So what you're saying is... BioWare could have made a sci-fi intergalactic Alien football game as their GaaS offerings instead.
Meh, there's a difference between Sony and EA. Sony does not rely on selling games to recoup costs and make money directly, EA relies on games braking and exceeding their costs to fund the next investments. For Sony to write a "blank check" for single-player experiences works cause they lead to hardware and software sales, Sony's bread and butter. For EA to approve a game that brakes even? Not good enough when that's your only revenue. I think what Jason means, EA wants money, how you achieve that is your decision, just bring us the figures and predictions. Of course Henning isn't used to that, story and themes don't translate to sales and long revenue tails.
If anything, after the string of failures across the board of Bioware, DICE, EA may decide to meddle more deeply into the studio leadership's and management.
I mean to be frank, Anthem clearly, clearly went wrong in development, and Project Dylan and the results signal toward the same grand vision that Andromeda went through and failed to deliver. (Someone else suggested this on era)
Like, lets not blame all EA or all Bioware, end of the day, the two entities are part of Electronic Arts, it really does not matter who fucked up. Saying EA fucked up and released too early, EA failed to manage the project, EA failed etc, well it still boils to Bioware failing, and as the owner of Bioware, EA fucked up.
It's the old broom and broom handle paradox, does anyone believe for a second that the old school executives of BioWare wanted to make this game before they'd left?
No the constraints are there because if theyre asking for X amount of millions of dollars, investors told them they need to hit X amount of projected revenue. They knew what they signed up for when taking this project. Blaming EA for wanting a return for hundreds of millions of dollars is asinine especially when the brunt of the problems with the game would have nothing to do with the publisher interfering. This is how any basic investment works, you ask for X amount of money, they tell you what they need to see before giving you X amount of money-the onus for how they come up with that is on them in addition to accepting the terms in the first place. They could have just worked on another project if they didn't feel comfortable hitting the numbers EA wanted them to. There is nothing misleading here, its just people not understanding how this process plays out and wanting to blame the EA boogieman.the ideas for the game may have been Bioware's and the studio may have some autonomy. but according to schreier's tweets that autonomy is severely constrained by internal targets and incentives imposed on the studio from the publisher, and Anthem's business model was clearly informed by those constraints. missing this important context makes for a very misleading thread title
OR bioware could have created a game that didn't require such a significant amount of funding so as to not in turn expect a sizeable amount of long term revenue. But this is the game they wanted to make. THis was their dream project. Not EAs. Theres no way this game wasn't designed from the ground up to be a gaas because all looter games are inherently gaas games at this point. They knew what they were doing when they pitched the idea. Stop blaming EA for their poor development. Every single account, including the ones from bioware, have talked about this being THEIR project and journalists are now backing that they had a lot of autonomy while working on this. Vs what youre arguing which is nothing but conjecture that you can't back up at all.Im not dilusional, you're just ignorant. The consequences of not having a long revenue tail game is clear. The way you design games with long revenue tails is clear or are you ignorant enough to not see how game design homogenizes around GAAS? You've got maybe.... four discreet templates.
Maybe you've never made a game or are new to games?
No hypothetical needed, thats verbatim whats going on in this thread.Weird hypothetical backed up by nothing. Were you born yesterday? EA has quite a reputation.
The quote is so vague you could interpret it in almost any way. Anthem was Bioware's idea. You think? They made the game. Literally thousands of ideas involved.. They know who their employer is, they know what's expected of them. Do you think it's a coincidence EA, Ubisoft, Activision, all these massive corporate publishers are the ones leading the way with the live service monetization model? Bioware didn't come up with the idea. Bioware has ideas, they serve their master.
Anthem was started under the tenure of the doctors, by and for leads at Bioware to stretch their creative legs doing something other than Mass Effect. All games evolve over their development but Anthem is broadly what Bioware set out to make.
No the constraints are there because if theyre asking for X amount of millions of dollars, investors told them they need to hit X amount of projected revenue. They knew what they signed up for when taking this project. Blaming EA for wanting a return for hundreds of millions of dollars is asinine especially when the brunt of the problems with the game would have nothing to do with the publisher interfering. This is how any basic investment works, you ask for X amount of money, they tell you what they need to see before giving you X amount of money-the onus for how they come up with that is on them in addition to accepting the terms in the first place. They could have just worked on another project if they didn't feel comfortable hitting the numbers EA wanted them to. There is nothing misleading here, its just people not understanding how this process plays out and wanting to blame the EA boogieman.
