Company News Bioware is fucked

[Zomg]

This is the ten-thousandth example of how grotesque developmarketing costs are dissolving all character in the industry.

 

[NiM82]

Bah, couldn't they've bought Bethesda instead? RIP Bioware. RIP Dragon Age. RIP Volourn (this news will surely kill him).

This is their punishment for making an extreeeme game with popular appeal. Hope they all love doing (underpaid) overtime, they will be seeing an awful lot more of it from now on, I suspect.

Curiousity: What will happen to all their licenses? Will their KOTOR/D&D licenses have been voided by the takeover?

 

[Deleted member 7219]

RIP Volourn (this news will surely kill him).

Then who will be the forum clown? Kingcomrade? He isn't funny enough.

Curiousity: What will happen to all their licenses? Will their KOTOR/D&D licenses have been voided by the takeover?

KOTOR, like everything Star Wars gaming related, belongs to Lucasarts. D&D belongs to Atari and WotC.

 

[Cassidy]

Any fan of an EA Games "RPG" will make Bethesda fans look like high class intellectuals in comparison... I have only one hope:

VAULT DWELLER, NOW YOU ARE TRULY ONE OF THE LAST HOPES FOR THE RPG GENRE. DON'T DISAPPOINT US AND SHOVE A REAL RPG AGAINST THOSE CORPORATE SALES FIGURES ASSES! AGE OF DECADENCE IS FOR THE RPG GENRE IS LIKE THE WATER CHIP FOR VAULT 13!

Now this is what I see from this news.

Bioware now will focus its efforts on making RPGs that resemble "The Sims" and will be possibly dubbed as "The Sims RPG" by sarcastic oldskool RPG fans

It only pulls a large urge of launching a deep, guttural voice and shouting in anger and disappointment.

FUCK EA GAMES!

[/RANT]

 

[Higher Game]

As far as I'm concerned, this is just karma and I find it more amusing than anything else.

 

[mytgroo]

MMO Basketball was a big hit from Korea...
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/sports/frees ... id=6148034

Think MMO football teams, and MMO soccer teams, you be the player get better moves as you advance in skill, huge money to pretend you are part of a sports team if done, a lot more than in traditional roleplaying games because there is a potentially much larger audience.

 

[Amasius]

"EA plans to release four or five games a year from the studios in each of the 2009-2011 fiscal years."

No surprises here.

 

[Cassidy]

Oh my god, EA wants to make RPGs again...

I think this was their last one, if we consider all platforms:

http://www.doomrpg.com/

 

[Vault Dweller]

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=29522

As to what BioWare and Pandemic stand to gain, Jenson referred to EA as the "world's best publishing organisation. We reach places they don't get," he said, making reference to EA's online and mobile business.

Mobile business.... SWEET!!!

Edit:

Although Riccitiello did not discuss his personal stake in the acquisition any further, EA has filed form 8-K with the SEC indicating that he could earn as much as USD 4.9 million from the deal.

So first, Riccitiello buys Bioware and Pandemic, forming VG Holdings. Then he gets a job at EA and sells them his own company. Now he will milk every buck from Bio's and Pandemic's intellectual properties. Herve Caen has finally met his match?

 

[fizzelopeguss]

EA ain't as bad as i remember, Tiberium wars and MOH airborne were both decent games i thought.

 

[Solaris]

So, another one bites the dust huh? Good ole EA

Just when I thought the rpg scene was getting its act together again (MotB, The Witcher, etc). Hope this doesn't fuck Dragon Age up, was looking forward to that

Fuck you EA....just about every game of theirs I've ever played has been a bug ridden piece of shit, rushed, incompatible, etc.....they are the masters of quantity over quality

 

[Brother None]

So first, Riccitiello buys Bioware and Pandemic, forming VG Holdings. Then he gets a job at EA and sells them his own company. Now he will milk every buck from Bio's and Pandemic's intellectual properties. Herve Caen has finally met his match?

