Bioware and Its Future

[Space Satan]

Not a single one for EVERY branch

Guys, we have to be prepared this time. We must stock wine, champaigne and cheese in advance.

 

[Elttharion]

I-I dont think we are getting another Mass Effect game...

 

[bat_boro]

I-I dont think we are getting another Mass Effect game...

And here’s why this is a good thing!

 

[Anonymous Ranger]

I think ME5 happens even if BioWare gets shut down. If there’s a ME TV show coming out there’s no way EA isn’t going to want a new game to come out along side it.

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

EA I’m sure will release at least one more Mass Effect even if BioWare is finished. They’ll just have Respawn Entertainment do it, (probably a reboot) which will likely result in a better playing game anyways. A cross between their Titanfall games and their Star Wars Jedi games. I mean Mass Effect would allow them to keep making some version of their Star Wars Jedi games without the restrictions, confines (they could just throw Titanfall mech combat into their own Mass Effect Game) or licensing fees of the Star Wars licenses. Almost seems weird BioWare’s Not Star Wars series didn’t have sword combat given their spin on Star Wars also threw in Dune shields.

The name is known enough where they could also just farm the series out to someone that makes smaller games and see some return.

There’s a bunch of stuff they could do with it. But they probably try at least one more thing even without BioWare before the series disappears like so many other series EA owns.

 

[Silverfish]

I-I dont think we are getting another Mass Effect game...

Hey, I'm still waiting for a sequel to the first one.

 

[Morality Games]

I-I dont think we are getting another Mass Effect game...

My intuition is that Mass Effect 5 will be EA's last real try with Bioware, but there's little chance of it being successful unless they start hiring some serious Casey Hudson Xbox-tier dudebro producers and/or project directors to make sure the soldiers in space marine armor talk and act like soldiers in space marine armor.

Dunno, though. The entertainment industry is defying the laws of logic.

 

[Tyrr]

My intuition is that Mass Effect 5 will be EA's last real try with Bioware

I heard that way too many times.
Bioware is the roach of games studios.

 

[Iucounu]

It used to be that not only games, but actual game devs and their studios were hyped by gaming media. But in recent years I think that has started backfiring, with all the woke AAA studios becoming more like a laughing stock. So perhaps it would be better to not retain the Bioware brand (even if all the staff was new and non-woke), since it will do more harm than good these days?

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

I-I dont think we are getting another Mass Effect game...

My intuition is that Mass Effect 5 will be EA's last real try with Bioware, but there's little chance of it being successful unless they start hiring some serious Casey Hudson Xbox-tier dudebro producers and/or project directors to make sure the soldiers in space marine armor talk and act like soldiers in space marine armor.

Dunno, though. The entertainment industry is defying the laws of logic.

I can’t imagine BioWare giving them another try at bat. My guess would be that Dragon Age: The Veilguard was the one more try, and that EA handing off The Old Republic to Broadsword Online Games was preparation for a potential closure of the studio. The Veilguard flopped and BioWare hasn’t had a success in years. It’d be one thing if BioWare was turning out low budget games fairly quickly, but BioWare pissed years ago making a total flop.

Like what, EA is going to give them four or five more years to waste money on something that likely also won’t sell? Probably also doesn’t help that they already did an unsuccessful Mass Effect... yes that game was a different branch of BioWare, but everyone had to be brought in to fix it since it was such a mess. If BioWare had a The Veilguard size flop closer to their 360 era success that’d be one thing, but by the time they’d be done with a new Mass Effect (it doesn’t even sound like development has started on it yet) BioWare would’ve had more than a decade of crap nobody gives a shit about.

 

[GamerCat_]

Bioware were always kind of a strange accident propelled forward by the momentum and popularity of the industry and getting in at the right time, rather than their model being good or making sense.

