star Wars: The Old Republic
- Jade Empire
- Mass Effect
- Mass Effect 2
- Mass Effect 3
- MDK2
- Dragon Age Origins
- Dragon Age II
- Dragon Age: Inquisition
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BioWare
And I would argue Obsidian was the better studio anyway. Besides NWN2, and moreso its fantastic expansion, Mask of the Betrayer, they also made the excellent Knights of the Old Republic 2, Fallout: New Vegas, and their own original franchises, Pillars of Eternity 1 and 2, and Tyranny.
There's other studios that similar to Blizzard didn't get bought out early and published multiple hit games, like Insomniac Games.
"Imagine a Blizzard that never made or never found the success they did with WoW and continued on the path of boxed releases every couple years."
I did find myself rather salty back then that it felt like Blizzard abandoned anything outside of WoW until 2010. WoW wasn't something I ever grew an interest in, yet I played an absurd amount of SC and WC3. Then SC2 was a huge miss for me, as well as every game after it.
Honestly I bet Obsidian is next, and I'm not sure I'll mind. I still love them for the great games they've made in the past, and still I buy their new releases, but they haven't been able to pull off a compelling game since Pillars of Eternity 2. That was 8 years ago.
RIP to one of the best game studios.
Speaking of Andromeda, I still rewatch videogamedunkey's hilarious review of it titled Mess Effect: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDjci1ODoBs
Even in the good times their ability to create (and hide) black holes was prodigious.
BioWare, in the last 12 years, has released: Mass Effect: Andromeda, Dragon Age: Veilguard, and Anthem.
It's still painful to see the studio go away, but I sadly agree.
However, The Veilguard to me was amazing. I loved that game and it's my favorite Dragon Age.
They were purchased decades ago
I wish I had never seen the new ME teaser / trailer [1] out 5 years ago.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lg-Ctg6k_Ao&vl=en
The last impressive things they shipped were Mass Effect and DA:O. That was 19 and 17 years ago.
Everything since has been trend-chasing and running on creative fumes.
I can't help but read that in the Critical Drinker's voice.
He hosted a friend and I end of last year and gave us a tour of their offices in Vancouver. Hits close to home.
I had never played any Bioware games but after that trip it inspired me to finally get around to playing through the Dragon Age series, and I marathoned them all over the next few months. It wasn't hard to see the very steep decline in quality. Which is unfortunate cause they definitely had a lot of talent but were being sabotaged internally from executives jerking them around with trend chasing (for as bad as Veilguard was, it's surprising they cobbled something together that's at least somewhat cohesive when it was going back and forth between a single player and multiplayer game), as well as people being put in charge of major creative decisions that clearly had not earned that role.
Never thought that Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund would shutdown the company that created so many childhood memories.
Apart from whatever the hell happened with Bungie's many changes of ownership, I can't think of many beloved franchises that have been successfully transitioned to new ownership...
I think that a lot of Bioware fans just had nostalgia though - their recent work doesn't seem to have been as well received as their franchise initiator games.
This will change. The silent majority of customers will vote with their wallets once they realise they will get a) more games and b) better games - because the barrier to entry has been lowered, the timeframes, resource requirements reduced, more unique IP or novel games, etc. Yes, there will be more slop/shovelware - that's bound to happen - but we will also get vastly more great games as well if we allow the industry to embrace AI coding and generative AI for assets to assist creatives and developers.
It is sad that EA announced they are choosing not to continue development of the next ME game. I'm sure there are many fans of that franchise here, I know I sank a lot of hours into the series (and the online co-op mode from ME3).
Maybe EA sell off the IP to a studio who can lean into fully AI assisted game development. There's a chance we'll get something decent - and hey, it can't be as bad as Andromeda, right?
It's like the cluttered overgrown forest that periodicly burns down to create space for new life.
EA is like a landowner who does no maintenance but loves to buy things that have been maintained because they look so good.
RIP to an amazing creative group
i can assure you that the original amazing group has been gone for over a decade. modern bioware has only been good at dragging someone else's legacy through the mud.
kotor was one of the first interactive media franchises to showcase that era in the Star Wars universe, and it was an era that's radically different than anything in the movies.
bg3 is a typical DnD setting + sex + lovecraftian elements and flayers sitting in for beholders to spice it up; and they were only there because during dev-time lovecraft was a huge gaming trend.
don't get me wrong; I love both of them, but the BG3 story was the one that ended up feeling like -- for me -- something that would have been a modpack for Neverwinter Nights.
I guess you have the edition of Deities and Demigods where they were cut...
To me at least, somehow KOTOR and KOTOR 2 made me care more about the characters and story than BG3.
BG3 has better systems and combat and gear and such, but for many the worldbuilding, story, quests and such of KOTOR have yet to be beaten. Bastia Shan, Carth Onasi, Visas Marr, HK47.
The story of Revan and its twists.
Perhaps its just nostalgia and many KOTOR fans having been at an earlier age when they played those Bioware games compared to DOS 2 and BG3 though. Maybe people who were teenagers playing Larian games feel as attached to the characters and story as those of us who were teens in KOTOR's heyday did.
Such as shame.
Bad decisions, mismanagement, greed.
Tho not the first aquisition I see nose-diving due to incompetent management.
I guess in a way it was unavoidable. Still sad though.
I miss many great companies of the 1990s.
I'm honestly surprised they lasted this long. Sad to see them go but only because they should have been way better
https://archive.is/ZUR5H
Anyway - good riddance.
[0]: https://www.autismparentingmagazine.com/autism-and-sarcasm/