OR bioware could have created a game that didn't require such a significant amount of funding so as to not in turn expect a sizeable amount of long term revenue. But this is the game they wanted to make. THis was their dream project. Not EAs. Theres no way this game wasn't designed from the ground up to be a gaas because all looter games are inherently gaas games at this point. They knew what they were doing when they pitched the idea. Stop blaming EA for their poor development. Every single account, including the ones from bioware, have talked about this being THEIR project and journalists are now backing that they had a lot of autonomy while working on this. Vs what youre arguing which is nothing but conjecture that you can't back up at all.
I have nothing else to say to people living in their made up fantasy world backed up by nothing but their own uninformed accounts. I'll trust the words of the devs, the publisher, and the press (especially Jason) over internet fairy talesYou responded exactly as I thought you would. So see my other response.
I can't get over how awful the understanding is of how investments work. "They were forced"....No. They asked for an incredible amount of money for a huge game they wanted to work on, EA said sure, but these are the targets were going to need to see for an investment of this size. But according to ERA, EA should be handing out hundreds of millions of dollars out of the goodness of their hearts and not expect to see significant returns on such a huge investment. So of course were running with the narrative that they were pressured into this when by literally every single account from a non internet nobody, thats not what happened at all.So they weren't pressured into making Anthem except for the fact that they were. OK.
Editing your post to still say nothing. Ok.Maggotmouth, you responded exactly as I thought you would. So see my other response further up the page.
And don't play dumb with letting EA off the hook for knowing the exact kind of impact only wanting and approving long tail GAAS games has, they're far from dumb.
Also haha at 'conjecture you can't back up given... sourced statements from former devs in lead positions. XD either actually respond to the points people are making or don't bother, no one wants to read your one sided rants.
I have nothing else to say to people living in their made up fantasy world backed up by nothing but their own uninformed accounts. I'll trust the words of the devs, the publisher, and the press (especially Jason) over internet fairy tales
I can't get over how awful the understanding is of how investments work. "They were forced"....No. They asked for an incredible amount of money for a huge game they wanted to work on, EA said sure, but these are the targets were going to need to see for an investment of this size. But according to ERA, EA should be handing out hundreds of millions of dollars out of the goodness of their hearts and not expect to see significant returns on such a huge investment. So of course were running with the narrative that they were pressured into this when by literally every single account from a non internet nobody, thats not what happened at all.
Editing your post to still say nothing. Ok.
But even besides gaming, how do they think any simple type of investment works? Its ludicrous.
The fact that the result is a bad online co-op, bad loot, bad shooter with a bad single player offering is absurd when they had 6 years to do this and apparently a big budget for a AAA+ game.Okay, sure.
However, Anthem getting made is heavily influenced by EA's business expectations and practices. An online co-op loot shooter is actually a much easier pitch with access to loads of more funding instead of Bioware's Single Player offerings of the past.
So yeah, they weren't forced to make it, but that doesn't mean that they weren't railroaded into it either.
The fact that the result is a bad online co-op, bad loot, bad shooter with a bad single player offering is absurd when they had 6 years to do this and apparently a big budget for a AAA+ game.
Someone mentioned this couldn't possibly be a Destiny clone because the design document is so old. Honestly, I wish they had cloned Destiny - even the lore in Destiny gets more interesting in the last DLCs than the keyword salad of Anthem.
It's obvious. You can watch the e3 2018 demo and see seamless co op for example that never make it in the final product.Anthem being a mess IS on Bioware to be sure (though without a doubt I bet that Frostbite plays a big part as well). Given how thread bare it is, we know that there must be piles of scrapped content, systems, and prototypes, there's no doubt that Bioware was trying many different things and failing throughout those 6 years, and there was plenty of time for Destiny to have influenced what was ultimately released.
You keep talking about evidence to the contrary and have yet to provide a single example of one. No, other projects being impeded in some form by EA does not automatically equate to every project being impeded upon (IE apex legends also were very clear they were given immense freedom to make the game they wanted).You still don't know what you're talking about, and to see you continue to use this 'fantasy land' line when you're proud of looking no further or thinking no deeper than 'just looking at published statements' is a little... eehhhhhhhhh, I might feel bad for you. We have plenty of sources that contradict you and you display a very basic understanding at best of how corporate structure works and soft power is used. Like, very basic. I highly doubt you've worked in industries like game dev or shipped products before. The fact that you can't bridge the gap to understanding that people blame EA for their singular approach, and the ramifications that has on game dev and design, even this late into the thread, is baffling.
