[Kotaku] How BioWare's Anthem Went Wrong (Jason Schreier article)

[Deleted member 1041]

So I wanna bring up Borderlands 3

That's a game that from what we have seen, has 'taken' from Destiny-Mainly the multiple planet with a hub between them. And I bet Gearbox are fans of Destiny-afterall they kinda mastered the shooter looter as it is today. And if the article is true(Which I believe), Destiny was a taboo word? Like, that's insanity. Anthem could've learned from Destinys mistakes. In fact, a while back, there were rumors that Gearbox hired/contracted people that did the gunplay for Destiny? Maybe

But that's just wild to me. "Don't mention nor think about our biggest competition".

 

[Candescence]

Frostbite may or may not be shit, I'm not the person to judge that, but before Unreal and Quake most studios were making their own fucking engines AND shipping games and now nobody can use anything but Unreal, Source, Unity or IDtech or whatever.

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Just to note - developing new engines is an increasingly time-consuming and difficult process, especially for smaller teams. With an increasing number of features needed to develop a fully-functioning game that's acceptable to players nowadays, most in-house engines are either fairly old or are done by devs who want specific features that aren't feasible with an existing licensed engine.

There are folks actively working on open-source engines, but I'm pretty sure only Godot is the notable multi-purpose competitor to Unity and UE4 at the moment.

 

[Deleted member 46948]

I've read Jason's book and I don't disagree that 'crunch' is common. However, I have also worked closely with many game devs and have my own insights and thoughts.

• While crunch is common, it does not always occur. I've worked with some triple A studios who have explicitly told me that their teams don't do crunch.
• Crunch is not black and white, some teams might work 60 hours weeks, some might work 100. Some might do this for 10 weeks in a row, some might do this for 1 or 2. Some might be compensate for their overtime, some may not. Crunch is a common label for a period of high workload near the end of game development, but not all studios experience this in the same way.
• The fact that crunch is common is not justification for it being important for game development. This just demonstrates that video game development is difficult to manage on strict schedules, and that crunch is a symptom of this difficulty.

Media molecule is a good example of a AAA console developer that simply doesn't do crunch.

As a side note, many developers that have crunched hard openly state that it results from mismanagement. Here's an article on the development of Horizon Zero Dawn which explains exactly that...

https://venturebeat.com/2018/07/06/...illa-games-made-horizon-zero-dawn-in-7-years/



You might also enjoy this article https://waypoint.vice.com/en_us/art...t-and-12-other-devs-how-they-deal-with-crunch

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We agree on all the points.

 

[mAcOdIn]

Because the article specifically says they started at square one for each game they have made. They have failed to pass the lessons in from previous games every time they have used it? Andromeda didn't learn from DA. Anthem didn't learn from Andromeda. They have significant issues with the engine that aren't being fixed by working on it repeatedly.

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And aside from specifically calling out them often losing the battle for the official DICE engine support team's resources it never mentions they were somehow barred from using anything from the DA: I team or anything, in fact at one point in the article it mentioned that they designed a new inventory system just because they felt they needed to not because they felt the old one wouldn't work. Amy Hennig said that other teams were benefitting from her team's work from her cancelled Star Wars game. So, like, I get it, it's not as flexible, understood and supported as Unreal is but I think people that are focusing on Frostbite are missing the main story here, they didn't know what the fuck they were doing. Making the game on Unreal might have allowed them to have less bugs or shorter loading times but if they didn't even know what the fuck the game would be, if they were going to turn down advice from other offices that had online experience out of pride, the game was always going to be hot shit. Period. Unreal wouldn't have allowed those guys under that leadership to shit out a great game. I'm not even trying to defend Frostbite, it still might be the better business decision to switch engines, because even if they should have 7 years of wildly different teams making tons of different genred games iterating on the engine if the publishers not doing a good job of supporting the engine and the individual studios can't be bothered to share across teams and do it, then yes, they've pissed away 7 years of work that under different leadership should have produced a pretty competent engine by now. That's not my battle, but this idea that Frostbite's still killing Bioware 7 years later, Bioware's killing Bioware, it's their fault if they don't want to re-iterate on past tools, it's their fault if they don't want to take advice from different teams, it's their fault they don't want to look at what happened on games from their own studio or from their competitors. Frostbite's just a secondary annoyance compared to that shit.

