Ex-Bioware dev on EA management, lootboxes, white leads, ME:A

[Lime]

This was from a week ago on Waypoint's wonderful podcast, but it's definitely a very informative interview with Manveer Heir. Heir used to work on Mass Effect 3 and Mass Effect Andromeda via Bioware Montreal. He was in charge of directing the team of what he called the three C's - character, combat, camera - basically the aspects that were received well by critics and players. I highly suggest listening to the podcast in full, it's really good. Heir and the Waypoint crew also talk about having the Spike Lee of the games industry and if that chance has gone by at this point (Austin's argument).

Heir reveals a lot of different things about EA's management, on Bioware Montreal's inner conflicts, the reason why publishers need lootboxes, on labor conditions and burnout, how it is to navigate white spaces as a brown person in a game company & the games industry, and his own upcoming indie studio.
On lootboxes & monetization (via Eurogamer):

"It's definitely a thing inside of EA," he said, "they are generally pushing for more open-world games. And the reason is you can monetise them better. The words in there that were used are 'have them come back again and again' [not quite but that's the gist - see above]. Why do you care about that at EA? The reason you care about that is because microtransactions: buying card packs in the Mass Effect games, the multiplayer. It's the same reason we added card packs to Mass Effect 3: how do you get people to keep coming back to a thing instead of 'just' playing for 60 to 100 hours?

"The problem is that we've scaled up our budgets to $100m+ and we haven't actually made a space for good linear single-player games that are under that. But why can't we have both? Why does it have to be one or the other? And the reason is that EA and those big publishers in general only care about the highest return on investment. They don't actually care about what the players want, they care about what the players will pay for.

"You need to understand the amount of money that's at play with microtransactions. I'm not allowed to say the number but I can tell you that when Mass Effect 3 multiplayer came out, those card packs we were selling, the amount of money we made just off those card packs was so significant that's the reason Dragon Age has multiplayer, that's the reason other EA products started getting multiplayer that hadn't really had them before, because we nailed it and brought in a ton of money. It's repeatable income versus one-time income.

"I've seen people literally spend $15,000 on Mass Effect multiplayer cards."

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On Mass Effect Andromeda

"The problem is, what ultimately comes out with a Mass Effect Andromeda isn't the game we started making," he said. "We started by making a prequel called Mass Effect Contact, and as we started testing things we realised a prequel wasn't a good idea and we moved to a sequel, which a lot of the team was happier with. We rebooted that game design multiple times, so the version of the game you see come out is probably the last two and a half years of direction."

It sounds like BioWare Montreal wasn't a happy ship, (there have been deeper dives into the turbulent development of Mass Effect Andromeda) and as soon as Heir had seen the project through to manufacturing, he left. "I was done," he said. "It was a real difficult project and time."

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On the leadership who denied there was any problem with e.g. the theme of colonialism :

When the game debuted earlier this year it caught some criticism for glorifying colonialist fantasies, for example, and now Heir says there were people within the team who spoke up about the issue years in advance -- and in vain.

"I wasn't the only one. There were other people, there were other white people, white men, who spoke up. There's a lot of really good people inside of BioWare who spoke up on this stuff," he said. "This is what happens when, I think, you have a homogeneous leadership. The leadership of Mass Effect: Andromeda was all white men."

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On navigating white spaces as a brown person:

He also ruminated on what it was like to be someone who works at a large, high-profile studio and also speaks publicly about topics like diversity, race, and representation in games. Heir describes being "talked to all the time about speaking up" and feeling like some people in the company wanted him to stop rocking the boat.


"As somebody's who's public, you become the loud guy, you become the angry guy, and you become the person who's just trying to get all the press for yourself. That's how it's read, and then there becomes internal strife," said Heir.

"It is our job to speak up and do that thing. I'm not gonna quiet down and I'm not gonna not fight. So to me, when I realized I was in an environment that did not accept that and want that, and that was telling me I was being too angry or I was speaking up too much, and basically tried to tell me to sit down and be humble, I was like...peace out."

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Listen to the interview here: https://waypoint.vice.com/en_us/art...-ea-woes-with-former-mass-effect-manveer-heir

 

[Shingi_70]

Looking at that Lootbox monetization number I'm suprised that EA hasn't take the Mass Effect multiplayer and make it its own separate thing for $30 or F2P.

This Episoide was really good, it was telling when Heir says he would see maybe 2-3 other brown people and they never worked in the same department. Diversity on dev trans is something that really needs to be worked on in the industry.

