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Ex-Bioware dev on EA management, lootboxes, white leads, ME:A
- Thread starter Lime
- Start date
Worth reiterating that it's a huge symptom of income inequality that this is even a viable business model.
If everyone had similar income they wouldn't be able to bank on a few overly wealthy players bankrolling the game for everyone else. This could be a sign of the future in general unless something is done to curb the rampant income inequality.
Can't stress enough how bad the Contact War setting is for a Mass Effect game. We're talking about a period with few to no aliens, very little conflict, very little exploration, and so on unless they decided to completely rewrite history. This stands in stark contrast to a game set entirely on Omega or the Citadel. Plenty of fantastic options there and room to operate in many different genres. The Silversun Strip in Mass Effect 3 was such a tease of what could have been.
Mass Effect: Terminus would have also been an acceptable setting.
We should probably do a thread about the last 'content update' for Mass Effect: Andromeda MultiPlayer. I am very accepting of alternative funding models especially in games with smaller communities. ME3 MP DLC would have never worked as a paid option. The splintering of the small player pool would have killed the game very quickly. However, ME:A MP's aggressive final itemization expansion is extremely suspect when taking the recent news under consideration. Every existing weapon was cloned with a few variants and added to the loot pool. On the one hand this means you are still getting real drops while maxxing out your Ultra-Rares. On the other hand the item pool is so big that reasonably grinding it out just by playing seems impossible. The discussion to be had is whether or not this is good for long term players or a simple harpoon that pushes away new players.
I don't necessarily blame the devs on this one. This looks like something that came from a person staring at the balance sheet as hard as possible.
Good luck to Manveer. I liked the snippets I read and will listen to the full interview as soon as I'm able.
Mass Effect: Terminus would have also been an acceptable setting.
We should probably do a thread about the last 'content update' for Mass Effect: Andromeda MultiPlayer. I am very accepting of alternative funding models especially in games with smaller communities. ME3 MP DLC would have never worked as a paid option. The splintering of the small player pool would have killed the game very quickly. However, ME:A MP's aggressive final itemization expansion is extremely suspect when taking the recent news under consideration. Every existing weapon was cloned with a few variants and added to the loot pool. On the one hand this means you are still getting real drops while maxxing out your Ultra-Rares. On the other hand the item pool is so big that reasonably grinding it out just by playing seems impossible. The discussion to be had is whether or not this is good for long term players or a simple harpoon that pushes away new players.
I don't necessarily blame the devs on this one. This looks like something that came from a person staring at the balance sheet as hard as possible.
Good luck to Manveer. I liked the snippets I read and will listen to the full interview as soon as I'm able.
I'm very interested in seeing application against hired data for some of these companies; the total number of applications, percentage of specific races/gender against who was finally hired.
It's very much a white male dominated industry, but we have made some progress with diversity in recent years. However I also don't want to baselessly point to institutionalised discrimination in their hiring process, and this is an assumption but I would guess the highest percentage of applicants is still white males leading to a higher chance that they'll be hired. Ultimately they'll want the best person for the job, and generally I'm against positive discrimination like affirmative action in modern industries (there was a time and place for it 100%, in the past it was a necessity to force society to move forwards). So that leaves the question how do we increase diversity in these teams, is a grass roots effort needed to push minorities into these fields to increase their percentage in the application pool and then increase their hiring rate?
And having the small amount of minority employees spread between teams is interesting. On one hand it does make sense to spread minorities between teams as it increases the diversity within each separate team so I don't think that is an inherently negative angle.
Very interesting interview.
Like I always say, the issue isnt that single player games don't make money, its that AAA publishers want maximum return on investment through microtransactions.
Its like those venture capitalists, they don't care if your business makes $1 million profit, they're interested in the one that makes $100 million.
Like I always say, the issue isnt that single player games don't make money, its that AAA publishers want maximum return on investment through microtransactions.
Its like those venture capitalists, they don't care if your business makes $1 million profit, they're interested in the one that makes $100 million.
Lootboxes are more a result of companies being publicly traded than anything else. EA and the like are under constant pressure to match any success competitors are having while also showing steady growth. That push for growth, even when it's not in the cards, can lead corporations to some less than savory places. If you only live for the next fiscal quarter, you can make a whole lot of decisions that are bad in the long run.
Yeah, I freaking hate microtransactions, and I want them to die a firey death. I was just shocked because the guy I quoted seems to quite genuinely think that the reason the problem exists is because we don't have communism, instead of putting the blame on idiots who support those kinds of practices.
There is a wide space between communism and laissez-faire capitalism, you know. As a matter of fact, every capitalist country currently extant is somewhere in that middle space. The problem is we need to move the needle closer towards the center than the USA is currently. Y'know... basically the opposite of what the government is doing right now.
It's going to get worse before it gets better. Expect more microtransaction BS until government changes hands and can start to rein in the craziness.
