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Company News Report: BioWare Montreal scaled down, Mass Effect series on hiatus

taxalot

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I was waiting for the new trilogy to be completed to start playing it. I guess I can play it right now.
 

naossano

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Where will the biodrone sjw retards go now? Obsidian? Bethesda?

Larian. They had them at necrophilia.

1920x1200_undead.jpg


In seriousness, Bethesda.

I am surprised by how they hide those dead boobs.
 

Nihiliste

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In general I agree you can't chalk up all modern commercial failures to SJWism but in the case of Bioware it certainly plays a role.

In recent years, hires at Bioware have been just as much based on diversity as merit, which we know is a complete fail. The company also got away from focusing on you know, thinking about what players might actually find fun in lieu of making sure the right people with the right political message were in positions to make design decisions.

I know a few guys who used to work there and they confirmed the place had descending into SJW hell.

Bioware was also totally ok with going down the romance rabbit hole and replacing fans who actually liked RPGs with insane perverted dating sim fans who also managed to somehow be rabid SJWs. Which ever retard decided to write those minor romances for BG2 didn't realize he was spelling the future death of the company.
 

vonAchdorf

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I don't think SJW'ism was the main reason for the failure, Infinitron 's theory seems to be more relevant in the grand picture. But SJW'ism helped to increase the "threats" to success and underscored their inability to adapt to the new marketplace.

If you do a SWOT analysis, SJW'ism adds very few opportunities and strengths while increasing threats and and weaknesses.

If you have Manveir spewing anti-white hate on Twitter, sane white programmers probably won't apply in numbers and quality you need. SJW'ism often comes with complacency, while CDP showed incredible ambition when embarking on the TW3 journey. Half-assing a "reboot" doesn't work. A self-confident project lead should have been able to convince the suits, that shipping the game with such animations will cost them.

Their focus on "dating" in the marketing may work on BSN, but the majority probably prefers pew-pew and the whole romancing is something you do on the side. Which dudebro (most ME sales where on the 360) wants to be asked by his mother, if he's playing the game where you can ride the bull have tasteful scenes with abominable aliens?
 
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cvv

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There was nothing wrong with having a romance with Liara or the high testosterone chick in ME1. It was decently done and added another layer to the game.

But they went crazy with it in ME2 - muh relaishunships, muh romances, fuck everything else. Turned a space opera into fucking Beverly Hills. Problem is millions of gamers loved it so they keep upping the ante until we got MEA with multiple gay options, transgenders and bestiality. In a way Bioware themselves were probably the least responsible for the IP going to shit - it was primarily EA greed and a retarded fanbase.
 

Azarkon

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Correct me if i'm wrong, but i cannot lay blame on EA for any of this.
I cannot blame a shark for being a shark, that's its nature. I can blame the moron that contrary to common wisdom and self-preservation decides to get in bed with it; aka Greed. Bioware chose this path, not EA.
I cannot blame EA for how this ends, it's what you do when a series/franchise is no longer milkable, performing according to expectations, or deemed impossible to 'fix'; you can it. There's no "passion" and "ideals" at play here, this is EA; this too they knew, before they went to bed with them; aka Greed.
And i cannot blame them for lack of potential, as that was solely Bioware's department; they were the ones designing the damn things; all important milestones having occured in between are solely Bioware's doing.

As to the usual evil EA talk? We're talking shit code here, we're talking shit implementation. This is on a pure technical level. Whatever hand EA had in design philosophy has had nothing to do with how abysmally bad the actual programming was. I saw that again and again, with the pinnacle being SWTOR. I was actually laughing when i first logged in, launch day. You just couldn't believe a studio that big and "accomplished" would be so.. incompetent really, that was the feeling.
Now this game, being even worse.

EA does money, not games. EA can lure you in, sure, but it cannot force you.
Lastly, because it's tempting to say good fucking riddance, lol.. don't. I'd rather Bioware remained on the same track. If this keeps on, those morans will soon be working for other studios, further fucking up the market. Better if they remained there all together, working on the next Prospermeda. At least the shit would be piled rather than spread out. This isn't good news, this isn't funny news.

People are talking about Bioware as though it's a person. It's not. It's a business company, and I doubt the people who owned it asked the employees whether they wanted to be swallowed up by the destroyer of game studios.

More likely, they were offered a price they couldn't refuse. The doctors made off with tens of millions and washed their hands of the whole industry. They got their dream retirement and are probably now off sailing the world. The rest of the company, not so much.

Bioware didn't choose. The owners did. Business decisions of this level aren't always made with the best interest of the company in mind. The doctors may well have known that Bioware would suffer for it. But why would it matter to them?
 

Mozg

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Anyone else see that advertisement for Dove soap with a 5-alarm middle aged classic histrionic autogynephile? I doubt anyone on Earth imagines that sells soap.

There absolutely is something going on where simple profitability is sometimes willingly sacrificed to serve the elite narrative.

That said they could have pushed whatever contempt-magnets they wanted if the graphics and fetch quests were an incremental improvement on TW3 so it's obviously an ingrown toenail on a rotten leg.
 

Bohrain

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Where will the biodrone sjw retards go now? Obsidian? Bethesda?

Montreal was one the three studios Bioware had, other ones being in Austin and Edmonton. ME:A was Montreal's first major title so they are basically delegated back to doing mobile garbage or something. Had it been the Edmonton studio that was getting downsized tumblrites would've flocked elsewhere, but this just means they'll keep on swarming on the pile of dung that is Dragon Age.
And I highly doubt their average customer would've complained about the game if it had proper facial animations. The general public can recognize a throwaway plot from something that even remotely tries to not be one, but not much else. If SJW elements would bite their sales it would've made DA:I flop too.
 