 

[T'Challa Shakur]

You know what. Fuck EA they are never getting another dollar from me.

 

[disparate]

I anticipate there's going to be more people mad about EA's desire to push open world than BioWare Montreal's leadership and creative leads dismissing the issues with colonialism.

 

[Raptomex]

I understand this is a business and people need to get paid for their work but this is also an art form and I wish some developers would treat is as such.

 

[disparate]

I understand this is a business and people need to get paid for their work but this is also an art form and I wish some developers would treat is as such.

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To be fair, the colonial creative vision wasn't great to begin with, and that's what they switched to 2 years prerelease.

 

[Luxorek]

And the reason is that EA and those big publishers in general only care about the highest return on investment. They don't actually care about what the players want, they care about what the players will pay for.

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Yep, the root of all evil in vidya games. It's not that single-player games aren't profitable, it's that they could always be more profitable and corporations will always be profit driven. Hard to blame them when they are vindicated by people spending ludicrous amounts of money on digital content. 15k $ for some crates in ME3 multi? C'mon.

Anyway, listened to this podcast when I was waiting for ResetEra to launch. Good stuff. It also touches upon on industry crunch a little and how Manveer who is in his early 30s is considered a veteran, and how these hectic projects lead him to leaving AAA and founding his own Indie company.

 

[Deleted member 4518]

I listened to this last week and I loved it. Manveer gave a lot of insight into his experiences. I related to him a lot and loved his honesty about everything.

 

[Lime]

I understand this is a business and people need to get paid for their work but this is also an art form and I wish some developers would treat is as such.

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That's not the fault of developers, but the publishers (or the economic system we are embedded in). Devs work their asses off (read the other thread on Schreier's article in NYT) and try to balance art versus profits, but the challenge is that budgets are so high and the only way is up because stockholders and the capitalist system expects a return of investment and increased profits YOY.

 

[Alo0oy]

They don't have a problem with a brown guy working there as long as he shuts up about wanting equality.

Those people in the "middle" are infuriating

 

[ilium]

It's disconcerting that they were aware of the colonial subtext and decided to roll with it anyway.

 

[Enduin]

I both get and understand why publishers always look for the greatest return and yet I do not understand why they drop profitable formulas.

Yeah you can spend 100+ million on some massive open world game with multiplayer and microtransactions that might print money. But it's been clearly shown it's not a sure thing. And even then why stop making a single player game with a more modest 50-60 million budget that you know sells well enough to generate a profit, just not an exponential growth profit. There's a real market there.

They've killed off so many IPs, and studios, in this attempt to add multiplayer and microtransactions. When are they going to learn? Publicly traded companies are just the worst.

 

[Jolkien]

I understand this is a business and people need to get paid for their work but this is also an art form and I wish some developers would treat is as such.

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Some still do, but the vast majority of game sales being published by a few giant publishers looking to squeeze every last cent out of our pocket is disheartening.

I don't understand how the people in charge waved their hands and dismissed it. I live in Montreal as well (not that it matters much) and there's a lot of diversity. I'm glad when I applied it didn't go through.

 

[WillyFive]

I didn't even realize Andromeda had colonial undertones, but it does make sense. The original Contact idea did sound more interesting though.

 

[Raptomex]

That's not the fault of developers, but the publishers (or the economic system we are embedded in). Devs work their asses off (read the other thread on Schreier's article in NYT) and try to balance art versus profits, but the challenge is that budgets are so high and the only way is up because stockholders and the capitalist system expects a return of investment and increased profits YOY.

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My mistake of saying devs rather than publishers. I just wish the balance leaned more towards the art side. The way this industry is going is kind of a turn off and feels more like a cash cow. Although, with some games, you can see the passion and hard work which I respect.

 

[Shingi_70]

The Colonial overtones were apparent from the get go. I would have went with Contact, just becuase it seemed more in line with the feeling of the first game with the light star trek tones.

 

[Persephone]

I've only played a few hours of the ME:A free trial, but the weird pro-colonialism aspect definitely rubbed me up the wrong way. You land on a planet with intent to colonise it, regardless of anyone who might be living there already, and then the characters get all offended when the natives are understandably pissed off at their arrival, even though I'm sure if it were aliens invading Earth they'd react the exact same way. Just uncomfortable all around.