Turning 'crpgs' into lightly tactical action games framing genre-fantasy narratives worked fine. These premises never benefited that much from rolling dice or arranging stats. But this idea, like most video game ideas, simply didn't scale well past the production limits of the original Xbox. That thing didn't hold them back. It kept them alive. But once you get on the scaling tiger there's no getting off. We know now what part of these games draws people in and interests them. And that's not where the scaling costs are going. At the same time we experienced a conceptual refinement in our understanding of these games as being about the characters and relationships, we get stuck in a massive scaling up of production values in everything around that. On some level they surely understand themselves, but are stuck with their reputation and standard industry practice.

They had to radically rebrand to stay alive. Ideally something like a decade ago. Even if they weren't fat woke tumblr humans they would still be screwed. These things just cost too fucking much to make, and it's not FIFA or Call of Duty. The audience aren't conditioned to see themselves as buying an iteration/subscription. You're rolling the dice every time. Playing Russian Roulette. Sooner or later Asmongold makes a bad asmongoldface at your trailer, someone gets pissed off at some thing you do despite your best intentions, and a game underperforms. Underperformance at this level of production is just about a death sentence. We have examples of what good faith game development at scale looks like over in Japan. They are struggling. It costs too fucking much. Scaling back to AA and lower standards, doing better with established tools, not giving all of their money to bluehairs, these keep them alive.

Bioware should have scaled back to AA in some big ways a decade ago. But even then that begs questions. "Why?" Once we're considering the shape of Bioware games they become hard to justify at any point. They were kind of organically evolving with trends, but the industry is stagnant now. Time to think, plan, and justify. If these games aren't simply going to be as big and broad as possible, what are they going to be? What do they do? Who are they for?

Now I've thought this through and concluded the same thing as the Japanese. Games for fat women who want to look at flirting queers should be made on a minimum budget for a phone-market release and designed to nickel and dime these stupid broads for all they're worth. When some Japanese guys got orders to make a Disney game for girls they didn't spend 5 years cloning Kingdom Hearts crossed with Skyrim. They took the bare elements needed to get women. Queer guys standing around talking. You need a VN engine and a guy to draw sprites. There's your game. There's your mountain of money. This is what Dragon Age: Veilguard should have looked like.

Do you know how much money fujo gacha makes? These guys will outlive Bioware. They will outlive the entire western industry at this rate.

 

[Morality Games]

I-I dont think we are getting another Mass Effect game...

My intuition is that Mass Effect 5 will be EA's last real try with Bioware, but there's little chance of it being successful unless they start hiring some serious Casey Hudson Xbox-tier dudebro producers and/or project directors to make sure the soldiers in space marine armor talk and act like soldiers in space marine armor.

Dunno, though. The entertainment industry is defying the laws of logic.

I can’t imagine BioWare giving them another try at bat. My guess would be that Dragon Age: The Veilguard was the one more try, and that EA handing off The Old Republic to Broadsword Online Games was preparation for a potential closure of the studio. The Veilguard flopped and BioWare hasn’t had a success in years. It’d be one thing if BioWare was turning out low budget games fairly quickly, but BioWare pissed years ago making a total flop.

Like what, EA is going to give them four or five more years to waste money on something that likely also won’t sell? Probably also doesn’t help that they already did an unsuccessful Mass Effect... yes that game was a different branch of BioWare, but everyone had to be brought in to fix it since it was such a mess. If BioWare had a The Veilguard size flop closer to their 360 era success that’d be one thing, but by the time they’d be done with a new Mass Effect (it doesn’t even sound like development has started on it yet) BioWare would’ve had more than a decade of crap nobody gives a shit about.

Anything is possible. However:

(a) Mass Effect has always had wider appeal and acclaim than Dragon Age by a longshot.

(b) it is evident from the way it was designed that Veilguard was produced to advance the software and tech they will use to make Mass Effect 5, which raises the spectre of sunken costs.

(c) a successful Mass Effect 5 that hits the right story beats and strikes the right tone isn't that terribly complicated to make.

Of course (c) is a problem because Bioware in 2025 would mess up making toast, but I'm not sure EA will see it that way. One good producer is all it takes to turn it around.

