Mac Walters leaves Bioware

[muds_animal_friend]

Stuff that can be reasonably enjoyed by both children and adults.

Or fucking retards, which sums up Codex's Bioware fans.

 

[Camel]

Casey Hudson and him are responsible for the ME3 endings mess.

Now I haven't played the Mass Effect trilogy but the impression I got was that the series was dramatically pivoting the story from game to game and making up stuff as it went along, kind of like tv show that gets renewed on a per-season basis. So I'm a little bewildered that there's so much vitriol surrounding its ending as if the plot was going anywhere to begin with.

The lead writer had a plan, but...

Chris L’Etoile was a huge loss in the writing department. His writing was grounded, realistic and more sci-fi than Karpyshyn’s. His portrayal of Legion was butchered by Hudson in ME2. Especially adding a piece of Shepard’s N7 armour to Legion just so it looked cool.
I won’t be surprised if L’Etoile is a conservative now.

 

[muds_animal_friend]

Camel Hey spastic. Codex Bioware fans are are like the greasy shite you have to clean out of the oven every couple of months. You just have to put up with their existence.

 

[Maxwell's Demon]

Not sure about that - I thought the reason they sold out to EA is that the owners got a nice fat check allowing them to retire and make craft beer instead of working, not due to financial pressure.

BioWare is not Obsidian. They weren't in financial trouble. The owners just wanted to cash out. Who knows, maybe they saw the writing on the wall for the industry early on, but it was probably just good timing.

https://gamerant.com/bioware-electronic-arts-sale-322/

While speaking at HavenCon, select members of the Dragon Age 2 team painted a bleak picture for BioWare about 10 years ago.

The panel, consisting of former Mass Effect lead writer Patrick Weekes, lead editor Karin Weekes, and former Dragon Age writer David Gaider, talked about how Electronic Arts' acquisition of BioWare prevented the studio from going bankrupt. The panel admitted that Dragon Age 2 was "very rushed" because EA had just recently acquired the studio. However, the game still became critically-acclaimed, scoring high marks from critics.

The game's rushed nature was apparently a byproduct of BioWare's need to show EA a finished product. But without the acquisition, BioWare would not have lasted much longer, as the studio had "essentially run out of money."

It may be business as usual now, but back in the 00s, DA:O having a five-year development cycle was considered excessively long. Until EA came along, it was self-funded. Jade Empire and Mass Effect were also largely self-funded, which is why Bioware was able to retain IP ownership of both and not Microsoft (who published both games).

This sounds to me like management spinning a narrative to the grunts to excuse taking their golden parachutes. The fact that grunts abandoned ship en masse shows that they didn't believe that justification, either.

 

[Ibn Sina]

I am suprised that codexers are still following news development of dragon age: deadname.

 

[Nano]

Yes. What's your fucking point? The writing is still shitty.

Dragon Age's worldbuilding has its flaws, but so do most fictional settings. Origins's writing is still significantly better than the average CRPG.

 

[muds_animal_friend]

Yes. What's your fucking point? The writing is still shitty.

Dragon Age's worldbuilding has its flaws, but so do most fictional settings. Origins's writing is still significantly better than the average CRPG.

The writing is shite. It's always been shite. Only the cesspit that's #CurrentYear Codex would argue otherwise.

 

[Nano]

The writing is shite. It's always been shite. Only the cesspit that's #CurrentYear Codex would argue otherwise.

https://rpgcodex.net/content.php?id=195

 

[muds_animal_friend]

My eyes bleed trying to read that pretentious horseshit. This is the world that the usurper DU and his Gen-X waste of space irony bro Something Awful clowns has built for us. A gaggle or morons slamming their faces on the button parade. No Functional adult could ever tolerate Bioware writing as good.

 

[Roguey]

DAI came before TW3, so it got the GOTY award in 2014. However when they gave it to them, the collective reaction from the world was more of a groan than anything else.

DAI is better than TW3's base game

They both have a lot of bad optional content, but when it comes to gameplay, critical path, and narrative-heavy side content, Witcher 3 was better. Bloody Baron alone.

I won’t be surprised if L’Etoile is a conservative now.

Nah, he wrote that asexual lesbian for Outer Worlds and then a personal tragedy upended his life.

 

[DemonKing]

If the Bio Docs really sold out because Bioware was out of money they must have been the worst businessmen ever. Every game (with the probable exception of Jade Empire) they produced sold millions of units. Publishers would literally have been lining up to do business with them (remember the original ME was initially an Xbox exclusive) and they even had a sideline in licensing out their tools/engines (apart from the Interplay IE games the original Witcher was built on the NWN engine).

After EA waved a fat wad of cash under their noses they hung around for the minimum 5 years they were contractually obliged to after the sale went through and then happily retired to pursue their own interests leaving Bioware to its fate.

 

[Hammer Of The Heretics]

If they lost interest in making games I'd prefer they retire instead of sticking around as increasingly pathetic parodies of their younger selves.

