Comment on EA: Ruin Everything
Goodeye8@piefed.social 1 week agoUnder EA what would Bioware have to do for you to say “yeah, Bioware is at fault here”? Because my argument is that EA gave Bioware all the chances to succeed and despite getting all the chances they still couldn’t succeed.
And I never said EA is the good guy here. EA is not the good guy. But being an asshole company doesn’t instantly mean you’re to blame for everything.
cmhe@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Your argument isn’t an argument, it is an assertion without any evidence, or even clear logical path.
Were you there in the talks between BioWare people and EA? Do you know what EA ask directly or indirectly through implication BioWare to do? How to they should or shouldn’t design their games? What they should integrate or not and what to focus on? What they should implement? What kind of stories BioWare is allowed to write? And the employees are treated? If they where given creative freedom, a good compensation?
I don’t know any of these things. My argument comes more down on the proverb “The fish stinks from its head.” And the observation that BioWare produced good games before ME3 and DA2. Then something must have happened, notable game designers left the company, and they produced bland games.
It could have been some BioWare manager that messed stuff up. But why didn’t EA replace them, or why were they even placed into that position in the first place? I don’t know… All I know is that someone at the top could have prevented it, if they wanted to. And at the top was EA people.
Goodeye8@piefed.social 1 week ago
How about you answer the question
cmhe@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Okay, so if any proof or evidence came out that proves that the BioWare leadership or employees themselves did something bad or self destructive…
Whatever it is, without the direction of EA, then they take the blame for that. You haven’t provided me any such evidence yet. Meanwhile, I’m sticking with what is known, and my conviction than any competent leadership could have prevented it, because it wasn’t a natural disaster that happened here.
I’m sure that EA managers are payed enough so that they can take the blame, I will not subject the developers to that.
Goodeye8@piefed.social 1 week ago
Have you read Jason Schreier’s article on how Anthem went wrong? Excluding the technical problems from the Frostbite engine everything wrong with Anthem was on Bioware. They couldn’t lock down what the scope of the game was, they couldn’t agree on the story and the studio functioned on what they called “BioWare magic.” which is a hope that the game will come together at the end. And until the very end the message from the leadership was that “Bioware magic will come and everything will work out”. That Bioware magic had been around since at least the very first Mass Effect game (possibly sooner, I don’t remember how long that had been going on).
I’ll also link this article for a quote.
To me that indicates the people leading the studio didn’t know how to communicate with EA. I’ve worked in corporate for years. The people at the top are so disconnected from the actual work it’s common for them to set unreasonable expectations. It’s part of the job of the people between the top and the people actually doing the job to temper the expectations from the people of the top so they could allocate resources (be it people, time or anything else) so the people actually doing the job can do their job. Whoever was the leadership at Bioware (even if they’re appointed by EA, they’re still a part of Bioware) failed at their job to temper the expectations from EA. As the quote indicates McKay got that part of the job, which is why Veilguard got the delays it needed even though it didn’t help because they were constantly scrambling to for a vision they couldn’t realize.