Dragon Age

What's interesting is apparently DA 4 was in pre-production... but they halted it (Cancelled all work done) to refocus on Anthem... and have only just kicked it back up again.

I mean, having worked in IT in the middle of crunch I can see how people and management get blinkered. But it's always horrid to see it play out in a narrative like that.

I would never accuse EA of being completely out of touch with the very business they try to conduct, or of being complete corporate vampires incapable of appreciating how a creative or artistic process should function.

But, y'know...

I would.

EA's not doing anything to Bioware that they haven't already done to countless studios. It's their business model. Their terrible, terrible business model.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Apr 2nd 2019 at 3:39:36 AM

The article makes the claim that EA is only partly responsible. EA's contributions to the mess were insisting on Frostbite and taking developers from Bioware and putting them to work on FIFA instead. This led to Bioware being understaffed. But the article also points out that even without that there were a ton of internal problems at Bioware. Bioware had some pretty hostile internal politics. Bioware's over-reliance on crunch periods also wore down the employee morale.

The article also mentions that it was actually an EA executive's insistence that Bioware give him a better demo that led to Anthem keeping the flight mechanics after all. So we actually have EA to thank for one of the best parts of Anthem: the flight.

Edited by M84 on Apr 3rd 2019 at 5:13:01 PM

Yeah, I think it's important that people not give Bioware a free pass. The descriptions in the article show a deeply flawed company, beyond just the looming shadow of EA.

IMHO these were flaws that have been building up at Bioware for years. The additional stress of Frostbite just tipped the scales and accelerated the downward spiral.

Seems like the classic toxic, abusive attitude that apparently is the standard in most of AAA games development. (Also I live in Europe, and here companies that gravitate towards that kind of "management style" are usually defined "American-style companies", even by the people who swear by them, but that's neither here not there ).

So yeah, I wouldn't say it's Bioware's fault, or even EA's at this point. They've just been infected from a cancer that's bigger than them.

From a consumer standpoint, I can only hope that DA 4 somehow comes out and is a decent conclusion for the series, instead of another sequel bait. But eh, I'll try not to hope too much.

Edited by Cozzer on Apr 3rd 2019 at 11:29:59 AM

And this is why I'm terrified to get and work for the jobs I want. I love video games. I think they're a powerful medium to build amazing stories out of.

But all the studios I ever wanted to work for are a mess. I loved Telltale, Rockstar, Bioware, and Gearbox and it feels like every 5 mins there's another reveal about what a shit hole everywhere is.

Telltale had YEARS of internal abuse and mismanagement to the point that they went bankrupt. Rockstar used employee abuse AS A SELLING POINT for their game. Bioware has gone bottoms up on what made them appealing in the first place and I could never handle such an over-stressed nightmare of an internal work place. And Gearbox has its own mess of problems though those I'm a little less informed on.

I don't know where I'm supposed to want to work if I ever got to write for a video game.

One bit that seemed particularly unlucky was that even Bioware's location helped fuck over Anthem. Apparently they had trouble finding developers willing to work in Edmonton because those developers didn't want to deal with Canadian winters.

@Ink Dagger: Well, it's also true that every company (and often, every division or subdivision of a company) is a separate world. As long as you keep searching for a non-toxic place and never ever let yourself be swayed by the disgusting, "but you're supposed to be doing this for passion!", abusive corporate bullshit, I would suggest going for it. There are non-toxic environments out there, the key is being able to realize when an environment has become toxic and immediately rotflnoping away from there, even if it means having to start from scratch.

Which, huh, now that I re-read it, is pretty similar to the romantic advice I usually give. Though the toxic-to-non-toxic relationship ratio is thankfully way better in love than in videogames software development.

Edited by Cozzer on Apr 3rd 2019 at 12:05:17 PM

^^^On side note if you want to work as writer, ye should probably read International Game Development Association's books on subject.

Mostly because I think they give lot of hints that lot of veteran game developers do wrong, so please learn from good books before you have learned bad habits first

Heads up: the GB article was largely retracted with the following message: "GamesBeat has since learned that EA leadership knew that BioWare GM Casey Hudson was going to the Dragon Age 4 blog and announcement. GamesBeat retracts this part of our story. We apologize for the error."

The big Kotaku breakdown is a kinda depressing read. I did look at BioWare's official response (I don't know if we've discussed it in the Anthem thread) — it's really not a great one, in my view. "We don't see the value in tearing down one another, or one another's work. We don't believe articles that do that are making our industry and craft better."

It comes off as a little dismissive of the actual concerns raised. Apparently the post was released around the same time as the actual article came out, so I guess it was written as a response to just whatever they were contacted about, rather than the article itself? Either way I think it comes off badly; I looked at the Anthem subreddits and the like (the bastions of consensus!) and it's been pretty poorly received.

Edited by Lavaeolus on Apr 3rd 2019 at 7:07:00 PM

x3

WHERE do you go though? It feels like almost everywhere does abuse their employees and has a toxic work place environment? And then you have the Indie Scene which I feel Sturgeon's Law applies to and not many projects actually coalesces into a tangible product and that's not even counting into other weird, creepy, or random stuff that just comes out of Indie Developers.