First priority should be on fixing leadership.
Second should be ensuring the damn health of the team.
And you could put what game engine they use as a distant third priority.

 

[skeezx]

So I wanna bring up Borderlands 3

That's a game that from what we have seen, has 'taken' from Destiny-Mainly the multiple planet with a hub between them. And I bet Gearbox are fans of Destiny-afterall they kinda mastered the shooter looter as it is today. And if the article is true(Which I believe), Destiny was a taboo word? Like, that's insanity. Anthem could've learned from Destinys mistakes. In fact, a while back, there were rumors that Gearbox hired/contracted people that did the gunplay for Destiny? Maybe

But that's just wild to me. "Don't mention nor think about our biggest competition".

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from the outset i can understand it. seemed like it was intended to be its own thing and you don't want to box yourself in with every design decision being an "answer" to another game

but at whatever point the game became a pretty straightforward loot shooter/service game then yeah you gotta take some hard notes from Destiny, Division, et al

 

[Green Yoshi]

It's such a spectacularly tone-deaf statement to make in response to a grisly list of allegations about how employees are failed. "It's not about them, it's about YOU, our loyal fans!" But then that's the idea, to deflect, to bait-and-switch, give the impression that Kotaku is attacking the reader, the player, the BioWare fans.

As it happens, it appears to have enormously backfired. The responses to the tweet for the article are… not pretty. It's fairly safe to say they already know this hasn't been a masterpiece of PR.

...
But all it didn't need to do was so loudly suggest that Kotaku is at fault for shining a light on them, and act as if BioWare staff weren't as important as the studio's super-fans. It could be this simple:

"We've read the article published on Kotaku today, and take the matters raised extremely seriously. While we strongly dispute many of the allegations made, and do not believe that the naming of names was necessary for the article, we care extremely deeply about the lives and health of our staff, and take seriously the statements made.
We intend to launch an internal review of the matters raised, to seek out the truth regarding the allegations and issues. And should we find areas where there is room for improvement, we commit to working as hard as is possible to do so.
Our employees are of the utmost importance to BioWare, and we wish to be known as an employer anyone would be delighted to work for. Anything that helps us achieve this goal is welcomed, and we thank our staff for their extraordinary efforts and diligence."​

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​

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/20...akus-expose-pours-petrol-on-a-raging-pr-fire/

 

[tuxfool]

Man I really hate to say it but I don't actually agree. Every time I've played a game and felt like it was not consistent had ridiculous changes for no reason, it comes out that that was exactly why.

Was true of Dark Souls 2, of Dragon Age: Inquisition, of Destiny 2, Halo 2, etc. All of these games had troubled development due either to publisher issues, massive, far reaching mistakes, poor planning and management, or a combination.

Not saying that decent things can't come of crunch, but man I don't feel like I'm usually fooled. Maybe it's just chance and I'll be duped, but idk. To me it usually seems pretty obvious.

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I'm not saying it's a binary thing, that games either come out polished or broken, but there is a gamut. There are games where it isn't obvious, TLoU being an example, some of the earlier BioWare games being another.

 

[rein]

Very interesting read. This really is a case of thick headed management. When the people making the game are voicing their concerns only to be brushed off or shut down, are we really surprised that things turned out the way that they did? The problem with EA (and most AAA publishers in general) is that they think they can keep doing the same thing over and over again and keep making profit, because it works with FIFA so why not the rest of the games? Like if they complete their checklist of live service open world games with loot and loot boxes and micro-transactions and pre-orders and limited editions and collectors editions and season passes and yada yada, and ship an unfinished game it will be ok and they make their money eventually. They will still post their bullshit responses of "We heard the feedback! :)". That feedback has been echoed for the last decade and they're still no getting the message.

