Editorial Lessons Learned While Working at BioWare

[J1M]

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.

Yes, I expect exactly that. They should say: "we made this change to try and sell more copies. We are sorry for alienating our core fanbase while attempting to expand our market share" and if they are actually the least bit sorry they can go on from there to explain other things they did to compensate for their dumbfuckery.

 

[attackfighter]

Yeah, WoW is a real quality game.

WOW is an extremely high quality game, relative to the other games in that sub genre (addiction based PVE focused EQ/Diku Mud clones).

The problem is that the sub genre it belongs to is an abomination.

But judging it within its own sub genre, WOW is pretty clearly *good for what it is*.

True, but when compared to Bioware games (even the DA franchise) I'd say it's of an average quality.

Today maybe, but around 5-6 years ago, it was as high quality as you could get. But is true, Blizzard got lazy and quality dropped a lot some years ago. Reason why I quit.

I disagree, even back then it was similar to one of the conservatively approached, focus group designed games you see today. The gameplay, content, graphics and every other aspect of WoW have and have always been rather unremarkable, at least when compared to games of other genres. It's success is largely owed to the lack of decent competition and the time of it's release, not because the developers had "quality" on their minds moreso than every other dev of the time.

 

[Naked Ninja]

Wowsers, DA/DA2 had dozens of artists and they somehow managed to not be worse than about half-a-dozen, give them a medal, most talented art team ever.

I'm thinking you don't quite understand how art assets come to be produced. More artists = more assets. But the assets are still generally produced individually (or broken up by function, texture artists, animators, etc).

As in, it's not like because they have 10x artists, each individual vase you find should be 10x the quality of the other game.There will just be 10x as many vases/environmental props.

And I didn't say 'not be worse', btw, I said better. DA 1 & 2 art is better than M&B. You disagree? You sure about that?

 

[felipepepe]

I disagree, even back then it was similar to one of the conservatively approached, focus group designed games you see today. The gameplay, content, graphics and every other aspect of WoW have and have always been rather unremarkable, at least when compared to games of other genres. It's success is largely owed to the lack of decent competition and the time of it's release, not because the developers had "quality" on their minds moreso than every other dev of the time.

Wow was innovative because it copied the best ideias from the games at the time. And did it with a good quality (although the graphics/art was already kind of lame). Lineage II was the great MMO at the time, and was absolute shit compared to WoW.

 

[Brotherman Bill]

Out of curiosity, how did WoW change for the worse? I have never played any MMO myself.

 

[fizzelopeguss]

Video game communites are filled with whiny, mentally unhinged man children.

 

[felipepepe]

Out of curiosity, how did WoW change for the worse? I have never played any MMO myself.

Although they implemented some nice things, it just lost the point. I spend around a year of casual gaming to get to lv 60 (end lv at time). Explored most of the world, got into the lore, was happy as a kid when reached lv 40 and got a mount after months of work....

People today reach lv 85 in 10 days and just keep grinding the same 2-3 dungeons/raids. And is not just the "powergamers", most of the players spend the whole day comparing achievments and gearscore. As Yahtzee said, it's just "my numbers are bigger than you numbers".

 

[BLOBERT]

BROS YOU NEED TO EMPATHIZE WITH THE DEVELOPER BRO

BY LISTENING TO THE FANS IN GENERAL YOU ARE PROBABLY LISTENING TO 75 PERCENT BORDERLINE IDOTS THEN YOU GOT SOME CORPORATE MIDDLEMANAGEMENT FUCK TELLING YOU TO ADD IN ANOTHER FAG SEX SCENE BECAUSE THE GUY ABOCVE HIM SAYS THE FAT CHICK SECTION OF THE MARKET ISNT BEING SERVED ENOUGH

BROS BIOWARE DOESNT MAKE GAMES MOST OF US LIKEYOU DONT NEEDTO BE MAD AT THEM ABOUT IT

I GUESS SOME OF THE LITTLER BROS HERE THINK BALDURS GATE WAS SUPER OLD SCHOOL THOSE ARETHE ONES I FEEL THE WORST FOR THEY ARE THEWHITE SUBURBAN KIDS WITH PANTS HANGING DOWN TO THERE KNEES AND GOLD CHAINS AND A BIG TILTED HAT IN OTHER WORDS THEY ARE TRYING TOO FUCKING HARD

 

[Notorious]

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 selling a million copies like BG2 did isn't enough? You need to make it more mainstream because of what? So that you can compete with CoD and get fired by your bosses? Or is it just for the $$$?

