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

[vonAchdorf]

No, I was talking about the really big money of action open world games EA seems so desperate to get. I talk of open world RPGs after that.

My bad. In retrospective, the TW path from characters, (linear) story and C&C in arenas (TW), to arenas which really looked great (TW2) to these "core components" in an open world would have been the path BW could have taken, but I think they lacked the ambition (and vision) which the CDP leadership clearly had. And without this, the chances to form a team capable of succeeding seem to dwindle.

 

[cvv]

Andromeda didn't create new problems it simply exposed existing ones. Bioware and Mass Effect were in sharp decline for years sadly Bioware Montreal is taking the fall.

For me its three strikes and you're out. People should have been fired after critical and in some cases commercial flops like Dragon Age 2, Old Republic, and Mass Effect 3.

The decline in the writing and design quality between previous Bioware games and DAI/MEA is abysmal. If they kept the original ME quality up they could've easily go on.

Btw ME3 wasn't a commercial flop, it was probably the most successful BW game. It grossed 200 million just in the first six months. With lifetime sales up until now plus the income from the multiplayer which apparently was a stunning success it can easily be twice as much. This was an IP very, very far from commercial mass grave.

Well, it's there now.

 

[Wonderdog]

People just buy series off the last game or two. ME 3 was still a decline, but it was 4 that rang the death knell. They should not even have bothered with androgeny. Yet they put a decent budget into it and got absolute crap and probably killed the series for good.

 

[Wayward Son]

People just buy series off the last game or two. ME 3 was still a decline, but it was 4 that rang the death knell. They should not even have bothered with androgeny. Yet they put a decent budget into it and got absolute crap and probably killed the series for good.

?? This was 4.

 

[MRY]

I've heard that Mac Walters will have to travel to Edmonton and Austin to call upon all the old allies in hopes of defeating EA. But will they honor the treaties?

 

[Aenra]

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.

 

[Wonderdog]

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

Says the guy who constantly has his feathers ruffled.

 

[Wonderdog]

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.

They had a comparable number of people working on this game as the witcher 3 and in a comparable timeframe. SJWs are incompetents who want something for nothing. Film at 11.

Personally I won't be happy til gaider is a homeless rentboy and dying of aids, but this is a good start.

 

[Irenaeus]

It would have made for a good story, but I don't think SJW or "diversity" had a lot to do with the bad sales and especially with the bad reviews.

 

[Irenaeus]

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

You sound upset, Jew.

 

[Mustawd]

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

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[Wonderdog]

People just buy series off the last game or two. ME 3 was still a decline, but it was 4 that rang the death knell. They should not even have bothered with androgeny. Yet they put a decent budget into it and got absolute crap and probably killed the series for good.

?? This was 4.

Seriously dude, read the post how fucking hard is it?!

 

[Des]

Bioware died years ago. Just because the name is still in use by EA doesnt mean its the same company. It should be called EA pseudo-rpg division.

This EA division doesnt even deserve any discussion about it here.

 

[Wayward Son]

People just buy series off the last game or two. ME 3 was still a decline, but it was 4 that rang the death knell. They should not even have bothered with androgeny. Yet they put a decent budget into it and got absolute crap and probably killed the series for good.

?? This was 4.

Seriously dude, read the post how fucking hard is it?!

Took me a minute. I was tired and misunderstood the post.

 

[Irenaeus]

Infinitron Bioware tried to chase the open world bandwagon not because the customer forced them but because the suits did. They were not a dinosaur doomed to extinction but judt an animal out of its element. They could have improved their traditional linear formula and the dudebros would have loved it.

Is there any traditional linear formula game not named Call of Duty that hits open world game numbers? And of course, you shouldn't be naive. The reason Mass Effect was pushed as hard it was by EA (compared to Dragon Age) was because of the success of Call of Duty. They switched from one bandwagon to another.

