Comment on Bloodbath Ahead For EA As It Looks To Cut $700 Million In Annual Costs Under Saudi Arabia
Zephorah@discuss.online 5 days ago
Well, there goes the last remnant of possibility for a dragon age or mass effect revival.
Replaying Dishonored 2, still mad about Arkane.
It’s like the long game is to kill gaming from two directions. Game Studio deaths and making PC components unaffordable for working class.
It’s like the long game is to kill gaming from two directions. Game Studio deaths and making PC components unaffordable for working class.
They can kill AAA gaming, but devs will just learn to adapt to the hardware limitations of their time. If you’ve got a device you can install stuff on, devs will figure out how to make it run games. They may not be as shiny, which is practically sacrilege to the AAA player community, but so long as we have hardware, we’ll have games.
I grew up with a card catalog and had Netscape navigator at college right out of high school. Stellar graphics are great, preferred, but not necessary. Would I care if graphics/engine quality went back to Dragon age origins or II? Mass effect the original? Even FO:NV? No. But I want the story level, complexity, and total game time to be completionist about it. Witcher 3 is lovely but it’s the quality of darkness in it that makes it so compelling.
Even without the hardware limitations, good, immersive stories that keep you as involved as GoT before the writers stopped writing are already in short supply.
I’m presently replaying the Dishonored games. There’s only so much of that a person can do. Games worth the time sink are already in short supply.
Candy crush and similar bullshit can’t replace good games.
All those things you want are divorced from the hardware for the most part, though. A gripping story has virtually no bearing on hardware requirements. Map complexity could be maintained by simply scaling down the graphical polish. Total game time is also almost totally decoupled from hardware strength.
If anything, I would argue that AAA’s constant emphasis on graphics detracts from those. Maps can be more complex if they have less polygons and processing. They could spend more time fixing up the stories if they weren’t hemorrhaging money on art that’s way more detailed than it needs to be, and they would be more free to pivot if they need to because it’s not as expensive to edit whatever needs it. It’s way easier to make more content to extend the game time when it doesn’t cost the moon and stars to add more fresh art to flesh it out.
Sure, but even with all that, what are the odds? Given the amount of “dated engine” and such in review commentary.
mereo@piefed.ca 5 days ago
That’s what I’m worried about. I played the Mass Effect Trilogy several times and they’re my all times favourite.
But this Saudi Arabia deal is not good for the industry because as we know, Saudi Arabia is a very conservative muslim country and it will destroy the creative process.
nullspace@lemmy.world 5 days ago
The funny thing is Mass Effect destroyed the series themselves with Andromeda. No Saudi help necessary.
Zephorah@discuss.online 4 days ago
That game was such a bleached out, thin piece of repetitive garbage. Every character, and their dialogue, was about as deep as a guard NPC in Skyrim.
Season 8 of GoT had better production value.
mereo@piefed.ca 5 days ago
But everyone was hoping the next Mass Effect game would return to its sources, not continue the “My face is tired” series. But I was hoping too much.
Zephorah@discuss.online 4 days ago
ME manages to incorporate just about every SciFi trope in a good way, have punchy dialogue and characters, offer chills at some points, and have a great overarching plot. More importantly, they give it an ending.
BioWare really fucked themselves with that EA deal. I don’t see them saving themselves like Amplitude did. I suppose there’s DDO, it’s still around, love of D&D being what it is within D&D communities The devs made a deal with Warner Brothers and now it’s Standing Stone, but how often has that happened? Mostly, studios just die.