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Editorial Lessons Learned While Working at BioWare

VentilatorOfDoom

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<p>Daniel Fedor, a former BioWare employee, describes some of the lessons he has learned during his work at BioWare <a href="http://rampantgames.com/blog/?p=2644" target="_blank">in this guest-post</a> on Rampant Coyote's blog.</p>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>You can&rsquo;t please all the fans all the time</strong><br /><br />BioWare wants to do right by its fans. It really does. Many of its employees (if not most, nowadays) are former fans of BioWare games. So they have an inherent interest in making quality games.<br /><br />The trouble is, fans. Yeah, that isn&rsquo;t a complete sentence. Its incomplete for a reason. &ldquo;Fans&rdquo; means a lot of things. Take a look at TV Tropes&rsquo;s list of fandom sub tropes. Reading just a few of those will alternately make your heart soar, or harden like stone. It&rsquo;s hard to summarize the effect fans have on game development in one word or sentence. When one creates a work that becomes popular, there are a lot of people watching you closely to see what you make next. And not all of these people want the same thing. So when your next product inevitably lands slightly outside their circle of expectations, they become disappointed. And often vocal.<br /><br />I can&rsquo;t tell you how many times we, as employees, scoured the internet for reviews, forums, anything to tell us what the world thought of our work. Did we do right? What can we improve? You have to have a thick skin to deal with what you find. There&rsquo;s a saying. I&rsquo;m not sure who said it first, but I first heard it while at BioWare. It goes, &ldquo;If we could give people a magic hat that would create for them the exact RPG experience they&rsquo;d always dreamed of, they&rsquo;d complain about the color of the hat.&rdquo;<br /><br />That about sums up where most employees arrive after reading too many forums. You just lose heart, and stop reading forums. There are a few who soldier on, taking the flak, and trying to get to the bottom of the feedback. There are even those BioWare hired to do so. But most devs eventually lose heart and just tune it out. Which is probably a good thing, frankly. Because if everything you do is going to piss someone off anyway, you might as well do what feels right. You&rsquo;ll be more engaged in something you believe in, and probably make a better product for those who actually want it.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Pesky fans. Why don't they just shut up and buy the next DLC?</p>
 

DarkUnderlord

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The thing about studios is, they’re expensive to run. And more to the point, employees are expensive to keep. Employees need salaries, sure. But they also need benefits. And equipment. And space to work in. And support staff. This all adds up, unsurprisingly. A useful “napkin math” figure I learned while in the industry is that your average employee costs twice their salary over a year. Think about that, for a moment. Let’s say your average employee is making $50k per year. That probably means you cost your employer $100k annually. That’s over $8k per month!

So when it came to pitching my small game idea, the question of money inevitably came up. I met with our director of finance, and we started working some numbers. Suffice to say, even a small team over a small time adds up. And that doesn’t include overhead for a product website, marketing, community management, etc. It became pretty evident to me that my barrier to profit was much higher than I realized.
Moral of the story: Only indie's can make the kind of innovative little games that rock.
 

Gondolin

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I can’t tell you how many times we, as employees, scoured the internet for reviews, forums, anything to tell us what the world thought of our work. Did we do right? What can we improve?

And, apparently, you haven't learned anything from forums.

The thing about studios is, they’re expensive to run.

Do I look like I care?
 

Lingwe

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Gotta love how 'whatever feels right' always inevitably results in further catering to stupid idiots who don't know how to tie their shoes.
 

jiujitsu

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Haha, I wonder how many devs got butthurt reading the Codex. I wish there was a magical counter or something. :love:
 

grotsnik

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He doesn't come across as ill-intentioned, exactly, but there's this bizarre Biowarean tendency to respond to outside criticism by focusing entirely on emotionally-driven, entitled 'fan' feedback; refusing to differentiate between 'why couldn't Morrigan come back? I wanted to spend more wuvvy-time with my Witch of the Wilds!' and 'hang on, this character's motivations just aren't logical.'

Funnily enough, some feedback is solely about wanting a different colour of hat or a burning desire to romance the ginger chick. This feedback (otherwise 'The Petty Demands Of Shitheads') can probably be safely ignored in favour of people willing to tell the developers what they *thought* about the nuts and bolts of the game rather than how sad they felt about not being able to marry Alistair.

Bah. I don't know who I'm rambling at.
 

felipepepe

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In actual fact, my flaw was gameplay. I have to admit, even I didn’t have a clear idea how the “core nugget” of gameplay worked. My pitch and my prototype both sort of danced around it, and implied something fun would happen.
"It was when EA proposed 'The Awesome Button'. Suddenly, we knew Dragon Age II was ready."
 

thesheeep

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Because if everything you do is going to piss someone off anyway, you might as well do what feels right. You’ll be more engaged in something you believe in, and probably make a better product for those who actually want it.

I just wish more devs would do that instead of trying to appeal to the masses.
 
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grotsnik said:
He doesn't come across as ill-intentioned, exactly, but there's this bizarre Biowarean tendency to respond to outside criticism by focusing entirely on emotionally-driven, entitled 'fan' feedback; refusing to differentiate between 'why couldn't Morrigan come back? I wanted to spend more wuvvy-time with my Witch of the Wilds!' and 'hang on, this character's motivations just aren't logical.'

Funnily enough, some feedback is solely about wanting a different colour of hat or a burning desire to romance the ginger chick. This feedback (otherwise 'The Petty Demands Of Shitheads') can probably be safely ignored in favour of people willing to tell the developers what they *thought* about the nuts and bolts of the game rather than how sad they felt about not being able to marry Alistair.

Bah. I don't know who I'm rambling at.