I would like to have played the Anthem they originally wanted to make instead of what we got.

 

[Asbsand]

I don't think it's crunch itself that leads to rushed, broken games on release dates at EA. I think it's EA's bad habit of letting their subsidiary game studios fuck around with no direction for years until EA casually swoops in only to realize nothing is getting done and then they hardlock them into releasing in the closest fiscal year end date for their investor meetings.

I won't excuse BioWare for not managing it properly but they actually rely on their publisher to set the plan for them too. This isn't back when they had the autonomy as a company to hash out deals with any publisher who had an interest in their pitch, this has to be done through EA, so EA also better step in and see how it their investments are paying off. It comes across as if EA has downprioritized BioWare for several years and only peep to them when they need a game release when there's nothing else to talk about in their quarterly earnings.

 

[Dunlop]

I don't think it's crunch itself that leads to rushed, broken games on release dates at EA. I think it's EA's bad habit of letting their subsidiary game studios fuck around with no direction for years until EA casually swoops in only to realize nothing is getting done and then they hardlock them into releasing in the closest fiscal year end date for their investor meetings.

I won't excuse BioWare for not managing it properly but they actually rely on their publisher to set the plan for them too. This isn't back when they had the autonomy as a company to hash out deals with any publisher who had an interest in their pitch, this has to be done through EA, so EA also better step in and see how it their investments are paying off. It comes across as if EA has downprioritized BioWare for several years and only peep to them when they need a game release when there's nothing else to talk about in their quarterly earnings.

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If this happens, people will shout from the mountaintops of how EA is influencing the studios and ruining the games.

 

[SpotAnime]

A lot of people screaming unionize in this thread will be the first to flip and start trashing developer unions once the first kotaku story hits about HDR being cut from a game, or a game getting graphically "downgraded" because of the developer's union agreement forbidding excessive crunch.

They'll bemoan the current state of the industry and complain that devs today aren't passionate like they used to be, and how unions are stifling creativity.

I have zero faith in any twitter/era/reddit user's ability to accept what they perceive to be worse products in exchange for more human working conditions.

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Not necessarily true. Any lean/agile organization from the top down can achieve sustainable, predictable productivity if they have the right mindset. Mismanagement and disorganization causes the chaos, dysfunction and inefficiency.

Unionization will only protect employees from such mismanagement. If management does become more lean and agile, they wouldn't necessarily need to unionize.

 

[Toumari]

 

[SpotAnime]

You don't need a union to foster a positive work environment. There's plenty of companies that do this. There's also a ton of literature covering best business practices and quality management methodologies with real life application that have successfully created happy employees and customers. But for whatever reason the game industry ignores decades of knowledge in key areas of management and like to think theyre in the wild west of software development.

I personally would much rather see the industry take charge before they consider unions. But it doesn't look like that's gonna happen, so if that's what it's going to take, I'm fine with that.

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I think the problem stems from hitting a date - having a finish product and immovable constraints. As we are moving more digitally and SaaS, teams will be able to iterate more, and the appetite for a minimal viable product will be much more acceptable than, 100% of the features by date X.

I think that's why we see the smaller companies achieve minimal or no crunch, because they are much more able to iterate, and not beholden to stockholders and review scores and first-day sales.

 

[Maternal Heart]

Harrowing tale. Great investigative work and good on kotaku for supporting Schreier to do this important work. I wish the industry wasn't hermetically sealed.

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if that is genuine response and if management at Bioware actually do listen to their workers and try to be introspective, then that's good. If it's all hot air, then the company isn't worth working for.

 

[BrassDragon]

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That's a step in the right direction. Will the Austin branch get its own all-hands or is that done via livecam?

