Because it's Bioware?
-
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.
ANTHEM - failed Destiny clone from BioWare
- Thread starter Infinitron
- Start date
-
- Tags
- bioware
If it is anything like Destiny, it might be fun as in "Haha! We're playing a trash game! Look at that shit!".
http://www.shacknews.com/article/10...2019-new-report-details-development-pressures
TL;DR
If Anthem doesn't deliver, Bioware will be dead.
TL;DR
If Anthem doesn't deliver, Bioware will be dead.
How can anything that is already dead, be more dead?
At this point BioWare is at Necromancer level now...
At this point BioWare is at Necromancer level now...
- Joined
- Jan 28, 2011
- Messages
- 99,558
Post the original article dude
BioWare Doubles Down On Anthem As Pressure Mounts
Promotional material from BioWare’s Anthem
Over the past few months, BioWare has essentially transformed into a single-game studio as it harnesses its teams to work on the ambitious multiplayer action game Anthem, sources say. There are still small teams maintaining Star Wars: The Old Republic and piecing together the next Dragon Age, which was recently rebooted, but the bulk of BioWare’s staff in both Edmonton and Austin are now on Anthem. And there’s a sense among BioWare employees that the company’s future is inextricably tied to this game.
Anthem, which was announced at E3 2017, is now scheduled for release in early 2019, according to three people familiar with the project. The “fall 2018” window mentioned during that E3 announcement was “never realistic,” one source said. Exact dates remain in flux—and Anthem’s developers must also plan for a beta release, an EA Access launch, and an ongoing schedule of patches and updates—but it appears unlikely to developers that publisher EA will allow BioWare to delay the game any further than March 2019, when the company’s 2019 fiscal year comes to an end. (EA, like most publicly traded companies, uses the fiscal calendar as a basis for all of its decisions, as those dates determine how investors will behave.)
BioWare, founded in 1995, has long been seen as one of the world’s most prestigious developers of role-playing games, thanks to hits like Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, the Mass Effect trilogy, and Dragon Age Origins. In 2007, EA purchased the studio, expanding it beyond its original office in Edmonton and putting BioWare studios in Austin, Montreal, and Virginia. (The latter two were later shut down.)
It’s not unusual for BioWare to pull staff from other projects as it enters the final year of production on a game. In recent years, BioWare has done the same for both Mass Effect: Andromeda and Dragon Age: Inquisition. But Anthem, the studio’s first new franchise in eight years and EA’s first big stab at a Destiny-style persistent online world, feels different. To BioWare staff, the stakes feel higher than they ever have. As one developer told me, there’s a belief that if Anthem doesn’t live up to EA’s expectations, BioWare will look very different in the future, especially after the disappointment of Mass Effect Andromeda led to EA absorbing BioWare Montreal into the studio EA Motive.
Now, with a year left in development and a climate that’s grown more turbulent thanks to controversies over EA’s Star Wars Battlefront II and Activision’s Destiny 2, pressure is mounting for Anthem to be great. In the past few weeks I’ve spoken to more than half a dozen people close to the project, all of whom spoke anonymously because they were not authorized to talk about the game, and they’ve described feeling both optimistic and anxious—optimistic that they can make something good, but anxious at the number of forces that appear to be pushing against them.
Anthem has been in development since 2012, at first under Mass Effectdirector Casey Hudson, who left the company in 2014 (and returned last year to lead BioWare as studio head). The game remained in preproduction at BioWare’s lead Edmonton studio for a very long time. Some close to the Anthem team have criticized that fact, suggesting that the game’s development was floundering, but veteran Anthem staff point out that most big new franchises have long gestation periods. Destiny, most notably, was in preproduction for years as the developers at Bungie tried to figure out what a persistent multiplayer shooter might look like. At points during 2014 and 2015, I heard several rumors that the Anthemproject was not going well, in part because of the long-running issues that BioWare has faced with its engine, Frostbite, and in part because making a game of this nature can be an excruciating process.