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

All of Bioware's failures should be blamed on them, not EA.

Old Bioware would never have released DA2 in the shocking state it came out in, or used the Frostbite engine for DA3.

Old BioWare did release DA2 in the state it was in. That game was released while Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk were still there. They agreed to the time table. The development time table for Dragon Age 2 I wouldn’t even say was the problem; the problem was mismanagement, a seeming lack of focus on what could be done within the time they had. Dragon Age 2 has superfluous shit where it wasn’t needed, a lack of stuff where it was, (specifically dungeons) and a revamped combat system (that they really didn’t need to spend any time fucking with) that’s confused about what it wants to even be.

Old interview with Zeschuk half a year after leaving BioWare:

Do you feel that BioWare's games were ever made to conform to some homogenous EA standard with things like forced multiplayer, micro-transactions, smart phone spinoffs, etc.? Did any of this make you jaded? Or you reject this notion?

No, I definitely reject it. And I can explain it too. The best analogy I use, in a positive way, is EA gives you enough rope to hang yourself. It was really interesting because we really made all the choices we wanted to make ourselves; these are all things we wanted to try. And that's something to remember - while we were independent we didn't have quite the resources we had as part of EA, and then we got to EA and it was like "wow we can do all this stuff." We had to be really thoughtful about what we wanted to focus on.

I remember this really distinct moment where - it was probably five or six months - we were just starting to wrap our head around how we worked with the company. And it took months for this formal period of joining EA, and learning how everything works, and when the initiation was done, we were sitting around asking how do we do stuff. It dawned on us, you just do it. That was the biggest revelation, that rope that EA gives you; they don't second-guess you, they don't say you shouldn't do that. We had complete creative control over a lot of it; some fans didn't like some of it and some of it was experimental, quite frankly.

The one caveat is at the end of the day for any company you have to run a profit, so you have to be thinking of things that actually make you profitable. So while you're taking all these creative risks in trying crazy stuff you almost have to simultaneously focus on the bottom line. The top line is not enough. In some ways, being independent I would say we had to be more conservative - being part of a big company, you could be more aggressive and try stuff. I think that's something people [struggle with] when they join EA; they do too much or they do too little.

Frostbite was also not forced on BioWare by EA. It’s been known for a few years now that wasn’t the case, and that BioWare are the one’s that reached out to use the engine. Regardless if BioWare actually had problems with the engine, and they seem to be the only studio using it that was having problems, the idea it was forced on them I think is just a
misconception that came from Jason Schreier.

 

[Riddler]

Casey Hudson and him are responsible for the ME3 endings mess.

Now I haven't played the Mass Effect trilogy but the impression I got was that the series was dramatically pivoting the story from game to game and making up stuff as it went along, kind of like tv show that gets renewed on a per-season basis. So I'm a little bewildered that there's so much vitriol surrounding its ending as if the plot was going anywhere to begin with.

The lead writer had a plan, but...

There was no decline i character art, concept art or level art in the sequels. The issues were entirely with the writing.

Why they jettisoned the plot laid out by Drew for the incoherent mess they replaced it with i have no idea. The character writing could have stayed almost entirely the same.

 

[DemonKing]

Old BioWare did release DA2 in the state it was in. That game was released while Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk were still there.

As figureheads and to smooth the transition.

Even in the post-exit puff piece interview you posted Zeschuk wasn’t exactly likely to turn around and burn EA as that would reflect badly on his choice to sell in the first place and especially not if he got given EA stock options as part of the deal.

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

Old BioWare did release DA2 in the state it was in. That game was released while Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk were still there.

As figureheads and to smooth the transition.

Even in the post-exit puff piece interview you posted Zeschuk wasn’t exactly likely to turn around and burn EA as that would reflect badly on his choice to sell in the first place and especially not if he got given EA stock options as part of the deal.

No. Zeschuk had no reason to lie about shit by that point. I know fanboys like to blame EA for stuff BioWare would end up doing, but that’s just bullshit from the little we know, and what we know is it sounds like EA gave BioWare free rein to do the projects they wanted. And smooth the transition...they were at EA for half a decade working under John Riccitiello, who was one of the co-founders of the private equity firm that had owned BioWare before the sale. EA wasn’t going to fuck with BioWare, BioWare was the whole reason EA bought Elevation Partners, they were the horse John Riccitiello rode in on, and they made EA look good while also making money.

Also, if it wasn’t clear to anyone years ago that BioWare has trouble managing projects, it should definitely be now after someone (I forget who it was) went over all the projects that didn’t happen because they kept getting changed and people couldn’t figure out how to do this or that. The Jade Empire 2 project that became a few different things sounded like multiple games without any clear direction.

