Dragon Age

I kinda disagree with this. It seems pretty clear to me that Bioware wasn't really all that interested in actually making Anthem, at least not the way Anthem ended up being. This one falls squarely on EA's shoulders in my opinion, with their usual "you, your name is famous, stop what you're producing and make this thing bring us more money" shtick.

The rest of what you said seems mostly correct from what I understand of Bioware, yeah, coupled with how over the years many of the people responsible for what we usually cite as the good parts of Bioware leaving for other companies, making the current Bioware a very different creature from the one that gave us those old goodies, which to my mind is exactly what's causing the problems you mentioned. You can still see the talent there sometimes, but it seems a bit more diffuse than before.

Edited by TheLovecraftian on Apr 8th 2019 at 8:03:44 AM

According to that article, EA didn't really step in during the Anthem creation process until five years of "pre-production" went by.

Upon which an exec played a demo of what they had and said "It's boring. Change it."

And that's why Anthem still has flight mechanics.

It seems more and more that Bioware's leaders weren't "forced" to go into multiplayer. This was something they've wanted for years.

Another issue was that Bioware refused to acknowledge they were making a Destiny clone. They wouldn't even allow people to mention Destiny out loud. As a result, they didn't learn from Destiny's example.

EA's main contribution to Anthem being a mess was them taking away experienced manpower from Bioware to work on FIFA instead. This left Bioware short on people who knew how to work around Frostbite (and short on people in general).

Edited by M84 on Apr 8th 2019 at 7:22:01 PM

, Precisely that. The studio, as a whole, seemed uninterested in the concept. But then the studio as a whole hadn't a clue what they were making.

It seems like, in this case, EA actually gave them free reign, enough that they canned DA 4's original pre production schedule to accommodate it. Until after that period of time they had stuff all and tried to bluff a demo with an exec, who basically called them on their BS.

So, in a weird twist, EA made them fulfill their deal and made them keep the (arguably) best part of the game. And all the while, their leads refused to look at the elephant in the room that was Destiny.

So, this time, whilst EA has a BROAD mandate for all games to contain live service options, this was Bioware's pitch to make a multiplayer game. And unfortunately, the guys left at Bioware seem to think they're auteurs and hollywood script writers (Which is to say, they produce bombast, which may read well, but you can't speak it - paraphrasing Harrison Ford there).

And that's taking into account that most Hollywood scripts and film pitches SUCK.

Well, this is topical.

Also, in a weird twist, it seems that as much as EVERYONE here was kind of confused by the concept when we saw the E3 trailers and demos, it seems the rest of Bioware was also confused.

Here's a Rock Paper Shotgun piece I found about Bioware's shitty response to the article, and how it bodes ill for what's going on in the heads of Bioware's leadership.

BioWare's awful response to Kotaku's exposé pours petrol on a raging PR fire

There is something terribly, terribly wrong with Bioware.

Basically, people saw behind the curtain. After ME 3 there was a slow decline, temporarily halted by DA: I. And they didn't capitalise on it.

Andromeda was a surprise fail for everyone, I think. And when you're knee deep in the crap you don't see how far it stretches - you only see how awesome the bit you're working on is.

Basically, the head sheds are bought into the company as if it's THE BEST. But the rest who joined, thinking they'd feel the same love, are instead being turned to grist for it. I bet the head sheds go round each others houses, share some beers and talk about "the good times"...

But they themselves AREN'T the founders or were even leads at the time of the great hits. They're the ones who grew up in the company but don't EMBODY it. So, they're basically wearing their parents clothes and trying to act like them.

It's an issue with personality led companies - lacking in structure, protectionism for a few, and mainly momentum carrying it on. I hope they do do something good with the next Dragon Age - but not if it comes at the cost of people's well being and a company not learning.

I imagine these problems may have been a greater feature of people's understanding of Bio Ware if the company's Cult of Personality didn't inform so much of their reputation. That this article made a broadly pro-labor critique of their workplace means there's basically nowhere left for them to hide.