 

[Dunlop]

Not necessarily true. Any lean/agile organization from the top down can achieve sustainable, predictable productivity if they have the right mindset. Mismanagement and disorganization causes the chaos, dysfunction and inefficiency.

Unionization will only protect employees from such mismanagement. If management does become more lean and agile, they wouldn't necessarily need to unionize.

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I think people put to much faith in unions, my office recently became unionized and the environment is fucking terrible with employees bickering constantly and production has slowed immensely.

Gamee development needs a complete overhaul but unionizing isn't going to magically cure all of the problems and as another poster mentioned this site will have a stroke when games are constantly delayed

 

[Hyun Sai]

Sad that they may only feel forced to take action because of the bad press (no pun intended... ah ah ah no, totally intended).

 

[Deleted member 46948]

While Mark Darrah seems like a nice guy and someone who knows what he's doing, this was something he said in an interview last year. The article makes it pretty clear that all of it is at best hopeful make-believe and at worst outright deliberate misleading.

Yeah and you know one of the things that I think has been a relatively recent lesson in the live service space is that before last year I think you saw games coming out that were relatively incomplete. [Games] that then sort of built up and built their fan base over time and grew and got bigger. And I think in the last year you've seen a couple of games launch that were in that same kind of space that you would've thought, 'Okay this should be fine' that then didn't work out.
People came in and they went, 'there's not enough here' and they left. So, I think it's partially because the competition in the space has gotten harder people are less willing to just kind of hang out and hope that stuff is going to come along. There are other things for them to do. So, I think for me a big lesson has been that... it's that you need to have enough on the first day so that there's a reason to stay. And when more is coming then that's great. That's amazing. But I'm not just going to hang out and wait for the game to become complete. It has to be complete from day one.

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It doesn't exactly inspire trust in Bioware's integrity.

Edit: source: https://www.usgamer.net/articles/anthem-pax-west-interview-new-details-live-service

 

[Eolz]

FWIW, Casey Hudson just tweeted this:

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Doesn't seem like it's working out too well then.
Reminds me of Cory Barlog saying in some tweets saying that conditions need to be improved, then defending crunch in some interviews.

 

[JonesiiiFromtheMoon]

A lot of people screaming unionize in this thread will be the first to flip and start trashing developer unions once the first kotaku story hits about HDR being cut from a game, or a game getting graphically "downgraded" because of the developer's union agreement forbidding excessive crunch.

They'll bemoan the current state of the industry and complain that devs today aren't passionate like they used to be, and how unions are stifling creativity.

I have zero faith in any twitter/era/reddit user's ability to accept what they perceive to be worse products in exchange for more human working conditions.

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I think people put to much faith in unions, my office recently became unionized and the environment is fucking terrible with employees bickering constantly and production has slowed immensely.

Gamee development needs a complete overhaul but unionizing isn't going to magically cure all of the problems and as another poster mentioned this site will have a stroke when games are constantly delayed

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Yall seem more worried about what era will think about game delays than what these developers have to deal with. Who cares about delays, or how what era will do when a game delays. Get these workers what they need so they wont be taken advantage of.

 

[poofynamanama2]

Basically, if you aren't DICE (i.e.: The people that developed and have worked with the engine since its inception), it's a slog to work with.

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Hell, DICE can't even reliably work with frostbite. Every single patch for Battlefield 3, 4, 1, 4, SWBF 1 and 2 have had issues. They literally ALWAYS break something one way or another, sometimes minor, sometimes game breaking.

 

[Spartancarver]

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Speaking as someone in a very burnout-heavy field:

If this meeting is anything like our required "wellness / anti-burnout" talks, it will be worse than useless and simply boil down to

- "try to make some time for yourself and your hobbies while working 90 hour weeks"

-"remember your work is meaningful "

-"we offer free counseling during normal Monday to Friday business hours that you won't be able to attend because you will be working, if you take off work to go to counseling one of your coworkers will have to cover you"

-"have you tried yoga?"