Self-Ejected

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And I highly doubt their average customer would've complained about the game if it had proper facial animations.

The lead animator had no previous experiences with games, much less animations. The project cost millions. Let that sink for a bit.

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I don't think SJW'ism was the main reason for the failure

But it is though. It is affecting their hiring process and development process. They are puting loons in charge of key aspects to fill the quota. That's madness.
 
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I think I remember saying something a few years back, about how franchise sales are governed by how well received the PREVIOUS game was, and how that would be really obvious if not for (a) Publishers not understanding games, especially the type that garner an emotionally attached fanbase, (b) developers having a tremendous financial and personal interest in not realising the obvious truth (pro-tip - explaining your game's failure to your publisher, by telling them that "actually, it's because our PREVIOUS game also sucked" is not a good survival strategy), and (c) publishers and developers somehow managing to make gaming the only industry that can survive by targeting lemmings, (aka 'people who pre-order', I mean nobody fucking buys their car, or even their next coffee a whole year before they've even laid eyes on it, and if they did and then whined that the barista had dropped his pants and laid a turd in their coffee, everyone would be laughing at them and high-fiving the barista for dealing justice where needed) and gamers keep buying into it. I don't care about idiots getting ripped off (I just wish they still did boxed copies, so that my imaginary turd-happy barista could lay his special pre-order reward in each one), but I do care that it distorts the market and convinces publishers to back the wrong horses, and then retreat to the safety of CoD clones because they've no idea why their product went belly up, I mean it's not like the haters whining about ME3's ending or gradual stripping of rpg mechanics were a significant part of the market, they can't be because ME3 sold fuckloads right? right?
 

cvv

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Yes, games generally sell on the basis of the sequels. But it's more complicated.

The series certainly didn't decline commercially because of plots, endings or stripping of RPG elements. If it were so then ME3 wouldn't sell jackshit since ME2 had a terrible plot, even worse ending and stripped the character development to the bone.

Plus I doubt the ME3 ending fiasco was impactful in any measurable way since it was only the hardcore, emotionally invested manchildren who whined and projected butthurt. And ALL of them bought MEA anyway. Your average console owner didn't even register there's anything wrong with anything since he was distracted by watching football and talking to his roommates about beer while playing.

It was the millions of average consolers, not the tens of thousands of the ME "community", who didn't buy MEA this time around and there's only one reason - they saw all the memes on Youtube and elsewhere. The memesphere and negative publicity destroyed this game, not ME3 sucking.
 

Athos

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Yes, games generally sell on the basis of the sequels. But it's more complicated.

The series certainly didn't decline commercially because of plots, endings or stripping of RPG elements. If it were so then ME3 wouldn't sell jackshit since ME2 had a terrible plot, even worse ending and stripped the character development to the bone.

Plus I doubt the ME3 ending fiasco was impactful in any measurable way since it was only the hardcore, emotionally invested manchildren who whined and projected butthurt. And ALL of them bought MEA anyway. Your average console owner didn't even register there's anything wrong with anything since he was distracted by watching football and talking to his roommates about beer while playing.

It was the millions of average consolers, not the tens of thousands of the ME "community", who didn't buy MEA this time around and there's only one reason - they saw all the memes on Youtube and elsewhere. The memesphere and negative publicity destroyed this game, not ME3 sucking.
But the shittyness of ME3 was also memed to the stars (marauder shield was another "arrow in the knee" basically) and even a distracted dudebro must have stumbled upon the memes in some pseudo-nerd online circle about videogames. This time the dudebro was also repelled by the evident absence of an asskicking protagonist at the center of the marketing campaign. Even the fucking body proportions of the characters scream "made by hipsters for hipsters".
 

Western

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lol of course the humorless scolds here immediately resort to reductio ad SJWam

BioWare's fate was written on 11/11/11, the date of Skyrim's release. Despite endless budgets and years of time, they failed to successfully adapt to the open world RPG marketplace. They're dinosaurs.

I can't agree with you here, I've noticed that once a person catches the mind virus their ability, humour and general competence enters a noticeable decline. In terms of an organisation hiring on the basis of meeting quotas, rather than the best talent will also have a devastating effect over the long term.

Besides there's still plenty of hype for non open world RPGs, the 'one city block' style still has a market, it just needs a competent, and well produced entry.
 
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lol of course the humorless scolds here immediately resort to reductio ad SJWam

BioWare's fate was written on 11/11/11, the date of Skyrim's release. Despite endless budgets and years of time, they failed to successfully adapt to the open world RPG marketplace. They're dinosaurs.

I can't agree with you here, I've noticed that once a person catches the mind virus their ability, humour and general competence enters a noticeable decline. In terms of an organisation hiring on the basis of meeting quotas, rather than the best talent will also have a devastating effect over the long term.

Besides there's still plenty of hype for non open world RPGs, the 'one city block' style still has a market, it just needs a competent, and well produced entry.

That is pretty much what ideologies do, and why Nietzsche came out swinging against them in Thus Spoke Zarathustra and other writings.

Every ideology that has ever existed is (obviously) empty platitudes and plausible sounding lies. People instinctively grasp for them, though, the same way addicts grasp for cigarettes or babies grasp for their baby blankets.

An ubermensch is effectively a human who has eliminated the ball of anxiety at the root of their skull that makes them want to grasp at ideas that provide them with a sense fulfillment and purpose. Instead, they laugh at the inherent emptiness of things and fill it with their own sense of purpose.
 

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