Anthem (Bioware's new property)

It's possible that the Bioware execs felt overconfident after Inquisition and figured it wouldn't be too challenging to use Frostbite to make Anthem.

Which would tie into some devs wishing that Inquisition had bombed.

Like I honestly don’t want Anthem to get better.

I just want someone to pull the fucking plug because ending everything would just be a mercy at this point.

They'd need to improve the writing, the loot drop rate, the actual loot, the microtransaction purchases, introduce new areas that really take advantage of the flight, introduce new and better npc's and questlines, add more variety to the enemies, add more Javelin types...and all without adding new bugs.

It'd be a kick in the pants to the people who are still playing the game though. It'd be another nail in the coffin for Bioware since it would alienate those players and make even people who don't play Anthem think badly of Bioware.

Anthem would need improvements all across the board and find a way to increase their player base. I would not be surprised if they eventually go Free-to-Play in an attempt to do the latter. But that would then lead to an even more tedious grind that would encourage players to buy microtransactions and such.

Edited by M84 on Apr 4th 2019 at 6:27:39 PM

Man does that sound like making a new game.

It’s a fucking mess, I’m not sure what’s the right thing to do.

Edited by slimcoder on Apr 4th 2019 at 3:26:55 AM

Their best bet might be to build on what Anthem does right. Add more content that takes full advantage of the flight mechanics, and add more Javelins. The flight is probably its best feature that sets it apart from other Looter-Shooters, and the Javelins are genuinely cool looking. They just need more of them.

Other games have pulled off similar transformations from lead to gold. If Bioware's execs can swallow their pride and learn from this debacle, they can do the same with Anthem. Assuming EA doesn't decide to simply cut losses.

Edited by M84 on Apr 4th 2019 at 6:30:49 PM

Square-Enix fixed FF 14 so technically it's possible.

Warframe rose out of the ashes too - although the difference there was that Warframe was FREE and that they only needed to make enough money to stop the company from going bankrupt.

I definitely think Anthem can be salvaged. The real question is whether the best course is to do it while the game is live, or to tear it down and rebuild.

Edited by GoldenKaos on Apr 4th 2019 at 12:12:28 PM

By rebuilding it from the ground up, as far as I know. Can't be too many devs/publishers willing to do such a thing. And have there even been other examples? Destiny 2 looked more or less on the right track at launch, but in my opinion went right down the shitter with the first two DLC expansions, to the point where I have no goodwill for them to try the latest and biggest expansion, which from what I hear has problems of its own

As for Anthem, yeah, call me when there's a sequel, nothing I've experienced with the beta or heard since makes me think this game is worth my time.

Edited by artfulscruff on Apr 4th 2019 at 4:18:48 PM

One problem with the "going free to play" approach.

Namely, they'll be free to pull any shady paywall shit in order to wring out more money from you. And that after they flat-out declared "No paywalls". Somehow, people are willing to pay Hello Games $60 for No Man's Sky after learning that the game turned around and works pretty well now, and Bioware knows full well they need their No Man's Sky NEXT moment before their 100 million run out.

Yeah, FF 14 only got salvaged by Square Enix saying "Yeah this isn't working" and then writing in A FUCKING APOCALYPSE to justify them taking it down to redevelop it and make it into the MMO titan it is today. Bio Ware can't do that, the best they can hope for is the Warframe and Siege approach

No, they can, better yet - they have to and they're on a very tight timer to do it.

Basically, they have two months or thereabouts for the first big change, five months for the second and eight for the third one. It's written into their timetable.

... So we've reached the part where even actually releasing the game does not free the team from crunch then? Yowks.

I feel like the most on-brand part of the story is that they had to change the name a few days before they announced it.

nah, the most on brand part of the story is when Bioware released a response so quickly after the article hit theres no way they actually read it before deciding to make an attempt at making it into "the games media is trying to hurt innocent, hardworking developers and we;re too progressive for that"

Granted, said attempt failed. even the anthem reddit didnt buy that line.

Actually, it was even worse than that. They had to keep patching 1.0 while at the same time rebuilding a brand new game. There's a whole documentary on what went wrong with FF 14, and how they fixed it:

There's quite a few similarities to what happened to Anthem, actually, such as using inefficient tools that made everything take longer than it should, as well as totally ignoring their closest competitor during development so they couldn't learn from either its successes or its mistakes.

Of course, the only reason they even considered rebuilding it was because the value of the Final Fantasy brand was worth a lot to them. In Bioware's case, no one cares about the Anthem brand so maybe they'd be better off cutting their losses and moving on the Dragon Age 4 or whatever.

