Putting the 'role' back in role-playing games since 2002.
Donate to Codex
Good Old Games
  • Welcome to rpgcodex.net, a site dedicated to discussing computer based role-playing games in a free and open fashion. We're less strict than other forums, but please refer to the rules.

    "This message is awaiting moderator approval": All new users must pass through our moderation queue before they will be able to post normally. Until your account has "passed" your posts will only be visible to yourself (and moderators) until they are approved. Give us a week to get around to approving / deleting / ignoring your mundane opinion on crap before hassling us about it. Once you have passed the moderation period (think of it as a test), you will be able to post normally, just like all the other retards.

Mike Laidlaw leaves BioWare

fantadomat

Arcane
Edgy Vatnik Wumao
Joined
Jun 2, 2017
Messages
37,087
Location
Bulgaria
That "We will see each other again." sounds like Mark Darrah will be quitting Titanic 2 soon.
 

J_C

One Bit Studio
Patron
Developer
Joined
Dec 28, 2010
Messages
16,947
Location
Pannonia
Project: Eternity Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath
I know I'm a bit behind the times in twitter culture, but why is this written on his twitter account: "He/Him. Poly." ?

It is a thing in Twitter cuckture to explicitly tell people what pronouns you want to go with. So for example: "He/Him", "She/Her" (rare), "They/Them" (kinda rare), "Fag/Faggot" etc. Apparently "He/Him" is the most common one, so it really is a cuckture going on.
Dafakk? I can look at his picture and I can see that he is a beardy man. Of course i will call him with "he/him". He doesn't have to spell it out for me. What, does he think I will call him a She? Fucking internet culture.
 

Urthor

Prophet
Patron
Joined
Mar 22, 2015
Messages
1,872
Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire
So didn't the exact same thing happen to Andromeda in like 2015 and then they redid a chunk of the game and it was actual literal garbage? Is DA4 in trouble?
 

Xeon

Augur
Joined
Apr 9, 2013
Messages
1,858
This guy's camera seems to be pretty good, quality of his face is outstanding.

yeah got nothing else to say
 

Iznaliu

Arbiter
Joined
Apr 28, 2016
Messages
3,686
I have a feeling that there may be more occurring at Bioware than meets the eye; it will remain to see whether they will weather the internal turmoil that is likely happening.
 

Zer0wing

Cipher
Joined
Mar 22, 2017
Messages
2,607
Why is animators so shunned at Bioware? It's important since they never put them to good use ever since Mass Effect 1.
 

Freddie

Savant
Joined
Sep 14, 2016
Messages
717
Location
Mansion
Why is animators so shunned at Bioware? It's important since they never put them to good use ever since Mass Effect 1.
Yeah, especially after what masterpiece of animation ME: Andromeda turned out to be one can't but wonder what's their problem.
 
Joined
Apr 3, 2006
Messages
1,386
EA made them change engines at some point during the development process and it completely screwed up the existing animations according to some dev interview I read.
 

Freddie

Savant
Joined
Sep 14, 2016
Messages
717
Location
Mansion
EA made them change engines at some point during the development process and it completely screwed up the existing animations according to some dev interview I read.
EA chose Frostbite engine for all EA studios to use.

That said, why do almost all aliens in ME series has 4 fingers instead of 5? and it happened that Protheans were retconned to space bugs because animators couldn't animate tentacle faces. And what happened to certain enemies in ME3, oh wait, animators couldn't animate them. Damn, so unreasonable demands.

I mean all the effort they gave. Like:
 

Iznaliu

Arbiter
Joined
Apr 28, 2016
Messages
3,686
Why is animators so shunned at Bioware? It's important since they never put them to good use ever since Mass Effect 1.

It could be that internal company culture decided that animators weren't necessary to produce a well-selling RPG, and that was only vindicated by the success of games like DA:I and other companies' games, such as Fallout 4.
 

Infinitron

I post news
Staff Member
Joined
Jan 28, 2011
Messages
97,236
Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
BioWare has had more retention than many people expect. James Ohlen (lead designer), Mark Darrah (programmer), Lukas Kristjanson (writer), all worked on Baldur's Gate and are still there.
 

Mebrilia the Viera Queen

Guest
Bioware credibility now is under the grave.. And the fact they are also EA don't help either... considering the shitstorm on EA about SWB2... Also unlike the past now there is a lot more competition on RPG...

For action rpg they released inquisition and felt way much subpar compared with witcher 3 also was a really bad mediocre title.. Then the mess that was Mass Effect Andromeda...

Will be interesting to see how they will slowly crumble....
 

DragoFireheart

all caps, rainbow colors, SOMETHING.
Joined
Jun 16, 2007
Messages
23,731
Bioware credibility now is under the grave.. And the fact they are also EA don't help either... considering the shitstorm on EA about SWB2... Also unlike the past now there is a lot more competition on RPG...

