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It seems many BioWare employees are jumping ship to Improbable

Asbsand

Asbsand

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Oct 30, 2017
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Company info: https://improbable.io/company/about-us


Reading my twitter timeline today it was unfortunate to see yet another BioWare developer who did significant work tweet that it is his last day at the office in Edmonton. Jason Hill leaves today and like a lot of recent departures he's off to work at Impropable, the same company which Aaryn Flynn, the former GM of BioWare landed his job at.



To add context, Jason Hill worked as a designer at BioWare Montreal on Andromeda back before it closed and one of the things that game absolutely did not fail to deliver on in my view was its final mission which was a good action romp that also took a lot of choices over the course of the game into account and tweeting directly back and forth I remember he said he and his team worked very hard to make it reactive - a very good effort in a game that got overlooked due to its controversies.

What's more is that looking guys like Aaryn Flynn up on LinkedIn it seems like several ex-BioWare are ending up there despite being in London. So far it's not really a game software developer that has produced GDKs and engines to be used with Unity and make development more efficient for developers that want to adopt the technology.

"In gaming and entertainment, our technology enables developers to create richer, more immersive and persistent virtual worlds."- Impropable's mission statement

This I find interesting but so far it doesn't seem like they're a games developer. I could however imagine that BioWare might end up collaborating with them and their products for future games. Food for thought.
 
fenners

fenners

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Oct 27, 2017
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What's more is that looking guys like Aaryn Flynn up on LinkedIn it seems like several ex-BioWare are ending up there despite being in London.
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They have an office in Edmonton, and offices in a bunch of other cities where they're trying to poach staff.
 
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Deleted member 8784

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I imagine development on Anthem would be starting to wind up, so a few members of staff may well be looking for their next project.

With that being said, Anthem doesn't seem like the kind of game that's going to be released and then 'done', so what do I know.
 
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Asbsand

Asbsand

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Oct 30, 2017
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juliamcardinals said:
Flynn was partially responsible for Andromeda disaster so
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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I finished my third playthrough today and noticed he's credited as co-project director and not just GM. So maybe yeah. I really hope Casey is course correcting them. I was checking glassdoor job listings today and granted they were for BW Austin but I like how some of them list "support a creative and candid work environment" because even before Andromeda shipped and we kept being like "when will we ACTUALLY see this?" a big concern I had was that BioWare seemed like they were hushing away actual issues especially after several Glassdoor reviews stated similar things, that HR would ignore serious concerns and there would be infighting between upper management of the two teams. Their outsourcing practices were also extremely puzzling to me, but who knows, could've been a BW Montreal issue and not actually at the fault of Edmonton's higher-ups but considering the fallout I like to think that it was.
 
bbq of doom

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Asbsand said:
I finished my third playthrough today and noticed he's credited as co-project director and not just GM. So maybe yeah. I really hope Casey is course correcting them. I was checking glassdoor job listings today and granted they were for BW Austin but I like how some of them list "support a creative and candid work environment" because even before Andromeda shipped and we kept being like "when will we ACTUALLY see this?" a big concern I had was that BioWare seemed like they were hushing away actual issues especially after several Glassdoor reviews stated similar things, that HR would ignore serious concerns and there would be infighting between upper management of the two teams. Their outsourcing practices were also extremely puzzling to me, but who knows, could've been a BW Montreal issue and not actually at the fault of Edmonton's higher-ups but considering the fallout I like to think that it was.
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You've played through Andromeda three times?
 
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Asbsand

Asbsand

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BBQ_of_DOOM said:
You've played through Andromeda three times?
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You don't need to double-take that. Yes, I have and it's so much better than the stupid bandwagon hate knee-jerk against it said.

Its biggest fault is it is poor IP management from a creative standpoint. As a game and even in some respects as "Mass Effect" it really succeeds. I'm in the camp that thought 3 was terrible and even 2 bent the premise a little too much so to me this return to the original vision of ME1 despite how different it is tonally, was something with much greater potential that sadly might never be fulfilled with sequels.
 
Rodjer

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Developers leaving a company to join another company, who would've thought that?

That's normal, every developer is going to lose an X amount of people and hire X amount of people once they ship a new title.
 
nDesh

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A little unrelated to the thread, but the RPG fanbase must be the worst in the gaming community by far, since the moment that BioWare 'betrayed them' with Mass Effect 2 (largely considered one of the best games of all time) it seems that they are just counting the minutes till the studio just dissapear.
 

Deleted member 11976

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This industry is built on a lot of personal relationships. It's not irregular at all for people to join new companies founded by old co-workers. It's the safest kind of hire you can make.
 
BossAttack

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"Jumping ship?" I've not seen any senior BioWare staff "jump ship" besides Aaryn Flynn and he was in a management role, not development. The last big name to leave BioWare was Mike Laidlaw. I've not seen anyone similar to him leave the studio since him, and they just got Casey Hudson back.
 

Deleted member 4494

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I hope that's just a tech demo, because as a game it looked bland and boring.