The problem isn't income inequality, man. The issue is that there are people who value shortcutting video games over other things. Some people drop 15k on modifying their car, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. No one would complain about income inequality between the street racers and the soccer mom, because those two parties don't intersect in anyway or care about it. The only difference between them and video gaming is that these huge triple AAA titles are supposedly for "everyone," except we don't want the same crap as the whales.
That seems rather presumptuous. You really don't think income inequality has anything to do with the fact that they can get 60% of their revenue from a mere 10% of their player base? Even if that closely mirrors a graph of actual income inequality?
Certainly, the desire has to be there in the first place or else they wouldn't bother. But then again, the threshold to being able to "care enough" is far, FAR lower when throwing around tens of thousands of dollars barely impacts your savings. On top of that, it simply makes sense - when the top 1% own a share of wealth so large that it literally can't be properly represented on a graph, we've got issues.
Obviously, there are other contributing factors that are definitely worth looking at - chiefly the incentive structure of publicly-traded companies. But the fact of the matter is, even without that supposed shareholder maximizing incentive, they'd still have an immensely powerful drive to gun for the wealthiest customers, because they simply have a LOT more money. A LOT more.
I think this was the case when the best way to make RoI as big as possible was to distribute copies to as many people as possible, because lootboxes weren't the thing. Now time has changed and way to maximize revenue doesn't always necessary to be connected to xx number copies of sold.
I know the current revenue maximizing approach being reliant to lootboxes would cause userbase to shrink and that may hurt the industry in the long run. However, investors want the increased revenue now, and if the industry becomes unprofitable they will just shift the capital to elsewhere, perhaps to more lucrative market.
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If games are art or not is subjective. Most just treat them as entertainment products so being art or not for some shouldn't impact on its quality as a game and fun factor.
See I wanted to say that but as he pointed out, there are good people of all races still at Bioware. I take what you said and change it somewhat. Barring any critically acclaimed masterpieces, I will continue to avoid EA's games.
This just blows my mind.. I'm trying to divvy up the trade-off, and I just don't see it from a consumers perspective..that is utterly ridiculous no matter how deep someone's pockets are.
Hardcore fans spend a ton of money. They're piggybanks.
It's just on a smaller scale compared to Star Wars or Star Trek or any other big franchise.
I'm somewhat sad but not surprised. I really want a good Mass Effect out just another great RPG from Bioware. But big publishers just like big movie studios only go for the money nowadays (something something capitalism) and that means releasing mostly pretty dumb mass-market safe games with the best performing monetisation schemes. I don't mind them, I enjoy my yearly supplement of blockbuster goodness but it's still sad that Bioware will never be the same. Those guys told great stories, not sold me loot boxes and multiplayer experiences.
The good news is that we're now at the point where small game companies can provide us with very solid titles, looking at Hellblade or Divinity: OS2. That's very reassuring.
The good news is that we're now at the point where small game companies can provide us with very solid titles, looking at Hellblade or Divinity: OS2. That's very reassuring.
For all those claiming that Bioware Montreal should have been a prequel instead: remember that when the first reports coming in about a new ME game being developed, we already had indications that they were planning to set it during the First Contact War. And people were upset. There was lots of outcry that fans absolutely did not want a prequel game and were relieved when it was announced that it wouldn't be so.
That's really not true at all. You can make a prequel about a lot of things that isn't just "will humanity survive?" People generally care about characters more than plot. If you can tell a good story with good characters, it can work.
There's a reason why Rogue One is a better movie than TFA despite it being a "prequel" where you know where the stakes are headed.
Bet everybody at Bioware is still kicking themselves for ramming Mass Effect into a dead end with the endings of 3.
Its not just that they were bad, its that they made it damn near impossible to create sequels for a franchise they almost certainly knew they would be tapping into again. It was incredibly stupid to try to close the book on Mass Effect and shut down the universe in the way they did.
Its not just that they were bad, its that they made it damn near impossible to create sequels for a franchise they almost certainly knew they would be tapping into again. It was incredibly stupid to try to close the book on Mass Effect and shut down the universe in the way they did.
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As someone who stuck with old 90's shooters like Q3 and CS well into the 2000's, going from community made maps and skins and dedicated servers, to what he have to day is almost impossible. I can't bring myself to pay for that stuff.
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Come to think of it, it's pretty crazy how top-down everything has become.
From maps to mods to cheats, you had so much variety in user-created 'content' (I hate that word). Team Fortress, Quake Action, Counterstrike, etc. And then all the map packs of course. So much experimentation and tinkering going on back in the 90's.
Now it's basically just looking through memory addresses to use cheat codes and everything else is locked down and having to wait for DLC and micro-transactions.
Manveer Heir is a pretty good gameplay designer - the combat systems he developed for MEA were enjoyable - and his explanation of why open-world games are a nightmare to design make total sense. That said, I can't feel any sympathy for his complaints about EA wanting him to keep his mouth shut - I've been following him on Twitter since the ME3 days and over the past 2 years, he's been saying that honestly would've gotten him into massive trouble anywhere else. I think that's part of why he's so open - he's burned all his bridges in the AAA space (at least among HR departments and PR flacks), so whatever he does from here on out has to done as an indie.