Over the last year, as Anthem’s production ramped up and BioWare began putting more and more of its staff on the project, things appear to have improved. When I asked one source recently whether Anthem’s strugglesfell more into the category of “this game is screwed” or “game development is really hard,” the source said that over time, it had veered from the former into the latter. Other people close to BioWare have said similar things, although it’s not hard to find developers willing to complain about Frostbite, the game engine initially designed for EA’s Battlefield games, which has impeded many of BioWare’s projects over the past decade.
The past year has been tumultuous for BioWare and involved some major changes to the studio. One was to reboot the fourth Dragon Age, which at the time was code-named Joplin, according to two sources. (There’s a running theme here—Anthem’s codename was Dylan.) The goal, those sources said, was to implement more “live” elements into the game, although two of those sources stressed that this next Dragon Age will still have a heavy focus on characters and story, whenever it does come out. It’s not clear what a “live” version of Dragon Age might look like, but EA has been public about its embrace of games as a service, and its lack of interest in releasing $60 games that do not have any sort of revenue tail, whether that means paid extra content, microtransactions, or something else.
BioWare has also discussed ending development on the multiplayer online game Star Wars: The Old Republic, those sources said, although one person familiar with the studio told me recently that plans are still up in the air.
What’s clear is that both BioWare studios, Edmonton and Austin, are singularly focused on Anthem, and will be until that game comes out. Even Mark Darrah, executive producer and shepherd of the Dragon Agefranchise, was recently moved to Anthem. In June, shortly after Anthem’s reveal, Darrah tweeted that he was not working on the game. But things have changed. This morning, minutes after we heard back from an EA spokesperson saying the publisher was declining to comment on this article, Darrah tweeted that he is working on both Anthem and Dragon Age—his apparent first public acknowledgement that he is now on Anthem. “Anthem’s up next but there are people hard at work on both franchises and I look forward to sharing more in the future,” he said. The creative director of the Dragon Age series, Mike Laidlaw, left BioWare last year.
Even with both of BioWare’s studios all-in on Anthem, some developers have expressed anxieties, in large part because of 2017’s other events. First there was Mass Effect Andromeda, a high-profile failure that disappointed fans last spring and led to the closure of BioWare Montreal, as well as Mass Effect getting put on ice. Veteran members of the Anthemteam were thrilled to finally unveil the game at E3 in June 2017, but a month later, BioWare studio head Aaryn Flynn departed, to be replaced by Casey Hudson. Both men are well-respected at the company, but this sort of top executive shuffling often leads to worry.
Then, in November 2017, widespread player anger over loot boxes and microtransactions in EA’s Star Wars Battlefront II shook up the entire video game industry. From what I’ve heard, the loot box controversy has led a number of big video game studios, including BioWare, to reexamine their plans for microtransactions in future games. Although Anthem’s microtransaction plans are still undecided (and, I hear, may only involve cosmetics), the outrage has left some developers on edge.
Most recently, sources say, Anthem’s developers have been watching the ongoing anger in the Destiny 2 community over the state of that game. Destiny fans have grown irritated at Destiny 2’s lack of content, Bungie’s poor communication, and the lingering feeling that Destiny 2 is repeating its predecessor’s mistakes. Although fans and pundits have suggested that Destiny 2’s inability to capture hardcore players may leave an opening for Anthem to grab that crowd, some BioWare developers have expressed worry that their game will face its own growing pains, as all games of this nature do. Most persistent action games have had to recover from rocky launches, including Destiny, Diablo III, and The Division. The question is: how much patience will EA have for Anthem?