Seriously why not built a stable studio and be independent instead of going to a big publisher and release a WoW clone with insane amounts of voice work nobody gives a crap about?

 

[Commander Xbox]

Developers need to tell the fans to shut the fuck up dev their own games. ever notice that as soon as games became designed by consensus quality went downhill rapidly? your average gamer doesn't have a fucking clue about how to build a good game, they just scream out a list of TOTALLY AWESOME gimmicks that are cool to them at the time. devs need to stop appealing to every man and focus on building a good game, they know how to do it.

 

[Daemongar]

So selling a million copies like BG2 did isn't enough? You need to make it more mainstream because of what? So that you can compete with CoD and get fired by your bosses? Or is it just for the $$$?

This has me puzzled. It's not like Rpg's aren't mainstream. Why the hell did they get all crazy with buttsex and cobat action, I mean, what part of their "fans" were even asking for that?

Look, it's obvious the only reason they had to stop listening to their "fans" was that they couldn't listen to them and Marketing at the same time. This fucker saying that "fans" are a problem, just replace "fans" with "buyers of my game" to see how full of shit he is.

 

[BLOBERT]

BROS THIS IS NOT BRIAN SURGERY

\THE BIOWARE BROS THEY TOOK THE NEW EASY WAY YOU MAKE A COMPANY THAT ANNOYS BIGGER COMPANIES ENOUGH THAT THEY PAY YOU WHAT IS FUCKING LUNCH MONEY FOR THEM BUT FUCKING RETIRE LIKE A PLAYER PIMPO MONEY FOR MOST PEOPLE

FUCK THEY GOTTA FOLLOW THE MAN ON ANY OTYHER GAMES THEY MAKE EVEN IF IT WILL BE A PEACE OF SHIT THE HEAD GUYS RETIRE IN STYLE AND THE PEEONS WONT TALK SHIT CAUSE THEY WANT TO GET ANOTHER JOB

POOR BLOGGER MOTHERFUCKER MAY BE TRYING TO RATIONALIZW A LITTLE BUT CAN YOU BLAM HIM

BROS IS THIS FORUM FIULLED WITH 13 YUEAR OLD ANARCHISTS AND COMMUNISTS LOLLOLLOL!!!!

 

[RK47]

BROS THIS IS NOT BRIAN SURGERY

\THE BIOWARE BROS THEY TOOK THE NEW EASY WAY YOU MAKE A COMPANY THAT ANNOYS BIGGER COMPANIES ENOUGH THAT THEY PAY YOU WHAT IS FUCKING LUNCH MONEY FOR THEM BUT FUCKING RETIRE LIKE A PLAYER PIMPO MONEY FOR MOST PEOPLE

FUCK THEY GOTTA FOLLOW THE MAN ON ANY OTYHER GAMES THEY MAKE EVEN IF IT WILL BE A PEACE OF SHIT THE HEAD GUYS RETIRE IN STYLE AND THE PEEONS WONT TALK SHIT CAUSE THEY WANT TO GET ANOTHER JOB

POOR BLOGGER MOTHERFUCKER MAY BE TRYING TO RATIONALIZW A LITTLE BUT CAN YOU BLAM HIM

BROS IS THIS FORUM FIULLED WITH 13 YUEAR OLD ANARCHISTS AND COMMUNISTS LOLLOLLOL!!!!

 

[Bigot_]

Yeah, WoW is a real quality game.

11+ million people agree with you.

Yes, I went there.

I won't bother defending SC2, that was Blizzard's worst game to date.

You don't have to bother defending SC2 on account of there are hardly any legitimate criticisms besides the bnet drama

"tairrran booildings look liek lego l0l"
"MUSIC DECLINE SERIES IS RAPED BETTER VOICE ACTING PLS"
"its just not like epic and totally fresh anymore its like starcraft 1 where's the innovashun?!"

I loved brood war and dragoons turning into blueberry pies as much as the next korean, but this bullshit has to stop
Music and VA are fine
Graphics are fine, why the fuck is that even near the top of the common criticisms anyway?
If they keep the gameplay relatively similar, you people cry that it's stale, if they'd have changed it significantly you'd cry that you just wanted a sequel to the original not this newgen bullshit.
Jesus fuck, I bet half of you will have "bad graphixxx/ugly faces" as your top complaint about skyrimjob

 

[Johannes]

Yeah, WoW is a real quality game.

11+ million people agree with you.