BioWare needs a top to bottom restructure and some leadership need to lose jobs for things to change

 

[Nezacant]

Kotaku has a new article that includes Casey Hudson's full internal email.
https://kotaku.com/bioware-boss-addresses-studio-issues-vows-to-continue-1833802608

My apologies if this was post already.

 

[Spartancarver]

Hell, DICE can't even reliably work with frostbite. Every single patch for Battlefield 3, 4, 1, 4, SWBF 1 and 2 have had issues. They literally ALWAYS break something one way or another, sometimes minor, sometimes game breaking.

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Yep. Battlefield V at launch was buggier and more busted than Anthem at launch.

 

[Asbsand]

Speaking as someone in a very burnout-heavy field:

If this meeting is anything like our required "wellness / anti-burnout" talks, it will be worse than useless and simply boil down to

- "try to make some time for yourself and your hobbies while working 90 hour weeks"

-"remember your work is meaningful "

-"we offer free counseling during normal Monday to Friday business hours that you won't be able to attend because you will be working, if you take off work to go to counseling one of your coworkers will have to cover you"

-"have you tried yoga?"


BioWare needs a top to bottom restructure and some leadership need to lose jobs for things to change

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I think crunch is something they can start to improve by getting rid of their "BioWare Magic" idea where everyone has to listen to a handful of leaders on a project, because when there's no clear vision the whole project slides; if the whole project slides you fall behind schedule and then you get 100 hour work weeks towards the last 6 months of development. I have a cousin in the field who has done animation work for Marvel movies and he told me the nature of crunch basically boils down to that.

If you don't get enough work done during the part of a project where you think you have all the time in the world, you end up having to do twice as much towards the end.

The authority-figures at BioWare has been a company structure that has damaged projects as far back as ME1. I know we mostly love that game, but it's the truth. By being more collaborative and trusting of the lower members of the developer you get better results than one superleader and 5 leads who made bad decisions and then expect their subordinates to make the best of it.

 

[Maternal Heart]

Speaking as someone in a very burnout-heavy field:

If this meeting is anything like our required "wellness / anti-burnout" talks, it will be worse than useless and simply boil down to

- "try to make some time for yourself and your hobbies while working 90 hour weeks"

-"remember your work is meaningful "

-"we offer free counseling during normal Monday to Friday business hours that you won't be able to attend because you will be working, if you take off work to go to counseling one of your coworkers will have to cover you"

-"have you tried yoga?"


BioWare needs a top to bottom restructure and some leadership need to lose jobs for things to change

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yeah this is also what I was thinking. The pesssimist in me tells me that this will be their all-hands on deck meeting with a lot of useless hot air

 

[SpotAnime]

yeah this is also what I was thinking. The pesssimist in me tells me that this will be their all-hands on deck meeting with a lot of useless hot air

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Usually the message here is "Rah Rah, we still own you suckers." it's a top-down change, usually the top is uninterested in changing. They're too insulated, and they don't care if they are removed because of golden parachutes. It's all about making shareholders happy, whatever it takes. It's a means to an end.

 

[Maledict]

Very interesting read. This really is a case of thick headed management. When the people making the game are voicing their concerns only to be brushed off or shut down, are we really surprised that things turned out the way that they did? The problem with EA (and most AAA publishers in general) is that they think they can keep doing the same thing over and over again and keep making profit, because it works with FIFA so why not the rest of the games? Like if they complete their checklist of live service open world games with loot and loot boxes and micro-transactions and pre-orders and limited editions and collectors editions and season passes and yada yada, and ship an unfinished game it will be ok and they make their money eventually. They will still post their bullshit responses of "We heard the feedback! :)". That feedback has been echoed for the last decade and they're still no getting the message.

I would like to have played the Anthem they originally wanted to make instead of what we got.

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Um, did you read the article? Because your comments don't really make sense.