Maybe if they'd tried hard enough they could have succeeded at being a Call of Duty of RPGs, but the open world route seemed more promising (because it probably is).

That's bad judgement by EA, to make Bioware competitive against big open world games in general (GTA, AssCreed etc.) They would have to restructure the studio and their work routine entirely, scrapping also their established reputation and fan expectations in the process. If, more modestly, they wanted to take on Bethesda and go after the Skyrim money they should have done the tricky thing the poles managed to do, that is reaching a good balance between narrative content and open-world gameplay bdcause to be a total Skyrim killer they would have to do the themepark, with modding on PC, again something totally out of their pedigree. They could have stayed smaller in scope with the open world content and mask that with a focus on the narrative but they blew this balance in Inquisition. Then the Witcher 3 came out, now alone on the hype train, and stole the show, managing to put even Fallout 4 in the shadow for the critical acclaim. To compete, EA gave full control of a game bigger in scope than Inquisition to a support studio with no experience on development of AAA open world games and that was just total stupidity because after the Mass Effect 3 debacle and the overall reduced trust in the Bioware fanbase the name alone wasn't enough to bring big sales. If they wanted ME:A to succeed they should have put on hold whatever MMO crap they had and give the game to the main studio without expanding Montreal, finding maybe a couple of writers who are not complete hacks.

So many words for so many shit games.

 

[MRY]

Surely someone has already made a dragon's teeth:husk::EA:Bioware meme?

 

[Forest Dweller]

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

DU should put a freeze on new memberships.

 

[Sentinel]

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

Judging by the PoE2 campaign, they're already flocking to Obsidian.

Makes me wonder if EA would buy Obsidian when they inevitably kill off BioWare.

 

[oneliner]

So unless you can argue that it is impossible to write a good story with gay characters in it, or to make a lifelike animation of a transsexual NPC, I think that Andromeda is another case of a game hurt more by its neglected production values than by its actual gameplay.

It is impossible to write a good story/make good animation if the writer/animator lack talent, which is the case with most SJW

 

[Iznaliu]

DU should put a freeze on new memberships.

That will just lead to accounts being taken over. It will be like Alien; unimaginable horror.

 

[KyivAfter12am]

It is impossible to write a good story/make good animation if the writer/animator lack talent, which is the case with most SJW

Identifying with a political movement has nothing to do with having or not having talent, and on the other hand neither does the ability to write a good story. E.g. Sapkowski has views that are quite similar to SJW, but his stories are quite popular, and not only with feminists and gay rights supporters.

 

[Morality Games]

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

Larian. They had them at necrophilia.

In seriousness, Bethesda.

 

[Wonderdog]

It is impossible to write a good story/make good animation if the writer/animator lack talent, which is the case with most SJW

Identifying with a political movement has nothing to do with having or not having talent, and on the other hand neither does the ability to write a good story. E.g. Sapkowski has views that are quite similar to SJW, but his stories are quite popular, and not only with feminists and gay rights supporters.

What about a political movement with a stated main purpose to stack every job with people with the 'right' politics. Why it's almost like it's a way for incompetents to band together and drain the rest of society or something.

 

[Morality Games]

I doubt SJW culture was the primary reason for Andromeda's failure (low production values and a dumb open world did that). However, SJW culture at Bioware did make them forget the fundamentals of entertainment in a way that even fully committed Hollywood SJWs like J.J. Abrams would never consider doing: sex sells, and everyone wants to be hot and have sex with hot people.

Even Gaider 100% knew that.

The goal is to take this kind of shallow wish fulfillment and turn it into a meaningful setting/story like the Witcher 3. The Andromeda team decided to grab the bull by the horns and attack the player's desire for wish fulfillment head on.

That sort of edgy artistic decision has little utility in a medium that is primarily rooted in entertaining people. Obviously, everyone wants to be an artist and challenge peoples' assumptions, but if you're working in the entertainment industry you need to be subtle about it.