 

[SolidSnakeUS]

Goes to show that the only thing EA cares about is bleeding you dry of every single dime. I really do feel we'll hit a breaking point where anything like lootboxes will basically just collapse and not be used anymore. EA probably is in the forefront of fucking up good game developers, more than Activision.

 

[Creamium]

"I've seen people literally spend $15,000 on Mass Effect multiplayer cards."

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The podcast was very interesting all the way through, but this segment in particular struck me. I mean, I know plenty of people spend money on this stuff, but if you have a few people going crazy like this, it's not surprise they want to cram this in every game possible.

 

[Lime]

The podcast was very interesting all the way through, but this segment in particular struck me. I mean, I know plenty of people spend money on this stuff, but if you have a few people going crazy like this, it's not surprise they want to cram this in every game possible.

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[Phellps]

How could anyone be happier with making a sequel to Mass Effect 3 is beyond me. Regardless of your opinion on its endings, we can all agree that it created the conundrum of which ending was going to be canon if there was ever a sequel. So they didn't make a sequel, they made a spin-off that just so happens to take place in a completely different galaxy 600 years later. And they just did not have the talent to recreate an entire Mass Effect universe that was as compelling as the original.

Should've stuck with the prequel.

 

[shimon]

Everytime I read something EA related it's just sad...

 

[BraXzy]

I've been meaning to start listening to a podcast at work, I guess I'll give this one a try :)

Some really interesting tid bits quoted, crazy about microtransactions, it's hard to blame EA as a business if people are dropping that kind of money.

 

[Jolkien]

How could anyone be happier with making a sequel to Mass Effect 3 is beyond me. Regardless of your opinion on its endings, we can all agree that it created the conundrum of which ending was going to be canon if there was ever a sequel. So they didn't make a sequel, they made a spin-off that just so happens to take place in a completely different galaxy 600 years later. And they just did not have the talent to recreate an entire Mass Effect universe that was as compelling as the original.

Should've stuck with the prequel.

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Crtics of the ending aside Bioware stated that, never mind I wanted to post which ending it was but I can't figure out how to use spoilers tag ?

 

[Virtu Al]

Sounds like EA is fully going microtransactions with most of its games. It's a real shame because as much as I loathe the marketing department of EA for those kinds of decisions they do have some very good developers under them. I'm still disappointed of how they sent Titanfall 2 to die against CoD and their own Battlefront. That title deserved better.

 

[Khanimus]

This year was infuriating by EA, almost all of it centered around the release of Mass Effect Andromeda. I don't mean "GRR YOU MADE A BAD GAME!" But I mean from these accounts of Manveer himself of how leads expressed zero interest or concern in discussing or correcting the problematic social issues in the game, but also people I know on that team who needed support (especially after release) and were tossed to the fucking wolves, EA has left me completely disgusted.

 

[J_Viper]

Manveer seems like a cool dude. Him and his team do great work with the combat, it's a shame the rest of the game couldn't meet that standard.

It was funny when we threw those Motive devs under the bus when he said some MEA devs are working there. That might explain why the Battlefront campaign looks so dull.

 

[Kill3r7]

It was an excellent podcast but I disagree with Manveer's assessment of failing upward. It is not a glitch but a feature of the corporate world. Plenty of people in middle management fail upward because it is part of the cycle. People get promoted, in large part because other people — especially, but not only, bosses — like working with them. Passion is great and all but too often puts colleagues off. Their success ultimately is not necessarily measured by the success of the overall project but rather how they handle adversity and relayed the massage from upper management. Also, they now have experience in middle management which gives them a leg up in the next hiring cycle.

In the grand scheme of things middle management makes few decisions that truly impact the outcome of the actual project. They are there to deal with the minutiae of day to day project management and assure that goals and deadlines are met. In other words they are there to assure that the vision of upper management is being implemented correctly.

Looking at that Lootbox monetization number I'm suprised that EA hasn't take the Mass Effect multiplayer and make it its own separate thing for $30 or F2P.

This Episoide was really good, it was telling when Heir says he would see maybe 2-3 other brown people and they never worked in the same department. Diversity on dev trans is something that really needs to be worked on in the industry.

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Could you imagine the internet shitshow that would bring about?

 

[Shingi_70]

Could you imagine the internet shitshow that would bring about?

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Well it's the most well recieved part of the franchise at this point. It could work if you billed it as a spin-off .

 

[Kill3r7]

Well it's the most well recieved part of the franchise at this point. It could work if you billed it as a spin-off .

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Agreed in a mass market sense but enthusiast forums would lose their minds.