For action rpg they released inquisition and felt way much subpar compared with witcher 3 also was a really bad mediocre title.. Then the mess that was Mass Effect Andromeda...

Will be interesting to see how they will slowly crumble....

fuck bioware!
 

LESS T_T

Arcane
Joined
Oct 5, 2012
Messages
13,582
Codex 2014
https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news..._Mike_Laidlaw_shares_storytelling_lessons.php

Ex-BioWare scribe Mike Laidlaw shares storytelling lessons

Mike Laidlaw, who recently stepped down as creative director at BioWare, took a break from his new consulting firm to talk to GDC about what he’s learned about writing and narrative design from his many years with the legendary game studio.

“Trust” is the theme he framed his talk with. “The key thing is to establish trust” in a team, he said, drawing on what he did in corralling BioWare’s writers to work as a team.

“Making sentences out of words appears to be the same skill-set as writing and storytelling. It’s not,” he said, but added that above and beyond that is the overriding need to “win the hearts and minds of your team,” whether as a director or a rank and file team-member. As a foundation, you have to schedule things properly. He managed to make the concept of scheduling a fascinating exploration of the fundamentals of game development.

“A writer can casually write ‘and the universe explodes,’ and it turns out… that’s really hard to render,” Laidlaw said, as he emphasized the importance of working with “downstream teams,” like editing, VO, cinematics, localization and QA, all of which depend on the writers to produce something viable to workshop. As he described it, his games began from the ground up with writing, where an approximate draft was needed before anything else could be done.

You can mitigate time loss by targeting cinematic and performance capture content locks first--meaning that in order to schedule responsibly, you would write for things that had a very high dependency on downstream departments. In addition, all major characters need one piece of marquee content early to ensure that the VO casting “sticks,” ensuring that a perfectly characteristic scene is ready to go and used by the VO team to cast the right actor. He also suggested working closely with translators and clearly tagging each piece of content with the status of every parallel bit of work it depends on.

Laidlaw went into detail about “Crumple” plans, which are, essentially, strategies to reduce the size of a game, scaling it back to realistic expectations. “As a writer, you have said ‘I’m not precious, I’ve created something that can survive an impact,’” he said, likening this to a car that has ‘crumple zones’ to absorb impacts during a crash. He argued that even a tightly plotted game, where everything that happened was “critical content,” could still stand to be reduced by about 25 percent in scope. By contrast, for a more expansive game, like Inquisition, he argued that no more than 25 percent of such a vast and open-world game should be “critical” content.

Equally essential to good scheduling, in Laidlaw’s view, is articulating a clear theme for your game. Inquisition was about “faith and what happens when that faith is challenged.” Centralizing such a snappy “vision touchstone” is essential to getting comfortable with making elevator pitches, a process that allows you to quickly sell every major moment in your game.

“An instantly graspable thing that allows you to… create a shorthand that gets everyone on track,” he said, noting the example of the Temple of Mythal scene in Inquisition was pitched as Dragon Age meets Indiana Jones, a simple and memetic idea that gave everyone a standard around which to rally, giving the players a sacred place where they had a choice of respecting or desecrating it.

For Laidlaw, developing a vision was essential for creating a framework for feedback during BioWare peer review of the evolving game. That, then, created a spine for a structured system--peer review followed a precise set of rules at BioWare.

“Multi-discipline fixes are the best fixes because everyone plays to their strength, which is why other departments were always at reviews,” he noted, saying that this particularly helped with preventing a major problem with writers where we tend to solve thematic issues with more words. “Oh, this character is sad but the text doesn’t make that clear. Well, animation can make her cry and change her posture, you don’t need to add more words.”

Another important rule was that junior writers were able to hear and give feedback to peers and leads alike, where “celebrity” writers were put on the same level as new blood. This, Laidlaw says, made the constructive criticism of peer review useful to everyone.

“Be transparent, be open, and then, be vulnerable,” he said. “Feedback you get from your team is feedback you can use to change.”

Once again, emotional intelligence was prized, “make efforts to earn the trust of the team around you. Make clear that what you do is not just put words into sentences, you write.” Leadership, even, requires vulnerability. This, he said, “is probably the lesson that I learned at BioWare.”
 

Mebrilia the Viera Queen

Guest
Ladiaw storytelling truly a pinnacle!

Ladiaw... Get another job :prosper:
 

Terra

Cipher
Joined
Sep 4, 2016
Messages
896
Scribe, lol. If I ever want to quickly tank and piss away the potential of one of the few promising crpg franchises in the space of two games, I'll look you up Mike. As it stands, I'll maintain my stance of never touching anything you're associated with, that is the lesson I learned from BioWare.
 

As an Amazon Associate, rpgcodex.net earns from qualifying purchases.
Back
Top Bottom