They didn't know what game they wanted to make. They spent four years pissing around failing to find a concept, and only settled on one after EA management stepped in and wanted to see something that was actually playable and fun. This isn't an issue cause by EA headquarters. It's an issue caused by the game's designers and developers in BioWare, who have failed in some very basic duties as managers and leaders and relied on 'BioWare magic' to fix things in crunch time at the end.

 

[gilko79]

Man, I'd love to be a fly on the wall during their next All-Hands. I really hope lasting, meaningful change is on the way for BioWare. Whatever form it takes.

 

[Altair]

I knew this was coming. 12-16 months of full production really shows in the actual game. What a toxic environment to work in. Nobody should ever have to work in such an environment.

 

[Dunlop]

Yall seem more worried about what era will think about game delays than what these developers have to deal with. Who cares about delays, or how what era will do when a game delays. Get these workers what they need so they wont be taken advantage of.

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I stated a reality, but you are taking my post out of context. It was too state that unions don't magically make the work environment better.

Having been through it, unions have been a detriment for us.

I do not care about game delays

 

[Maternal Heart]

I think crunch is something they can start to improve by getting rid of their "BioWare Magic" idea where everyone has to listen to a handful of leaders on a project, because when there's no clear vision the whole project slides; if the whole project slides you fall behind schedule and then you get 100 hour work weeks towards the last 6 months of development. I have a cousin in the field who has done animation work for Marvel movies and he told me the nature of crunch basically boils down to that.

If you don't get enough work done during the part of a project where you think you have all the time in the world, you end up having to do twice as much towards the end.

The authority-figures at BioWare has been a company structure that has damaged projects as far back as ME1. I know we mostly love that game, but it's the truth. By being more collaborative and trusting of the lower members of the developer you get better results than one superleader and 5 leads who made bad decisions and then expect their subordinates to make the best of it.

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Do you have some info or documents on the development of ME1? I'd love to read about it. I know that their version of UE3 was really difficult to work with because it was apparently an early-generation version.

 

[m_dorian]

Kotaku has a new article that includes Casey Hudson's full internal email.
https://kotaku.com/bioware-boss-addresses-studio-issues-vows-to-continue-1833802608

My apologies if this was post already.

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This feels like was made to be leaked as a PR move more than to address the legit concerns of their badly managed staff.

 

[Deleted member 721]

This is FFXIII. It's hilariously similar, although that game is still st least 'good' (ish) despite being the worst FF.
https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news...Scenes_Of_Square_Enixs_Final_Fantasy_XIII.php

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thx

 

[Asbsand]

Do you have some info or documents on the development of ME1? I'd love to read about it. I know that their version of UE3 was really difficult to work with because it was apparently an early-generation version.

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No documents, sorry, but there was a twitch streamer, who I've linked to before in recent topics who was a cinedesigner on the game and he has a lot of stories and even footage of scrapped onused content from the cut planet of Caleston, which had as much dialogue and content as Noveria but nothing made the cut and not enough was actually developed.

But it's interesting you mention their UE3 troubles. He talked about that too, how Epic Games had zero implementation for the engine to run math equations and BioWare implemented that for them, which is actually still what you'll use if you sit with the UE4 kit today; that was made by BioWare in 2004 or something.

However, it interests me because it sounds like on paper Frostbite should've been no more or harder to work with and Epic Games is even notorious for not providing very clear documenation for their engine, especially back then but BioWare made do... it just seems there must be something fundamentally different about Frostbite's foundation which causes it to become unintuitive for a number of uses.

As for general ME1 day hearsay and developer outings I dug up a lot of posts by Patrick Weekes (Takyris) and Chris "Stormwaltz" L'Etoile who were writers and who frequently opened up about their work on the Penny Arcade boards. Most of it is just good fun, but Stormwaltz answered a lot of questions for clarification on story developments but they also occasionally blurted out things that suggested they were perhaps a little irritated with Casey's leadership on the project.

 

[Mik2121]

Man, this article is really making the rounds around all the game companies I have friends at, as well as where I work. Sympathy all around.