Yes, I went there.

I won't bother defending SC2, that was Blizzard's worst game to date.

You don't have to bother defending SC2 on account of there are hardly any legitimate criticisms besides the bnet drama

"tairrran booildings look liek lego l0l"
"MUSIC DECLINE SERIES IS RAPED BETTER VOICE ACTING PLS"
"its just not like epic and totally fresh anymore its like starcraft 1 where's the innovashun?!"

I loved brood war and dragoons turning into blueberry pies as much as the next korean, but this bullshit has to stop
Music and VA are fine
Graphics are fine, why the fuck is that even near the top of the common criticisms anyway?
If they keep the gameplay relatively similar, you people cry that it's stale, if they'd have changed it significantly you'd cry that you just wanted a sequel to the original not this newgen bullshit.
Jesus fuck, I bet half of you will have "bad graphixxx/ugly faces" as your top complaint about skyrimjob

It's quite similar to SCBW, yes, but it's also slightly worse. The units and overall pace of the game just aren't as fun, exciting or strategic as BW. It's not a bad game per se but when there's a similar thing but better...

 

[Bigot_]

Yeah, WoW is a real quality game.

11+ million people agree with you.

Yes, I went there.

I won't bother defending SC2, that was Blizzard's worst game to date.

You don't have to bother defending SC2 on account of there are hardly any legitimate criticisms besides the bnet drama

"tairrran booildings look liek lego l0l"
"MUSIC DECLINE SERIES IS RAPED BETTER VOICE ACTING PLS"
"its just not like epic and totally fresh anymore its like starcraft 1 where's the innovashun?!"

I loved brood war and dragoons turning into blueberry pies as much as the next korean, but this bullshit has to stop
Music and VA are fine
Graphics are fine, why the fuck is that even near the top of the common criticisms anyway?
If they keep the gameplay relatively similar, you people cry that it's stale, if they'd have changed it significantly you'd cry that you just wanted a sequel to the original not this newgen bullshit.
Jesus fuck, I bet half of you will have "bad graphixxx/ugly faces" as your top complaint about skyrimjob

It's quite similar to SCBW, yes, but it's also slightly worse. The units and overall pace of the game just aren't as fun, exciting or strategic as BW. It's not a bad game per se but when there's a similar thing but better...

You can't get away with saying something is less "fun and exciting" without giving a single reason or argument to support it
Don't even try spouting that kind of shit at me bro

Not to mention that SC2 is more strategic than BW, if anything, considering that the major difference is that SC2 is more macro (strategy) oriented while BW is more micro (tactic) oriented.

 

[Johannes]

SC2 is much more about just getting the right unit mix compared to your opponents' and then deciding the game in a single quick battle of a-moving units. Maybe that's not the case each and every match but it's how it usually goes as far as I've seen. BW does have more complex tactics as you said but I don't see how SC2 would be strategically deeper. BW games on average include bigger economies, last longer, overall allows for more defensive strategies, you actually can make long term plans when in SC2 too much depends on the short term, you cannot invest into long term very much at any point. Though partly that's got to do with not just the design but how the game is newer and less mapped out.

Less fun and exciting units? Almost all units like mines, lurkers, dark swarm, dodgeable psi storm, (even if siege tank is still in) that made for intricate micro tactics for both sides and allowed for more strategic stalling of enemy movements, have been removed. With a much simplified high ground advantage, positional play is much less important.
Instead you've got forcefields and fungal growth for example, which just take away unit control from one side, that's much less satisfying for the receiving player at least. There's some new stuff that's cool, like new creep mechanics for one, but that doesn't offset the faults enough imo.

 

[Roguey]

Wowsers, DA/DA2 had dozens of artists and they somehow managed to not be worse than about half-a-dozen, give them a medal, most talented art team ever.

I'm thinking you don't quite understand how art assets come to be produced. More artists = more assets. But the assets are still generally produced individually (or broken up by function, texture artists, animators, etc).

As in, it's not like because they have 10x artists, each individual vase you find should be 10x the quality of the other game.There will just be 10x as many vases/environmental props.