 

[FroMonk]

Man, this is just depressing when you think about what could have been wrt ME:A. There were flashes of greatness, punctuation marks on a game that I enjoyed overall but would never replay. Now that I know just how much focus EA pressed upon the multiplayer, it doesn't surprise me that they canned any single player DLC. People aren't incentivized to buy lootboxes there, so why spend money on it? It's just so frustrating.

 

[Deleted member 1627]

Manveer seems like a cool dude. Him and his team do great work with the combat, it's a shame the rest of the game couldn't meet that standard.

It was funny when we threw those Motive devs under the bus when he said some MEA devs are working there. That might explain why the Battlefront campaign looks so dull.

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While I understand people being somewhat underwhelmed with the BFII single player that's been shown so far, I don't know what people are actually expecting from a Battlefront game. I mean were we ever really expecting a Titanfall 2 situation of a stellar single player on top of best-in-class multiplayer? Mechanically alone BFII is leagues behind TF2 and the like... the mechanics don't really suit a single player environment.

 

[Darryl M R]

That was a really good podcast. I also enjoyed the part about how the gaming industry hasn't had an influential game that reflected modern times.

Also it would probably be smart to buy stock in companies that will go full throttle lootboxes if you cared about getting a quick return, smh.

 

[Mindwipe]

How could anyone be happier with making a sequel to Mass Effect 3 is beyond me. Regardless of your opinion on its endings, we can all agree that it created the conundrum of which ending was going to be canon if there was ever a sequel. So they didn't make a sequel, they made a spin-off that just so happens to take place in a completely different galaxy 600 years later. And they just did not have the talent to recreate an entire Mass Effect universe that was as compelling as the original.

Should've stuck with the prequel.

Click to shrink...

Prequels never work. There's no story stakes because you already know what's going to happen in broad strokes, and that's inherently boring.

They should have just picked a canonical direction.

(Of course, the answer is that they shouldn't have fouled up the end to ME3 so much that they ruined the IP's future direction, even after it was "fixed", but there you go).

 

[Risk Breaker]

Leadership teams in the industry being mostly or almost exclusively composed of white males is unfortunately a very real problem.

 

[FroMonk]

Prequels never work. There's no story stakes because you already know what's going to happen in broad strokes, and that's inherently boring.

They should have just picked a canonical direction.

(Of course, the answer is that they shouldn't have fouled up the end to ME3 so much that they ruined the IP's future direction, even after it was "fixed", but there you go).

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Prequels *can* work, it's just harder. Making it about the journey rather than the destination, so to speak. Like, you knew what was going to happen in Halo: Reach, but it didn't make the ending any less impactful.

 

[rakkadakka]

Public Companies are under an obligation to deliver value to their shareholders.

The second they catch wind of any sort of reliable revenue stream they are going to utilize it.

Unfortunate as those implications are for big budget games.

 

[Phellps]

Prequels *can* work, it's just harder. Making it about the journey rather than the destination, so to speak. Like, you knew what was going to happen in Halo: Reach, but it didn't make the ending any less impactful.

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Yeah, I agree with this. I mean, we all know roughly how the First Contact War played out, but we don't know the specifics, we don't know the people that were part of it. And the characters are the strongest point of any BioWare game, specially Mass Effect, so the story could've shone. It was a missed opportunity, unfortunately.

 

[Mindwipe]

Prequels *can* work, it's just harder. Making it about the journey rather than the destination, so to speak. Like, you knew what was going to happen in Halo: Reach, but it didn't make the ending any less impactful.

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But it did make the ending less impactful.

Reach was quite well executed, but it would have been much more so if Halo CE hadn't already happened, and did suffer as a result.

 

[FroMonk]

But it did make the ending less impactful.

Reach was quite well executed, but it would have been much more so if Halo CE hadn't already happened, and did suffer as a result.

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I feel like we're going to have to agree to disagree on that one. Part of the charm of the last sequence and the objective of getting the Pillar of Autumn away safely was the meta-knowledge that none of the spartans survived other than the Master Chief, and the linking of the ending of Reach to the beginning of Halo CE.

I really liked the ending of Rogue One for the same reason, but that's another story.

 

[Brick]

This was such a great interview. I highly encourage everyone to listen to the whole thing.

 

[gogosox82]

How does one person justify spending 15k on loot crates? Even if you have a bunch of disposable income, 15k on a lootcrate than you could easily get for free just by playing the game? I don't get it.