Likewise that you can't understand that 99% of the people commenting in this thread aren't placing sole blame with EA, because it WAS Biowares project after all, EA just funneled the design elements with their key deliverables, and fronted the money. 'Bioware knew what they were getting into' no shit my dude, they are owned by EA and had to meet EAs expectations of creating a game that could generate massive revenue over years.
So which one is it? Shareholder or useful meat that has yet to spoil?
https://www.resetera.com/threads/ac...tudios-autonomy-and-more.105408/post-18862353
Okay, sure.
However, Anthem getting made is heavily influenced by EA's business expectations and practices. An online co-op loot shooter is actually a much easier pitch with access to loads of more funding instead of Bioware's Single Player offerings of the past.
So yeah, they weren't forced to make it, but that doesn't mean that they weren't railroaded into it either.
Executive pressure is more subtle than "Make this game!" - it's resource maneuvering and "Where's your version of FIFA Ultimate Team?"
For sure, but that's not EA going to BioWare and saying "you need to make us a Destiny clone" - it's EA saying "if you want resources, show us how your game is going to make long-term revenue." Huge difference there!
I remember hearing how EA was actually a decent place to work, so this doesn't surprise me too much
It looks like EA made it very clear they want a GaaS game with revenue tail, but in a subtle way, not in an agressive form.
Wasn't this (lack of long-term revenue) the reason they cancelled Amy Hennig's Star Wars project ?
Also, they force the studios to use Frostbite engine.
JS: ...which is something that you have been heavily involved with. One misconception that I want to correct—a lot of people think that EA forced the Frostbite engine upon you guys.
AF: No, not at all; no.
JS: That was your decision, correct?
AF: Yeah, it was, actually. We had been wrapping up [Mass Effect 3] and just shipped Dragon Age 2, and we know that our Eclipse engine that we shipped DA2 on wasn't going to cut it for a future iteration of Dragon Age. At the same time—
JS: Right, making an open world on there.
AF: Right—
KH: What were the specific limitations that you were running into?
AF: Open world, the renderer wasn't strong enough: those were the two big ones. We thought about multiplayer as well, kind of in the backs of our minds, so we thought the next engine should at least not—we shouldn't start with the next engine as being incapable of doing it, because—since that decision was going to come later, let's at least see if something was going to allow that. Eclipse wasn't; it was single-player only.
And then the [Mass Effect] Trilogy was ending, so we thought to ourselves, "Well, we're going to need a new engine for that." So we really just talked internally about whether we were going to have—we had three options, we said: are we going to burn Eclipse down and start something new internally; are we going to go with [Unreal Engine 4]—or the next version of [Unreal Engine 3]; I can't remember if UE4 was announced or not—or were we going to go with Frostbite? And Frostbite had been developed at DICE and had shown some really promising results on the rendering side of things, and it was multiplayer. And so we said "Well, that's an interesting candidate." And when it came down to it, we talked to folks and we really liked the Frostbite option, and—again, back to this idea of being part of a community—there were more and more teams who were considering Frostbite and we were jumping in, saying "Well, why don't we take the plunge; we've got to do this—"
JS: "We'll be the guinea pigs."
AF: Yeah! "Yeah, we'll do it." It was a decision that I made after hearing all of the technical deep dives in probably late 2011, I would say; about then.
JS: So just a little bit of context just in case people aren't familiar: the Frostbite engine was developed by DICE to make battlefield games, and you guys had a lot of well-documented struggles with it because a lot of the tools weren't there yet; a lot of the technology was designed for first-person shooters, and you guys were trying to make entirely different games. So, in retrospect, after the struggles that you guys had to go through on [Dragon Age:] Inquisition, on [Mass Effect:] Andromeda, now on Anthem—who knows what's going on?—Do you feel like you made the right decision back then?
AF: Oh yeah, I think so. You get to be—going back to that community theme—Being part of a community of developers, especially because everybody is on it now, right? Everybody at EA other than the Sims and a couple of the mobile titles are on it. And that is powerful, it is good to be part of a group of like-minded folks who are eating all the same dog food, you know? That's a good place—
[Jason and Kirk laugh at the idiom]
AF: It is! It's a good place to be, and—credit to the Frostbite team, how they keep so many diverse titles on one engine, everything from FIFA to Anthem. is amazing to me, like, there's so many—
KH: Is there an actual, physical moving of resources? Like, people going from place to place? It feels like, over the last few years, there's been this—I'm guessing—massive, concerted effort to get EA studios running and get Frostbite working on all these different genres that it wasn't originally designed for—is that an actual, physical thing where people are going from place to place: "Hey, I'm your Frostbite expert; I'm here to help!"
