Bioware used to be one of the Old School development houses. A dev team that prided itself on turning out new games as an art form rather than a money making machine. Just like I.D. Software, it's games were "done when they were done". Gamers felt confident that it's products were released "by the gamer for the gamer". Labours of love that really understood the sort of game that the RPG player wanted to play. A Bioware product was the leader in it's field, innovative, deep, lengthy and polished. Did the end of that process begin in 2007 when EA took the to the helm?
 
Rather than being a pioneer for software quality, it seems that E.A. is a pioneer for business models. There are many common themes with E.A. published games - paid for DLC, pre-order bonuses, special editions, online activation codes etc. All of these are innovations in generating money rather than improving the quality of the game. Methods that increase the money you hand over and reduce the chances of selling the game to the pre-owned market.
 
Bioware's latest release, Dragon Age 2 included all of these "innovations". It had a signature edition that included "The Exiled Prince" DLC, basically asking you to pay more for DLC that's already on the disk rather than paying even more to download it. The Exiled Prince was available on day one so was obviously created as part of the standard development process and split off to generate more income. The game also came with an online code that enabled The Black Emporium and some items, a thinly veiled attempt to reduce the odds of resale. Bear in mind that these "extras" are nothing of the sort, they were created during the very short 18 month development cycle.
 
18 months is not long enough to make a quality RPG, corners had to be cut along the way.
 
What do you think? Has the golden era of gaming as an art form been lost forever? Will we ever see old school RPG's again, or are we destined for ever more dumbed down, short life cycle action RPG's?
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