 

[Talapia]

I listened to this last week and I loved it. Manveer gave a lot of insight into his experiences. I related to him a lot and loved his honesty about everything.

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He did state some eye openers, but I already was aware of scummy EA practices and have been for some time. If only he toned down the segregationist talk, it just makes him sound bitter that he didn't get to work on Battlefront II.

 

[Deleted member 4518]

He did state some eye openers, but I already was aware of scummy EA practices and have been for some time. If only he toned down the segregationist talk, it just makes him sound bitter that he didn't get to work on Battlefront II.

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I think that talk is necessary though, rather than coming from a place of bitterness. That particular conversation resonated with me because it's similar to where I work and definitely noticeable, and I'm not bitter about not working on something - it's just something you notice.

 

[Dinobot]

This still stings. Fuck EA. They mismanaged my favourite IP of the last decade and it won't be coming back for a long while if ever.

 

[Almeister]

The Colonial overtones were apparent from the get go. I would have went with Contact, just becuase it seemed more in line with the feeling of the first game with the light star trek tones.

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Do you mean you would have gone with 'Contact' as a name for the game?

I think that would have been a huge misnomer as the actual idea of encountering new alien races for the first time, and how that plays out, is very far down the list of things Andromeda spends any actual time on.

I enjoyed Andromeda more than most, but it really dropped the ball in terms of making you feel like you were engaging with a new galaxy.

 

[I KILL PXLS]

Really enjoyed this episode and it was refreshing hearing a dev from the AAA side speak so candidly . Here's a link to the GDC speech they reference a few times. Still completely relevant sadly.

 

[Tebunker]

Public Companies are under an obligation to deliver value to their shareholders.

The second they catch wind of any sort of reliable revenue stream they are going to utilize it.

Unfortunate as those implications are for big budget games.

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The thing is, there are many ways to do this, Unfortunately Wall street has taken a very effed view of how best to do this over the last 30ish years.

Jack Welch all but screwed up modern coporate management when he took over GE, by telling companies to focus wholly on shareholders versus customers and employees. It is a completely short term point of view and will ultimately harm the business. We are also witnessing what this new era of thought is doing to our economy and jobs.

Companies aren't reinvesting their capital, they're doing stock buy backs. They are doing what is needed to get the board and c-level big returns under the guise of helping shareholders. They make employees share holders so they can convince them they too are partaking in this boon time, when in reality they are getting the short shrift.

So yeah you can say that they are under obligation to shareholder (hint they really aren't) but I think the best way to do that is a long term view and to be customer centric, and customer and employee focused. That doesn't mean Mts would go away but that decisions would made to answer whats best for our people (customers and emps) first and then say okay how do be profitable off that.

Look we can go to EtcetEra for more on this. Its not going to change soon, but we shouldn't just excuse it as companies doing whats best for the shareholders because thats a narrative that isn't that old and we should challenge it.


As for this podcast/interview. I loved it. Great insight and understanding of how things went down. People should just listen. Thats it. Open your brain and listen.

 

[Shingi_70]

Do you mean you would have gone with 'Contact' as a name for the game?

I think that would have been a huge misnomer as the actual idea of encountering new alien races for the first time, and how that plays out, is very far down the list of things Andromeda spends any actual time on.

I enjoyed Andromeda more than most, but it really dropped the ball in terms of making you feel like you were engaging with a new galaxy.

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Before Andromeda, The game was going to be a prequel about Humanity's first contact with aliens and the ad with the turians.

 

[Talapia]

I think that talk is necessary though, rather than coming from a place of bitterness. That particular conversation resonated with me because it's similar to where I work and definitely noticeable, and I'm not bitter about not working on something - it's just something you notice.

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It is necessary, but not under that pretext. I disagree with the focus that the crew performed worse because of a lack of diversity. It not only makes far too many assumptions, but it doesn't consider diversity of opinion, which is the more important element here.

I say this because the upper management at Bioware seemed to only care about surface traits (skin tone and ethnicity) and didn't consider the far more nuanced elements of an individual, which is the main contributor to them ignoring the suggestions from employees, not so much the biological appearance of the staff.

When it comes to diversity, it should never consider the appearance (complexion, sex etc.) as a reason to hire someone. Only the skillset and experience should be factored in for a hire. For a creative position, add innovation. Having less/more white male leads doesn't do anything to improve or decrease the quality of production whatsoever. This is where I feel Manveer has made a mistake in his critique.