There's a key difference. At least this guy's making money out of this, Herve Caen just basically destroyed a company without even managing to turn out a profit for anyone, let alone himself.

 

[gromit]

Regardless of how anyone here feels about their games, I've always had the distinct impression that they always made exactly what they felt like, and given that freedom found massive success. This is sad.

So do we start a death pool on Dragon Age? Bonus payout for calling the quasi derogatory terms thrown at the platform and genre two medical software designers built a legend with?

 

[NiM82]

KOTOR, like everything Star Wars gaming related, belongs to Lucasarts. D&D belongs to Atari and WotC.

Cheers, the Bioware logo on the NWN2 box had led me to believe they were the ones who had the WotC license, not Atari.

All this talk of EA reminded me of this video from an early 90's PC Zone.. shame the rockets weren't real

 

[Texas Red]

Why exactly do you guys care? Bioware has already completely abandoned the PC market in order to produce Hollywood blockbuster-like shit. This news does not affect me since Bioware doesnt make PC games anyway .

Although I do hope that EA will order Bioware now to produce both console and PC games at the same time. In the thread I made it was said that Microsoft bullied Bio in to making games for Xbox only. Now maybe EA will have authority over this decision.

So it turns out this may be good after all. Shitty RPGs for PC are better than no RPGs, AMIRITE?

EDIT: Im pretty much tired of the retarded 4 year period of new "cutting edge" grafix development ala Bioware and Bethesda. Its all fine by me if they shove out games with the same engine, though let us hope with high quality.

 

[spacemoose]

this is a triumph of the free market! rejoice, everyone

in fact, someone should write a book based on this event - "Triumph of the Freemarket"

 

[Section8]

I still don't get why EA is demonised so much more than other game developers with the same practices. I mean, at least they're forthright about incremental releases of the same game - the attitude seems to be - Here's <game> `07. It's a minor improvement on <game> '06, and features the following changes. Don't like it? Don't buy it.

To me, that's a more transparent and honest policy than Bioware making games with the same shitty combat, the same shitty pathfinding, the same cliched characters and different, but equally trite narrative.

Or look at Bethesda, who don't even make incremental improvements to their games, they just retard-proof the one before and try to gloss over their design failures with different design failures.

I buy a Tiger Woods game every couple of years. I might buy a Need For Speed game every now and then. I bought The Sims 1 & 2. Now that hardly makes me an EA fanboy, but the last Bioware game I bought was NWN, and my god, was it a piece of shit. So bad, in fact, that I've not bought a Bioware game since, and don't plan to. I haven't even bought an Obsidian game because they've been churning out Bioware sequels.

So is this animosity stemming from EAs fuckery of Origin or Bullfrog or something? How many of you even remember those halcyon days? It seems to me that EA hatred is borne of the same ovine need to follow that has established Halo 3 as a quasi-religious icon, or the need to parrot the latest 4chan/SA memes.

Was anyone complaining about incremental releases back when they were getting Ultimas and Gold Box games?

Now let me backtrack a bit here - I don't think EA acquiring Bonoware is likely to net any kind of gain for us - the role playing gamers - but they can't do any worse than Bioware themselves are doing, so my verdict is - Benefit of the Doubt.

 

[Cassidy]

this is a triumph of the free market! rejoice, everyone

Hah! And so many right-wingers here... sweet!

Final Fantasy had much more sales than Planescape Torment, so from capitalist thought Final Fantasy is much, much better! EA proved once more that the most simplistic capitalist thought(MOAR PROFIT!!!!!) and big corporations predate creativity and innovation, specially in oligopolies where a handful of big companies control most of the market. Or maybe it's mindless consumerism specifically... but how significant sectors of capitalism could survive without it? When the $$$$$$ is considered much more important than the game itself, we can expect that overhyped shit will probably be the end result

Briefing it.