That said, one thing that really confuses me when people talk about the game is the colonialism. It might be due to the fact that I only played the game once (so far) and picked the science route, but everything I remember about the game is basically "We don't want to be douchebags, we planned this out before we left, but let's work with the natives and respect their stuff and values." Like, the only semi-controversial thing that could be considered an imposition of the Initiative's will on the Angara was not picking the Moshae at the end, but A) the Angara already had an Ambassador to the Initiative on the Nexus, and B) the post is supposed to handle issues between the Initiative's colonies and the Nexus, and the Moshae wouldn't know anything about that.
I can see the Exiles and Krogan being colonialist, especially the Exiles when Sloan Kelly is running things, but unless the military route of MEA is way more "Rah rah, let's do whatever," I'm not seeing where the problem is. Maybe it's the fact that you couldn't choose what kind of outpost you could put on each planet? That was a weird gameplay limitation what probably had to do with the disaster the game's development was.
As for diversity of leadership, what matters most is intellectual diversity. Having more non-white people as leads on projects may or may not help with this, because if you've got a bunch of people of different ethnicities, but they all are ultra progressive, then you basically have an echo chamber of a different sort. Star Trek was kinda bad at that back in the day with that - just look at any episode where they deal with business.
That said, one thing that really confuses me when people talk about the game is the colonialism. It might be due to the fact that I only played the game once (so far) and picked the science route, but everything I remember about the game is basically "We don't want to be douchebags, we planned this out before we left, but let's work with the natives and respect their stuff and values." Like, the only semi-controversial thing that could be considered an imposition of the Initiative's will on the Angara was not picking the Moshae at the end, but A) the Angara already had an Ambassador to the Initiative on the Nexus, and B) the post is supposed to handle issues between the Initiative's colonies and the Nexus, and the Moshae wouldn't know anything about that.
I can see the Exiles and Krogan being colonialist, especially the Exiles when Sloan Kelly is running things, but unless the military route of MEA is way more "Rah rah, let's do whatever," I'm not seeing where the problem is. Maybe it's the fact that you couldn't choose what kind of outpost you could put on each planet? That was a weird gameplay limitation what probably had to do with the disaster the game's development was.
As for diversity of leadership, what matters most is intellectual diversity. Having more non-white people as leads on projects may or may not help with this, because if you've got a bunch of people of different ethnicities, but they all are ultra progressive, then you basically have an echo chamber of a different sort. Star Trek was kinda bad at that back in the day with that - just look at any episode where they deal with business.
Yes, there are some major whales that spend a huge amount of money on vidya games. For obvious reasons, we shouldn't consider them the norm, nor are they a symptom of income inequality, especially as you (the royal you) don't know their background. People who build model trains often spend a lot, but I don't think we'd consider that hobby an example of income equality. From my experience working in F2P, a lot of them just really like the games they play--they're just normal ass people. And yes, occasionally, there's the Emirati prince or Chinese e-commerce scion who might "invest" in your title, but those are quite rare.
Also, whales aren't the ones who are single-handedly propping loot boxes (and other monetization methods) up. Benchmark monetization metrics don't even take into consideration exceptions like whales, and instead look at things like LTV (lifetime value) and ARPDAU (average revenue per daily active user), which provide a more holistic view of your product's performance. And of course, if your monetization implementation ends up benefiting whales but hurting your average user, chances are your ARPDAU and LTV are going down. It's really in no one's interest to design bad monetization; bad monetization happens when you have bad designers. As a designer, generally when I'm looking at monetization, what we want to do is create a system with deep potential spend (e.g. not one and done), but one that won't hurt your average F2P user. With most games involving player-to-player contact, your metrics have a positive correlation with player count, and the only way to keep player count up is to keep players happy--and given the conversion rate of most F2P titles (or even paid titles whose users convert to microtransactions), the vast majority of players are F2P.
Somebody showed me this ex-devs twitter and he seemed like a really unpleasant person to work with.
It's good to bring up racism and inequality but he seemed to just hate his white colleagues.
Also, Jesus Christ. If you know a whale, tell them to stop. Not just for their sake but for all of us. It's bad for all of us if the industry caters to these people.
It's good to bring up racism and inequality but he seemed to just hate his white colleagues.
Also, Jesus Christ. If you know a whale, tell them to stop. Not just for their sake but for all of us. It's bad for all of us if the industry caters to these people.
Yeah, Manveer swings pretty far out on the extremes of it. I mean you aren't going to foster much discussion about people's preset state of mind of you start by calling them 'white devil'
As for whales, people should remember that for many of them $15,000 is literally nothing. Why would they spend dozens (or in the case of mobile games hundreds) of hours grinding away leveling up various subsystems to get to the point they want to be at? If they want that Rank 5 Castle or whatever it is they're shooting for, it's less expensive for them in terms of what their time is valued at to just dump $15,000 to buy the resources rather than grinding away.