The technology on the other hand is reasonably interesting. I think games like looter shooters are in desperate need of a rethink, technologically speaking, and something like SpatialOS could open the doors for that.
 
diablogg

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nDesh said:
A little unrelated to the thread, but the RPG fanbase must be the worst in the gaming community by far, since the moment that BioWare 'betrayed them' with Mass Effect 2 (largely considered one of the best games of all time) it seems that they are just counting the minutes till the studio just dissapear.
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I think in regards to this countdown feeling you got, it's prob more cause EA purchased them, and with EA it seems it's not a matter of if, but when.
 
Disclaimer

Disclaimer

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nDesh said:
A little unrelated to the thread, but the RPG fanbase must be the worst in the gaming community by far, since the moment that BioWare 'betrayed them' with Mass Effect 2 (largely considered one of the best games of all time) it seems that they are just counting the minutes till the studio just dissapear.
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Painting a little broadly there.

There's definitely a loud portion of Era (and elsewhere) that pollutes every BioWare thread with toxic doomsaying, but there's plenty of BioWare fans still who push back against that.

Anyway, on-topic: "many" is a vast overstatement. Still tons of recognizable talent at BioWare.
 
Prine

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Velocity:Design:Comfort said:
It was outright stated it didn't but ok, hate pile.

The gaming reddit mainstream not liking a game because of memes doesn't mean it's bad.
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It was a piece of shit representation of a Mass Effect game, I'm sorry, it did kill the franchise. The only hope is that Casey is back, and I hope the those behind Andromeda direction are not involved again in any meaningful way with the future of the franchise (if there is another one)
 
Septimus Prime

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panecasio said:
This industry is built on a lot of personal relationships. It's not irregular at all for people to join new companies founded by old co-workers. It's the safest kind of hire you can make.
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Yes, this. It's not even just to new studios. When people go anywhere, if they like it, they'll try to bring their friends.
 
TC McQueen

TC McQueen

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SofNascimento said:
There is an alternative view of the subject? If Andromeda didn't kill the franchise, what happened?
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Making Mass Effect revolve around the Reapers killed the franchise. What Andromeda did was show that a poorly managed project could prevent a soft reboot from getting off the ground to get around that whole narrative dead end.
 
SofNascimento

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TC McQueen said:
Making Mass Effect revolve around the Reapers killed the franchise. What Andromeda did was show that a poorly managed project could prevent a soft reboot from getting off the ground to get around that whole narrative dead end.
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That makes no sense. If they wanted to make a Mass Effect 4 in the milk way they could, Reapers or no Reapers. The issue is that they would have to make one ending canon, and the whole deal about Mass Effect is that there is no canon, it's your story. Moving to Andromeda wasn't a bad idea in itself, but the explanation they came up with was terrible and the game... well, there is nothing to add there that hasn't been said before.
 
TC McQueen

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SofNascimento said:
That makes no sense. If they wanted to make a Mass Effect 4 in the milk way they could, Reapers or no Reapers. The issue is that they would have to make one ending canon, and the whole deal about Mass Effect is that there is no canon, it's your story.
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All the major problems with the Mass Effect franchise stem from the fact that the entire original trilogy revolve around an galaxy threatening existential threat, which is literally the worst thing you can do when you're starting a franchise you want to keep going. When your overarching narrative basically blows up half the reason people care about your franchise (the space opera setting), you've done fucked up.

You've got a point that Bioware's reluctance to declare a canon ending is part of the problem, but they should've been smart enough to avoid the damn problem to begin with, or at least go with an Andromeda style ending instead of a multiple choice ending that causes problems due to their own philosophy.
 
SofNascimento

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TC McQueen said:
All the major problems with the Mass Effect franchise stem from the fact that the entire original trilogy revolve around an galaxy threatening existential threat, which is literally the worst thing you can do when you're starting a franchise you want to keep going. When your overarching narrative basically blows up half the reason people care about your franchise (the space opera setting), you've done fucked up.

You've got a point that Bioware's reluctance to declare a canon ending is part of the problem, but they should've been smart enough to avoid the damn problem to begin with, or at least go with an Andromeda style ending instead of a multiple choice ending that causes problems due to their own philosophy.
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But I think your premise is false. You can't judge the games as if their primary goal was to create a franchise with multiple future games. The Mass Effect trilogy was meant to be the Mass Effect trilogy, it was not there to set up a universe to be further explored by other games. So when ME3 ended Bioware wasn't worried about the next game. As they shouldn't. Indeed, we can compare it with Assassin's Creed, which took a very different route, even though you could argue the main threat of that franchise was also a doomsday scenario.
 

mintzilla

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Is there another industry where employees leaving to go to another company in the same industry is seen as weird? Gaming is so odd.
 
Kaeden

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I've always wondered, is it perfectly okay for employees to be "poached" from their current employer to go work with a former employee at a new location? I imagine this could vary state to state, and country to country, but I never knew if there were established laws that look to prohibit something like this. Not saying that's specifically being done here, it just made me think about it.
 
Aokiji

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Asbsand said:
Yes, I have and it's so much better than the stupid bandwagon hate knee-jerk against it said.
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Asbsand said:
I'm in the camp that thought 3 was terrible and even 2 bent the premise a little too much
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tenor.gif
 

Deleted member 47654

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ME Andrómeda was an awfully written RPG (History, dialogs and characters) get over with it people, the memes didn't kill him.