And then there’s the toxicity problem, as video game pundits seize any opportunity to stoke anger at big publishers. Two people who have worked on Anthem both expressed anxiety to me about the ways some big YouTubers have spread misinformation and inflammatory rhetoric about EA, saying that it has a demoralizing effect on those people on the ground level. To people who work for EA, the publisher isn’t just a cold corporate master—it is a complicated machine that, yes, is concerned first and foremost with generating revenue for investors, but also supports thousands of people in many tangible and intangible ways. People close to BioWare, along with many other developers I’ve talked to in recent months, worry that commentary from some of YouTube’s loudest voices has eliminated nuance and made companies like EA seem like Disney villains.
If you’re a BioWare fan, there are certainly reasons to be hopeful. Anthem’s staff have shown a willingness to be transparent and engage with fans, as technical design director Brenon Holmes posts frequently on Reddit to answer questions and share details on the game. What we’ve seen of the game has looked spectacular, even if last year’s footage seems a little too pretty to be real. One thing is undeniable, however: For BioWare, the pressure is on.
fantadomat
Arcane
Good,it is time for the sickman to die.
fantadomat
Arcane
Here it is pretty interesting video about Anthem.
fantadomat
Arcane
True,but most people are too lazy to read that shit.
vonAchdorf
Arcane
- Joined
- Sep 20, 2014
- Messages
- 13,465
Besides the usual technical ineptitude at Bioware, I think the major setback for the game is the Battlefront II and Destiny 2 (and general loot box) discussion. They need to figure out a future proof monetization scheme.
Yes, absolutely.
Bioware got rekt by letting themselves be bought by EA.
But hey, that is what happens if you spread those cheeks really wide. What a surprise.
Bioware got rekt by letting themselves be bought by EA.
But hey, that is what happens if you spread those cheeks really wide. What a surprise.
fantadomat
Arcane
The doctors just wanted to get away with a nice profit.
TheChickenKing
Savant
- Joined
- Sep 16, 2016
- Messages
- 296
Hmmmm. Future proof monetization scheme. I have a crazy idea, but hear me out: What if they released smaller chunks of actual new content for real money? Instead of cosmetics, they sell new levels, guns, classes, and the like for less than the base game. I don't know if that could make them money, but maybe they could try such an original and unique concept. They could call these mini-releases Downloadable Game Expansions, or DGEs. That sounds kinda silly but idk what else they could call it since this is such an original and unique concept. In any case, it'd be an alternative to just milking their consumers dry through exploitative and pointless microtransactions that deliberately attempt to prey on addiction and whatnot, at least.
- Joined
- Jan 28, 2011
- Messages
- 99,558
The article you're quoting is the first time it's been revealed, so probably not! But see here for any further information: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...gon-age-confirmed.115334/page-13#post-5461308
So DLCs? Like they did for their previous games (excluding MEA)? I mean it's less scummy than microtransactions, but it's still shit.
Vorark
Erudite
- Joined
- Mar 2, 2017
- Messages
- 1,450
Hmm, not much to go by. Thanks for the link, though. Could be scrapped work, a genre shift or all out series rewriting. Whatever "reboot" means, I'm looking forward to the eventual drama.
vonAchdorf
Arcane
- Joined
- Sep 20, 2014
- Messages
- 13,465
DLC with essential content (levels, weapons) isn't great in a multiplayer game, because it fragmentizes the community. DLC for single player games is a feature for the most loyal fans, but the attach rate, aka owners of the base version who buy the DLC, is between 10-20% (optimistic).
There are only so many "games as a service" the market will support, and there are a few on the market already.
There are only so many "games as a service" the market will support, and there are a few on the market already.
Where did you get that number from?
Not that I don't think it is realistic (I'd assume about the same), but it would be nice to have a source for that.
Last edited:
TheChickenKing
Savant
- Joined
- Sep 16, 2016
- Messages
- 296
thatsthejoke.jpeg
DLC at least doesn't have to be bad, and can be more like a proper expansion. I'm just saying that companies are starting to act like microtransactions are the only way they can monetize products post-launch, when other, better options exist - even assuming that post-launch monetization is necessary.
As an Amazon Associate, rpgcodex.net earns from qualifying purchases.