AF: Yeah, there's definitely folks who do that. I don't know if folks actually live—some people transfer around. Being a company with that many developers, people do take on new roles and take on new teams. But yeah, they have folks who commit themselves to making sure that game teams get the support they need, and they move from one project to another, and I know—
JS: There's a Frostbite team, right? In Vancouver?
AF: Yeah, well there's one in Stockholm too, right? And then there's a second one in—there might be another one, I don't even know. But yeah, they are experts in the internals of the engine, and their job is to make sure that teams get the support they need, and they do a great job of it.
JS: Yeah, it just feels like Frostbite has just caused so many problems for BioWare that, looking back at it…
AF: Yeah, I hear that and I get that. Certainly we would look at things and say, "Oh man, we've got a lot of work to do with this," but it's tough, right? Because it's also true that the titles are ambitious; they're meant to be ambitious. So, we go, "I don't know; is it the ambition of this thing that is causing this, or is it this specific technical issue that's causing this?"
JS: Fair question.
AF: I think it's safe to say that you've got to just work with folks to get the problems you need solved, solved, and see what happens with it and do their best with it, right?
Yeah....not really seeing the "Huge difference there!" "Show us how your game is going to make long-term revenue" = GAAS. This crap has been the blight of gaming for years (even if I do enjoy Overwatch).
Andromeda was on EA partly, EA forced Frostbite on them a decent way into developmentYeah, it sounds like Andromeda and Anthem had all the time in the world.
Not the rushed piece of shit that DA2 was but just two very confusing messes..
What the fuck is going at Bioware?
Andromeda was on EA partly, EA forced Frostbite on them a decent way into development
And more importantly is the fact that Frostbite was the correct decision by EA for all their studios, a standard set of in house tools for all of them IS what makes sense. Frostbite not being good enough for that or complicated is DICE's fault.
People tend to forget that Mass Effect 3's multiplayer was received quite favorably with 23 million matches played. BioWare asked in a survey to players if they wanted multiplayer in DA:I, and supposedly people didn't say no. And let's not forget DA:I won GOTY from almost every major outlet, including the Game Awards.
Now whether you believe Jason or not is up to you. Just as believing a former BioWare developer saying the opposite is up to you. But BioWare choosing to make a GaaS game should not be that surprising, given their prior history & successes.
It's almost as if working at EA isn't some flesh pit fuckhouse like you maggot mouths suggest!!!
WelpAndromeda was planned to use Frostbite from the beginning. Also not forced. Just read the Aaron Flynn interview posted above.
probably the fact that ubisoft releases successful large scale games, while every high budget EA game that is not sports bombs
clearly there is some crucial difference between how EA and ubisoft manage their studios
That's from Kotaku's exposé on Visceral's collapse. The context of that quote is 100% about demanding knowledge of that extreme level of profit above your game's core experience.
I'm sure the pressure is as subtle as he's making it out to be, but asking "Where's your Destiny?" or saying the studio needs to get on board with the corporate-wide GaaS initiative and figure out how to monetize their games past the initial point of sell is basically forcing them to make an online game. I mean, everyone knows what happens to EA studios that don't perform. Not that the people in charge of Bioware weren't interested in giving it a try, but I doubt there was zero pressure to do it.
You'll probably play The Last of Us 2. It'll be a GaaS game. Ditto for Uncharted 4.
Asking for a plan for a long term revenue tail is NOT anything close to forcing devs to make a particular type of game.
Nope, that narrative needs to die cause Bioware themselves confirmed it. And more importantly is the fact that Frostbite was the correct decision by EA for all their studios, a standard set of in house tools for all of them IS what makes sense. Frostbite not being good enough for that or complicated is DICE's fault.
People need to go back and take a listen to Jason's interview to Aaron Flynn.
It's all their fault.
Yeah i don't see the big difference either. So EA doesn't directly force devs to produce this live service crap, but Indirectly through financial pressure. And then shuts the studios down if they're not happy with the business model of a certain game.So EA uses soft strong arm tactis, instead of hard strong arm tactics. Okay.
And yet we have Apex running on a modified Source. I don't think stardardization is reason enough to throw out expertise and Respawn's gem is there to prove it.