IHaveHugeNick
Arcane
- Joined
- Apr 5, 2015
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No, you've got it completely backwards. It's that the AAA companies have become so incompetent that the trash they're throwing out the door is so low quality that even consumerist whores are going, "Eh? What? I'm supposed to pay for this?"
remember when EA was a bad guy in this comic?Finnaly, it's happening.
Rather, I think it's something the companies did to themselves
Didn't Andromeda take 5 years? Witcher 3 took 3.5 years. Same number of devs at >200 (Andromeda) and 240 (W3). How's that too short? Team inexperience?
Rather, I think it's something the companies did to themselves
I don't know man. What you're basically saying is "Bioware got too ambitious, they should go back to making smaller, cheaper and scaled down corridor shooter RPGs again". Lot of people are saying that now btw.
But I can't help thinking if they actually did that they'd face the same scorn and eventually sink into irrelevance as the developer "stuck in the past". Once you raise a bar of expectations it's very hard to push it down again, especially with the much cheaper and equally able competition from the Eastern Yuro and Asia.
Didn't Andromeda take 5 years? Witcher 3 took 3.5 years. Same number of devs at >200 (Andromeda) and 240 (W3). How's that too short? Team inexperience?
5 years should be plenty but it proved too short for MEA, clearly. Team experience prolly played a role too, also the engine. W3 was built on W2 engine, MEA on a brand new one, by a brand new team.
Bottom line, if it works, don't try to fix it and if you already have a large core audience
The problem is that it wasn't large enough. BioWare were/are stuck in the "3 million ghetto". Lots of hype, very popular with the sort of people who participate in communities on the Internet, but not actually played by many "normies" beyond that.
Which is of course, more evidence of BioWare's incompetence. The hype they had with Mass Effect was a huge starting advantage that many developers would have killed for, and they squandered it.
So basically I guess I disagree with you. I think they COULD have filled those large worlds (even Obsidian managed to do this once FFS). They weren't some no-name dev, they were BioWare, with EA's marketing muscle at their disposal. They could have broken through.
Bottom line, if it works, don't try to fix it and if you already have a large core audience
The problem is that it wasn't large enough. BioWare were/are stuck in the "3 million ghetto". Lots of hype, very popular with the sort of people who participate in communities on the Internet, but not actually played by many "normies" beyond that.
Which is of course, more evidence of BioWare's incompetence. The hype they had with Mass Effect was a huge starting advantage that many developers would have killed for, and they squandered it.
So basically I guess I disagree with you. I think they COULD have filled those large worlds (even Obsidian managed to do this once FFS). They weren't some no-name dev, they were BioWare, with EA's marketing muscle at their disposal. They could have broken through.
I hope this will be a good lesson for other game developers in the industry.
If you focus on SJW bullshit and forcing everything to create the most "diverse game" you are going to fail at everything.
These weird people think games are some sort of capture point. If you really wanna change something, go political but frek off from games.
The same goes for the Democrats in the last election. If your strategy is demonizing an entire race (in this case white people) and this race happens to be the majority of your target audience, then of course you're going to lose. Bileware had this muslim guy for the longest time who said thing like white people should be killed, etc. I think he eventually was fired, but the fact they kept him on board and tolerated his views for as long as they did speaks for itself. And yes, those sorts of views will impact the design of a game - even if only subconsciously. The gaming media didn't really cover this as much as they perhaps should have, but word of mouth still got around, so people did know. That's probably why they eventually fired that guy... not because they had a problem with his views personally, but because other people did and they were probably getting blasted for it. This game and its agenda would have been perfectly fine if its target country was Mugabe's Zimbabwe, but not here.
I hope this will be a good lesson for other game developers in the industry.
If you focus on SJW bullshit and forcing everything to create the most "diverse game" you are going to fail at everything.
These weird people think games are some sort of capture point. If you really wanna change something, go political but frek off from games.
The same goes for the Democrats in the last election. If your strategy is demonizing an entire race (in this case white people) and this race happens to be the majority of your target audience, then of course you're going to lose. Bileware had this muslim guy for the longest time who said thing like white people should be killed, etc. I think he eventually was fired, but the fact they kept him on board and tolerated his views for as long as they did speaks for itself. And yes, those sorts of views will impact the design of a game - even if only subconsciously. The gaming media didn't really cover this as much as they perhaps should have, but word of mouth still got around, so people did know. That's probably why they eventually fired that guy... not because they had a problem with his views personally, but because other people did and they were probably getting blasted for it. This game and its agenda would have been perfectly fine if its target country was Mugabe's Zimbabwe, but not here.
A company like that would have difficulties selling product, and major problems attracting and retaining talent. Really good technical people are quite rare, they can go anywhere in the world and name their price. Why would they want to work in a toxic environment when there is better? And isn't it interesting that people are also citing technical issues?
Bioware should have done a kotor game instead of Andromeda or inquisition.
At least the Austin studio was semi capable with the setting when they released the old Republic mmorpg, tho that degenerated quickly as well into a bunch of shit expansions.
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.
Good to see a lot of these shite games get a more negative reception, tbh I don't know the difference between now and a few years ago but it seems like the average gamer is a bit more critical of AAA releases. Have they gotten that much more rubbish?
No, you've got it completely backwards. It's that the AAA companies have become so incompetent that the trash they're throwing out the door is so low quality that even consumerist whores are going, "Eh? What? I'm supposed to pay for this?"
There is no incline here, only a decline so great that even the mainstream is learning the meaning of the word.
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.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.
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.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.
Why? Isn't TW3 basically what BW fan expectation of an open world BW game would have been? Story, C&C, Characters?