 

[Roguey]

If the Bio Docs really sold out because Bioware was out of money they must have been the worst businessmen ever. Every game (with the probable exception of Jade Empire) they produced sold millions of units. Publishers would literally have been lining up to do business with them (remember the original ME was initially an Xbox exclusive) and they even had a sideline in licensing out their tools/engines (apart from the Interplay IE games the original Witcher was built on the NWN engine).

After EA waved a fat wad of cash under their noses they hung around for the minimum 5 years they were contractually obliged to after the sale went through and then happily retired to pursue their own interests leaving Bioware to its fate.

Everyone in the game industry is bad at management. By their own admission, all of Bioware's games only became fun after Bioware Magic (months of crunch) happened. Doesn't matter how much revenue you're bringing in when your expenses exceed it. And the pressure to grow the company to stay competitive is always there.

Edit: more Bio-history https://www.referenceforbusiness.com/history2/16/BioWare-Corporation.html

During 2005, BioWare/Pandemic Studios produced four of the top ten titles, three of them original games. The two studios, with nearly 500 employees, planned to continue to produce titles independently and work in tandem to create new gaming vistas.


In that light, BioWare announced the formation of a new studio, in March 2006: BioWare Austin had begun developing a new massive multiplayer online game. The company also continued to develop new game engines and license that technology. As for the fans of BioWare games, the company's online community approached three million registered users.

Over 200 employees in 2005 and they had started The Old Republic in 2006. Yeah, that's why they ran out of money, they decided to do an MMO on their own. But unlike Curt Schilling, they actually succeeded.

 

[Orud]

Chris L’Etoile was a huge loss in the writing department. His writing was grounded, realistic and more sci-fi than Karpyshyn’s. His portrayal of Legion was butchered by Hudson in ME2. Especially adding a piece of Shepard’s N7 armour to Legion just so it looked cool.
I won’t be surprised if L’Etoile is a conservative now.

We went from:

To the green synthesis ending, which is written for absolute feel-good morons.

 

[muds_animal_friend]

None of you boring Biwoware button parade fags would have been allowed to exist back when the codex was a good forum

 

[Edgetard]

None of you boring Biwoware button parade fags would have been allowed to exist back when the codex was a good forum

bg2 was good and that's all I'll say

 

[Camel]

Chris L’Etoile was a huge loss in the writing department. His writing was grounded, realistic and more sci-fi than Karpyshyn’s. His portrayal of Legion was butchered by Hudson in ME2. Especially adding a piece of Shepard’s N7 armour to Legion just so it looked cool.
I won’t be surprised if L’Etoile is a conservative now.

We went from:

To the green synthesis ending, which is written for absolute feel-good morons.

Fellow BioWare writers admitted how he was the final authority on the ME universe.
About the AI in ME.

How I wrote Legion (and EDI) came from sitting down and thinking about how a "real" machine intelligence free of glandular distractions, subjective perceptions / mental blocks, and philosophical angst (fear of death, "why am I here?") would view the world. Star Trek was a minor inspiration, though in the negative -- I didn't want the geth to be either the Borg ("You are different, so we will absorb/destroy you") or Data ("I am different, so I want to be you").

My broad approach with the geth was that they observed and judged (Legion used that word a lot), but always accepted. "You hate and fear us? Very well. We will go over there so we don't bother you. If you want to talk, come over whenever you want."

 

[Egosphere]

Casey Hudson and him are responsible for the ME3 endings mess.

Now I haven't played the Mass Effect trilogy but the impression I got was that the series was dramatically pivoting the story from game to game and making up stuff as it went along, kind of like tv show that gets renewed on a per-season basis. So I'm a little bewildered that there's so much vitriol surrounding its ending as if the plot was going anywhere to begin with.

The lead writer had a plan, but...

There was no decline i character art, concept art or level art in the sequels. The issues were entirely with the writing.

Why they jettisoned the plot laid out by Drew for the incoherent mess they replaced it with i have no idea. The character writing could have stayed almost entirely the same.

Also, we dont have an industry standard to compare it with. Turnover of workers has most likely been high since mid 00s in the industry. Did Dark Souls 3 retain most of its artists from Demon Souls, for example?

 

[Nano]

ME1 did not have good writing. It was literally 90% mindnumbing exposition dumps. ME2 is the game where the characters started talking like actual people.

 

[Tyranicon]

ME1 did not have good writing. It was literally 90% mindnumbing exposition dumps. ME2 is the game where the characters started talking like actual people.

It was kinda funny how every alien was just a tourist guide for their specific trope homeworld.

 

[Egosphere]

ME1 did not have good writing. It was literally 90% mindnumbing exposition dumps. ME2 is the game where the characters started talking like actual people.

I don't remember whether it was 1 or 2, but the info dumps in the codex about space combat and travel were pretty solid. I remember reading up on Cherenkov radiation when playing them. The only problem was the dissonance of space battle cutscenes - instead of the methodical, strategic movements described in the codex, the battle against the reapers near the citadel was a giant clusterfuck without rhyme or reason.