 

[Mahonay]

Yep. Battlefield V at launch was buggier and more busted than Anthem at launch.

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No, it wasn't.

BF4? Yes.

BFV's main launch issue was lack of content. The only thing that was especially buggy was tying to join friends that were in a game (which is still ridiculous they had this problem after so many years). Also lots of little legacy bugs, which is more a DICE issue than anything.

 

[808s & Villainy]

If this happens, people will shout from the mountaintops of how EA is influencing the studios and ruining the games.

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As the publisher I think EA should have some strong arm influence. The thing is there's never any transparency to it. Take what happened with Nintendo and Metroid Prime 4. They stated very clearly the game was in development hell with the current team and was being restarted with Retro. If EA decided to swoop in and do something like that, I think if they explained to fans the situation and why they were doing it, it wouldn't go over so badly. The problem is that they never do that, so we only hear about it through these types of pieces when studios are closed or games are cancelled. Instead of controlling the narrative of why those things happen, they let these articles reveal all the issues in the open

Of course, EA has also accumulated years of bad PR so maybe it still would to an extent be seen that way

 

[panda-zebra]

This feels like was made to be leaked as a PR move more than to address the legit concerns of their badly managed staff.

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Definitely reads as a response to the piece and the discussion around it (not that's it's much of one) and directed at pretty much everyone but his staff. There's stuff there those beneath him should be well aware of. Other parts read like an Anthem community manager post vaguely promising "we're looking at this/there's more to come/it's not working as we'd like" down the line.

 

[Tankard]

Another fantastic jornalistic piece by Jason.

And what a sad read that was. Already said here a thousand times, but it's past time they unionize.

 

[Spartancarver]

No, it wasn't.

BF4? Yes.

BFV's main launch issue was lack of content. The only thing that was especially buggy was tying to join friends that were in a game (which is still ridiculous they had this problem after so many years). Also lots of little legacy bugs, which is more a DICE issue than anything.

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That absolutely was not BFVs only launch issue and I am genuinely questioning if you even played it at launch

 

[JasoNsider]

Man, this article is really making the rounds around all the game companies I have friends at, as well as where I work. Sympathy all around.

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Yup, it's getting talked about and shared within game dev circles here, too. Actually, any time the press goes out of their way to do some excellent reporting on the industry it often gets talked about. This kind of journalism is actually helping things.

 

[Otheradam]

It almost always comes down to bad leadership in these situations and they need to basically replace all of them with better people for any meaningful change to happen. That isn't exactly easy, though.

 

[DrBo42]

This feels like was made to be leaked as a PR move more than to address the legit concerns of their badly managed staff.

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Might be cynical but I agree.

 

[Spartancarver]

This feels like was made to be leaked as a PR move more than to address the legit concerns of their badly managed staff.

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100% agree, first thing I thought of was this was a controlled and intentional leak

 

[Deleted member 27471]

Why are we acting like every time they use Frostbite again that they're staring back at square one? They have how many years worth of experience with this engine now, they've developed how many assets and tools for this engine now?

Frostbite may or may not be shit, I'm not the person to judge that, but before Unreal and Quake most studios were making their own fucking engines AND shipping games and now nobody can use anything but Unreal, Source, Unity or IDtech or whatever. I don't buy it. I'm sure the engine had limitations that they've now solved. I'm sure it has other limitations that have to be planned around or have yet to be solved. There may be better engines more suited to the game they'd like to make. But I seriously doubt that most of the fault here lies with Frostbite.

In a way I see a parallel with Bethesda and their engine but I think the honest truth is, these things can be modified, Bethesda's engine started out as a damn MMROPG with Dark Age of Camelot or something, was heavily tuned and used as a single player enginefor the likes of Morrowind and Fallout to totally fucking sucking at running a MMORPG with Fallout 76. With bugs that date back to Morrowind still cropping up in their releases. Unless EA also has an insane directive like burn all tools and assets after each game and fire anyone with experience so you can start from scratch each game Frostbite should be a markedly better engine today than it was at the start of Inquisition, Andromeda and now Anthem and at some point you do have to fault someone at the company for not fixing things that are borken if they're not.