 

[GamerCat_]

Anything is possible. However:

(a) Mass Effect has always had wider appeal and acclaim than Dragon Age by a longshot.

(b) it is evident from the way it was designed that Veilguard was produced to advance the software and tech they will use to make Mass Effect 5, which raises the spectre of sunken costs.

(c) a successful Mass Effect 5 that hits the right story beats and strikes the right tone isn't that terribly complicated to make.

Of course (c) is a problem because Bioware in 2025 would mess up making toast, but I'm not sure EA will see it that way. One good producer is all it takes to turn it around.

Mass effect could succeed, but again, this business model is so bad that it's a question of how many chambers are loaded in this round of Russian Roulette. If they let the blue-hairs take the creative wheel they might as well use an automatic on themselves. But even if they do everything right, what will this cost, how big is the potential audience for these pointless tv-games? Baldur's Gate 3 in space is the dream to chase, they should try to go for that and signal they're doing so. But even then, Baldur's Gate 3 is retarded, and I wouldn't count on that model succeeding again. That wasn't a general success. That was a runaway viral success. You can't return that result consistently. It was obviously more of a 2000s Bioware Game than anything Bioware have made in 10 years, but it didn't succeed to the level it did on that. It succeeded because of a snowballing effect of happyasmongoldface youtube thumbnails putting normalfags into a purchase-trance. 95% of the people who purchased this game would probably go "Huh?" if you were to ask them how they liked 'Baldur's Gate 3'.

It seems like anything short of lightning in a bottle performance is going to be a massive failure for this game.

 

[thesecret1]

It used to be that not only games, but actual game devs and their studios were hyped by gaming media. But in recent years I think that has started backfiring, with all the woke AAA studios becoming more like a laughing stock. So perhaps it would be better to not retain the Bioware brand (even if all the staff was new and non-woke), since it will do more harm than good these days?

I think so too. EA may have noticed that what drove whatever little excitement there was for Veilguard was the IP, while the Bioware logo was acting more as a hindrance than a benefit. At which point, why keep them around? Any game they make will have a shitstorm brewing around it because normalfags realised it's fun to hate those losers, hence a storm of influencers taking a shit in turns, outdoing each other on who ridicules it more.

Better to take the IP and hand it to a studio whose brand isn't radioactive.

 

[scytheavatar]

Bioware were always kind of a strange accident propelled forward by the momentum and popularity of the industry and getting in at the right time, rather than their model being good or making sense.

Turning 'crpgs' into lightly tactical action games framing genre-fantasy narratives worked fine. These premises never benefited that much from rolling dice or arranging stats. But this idea, like most video game ideas, simply didn't scale well past the production limits of the original Xbox. That thing didn't hold them back. It kept them alive. But once you get on the scaling tiger there's no getting off. We know now what part of these games draws people in and interests them. And that's not where the scaling costs are going. At the same time we experienced a conceptual refinement in our understanding of these games as being about the characters and relationships, we get stuck in a massive scaling up of production values in everything around that. On some level they surely understand themselves, but are stuck with their reputation and standard industry practice.

They had to radically rebrand to stay alive. Ideally something like a decade ago. Even if they weren't fat woke tumblr humans they would still be screwed. These things just cost too fucking much to make, and it's not FIFA or Call of Duty. The audience aren't conditioned to see themselves as buying an iteration/subscription. You're rolling the dice every time. Playing Russian Roulette. Sooner or later Asmongold makes a bad asmongoldface at your trailer, someone gets pissed off at some thing you do despite your best intentions, and a game underperforms. Underperformance at this level of production is just about a death sentence. We have examples of what good faith game development at scale looks like over in Japan. They are struggling. It costs too fucking much. Scaling back to AA and lower standards, doing better with established tools, not giving all of their money to bluehairs, these keep them alive.