I just think that this shifts too much of the blame away from EA. Bioware was never as great as people said — my favourite thing about them was always that they threw work at Obsidian during those lean years of the mid-2000s. But I don't think you can separate the turn the company has taken from EA's influence on their output — Bioware put out a major game at a rate of about one every 2 years or so before being bought; they put out one game a year from 2009 to 2012, followed by DAI in 2014, a game that many of the devs weren't all that happy with, during development or after release, followed by a long development cycle on Beyond/Anthem, a game that most of the devs don't seem to have really wanted to make.

Bioware's management does bear the blame for that, but I just don't think you can separate them fully from EA — open-world MM Os, games as service, this is something EA has been pushing with all its companies. So there's a trickle-down effect that has shaped Bioware's leadership over the past ten years — it's not just Bioware's latent toxicity rising to the surface, though there may well have been some of that as well.

I also don't know if I'd really count Andromeda or The Old Republic. They were/are largely developed by separate studios that EA just happened to slap the Bioware name on once they acquired it — some employees did cross over, but Bioware Edmonton didn't have much control over them. There are like four or five other companies that were at one point named Bioware, many of which are now defunct or were re-branded in the years since.

Edited by Unsung on Apr 9th 2019 at 12:13:39 PM

Yes the "they weren't real Bioware" excuse was used to explain Andromeda's failings.

Except Anthem has nearly all of Andromeda's failings and more. And it was made by Bioware's supposed "A" team.

And yes, the article did point out how fucked up it was that Bioware had that kind of elitist bullshit going around their offices. And it played a factor in Anthem not being very good, what with the "A" team not listening to the Austin people even though the Austin people had experience in this sort of thing.

The article also states that the devs were enthusiastic about Beyond at first, back when they thought they knew what kind of game they were going to make. It was the years of no real direction or leadership that soured them on the project.

Edited by M84 on Apr 10th 2019 at 2:03:13 AM

Article on Dragon Age 4 , also by Jason Schreier, who did the Anthem post-mortum that we are discussing.

tl;dr is the DA4 was going to be an Alpha Protocol-esque single player RPG, but EA cancelled it because it wouldn't have been super profitable (fuck EA).

Now DA4 is likely to be online-only, with the main story path being designed to be completable solo. However, it is early enough in development that this could change.

Again, fuck EA.

Dragon Age 4 also got fucked by Bioware being forced to put it on hold to deal with the tire fires that were Andromeda and later Anthem.

There are currently too many unanswered questions about Dragon Age 4's future now.

On another note...the code name is Morrison? What's that a reference to, I wonder?

Edited by M84 on Apr 10th 2019 at 2:19:12 AM

I didn't say this latest case wasn't the real Bioware. Like I said, I'm not even a huge fan of "the real Bioware", and I'm not trying to shift blame away from them. But there is this tendency to say that this was all Bioware, and EA, for once, is blameless. And I don't really buy that. There's too many of EA's usual fingerprints on the way Bioware has shifted away from its original niche.

I feel you.

Edited by Unsung on Apr 9th 2019 at 12:19:42 PM

EA's main direct contribution to Anthem being a tire fire was taking Bioware devs who actually knew how to deal with Frostbite and putting them to work on FIFA and salvaging Andromeda instead. Which kind of left Bioware in a lurch for a while, until the Montreal branch shut down and those workers came back to Edmonton.

"Direct" is the key word there, I think. What I'm saying is that I think EA's long-term, indirect influence has long been a pernicious thing, and the writing has been on the wall for a while. Of course no one actually at EA is going to fall on this particular sword, but I don't that actually means their hands are clean. That's all I'm saying.

"Morrison" is probably a reference to Van Morrison, the way Dylan was a reference to Bob Dylan.

Edited by Unsung on Apr 9th 2019 at 12:25:19 PM

EA's influence is that they prefer live service stuff that makes them a lot of money.

The new article does point out that this has made some Bioware devs feel a bit out of place.

Edited by M84 on Apr 10th 2019 at 2:33:21 AM

I mean, exactly. That's EA's influence. I'm pretty sure they don't care about narrative, atmosphere, tactical strategy games, or anything beyond their bottom line. That has had fairly far-ranging consequences on the companies they've bought, and attempting to please and placate them seems like it would have a pretty obvious impact on the shape of a company's management culture.