From the DA2 manual:
Art and Animation
Character Artists: Shane Hawco (Lead), Ben Carriere,
Leroy Chen, Jae Keum, Francis Lacuna
Cinematic Animators: Greg Lidstone (Lead), Carlos Arancibia,
Edward Beek, Tim Golem, Suhas Holla, Nathan Zufelt
Concept Artists: Ben Huen, Ville Kinnunen, Steve Klit,
Casper Konefal, Matt Rhodes, Ramil Sunga,
Nick Thornborrow
Environment Artists: Ben McGrath (Lead), Sheila Nash
(Technical Lead), Casey Baldwin, Hayden Duvall,
Andrew Farrell, Rohan Knuckey, Boyd McKenzie, Chris Ryzebol,
Andre Santos, Lee Scheinbeim, Alex Scott
GUI Artists: Warren Heise (Lead), Tyler Lee
In-Game Animators: Clove Roy (Lead), Julio Alas,
Steve Gilmour, Marc Jarvis, Michael Milan, Cody Paulson,
John Santos
Technical Animators: Charles Looker (Lead), Kevin Ng,
Steve RunhamTechnical Artists: Geordie Moffatt (Lead),
Yunus “Light” Balcioglu, Daniel Fedor, Suhwan Pak
Visual Effects Artists: Alim Chaarani (Lead), Jacky Xuan
Additional Art and Animation: Joy Ang, Heather Cerlan
(BioWare Mythic), Chad Emond, Harvey Fong, Trevor Gilday,
Lucas Hardi (BioWare Mythic), Sung Kim, Terrence Kim,
Tohan Kim (BioWare Mythic), Mikko Kinnunen, Nate LaMartina,
Tom Rhodes, Rion Swanson

All those people worked on the plethora of unique assets, sure.

And I didn't say 'not be worse', btw, I said better. DA 1 & 2 art is better than M&B. You disagree? You sure about that?

Once again: not much of an accomplishment. They're still unpleasant to look at and compared to games with similar-sized art teams, they're a particular level of bad.

 

[Xor]

Yeah, WoW is a real quality game.

11+ million people agree with you.

Yes, I went there.

I won't bother defending SC2, that was Blizzard's worst game to date.

You don't have to bother defending SC2 on account of there are hardly any legitimate criticisms besides the bnet drama

SC2 was Blizzard's worst game to date, at least for me (and I'm not even saying it was a bad game, just average, which is below par for Blizzard). You can talk about the mechanics being solid all day long, and I'm not really qualified to dispute that, but there were numerous other elements to the game that made me regret purchasing it. Battlenet 2.0 actually has fewer features than the original bnet did, which is silly and I don't buy Blizzard's justification as to why. Custom map support was still shit last time I bothered checking, and that was the one feature that kept me coming back to WC3 even after I realized I sucked at the core game and got bored with it.

Also, the story was absolutely awful. That might seem like a minor point in a multiplayer-focused game, but I actually enjoyed the single player campaigns of WC2, SC1, and WC3 even though I was never very good at any of them. The terrible story ruins the single player campaign for me, even though the missions themselves were really interesting and challenging (again, I'm not good at RTS's). Plus I was a bit disappointed with the way they handled units in the single player campaign; I liked using the campaigns to learn each race's units, but many of the units in SC2's single player aren't available in multiplayer so I couldn't do that.

I realize this is all just opinion, but it seems like SC2 is less fun overall than any other Blizzard game I've played. I haven't touched it in months. It's not even installed on either of my computers any more. I recognize that you might like it, but to say there are no legitimate complaints about the game is disingenuous.

 

[felipepepe]

I realize this is all just opinion, but it seems like SC2 is less fun overall than any other Blizzard game I've played. I haven't touched it in months. It's not even installed on either of my computers any more. I recognize that you might like it, but to say there are no legitimate complaints about the game is disingenuous.

SC2 here in Brazil was priced really low - around 8 dollars - but you only got 6 months of the game, you had to buy game cards after that (even single player game was locked). Best deal ever, since I played for 1 month and never even tried again.

I just feel sad cause it's not what I expected from a Blizzard game. Even thought we got our own servers and a fully translated game (with some good voice actors), with is more than ANY game company ever did around here, the game just died after a couple months.

Still, I'm sure to buy the next expansions.

 

[Dorf]

Oh come on, you're not trying to suggest that throwing money at a game guarentees success, are you? I mean, marketing helps, but you're just being obtuse if you're suggesting that more money invested automatically equals more profits.

Just because something has a high volume of sales doesn't mean its good. Look at beer. Some of the top sellers are Miller Lite, Budweiser, & MGD but they are absolute crap.

