Comment on After years of holding out hope, 2024 was the year I finally gave up on BioWare
Kolanaki@yiffit.net 2 weeks agoBefore EA, Bioware’s RPGs had some personality and took risks trying new shit. Since Mass Effect, they’ve been especially formulaic, toned down, and sanitized for a larger audience.
EA makes good looking, (usually) well polished games meant to appeal to as wide of an audience as possible, and when you have spent years playing games with a distinct style you can very easily see this shift once EA acquires a studio. Either you’re never going to see those games again, or they will become the most watered-down, generic version of the studio’s greatest IPs.
Poopfeast420@discuss.tchncs.de 2 weeks ago
Like I said, what does EA do exactly in these cases? People from Bioware themselves said that EA doesn’t interfere with them, and they’re making their own choices:
youtu.be/K9Z-nCv7XsI?t=2885
I highly doubt that, since Catalyst came out eight years after the first one. If EA was just chasing the money, why wait so long.
averyminya@beehaw.org 1 week ago
Are you familiar with the US foreign policy proposed by Theodore Roosevelt? “speak softly and carry a big stick”
EA may speak softly, but they carry a big stick. Bioware has clearly catered to EA, intentional or not, and their games have suffered from it.
Mirrors Edge was not a success either, btw.
It took them 5 years to reach their initial projected sales, and that’s after combining every available edition. That’s a commercial failure.
They did still chase it with followup games, btw.
Catalyst was going to be included, as it was shown at E3 in 2013 and 2014. And delay, delay, delay, all the way into 2016. Catalyst was quite literally EA chasing the money, because Mirrors Edge has only really gotten recognition long after its release – in terms of sales, and it’s availability on Steam really helped solidify it’s presence as a cult classic. The game of course was received well, it just didn’t sell (not much marketing and it’s not a game of the era, so to say, it is not an action heavy shooter game). So now after 8 years of letting this IP rot in development hell they said oh we can add some MTX and make another one, hm, let’s make it open world that’s what gamers like these days. It was actually decided in 2015 that it would be open world, since that wasn’t seen in any of the 2014 promotional. So 1 short year, since June 2016 is the games release.
Nah, I enjoyed parts of Catalyst but it’s a shell of its original. Dying Light and Ghostrunner are almost closer spiritual successors in regards to expanding on mechanics. The gameplay was the same but without any actual dynamics (gunplay wasn’t great in ME but it breaks up and gives variety), the writing was predictable and just really not that great, and that leaves new additions… Which you just avoid because it’s an open world and you only have running tools at your disposal. The mechanics of the game are horrible as well, inputs get dropped all the time it’s a huge problem. There’s just so little about the game that’s designed well, which is insane, because the game still accomplishes scratching the itch of Mirrors Edge, just very poorly.
No, what made Mirrors Edge great was the passion. It was a tight knitted and mechanically rewarding. These levels so carefully designed. Catalyst’s paths do not have the same care, they are just rushed together and it shows during the gameplay and how one path flows and the others are just ways you can go. There’s no depth and attention.
The developers freedom to pursue that passion was the very same thing that allowed Bioware to create the games they wanted to make (and like Bad Company 2’s story with DICE before dropping it entirely for multiplayer only).
BF3 may be a fine game, and 4, but you surely understand that they are copy pasted formulas that explicitly are not impassioned. What made Bad Company beloved was its improvements over the previous iteration along with its differentiation from MW2, on top of having a fair single player story. What made Mirrors Edge beloved was its direction and its gameplay. For both of these, these IP’s to EA became no more than how many zeroes they can generate. It’s a pattern with EA, from Mass Effect to Need for Speed to sports games to Battlefield. Once you have a formula you wait for it to be profitable to sell it again.
Mirrors Edge was received well but sold poorly. They tried to profit on some spinoffs, failed, 4 years later sort of began development and turned Catalyst into another open world microtransaction game without any of the heart that made Mirrors Edge work. Battlefield was mediocrely received until it did something better than CoD, then they focused on repeating that over and over, leading to BF3 and 4 and 2042, with the only “unique” Battlefield even available now being Battlefield One. Before Battlefield, it was Medal of Honor.