This. I like this.
 

Roguey

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Lead technical artist on DA:O, technical artist on DA2. What a horribly untalented person. I appreciate his anecdote nonetheless.

Unfortunately, reality sometimes has other plans. In our case, market conditions and studio needs meant that we had to put those ideas on hold to work on more pressing projects.
Had to rush out DA2, had to pump out that DLC...
 

waywardOne

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some nobody with mediocre talent opens his heart to the masses. why is this "news"? what's next, the guy who hand-placed all the rocks in Oblivion posts his karaoke video collection?

here, for the topic: this is the guy responsible for all the floating tufts of grass, armor clipping, and terrain not blocking animations. fuck him.
 

laclongquan

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grotsnik said:
He doesn't come across as ill-intentioned, exactly, but there's this bizarre Biowarean tendency to respond to outside criticism by focusing entirely on emotionally-driven, entitled 'fan' feedback; refusing to differentiate between 'why couldn't Morrigan come back? I wanted to spend more wuvvy-time with my Witch of the Wilds!' and 'hang on, this character's motivations just aren't logical.'

Funnily enough, some feedback is solely about wanting a different colour of hat or a burning desire to romance the ginger chick. This feedback (otherwise 'The Petty Demands Of Shitheads') can probably be safely ignored in favour of people willing to tell the developers what they *thought* about the nuts and bolts of the game rather than how sad they felt about not being able to marry Alistair.

Bah. I don't know who I'm rambling at.

:love:
 

commie

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“If we could give people a magic hat that would create for them the exact RPG experience they’d always dreamed of, they’d complain about the color of the hat.”

So in other words: "we are making smug generalizations about customer feedback in order to not give a shit about anything they ask for."
 

Naked Ninja

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The irony of you lot affirming the truth of his post even as you reject it is quite amusing.

The fact that this irony is lost on you? Double plus amusing.
 

kofeur

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Roguey said:
Lead technical artist on DA:O, technical artist on DA2. What a horribly untalented person. I appreciate his anecdote nonetheless.

That sums it up quite nicely :salute:
 

Serious_Business

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You can wonder why isn't making the point that Bioware are making mainstream games. This isn't about fans, this is about selling games. Which fans anyway? Obviously there's a bunch of wild different expectations and no one expects them or anyone to make the "perfect game", that wouldn't even be a damn game. Every choice you make is going to be negating another possible choice you could have made, which someone else somewhere would have prefered. Fine, this is basic logic here. His point is so wide, he's not making a concession about anything.

The funny thing, you don't really need to expect a Bioware dev coming out of the woodworks and say "our games are products, we make em to be able to sell em, and that's that we don't care about you". They already say that. They're pretty straightfoward about it too. They don't have an ambition to make something that goes agaisnt what is flat, boring and predictable. It's not like the evil producers are containing their artistic élan, they don't have any of that. The games they do are the games they want to do. They're perfectly honest about it and you really can't tax Bioware of hypocrisy. It's just why Volourn is the perfect Bioware fan : he's honest. You can tax them of being fat and lazy, though. And ugly. It's not about them being bad devs, it's about them being bad human beings. You can bet your ass they don't like to read forums because it hurts their feelings. Shit, your ego must crumble everytime someone reminds you that you're fat and ugly.

Not like :mca:
 

Zdzisiu

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Naked Ninja said:
The irony of you lot affirming the truth of his post even as you reject it is quite amusing.

The fact that this irony is lost on you? Double plus amusing.

Scars of War, Mister Vaporware indie developer?
 

Xor

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From what I can tell, Bioware is one of those developers who only respond to mostly positive criticism. They dismiss any negative response as trolling; Gaider even went so far as to dismiss all the negative metacritic user reviews as an elaborate conspiracy between /v/ and the codex FFS.

You know what the funny thing is? Blizzard does a much better job listening to negative criticism and their games are more popular. I'm sure that's just a coincidence, though.
 

quasimodo

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Naked Ninja said:
The irony of you lot affirming the truth of his post even as you reject it is quite amusing.

The fact that this irony is lost on you? Double plus amusing.


What great truth is that? Some internet posters are big meanies?


I never saw you or VD ignoring your forum because someone hurt your feelings.
 

Shannow

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Naked Ninja said:
Scars of War, Mister Vaporware indie developer?

A cunning counter-argument, well done.
A counter-argument would have required an original argument. All you gave was a statement, while being all smug about "us" not understanding it. Thus you actually skipped the argument-part (which would have required reasoning out why your statement was true and convincing your readers of that truth)...
Ah, well, one could say you made as much of an argument as you made a game :roll:

Serious Business was actually quite right in his post and I even considered un-ignoring him until he claimed that Volly was an honest Bio-fanboy, although everyone knows that the "Bio-fanboy"-thing is just Volly's trolling-scheme and he will lie as much as it takes just to keep up the facade...
 

attackfighter

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Xor said:
You know what the funny thing is? Blizzard does a much better job listening to negative criticism and their games are more popular. I'm sure that's just a coincidence, though.

Blizzard also spends 10 times more on advertising. Probably just another coincidence though.

800px-Starcraft_II_Commercial_on_Korean_Air_-_Seoul_Incheon_Airport.JPG
 

MapMan

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Companies exist to make money, you gotta deal with it. What do you people expect? Main producer or designer saying in an interview "yeah, we had to change that because it will bring us more sales"? No one will ever do that. Also often they really DO believe in what they're doing. You can't blame them for having shit taste or writing lame story that doesn't make sense.
 

King Crispy

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What a whiney pussy. You don't hear Cleve complaining like that, do you?





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