ME4 can happen, but it needs a canon, knowing Bioware the canon would look like this:
-Femshep the canonical Commander Shepard (just because some crybabies can't stand Mark "God" Meer's voice, his legacy and his vision about creating an avatar instead of a character)
-Liaria as the canonical Love Interest, yeah, that shitty romance taken out from a fantasy book for teenagers, miles behind of Tali's romance (best one in the Trilogy) even behind Miranda's.
-Destruction ending (well, this is good, i can't deny that)
-Javik is dead, the Geth as well (less paperwork xD)

I'm sure that there will always be people complaining about the hypothetical chosen canon, just like me.
 

Absolute

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lol at the idea of Bioware wrapping things up and letting people go months before release. Have you played BioWare games?

^ also I agree ME:A had terrible writing.
 
Rodney McKay

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People leave companies all the time, it's usually a good thing for everyone involved. They likely get better pay, hopefully less stress, and better opportunities at a new company, while the old company can get new talent that's potentially better than the last.

Also, one person wasn't responsible for the mess of Andromeda, even someone in a management position, and the premise of Andromeda was a perfectly sound launch pad for more Mass Effect games. Budget and time constraints along with a lack of quality control across the board was much more likely where the faults lie.
Sure a director on the game was likely someone who should have been guiding things like the quality of the writing and bug prioritization, but at a certain point I'm sure it was just a snowball rolling downhill.

I tried replaying ME:A recently and even playing the combat more fun than my first playthrough (played it more cover based the first time, but the game is really built more for close range run and gun) and the bug fixes since launch, the story and the writing were so bad and the missions and open world design so lifeless that I couldn't make it to the end (even if the final mission was the high point of the whole game).

But I wish this guy well and hope he finds success with this new company.
 
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SofNascimento

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Regis said:
ME Andrómeda was an awfully written RPG (History, dialogs and characters) get over with it people, the memes didn't kill him.

ME4 can happen, but it needs a canon, knowing Bioware the canon would look like this:
-Femshep the canonical Commander Shepard (just because some crybabies can't stand Mark "God" Meer's voice, his legacy and his vision about creating an avatar instead of a character)
-Liaria as the canonical Love Interest, yeah, that shitty romance taken out from a fantasy book for teenagers, miles behind of Tali's romance (best one in the Trilogy) even behind Miranda's.
-Destruction ending (well, this is good, i can't deny that)
-Javik is dead, the Geth as well (less paperwork xD)

I'm sure that there will always be people complaining about the hypothetical chosen canon, just like me.
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I think a reboot/remake is more likely than a ME4.
 
Cats_Schrodinger

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SofNascimento said:
It killed Mass Effect.
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3 did that, which was an arguably worse game than Andromeda.

Andromeda was the more of a victim of the video game industry outrage-machine than an actually bad game.

Andromeda was the first game after 1 where the actually seem to care about the intentions of the original. They failed at executing many of these, but with 3, they didn't even try.
 

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Cats_Schrodinger said:
3 did that, which was an arguably worse game than Andromeda.

Andromeda was the more of a victim of the video game industry outrage-machine than an actually bad game.

Andromeda was the first game after 1 where the actually seem to care about the intentions of the original. They failed at executing many of these, but with 3, they didn't even try.
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ME3 sold at pair with Uncharted or Gears (more than 5 million units and tons of money from DLC and multiplayer)
that was a huge achievement for the franchise. You can't kill Mass Effect selling that good and with a 93 on Metacritic, LOL
 
Cats_Schrodinger

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SofNascimento said:
That's factually incorrect. You can argue ME3 ruined the trilogy for you or for many people, but most definitely didn't kill the franchise. It had multiple DLCs, Citadel being a massive one, and very few people had a doubt a new Mass Effect game would come out eventually (indeed a sequel was unnoficially confirmed very soon).
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While I mostly agree with this, I don't think it's relevant wether it killed it from EA's financial perspective or not (I don't believe it is really dead btw).

I was referring to a comment which indirectly states that it was a disaster, which killed the franchise. I believe the disaster was not the game, but the reaction to it, which is not the games fault.

Mass Effect 3 killed the franchise because it completely exhausted it. I strongly believe that if ME:A received the 7-8 scores it deserved, it would have still sold badly.

Also, ME:A had nothing going for it from a developer perspective, it was a much more difficult job to do it right than ME3. And ME3 was fucked up in ways I could have never imagined. It was the ending of the trilogy, it could have been 2 lines of code and it still would have sold well, but after that, it's not a coincidence that I bought Andromeda for 15 pounds more than a year after it came out.
 
TC McQueen

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SofNascimento said:
I think a reboot/remake is more likely than a ME4.
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Well yeah, that's because they couldn't get the soft reboot to stick, and they need to go back to the Milky Way, but they don't want to deal with the whole "let's set a canon" thing.

That said, they really need to marginalize the Reapers if they do a reboot, because they're going to run into the same problems if they don't.
 
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