EA is a plight. I don’t know how you can say it’s not that bad and shift blame to the developers, that their games are their decisions. It’s just unequivocally untrue. Of course Bioware doesn’t have execs breathing down their necks, the execs are selling the game Bioware pitches to them - Mass Effect now with MTX. In that interview they literally even say, “EA wants to buy a company to do something well, if they ruin Bioware then they won’t get money. We make the games we want to make. They give input absolutely but we make our game.” Oh, and he mentions games, Shadow Realms, which never even came out because it was cancelled in 2015. And this is a video from 2013, so it may not have even been 2 years before this video with the timestamp you like is literally proving the point of the person asking the question (Q: Will Bioware be affected by EA’s acquisition; A: No, Bioware makes the games we want to make, EA wants money, EA gives input, Bioware makes the games we want to make) 2 years later, EA: Yeah, you can’t make that.
All that aside, I’m not really sure what the point of the video is supposed to prove… These people don’t even work there anymore if I remember right (head Bioware all jumped ship, no? I may be misremembering)? EA has the big stick. If you devs don’t follow them, you won’t be a dev at EA anymore. The devs at EA are inherently trapped because you cannot expect your game to be made unless it is within the expectations of the publisher, and thus you see the problem. When you pitch to EA, your creative work is already compromised. You think Bioware made the game they wanted to make with Andromeda? Anthem? Psh, Shadow Realms?
EA bought Bioware in 2007/8. EA killed Bioware in under 10 years and is now playing with its corpse. Literally 5 years after the acquisition is this video, the game of which he’s referencing 2 years later is cancelled and 2 more after that Andromeda releases. I really, really think you have mischaracterized EA and their relationship with their studios. EA is very hands off, yes. But they speak softly to you. And they carry a big stick.
You, too, would compromise your passion when working for this studio. It is actually impossible not to, by design.
I lived near EA’s SF studio for many years, that’s really honestly the main reason I even bothered to reply with something this lengthy. I know many former devs part of studios both made with and acquired by EA. It’s insane, they would be a great company to work for in so many ways. But their business practices ruin all of that. The last 20 years of EA being awful are true, just because you can point to BF2BC and say how could they be bad, you can also point to Madden Fifa and SWBF2. EA perfected this practice of seeping out the creatives from the studios long, long before Bioware was bought out.
Poopfeast420@discuss.tchncs.de 1 week ago
You are pretty much just rambling, so I don’t really know what you want to say sometimes.
I never said EA was good, I only ever doubted how EA supposedly just kills their game studios. From all the evidence I’ve seen, they are pretty hands-off with studios like Bioware or DICE, so a lot falls on the devs themselves, if the games are subpar.
You mentioned Anthem, like if that was the game Bioware wanted. No it wasn’t, because apparently the most fun part of the game, the flying, was a suggestion from an EA exec.
Then for Mass Effect Andromeda, EA offered to delay the game again, before it’s release, but Bioware didn’t want to. Why? Must have been EAs big stick. That game also doesn’t have MTX
How is EA chasing money, if they make a sequel that took years to barely make money? I’d say that’s the exact opposite. The game also has no MTX.
The point of the video I linked is that the people from Bioware actually say EA doesn’t dictate what kind of games they have to make. Bioware makes what they want. Even if this video is already 10 years old or if the people don’t work there anymore, why would this change? The only reason I could see this change, if the games just continue to underperform constantly, like what’s happening with Bungie at the moment.
Why do you think EA was the reason for cancelling Shadow Realms, pretty far into development? Do you know something others don’t? Don’t just say it’s obvious, because it’s EA.
You also mention how EA destroys or all the passion or creativity from their dev studios, but how are they doing that?
I think the reason why a bunch of these studios that were bought either go under or release sub-par games is much more simple, and it’s not directly EAs fault. After they are bought, management leaves, because they just got tons of money, or they might have a contract, which says they must stay for a few years, but after that they’ll leave anyway. Now there’s nobody left who made the original games, so the studio declines. It’s not like EA can do something against this, unless they make the devs sign some kind of slave contract, where they can never leave the game studio.
averyminya@beehaw.org 1 week ago
Bioware cancelled Shadow Realms because Mass Effect and Star Wars MMO was more profitable.
Read between the lines. EA canned it so the studio would give us Andromeda and more Old Republic. Oh but sure, “it wasn’t EA’s decision”.
Big stick.