Edited by Clarste on Apr 4th 2019 at 1:24:09 AM

FFXIV continues to be the most fascinating example of game development I can possibly think of.

But yeah, I'd not be surprised if "Anthem" is only spoken of in a tone bellying a degree of spite and hurt at Bioware. Especially since it seems to have largely been dumped into Bioware Austin's lap now.

Skirting close to getting off-topic here, but I don't think it's unreasonable to say that FFXIV: A Realm Reborn is the best FF game there's been for two console generations. Whatever they did to fix it, they did it right, but it must have been a stars align kind of thing, because off the top of my head, such a thing has never been repeated, and there have been plenty of games released that should have been better and never got there.

Given the history of condescension the Edmonton studio has shown to the Austin studio, it'd be rather cathartic if the Austin studio managed to salvage Anthem and make it an acclaimed success.

But you just know Casey Hudson would swoop in to take the credit for "righting the ship". I can already see the internal management narrative being written... and a few head designers thrown under the bus.

Game studios need to Unionise properly... and realise it isn't the "dev studio" against the "publisher" - it's the guys on the ground who need to push back against their direct IN HOUSE management who in turn need to be more stand up to the publishers, who in turn, need to manage expectations better

Well, the studio had nothing to sell to the publisher for a long time. Only when the publisher played with an outlandish experimental build (note, experimental, where the concept wasn't even well-defined yet) and liked it, things gained momentum. But it still took the studio (or both studios) a lot of time to even agree on the basics.

It was a clusterfuck, pure and simple. Bioware brought it upon themselves, and the only fault of EA proper was being the insistence on using Frostbite for everything without really granting much support to people who wanted to do something more ambitious with it (not that using it for FIFA of all things was a good idea in the first place).

Well, I'd say what is also of EA's fault is if they don't get some kind of industry specialist in there to pull the massive company therapy that I think Bioware needs.

And even then it's debatable whether EA really mandated the use of Frostbite or strongly "encouraged" it (keeping in mind the very uneven power dynamics involved).

I've heard nothing about Frostbite that would make me think BioWare would've used it if it wasn't mandated.

Here's a reddit post covering this.

It references an interview (it's a podcast) from last year with former Bioware General Manager Aaryn Flynn. In it Flynn claimed that Bioware wasn't forced to use Frostbite. Rather, it was a decision the higher-ups made for a few reasons: the Eclipse engine was aging and not cut out for multiplayer (Bioware had been planning to pivot to multiplayer for a while), Bioware was impressed by Frostbite's rendering capabilities, and they wanted to be able to take advantage of EA's in-house support for the engine.

The general impression is that Bioware's leadership was looking for a new engine to replace Eclipse and were wowed by the stuff Frostbite was good at: rendering and being able to handle multiplayer. Again, Bioware was apparently planning to pivot to open world multiplayer stuff for years.

It was Bioware's leadership who fucked over their developers by dumping Frostbite on them and telling them to make it do stuff it wasn't originally built to do.

This ties in to one of the main points of that Anthem article: Bioware's leadership sucks.

Edited by M84 on Apr 7th 2019 at 10:26:20 PM

I don't know much about game engines, but apparently Frostbite is really really good at the stuff it's good at and like handling an electrified porcupine when you're using it for the stuff it's bad at.

But yeah the gist of the article really seems to be "We lack strong direction" which makes sense considering how much of the vets have jumped ship.

If that interview was any indication, it seems like Bioware's leaders at the time were so impressed by the stuff Frostbite was good at that they didn't really think about the stuff it wasn't good at before foisting it upon their developers.

As for why they didn't switch to Unreal or something in the past few years once it became clear that Frostbite was an issue...maybe that would have happened if Inquisition had flopped as some developers hoped it would. But Inquisition succeeded. That may have convinced some at Bioware that Frostbite wasn't that big an issue. Worse, it may have also convinced Bioware's leaders that the "Bioware Magic" was still a thing.

EA is of course far from blameless when it comes to Anthem though. Remember that the article also pointed out that EA would take developers from Bioware who actually knew how to make Frostbite work and had them work on FIFA development instead. This left Bioware with a lack of experience and manpower. Compounded with the lack of good leadership, this left Bioware floundering for years.

Still, the biggest problem Bioware is facing at the end of the day isn't EA. It's their own inability to provide strong leadership and direction for their people.

Edited by M84 on Apr 7th 2019 at 10:32:10 PM