Bioware should have scaled back to AA in some big ways a decade ago. But even then that begs questions. "Why?" Once we're considering the shape of Bioware games they become hard to justify at any point. They were kind of organically evolving with trends, but the industry is stagnant now. Time to think, plan, and justify. If these games aren't simply going to be as big and broad as possible, what are they going to be? What do they do? Who are they for?

Now I've thought this through and concluded the same thing as the Japanese. Games for fat women who want to look at flirting queers should be made on a minimum budget for a phone-market release and designed to nickel and dime these stupid broads for all they're worth. When some Japanese guys got orders to make a Disney game for girls they didn't spend 5 years cloning Kingdom Hearts crossed with Skyrim. They took the bare elements needed to get women. Queer guys standing around talking. You need a VN engine and a guy to draw sprites. There's your game. There's your mountain of money. This is what Dragon Age: Veilguard should have looked like.

Do you know how much money fujo gacha makes? These guys will outlive Bioware. They will outlive the entire western industry at this rate.

Nice of you to pretend Baldur's Gate 3 didn't exist. Why is it that Bioware has to go AA yet Larian can go AAA?

 

[GamerCat_]

Nice of you to pretend Baldur's Gate 3 didn't exist. Why is it that Bioware has to go AA yet Larian can go AAA?

I addressed the success of Baldur's Gate 3 in the next post I wrote. Short answer is that I think it as a viral success that had far less to do with the character of the game than people just being bored and the game having a lot of video thumbnail and twitter thread fodder.

Mass effect could succeed, but again, this business model is so bad that it's a question of how many chambers are loaded in this round of Russian Roulette. If they let the blue-hairs take the creative wheel they might as well use an automatic on themselves. But even if they do everything right, what will this cost, how big is the potential audience for these pointless tv-games? Baldur's Gate 3 in space is the dream to chase, they should try to go for that and signal they're doing so. But even then, Baldur's Gate 3 is retarded, and I wouldn't count on that model succeeding again. That wasn't a general success. That was a runaway viral success. You can't return that result consistently. It was obviously more of a 2000s Bioware Game than anything Bioware have made in 10 years, but it didn't succeed to the level it did on that. It succeeded because of a snowballing effect of happyasmongoldface youtube thumbnails putting normalfags into a purchase-trance. 95% of the people who purchased this game would probably go "Huh?" if you were to ask them how they liked 'Baldur's Gate 3'.

It seems like anything short of lightning in a bottle performance is going to be a massive failure for this game.

If I'm wrong, more people will be able to replicate the style and performance of Baldur's Gate 3 and succeed. But even that's worked into the problem. How goddamn much does it take to do that now? Time, money, man-hours? Psychotic business model. And the idea these returns can be guaranteed, or even likely is insane. It would be far smarter to start making porn-oriented gacha. And you can't say it's an integrity problem. Chinese high-gacha is basically a second JRPG industry led by auteur-artisans who are deeply passionate about what they do. And what they do is make fucking massive monster-projects that make the money back and then deliver insane returns. It's obviously a better deal for artists than our insane dying political-commissar welfare-program of an industry and its endless succession of Titanic level follies.

And don't feel bad for the players. They'd just waste the money getting fatter anyway.

 

[S.H.O.D.A.N.]

One good producer is all it takes to turn it around.

Inquisition, Andromeda and Veilguard all had different game directors. I've not played any of them, but from the sidelines, it appears the problems that tanked Veilguard were there for a long time now, progressively, heh, getting worse ever since at least DA2, and changing the figurehead did nothing to stop that.

It might be that the studio's internal politics no longer allow for a top down change of course at all.

 

[Aarwolf]

(b) it is evident from the way it was designed that Veilguard was produced to advance the software and tech they will use to make Mass Effect 5, which raises the spectre of sunken costs.

Yes and no.

Failguard was the last game made by Bioware on Frostbite, Mass Effect was gonna be made on Unreal.

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

I-I dont think we are getting another Mass Effect game...

My intuition is that Mass Effect 5 will be EA's last real try with Bioware, but there's little chance of it being successful unless they start hiring some serious Casey Hudson Xbox-tier dudebro producers and/or project directors to make sure the soldiers in space marine armor talk and act like soldiers in space marine armor.