The thing is, prior to the article revealing Bioware's bullshit, a lot of people were prepared to put all the blame on Anthem's failings on EA being evil. Finding out that EA wasn't responsible for most of it and in fact is why Anthem still has the flight mechanics...that might have led some people to pivot to the opposite extreme.

We can talk about how EA is The Corrupter and how it has ruined studios in the past...but for the purposes of talking about Anthem and Dragon Age 4...it's still more appropriate to pin the lion's share of the blame on Bioware's management.

As others pointed out, the turning point for Bioware seems to have been the departure of Casey Hudson. The man had vision, something that Bioware is sorely lacking and desperately needs.

Edited by M84 on Apr 10th 2019 at 2:44:24 AM

I don't have a problem with people calling Bioware on their shit, not at all. But I'd just rather not watch EA foist the blame for their shitty internal practices on another company they've ransacked and run into the ground.

What I'm saying is that I don't think you can draw an easy line between Bioware's management and EA. The company is, at this point, part of EA, and the managers are themselves the line between the two.

Edited by Unsung on Apr 9th 2019 at 12:47:57 PM

Except EA isn't doing that. On the contrary, they are right there with Bioware management trying to cover it up and attacking game journalism.

Which is another bag of troubles entirely.

As for Bioware's management being a bridge to EA...while that's true, it's worth noting that Bioware has enjoyed a lot of autonomy compared to other EA studios. Likely because of the aforementioned greater concern EA has for their moneymakers like FIFA.

Edited by M84 on Apr 10th 2019 at 2:47:44 AM

We're getting caught up in semantics, now. That is, itself, a shitty internal practice. It's also a shitty external practice. The whole thing is opaque, both to the devs and the public, and we might not ever really know exactly who made what decision. That's basically what I'm saying when I say that the distinction between EA oversight and Bioware management is probably kind of blurry.

And, y'know, the freedom to fail, that doesn't really leave EA blameless either. Whoever made the decision to make Anthem, to use Frostbite — and I do assume it was several whoevers — I think they probably had some belief that EA, with all their vast wealth and resources, would offer some backup when it came to their proprietary engine. If somebody refused or got territorial, I don't know, that strikes me as more likely to have been the result of corporate maneuvering, overpromising now in exchange for considerations later.

Edited by Unsung on Apr 9th 2019 at 1:24:02 PM

Ugh, seriously.

I could say a lot more, but fuck EA.

And fuck Bioware.

Bioware not getting enough support for Frostbite was indeed an issue during Anthem development. As the article points out:

This neatly demonstrates one downside to relying on a single in-house engine for most of your studios. You spread your support team too thin.

Edited by M84 on Apr 9th 2019 at 10:28:33 PM

I did read the article when it came out, just to be clear. I don't have it memorized, but I'm not unaware of these points. But with a company as big as EA, the fact that their in-house engine is so rife with bugs and lacking in support seems like part of that same larger pattern of indifference, to the product and the workers alike. It's not really surprising that that culture trickles down.

This is what happens when one's choice of proprietary engine turns out to be overly specialized. It'd be fine if all of EA's studios were making games in the genre that Frostbite is good for. But they don't.

The problem seems to stem from EA's execs not quite getting or caring about just how hard it is for developers to make an engine that is not meant to do a certain thing to do it. Developers aren't wizards, contrary to what Bioware claims ("Bioware Magic"...FFS).

That's one of the points Jim makes in his vid. All of the talk of "magic" and shit in the industry covers up the ugly reality that making videogames is hard fucking work.

Pivoting back to Dragon Age...if that article is any indication, the future for "Morrison" is also grim. It seems to have the same problem that Anthem had: a lack of a clear vision of exactly what kind of game Bioware actually wants to make. No doubt due to its development being halted so that Bioware could deal with the messes that their other games had become.

Edited by M84 on Apr 9th 2019 at 11:20:51 PM