By that logc Angry Birds, or Farmville are great games, and well they are not. They are amusing and require little thought or skill to play them. They appeal to the masses

I would argue that sales are a good indicator of the success of a product, not necessarily the quality (how do you measure quality, anyway?). Angry Birds has over 10 million sales or something like that, but at only $1 per sale. WoW has had millions of customers paying $15 a month for years. It is undeniably a successful product.

frankly the masses have crap taste.

Statements like this are silly. People have different tastes than you. That doesn't make their opinions worse than yours or your opinions better than theirs.

I am referring to the masses, and you are refferring to people as individuals. As individuals we do have varying tastes, but when we are lump with the mob and all of our individual tastes are watered down to banality (ie. DA2) then, yes, the masses have crap taste.

And you are right volume of sales, or profit, is no measure of quality, but asking how we can measure quality as if we can't... well that is just silly. I can measure quality in steak I eat just as I can measure it in a game I play. We can define, while we argue the degree something is good or crappy, generally if you are being truthful and knowledgeable about what you are judging you know if its crap, or not.

 

[Xor]

I am referring to the masses, and you are refferring to people as individuals. As individuals we do have varying tastes, but when we are lump with the mob and all of our individual tastes are watered down to banality (ie. DA2) then, yes, the masses have crap taste.

Ah, I understand. Yeah, that's an interesting point.

 

[Shemar]

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.

I am referring to the masses, and you are refferring to people as individuals. As individuals we do have varying tastes, but when we are lump with the mob and all of our individual tastes are watered down to banality (ie. DA2) then, yes, the masses have crap taste.

Yes, the larger the group of people you are trying to please the bigger the compromises you have to make and the less you end up pleasing each individual. Unfortunately game developers and publishers are always looking for that point of "please them enough to buy the game, but not enough so as to exclude other potential customers", which is a perfectly valid business model of course, just not very popular with gamers/customers.

There are really only two valid approached to making games. One is "game is business" and the goal of every design decision is to sell more or cost less and the other is "game is art" where the goal is to create the game the designer wants regardless of sales. Funnily enough, the second one is the one that involves listening to the fans the least. Of course most developers are somewhere in the middle, between the two extremes.

 

[circ]

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? You have to have a thick skin to deal with what you find.

OK GOOGLE DO YOUR FUCKING MAGIC. BIOWARE. YOUR GAMES SUCK. FIRE THE ENTIRE DA2 TEAM. FEEL FREE TO DOWNSIZE THE MEXTREME TEAM TOO.

 

[Xor]

Yes, the larger the group of people you are trying to please the bigger the compromises you have to make and the less you end up pleasing each individual. Unfortunately game developers and publishers are always looking for that point of "please them enough to buy the game, but not enough so as to exclude other potential customers", which is a perfectly valid business model of course, just not very popular with gamers/customers.

There are really only two valid approached to making games. One is "game is business" and the goal of every design decision is to sell more or cost less and the other is "game is art" where the goal is to create the game the designer wants regardless of sales. Funnily enough, the second one is the one that involves listening to the fans the least. Of course most developers are somewhere in the middle, between the two extremes.

The main problem with this strategy is that history has shown that you don't have to dumb a game down the the point where it's meaningless to appeal to a mass audience. If anything, companies that target only hardcore gamers are dwarfed by companies that target the masses in general. Look at the widespread popularity of old-school arcade games like Pac-Man or any of the 2D Super Mario games. Everyone has heard of these older games, and their popularity and influence on popular culture is undeniable.

No, the problem isn't that developers need to dumb down their games to sell to a mass audience, the problem is that they don't want to make the kinds of games that will sell to a mass audience, or they don't know how to. The only audience they know how to target is the shrinking core gamer market.

We're already seeing the return of arcade-style games in the form of iphone apps and the like. In a few years that "casual games" industry will completely eclipse the current game industry. If these companies don't adapt and start focusing on niche markets (like the cRPG market!) with smaller production values ($500,000 budget for a game instead of $20 million) they'll go bankrupt as they continue to bleed customers who are increasingly becoming disinterested in the watered-down crap hardcore games have become.

 

[Phelot]

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.

Yes, I expect exactly that. They should say: "we made this change to try and sell more copies. We are sorry for alienating our core fanbase while attempting to expand our market share" and if they are actually the least bit sorry they can go on from there to explain other things they did to compensate for their dumbfuckery.

I agree though I think it's expecting too much from devs. But it's not expecting too much from the joke that is gaming journalists which have basically become paid fans.

I don't get it. even shitty mainstream music mags like Rollingstone will from time to time offer a scathing opinion of an otherwise popular band. We never see this in games.