Even applications to Gearbox that I went over with College Advisors wanted references to 3 published AAA projects. I don't know where anyone is actually supposed to get a foothold and none of my college advisers seemed to have an idea of where to point me either, instead wanting to push me towards journalism and publication editing because that's what they knew and had contacts with.

Video game companies aren't going to get their shit together until developers unionize or some legal regulations are passed. They famously treat their staff like shit, and make money (or at least believe it makes them money) in doing so.

Edited by SilentColossus on Apr 3rd 2019 at 8:16:53 AM

I believe that finally got a lot of traction in the advent of Telltale's destruction. Least I heard a lot of discussions about it.

I fear that the industry largely looks at Telltale's failure as refusal to innovate: all their games following The Walking Dead were more of the same. Limited gameplay changes and the continued insistence that "choices matter" (even though they didn't really) eventually led to the audience getting less interested and thus not buying the games.

I remember a lot of people saying Telltales games were how David Cage wishes he could make games; that they did the interactive story thing better.

Yet his last game was a huge success and QD are still around while TT is not. Hm....

Sorry, I just like feeling vindicated since the Internet hates David Cage with a bizarre fury. And Heavy Rain was great.

The thing is, that's not exactly wrong either. Telltale's style was getting a tad stale and their engine was showing its age.

Another issue was that they blew too much money on licenses with little payoff.

Here's a "Death of a Game" vid covering it:

Which isn't to say that poor workplace conditions and sour internal politics weren't issues either.

The Internet hates David Cage in part because he's a bigoted POS and so is the workplace he fostered. That creeps into his games as well.

David Cage is one of far too many people who prove that being an utter shitbag of a human being with mediocre ability is no barrier to financial success.

Edited by M84 on Apr 6th 2019 at 1:29:38 AM

People have been whining about Cage long, long before that story from a year or two ago came out so I don't buy that explanation. Besides, I hesitate to assume the gaming community hates a dev for being bigoted. Gamers seem to prefer that, actually. No, it was more just the fact he made video games of anon-standard variety and it pissed off snobs. Again ties in well with the demonstrated obsesesion with gatekeeping in the gaming community.

Of course the only demographic really targeted in his games are American police and military. Never gets any credit for how respectfully he treats the homeless, either.

Edited by Nikkolas on Apr 5th 2019 at 10:41:53 AM

Oh yeah. They're not wrong at all. Telltale really, really, really needed to change things up. They didn't. Not until it was too late: Batman S2 actually did have an entirely different Episode 5, and The Walking Dead Final Season tried to change things and ended up looking more like Life is Strange in terms of camera and movement. But by then the faith had already dried up.

But so many companies are abusing their employees and are still making bank. They really don't see how Telltale treated their employees as an issue.

I'll try watching that video later, thanks for it.

Edited by SilentColossus on Apr 5th 2019 at 10:42:25 AM

Even taking aside his putting his Auteur License into full effect, I just don't enjoy Cage's writing, and I don't like the kind of interactivity he puts in games. Technically they do some interesting things, but outside of the very opening scene of Indigo Prophecy, I don't have much fun actually playing them. Telltale's later games are basically just extended choose-your-own-adventure cutscenes/dialogue trees, but given that's the part of RPGs I enjoy most, I'm okay with that, because when Telltale's writing is good (and it isn't, always), it's very, very good.

Telltale's best games (Borderlands, Batman Season 2) were never their most popular, and I think their actual most popular game, The Walking Dead, had more to do with the synergy of being released at just the right time than it did with the gameplay itself. I'm not saying the gameplay was bad, but I think we've seen that it's not a genre the general public embraces with open arms as a general rule. There have been some pretty solid, if workmanlike, innovations in Telltale's narrative design. They're just not the kind of thing that could carry the market as far as the big licenses Telltale kept going to bat for.

Telltale struck gold with The Walking Dead license and kept trying to repeat that feat with other licenses. But it just didn't work out. And as a result, they blew too much capital, time, and manpower on mediocre games.

Warning, it's a fairly long vid. About 40 minutes. So have a cup of coffee ready or something.

Edited by M84 on Apr 6th 2019 at 1:48:04 AM

They also massively expanded their workforce and games in a short time: the company got too big and they ended up competing with themselves by releasing things like Borderlands and GOT around the same time.

They got overconfident, formulaic, and cannibalized their own market.

The expansion was a mistake in hindsight, but it was understandable. In this market, if you're not trying to grow, you're failing.

The vid also points out that a lot of these problems were down to Telltale's struggle to find strong leadership. Telltale's leaders ranged from mediocre to downright incompetent.

Edited by M84 on Apr 6th 2019 at 1:54:45 AM

And meanwhile, things like Life is Strange arrived and changed the formula whilst being inspired by it.

Edited by SilentColossus on Apr 5th 2019 at 10:57:17 AM