Capitalism on its fullest in gaming is:

-Milking Series for more profit.
-Hype and Graphics for more sales and profit.
-Raping franchises for more profit.
-Focusing on the mainstream market for more sales and profit potential.
-Ignoring niches because they aren't profitable enough.
-Gaming Journalism, because being honest is much less profitable.

EA followed that formula, it's one the biggest companies now. So are they wrong under the free market paradigm?

On the other hand, most Indy games aren't primarily moved by the thought of making profit, but by the thought of making a great, unique game with more emphasis on graphics than gameplay. Interplay also probably didn't had an excessive worry about MAXIMUM PROFIT when they created Fallout 1, Falllout 2 or Planescape: Torment because none of these games had a mainstream appeal though neither were commercial failures, they just gave less profits than a mainstream hypebuster. Of course, a nice market like real RPGs, though have less sales potential has the larger advantage of having almostly 0% competition.

Finally, graphic cards and overall hardware manufacturers have an interest on more and more shinier graphics games, and Microsoft has it too(Or all they would have market for would be Service Packs), the game companies do that for them(maybe there is some kind of implicit deal between these commercial sectors). All in all, there is a whole chain of corporate interests and mainstream idiocy that keeps the "MOAR BLOOM" alive and kicking.

 

[Zomg]

Edit - Rereading this, it came across as far douchier than I had intented.

 

[Jaesun]

Well, I assume this means they have a publisher for Dragon Age now. Ugh. Good Bye Bioware. I salute thee and your fellow fallen comrades:

- Westwood
- Bullfrog
- Maxis
- Origin
- Microprose



Does this fuck Obsidian? As in NWN2 and further development?

 

[Jasede]

...Microprose? EA did Microprose in? The best gaming studio ever? - ...

 

[Saxon1974]

Wow, I can't believe this.

So pretty soon 2 or 3 mega companies will own almost every RPG dev studio and we will only get games made that will sell 2 million plus copies of a crappy game!


DDDDDDAAAAAAAAAMMMMMMM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Volourn]

"RIP Volourn (this news will surely kill him)."

Nope.

I've said this before, and I'll say it again. BIO itself means NOTHING to me. As long as they make games I want to play, I'll continue to buy them. If they don't, I won't. It's that simple.

As for EA itself, i like EA. They have made plenty of games I've enjoyed over the years.


"To me, that's a more transparent and honest policy than Bioware making games with the same shitty combat, the same shitty pathfinding, the same cliched characters and different, but equally trite narrative."

Don't be dishonest, and stop making stuff up.


"Bioware has already completely abandoned the PC market in order to produce Hollywood blockbuster-like shit. This news does not affect me since Bioware doesnt make PC games anyway . "

You are worse than Section 8 as you conviently forgot Dragon Age. Dumbass.

 

[The Watchman]

Apart from hating EA, why should i give a toss about this ? Bioware died to me, when they started catering to shitbox morons. What the hell have we gotten apart from some shitty ports of some rather mediecre games? NWN pathes ?!? Give me a break and dont start on Dragon Age, i cant really use some mystery game that should have been released alot years ago to anything. Screw them...

 

[Texas Red]

I will remember Dragon Age when it leaves its vaporware status, mang, and we have actual information on it.

 

[Solaris]

Well, its pretty simple for me, why I dislike EA. As I type this I look up and see about 50 pc game boxes on my shelf here ( don't play most of them anymore, just a collection really). A nice assortment, all sorts of genres', sports, shooters, RTS, RPG, simulations, you name it....and when I think back to all the games that gave me grief and frustration and made me feel ripped off, every one of them has an EA logo on the box.

Still, being the eternal optimist that I am I kept buying their shit. But no longer...fuck em. And yeah, I remember when EA wasn't bad. Hell, my first ever EA product was Deluxe Paint for the Amiga....them were the days, lol. Maybe they should of stuck to Apps instead of raping the games industry