Dunno, though. The entertainment industry is defying the laws of logic.

I can’t imagine BioWare giving them another try at bat. My guess would be that Dragon Age: The Veilguard was the one more try, and that EA handing off The Old Republic to Broadsword Online Games was preparation for a potential closure of the studio. The Veilguard flopped and BioWare hasn’t had a success in years. It’d be one thing if BioWare was turning out low budget games fairly quickly, but BioWare pissed years ago making a total flop.

Like what, EA is going to give them four or five more years to waste money on something that likely also won’t sell? Probably also doesn’t help that they already did an unsuccessful Mass Effect... yes that game was a different branch of BioWare, but everyone had to be brought in to fix it since it was such a mess. If BioWare had a The Veilguard size flop closer to their 360 era success that’d be one thing, but by the time they’d be done with a new Mass Effect (it doesn’t even sound like development has started on it yet) BioWare would’ve had more than a decade of crap nobody gives a shit about.

Anything is possible. However:

(a) Mass Effect has always had wider appeal and acclaim than Dragon Age by a longshot.

(b) it is evident from the way it was designed that Veilguard was produced to advance the software and tech they will use to make Mass Effect 5, which raises the spectre of sunken costs.

(c) a successful Mass Effect 5 that hits the right story beats and strikes the right tone isn't that terribly complicated to make.

Of course (c) is a problem because Bioware in 2025 would mess up making toast, but I'm not sure EA will see it that way. One good producer is all it takes to turn it around.

Dragon Age is the more successful of the two series.

I doubt the visual advances seen in DICE’s Frostbite engine were made by BioWare. It is EA’s in-house engine that gets used on everything beside whatever Respawn does I guess. Gameplay wise what The Veilguard is doing would make for a very different Mass Effect if that’s what you’re talking about.

You say a successful Mass Effect 5 shouldn’t be terribly complicated, but they already fucked up the last Mass Effect. And while not Mass Effect by name, Anthem was a third person shooter that seemed like an extension of Mass Effect 3’s multiplayer, and BioWare fucked that up too. Also, BioWare just isn’t good at action gameplay. Mass Effect was never a particularly good third person shooter, and I’m not sure how much the excuse of being an “RPG” will fly now like it did during the 360 era.

 

[Dishonoredbr]

Mass Effect has always had wider appeal and acclaim than Dragon Age by a longshot

Yet never sold more than dragon age.. huh

 

[Dishonoredbr]

Kingdom Hearts crossed with Skyrim.

Skyrim with kingdom hearts 2 combat tho. That would be been peak tho

 

[GamerCat_]

Kingdom Hearts crossed with Skyrim.

Skyrim with kingdom hearts 2 combat tho. That would be been peak tho

Oh yeah. Given enough time and money they could have made that premise into an incredible game. But the Japanese have to be realistic. Best reasonable thing they can do, form-fitted to their ambitions. What a shame that retarded excess is standard practice in the industry that couldn't make a good game with infinite time and money. Billion times zero is still zero.

 

[Larianshill]

 

[Quillon]

Mass Effect has always had wider appeal and acclaim than Dragon Age by a longshot

Yet never sold more than dragon age.. huh

They say DAO sold better cos ME1 was exclusive to PC/xbox that DA had PS players from the start, I doubt DA2 performed better than either ME2 or 3. Inquision benefitted greatly from getting GOTY, probably why DA beats ME overall. It lucked out with Witcher 3 delay tho. Imagine they both came out at the same time, DAI would have gotten thrashed by people comparing it to W3.

While I have a certain dislike to fantasy games cos there are too many of them, I liked DA better than ME when they hadn't dumbed down its setting & gameplay. But I think ME was the one with better appeal second game onward, their fault dropping the ball hard with Andromeda & now with Failguard.

 

[Space Satan]

This is a rookie numbers,we can do better