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I never said they're starting at square one. The issue is just use of the engine. Maybe others have.

They developed tools after DA3 and that didn't help andromeda. They developed tools after Andromeda and that didn't help Anthem. Theres a pattern and theres a good chance that DA4 will be the same issue.

The reason theres so much blame towards the engine is because its had 3 games now, two of which were critical failures and all 3 of them being plauged by severe developmental issues. Theres literally been employees at BioWare that for all three games have pointed the finger at Frostbite as being difficult to use.

It's not just about starting over, there are many documented issues with engine. That's not even including all the other employees at all the other studios that have brought up the same fact. So I'm not sure why the criticism isn't valid as the engine has been an issue even after all three games and the games or cancelled games outside of BW have all been having issues with it. It's literally insanity to keep thinking frostbite is one day going to all come together and be development friendly for a variety of studios.

Remember BioWare had 7 years to make Anthem. The article cites a ton of examples of how Frostbite was a roadblock for following through on their prototypes that they developed. Even if they had all the tools it's still problematic for the teams using it.

Your right about the fault on being on someone, the article stated why they didn't get help with streamlining frostbite. It's all there.

This conversation will be interesting to pick back up once DA4 releases. Maybe what your saying will be proven to be true and they finally have efficiency with frostbite.

I would like to see BW make a successful return to the world of RPG's. Hopefully the next one under new leadership will be that game.

 

[SpotAnime]

This feels like was made to be leaked as a PR move more than to address the legit concerns of their badly managed staff.

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The first step in fixing a problem is being transparent about it. BioWare and EA never wanted this level of mismanagement exposed to the public, hence it would be allowed to continue.

Now it's out in the open, they can ignore or fake a solution but that will be under increased scrutiny by the board members and shareholders - every time a game underperforms critically of financially, or is delayed, everyone can point to these issues as reasons. There will also be repercussions such as employee retention. They may try to run and hide from it, but they can't get away from it anymore.

Great work, jschreier.

 

[Mahonay]

That absolutely was not BFVs only launch issue and I am genuinely questioning if you even played it at launch

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Yes I did. Bought the version that let me play early. Battlefield has been my primary multiplayer game for over a decade.

I'm also just used to janky shit leftover from their previous games. Compared to their previous flaming wreckage launches, it was relatively smooth (PS4). Although I have less patience for it now, it's why I've been dumping hours into Apex and barely playing Battlefield.

The legacy jank/bugs/usability is the #1 problem with Battlefield. Literally feels like they unlearn lessons learned from the previous game. Every time.

 

[Enduin]

I really hope all those devs who made indications or comments about "change Bioware w/ my studio and Anthem w/ game X" come forward as this definitely is a much more widespread issue than just BioWare.

The whole industry needs to be better about this stuff and having one studio with a clearly failed product in the spotlight for it is just a start but honestly one that many will ignore if they've continued to ship successful products despite it. Even for BioWare themselves there's a really easy chance of just taking half measures and smoothing things over in the short term but not really addressing the core issues. Really exposing and acknowledging that this is an industry wide issue and not just certain bad studios and companies will do a lot more for motivating everyone to really re-evaluate and take a hard stock of just how they're operating and their whole approach to things and to take more far reaching, systematic and long term actions to address it. Especially if a significant part of the industry is doing the same.

 

[devSin]

While Mark Darrah seems like a nice guy and someone who knows what he's doing, this was something he said in an interview last year. The article makes it pretty clear that all of it is at best hopeful make-believe and at worst outright deliberate misleading.

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Mark is frequently aspirational. It's the stuff he wanted and was aiming for, but obviously they weren't able to deliver.

It's not the first time this has happened (Inquisition was like this too). He's good people for sure, but you have to look at his statements in the context of talking about things that only exist on paper.