Anthem "Exposed": They Done fucked up

[PHYLO]

7 minutes ago, Bouzoo said:

Look as ME: Andromeda and Anthem. That's basically what you can expect. I am really sad as well since DA: Origins is one of my all time great RPGs. 

Agreed, DA: Origins is the RPG that really got me back into RPG games since Morrowind. Lol.

[suicidalfranco]

3 hours ago, Bouzoo said:

Look as ME: Andromeda and Anthem. That's basically what you can expect. I am really sad as well since DA: Origins is one of my all time great RPGs. 

dont forget inquisition. Such a bad game

[xAcid9]

RIP? 
 

10 years live service.

[Eaglerino]

3 hours ago, suicidalfranco said:

dont forget inquisition. Such a bad game

Inquisition should have been a warning for what was to come... wish I had listened before I bought Andromeda

[MoonSpot]

16 hours ago, Eaglerino said:

Inquisition should have been a warning for what was to come... wish I had listened before I bought Andromeda

The mind boggling thing is that inquisition was less terrible than andromeda, was a smaller franchise and came out 1st(by 2 years?).  Take away for me there is that the Austin team is vastly superior to montreal; though I've no idea what the multi-player in inquisition is like, nor did I care to ever try it(MP being montreals 'strength' apparently).  IIRC Montreal team did the MP for ME3, don't know of any other instances of MP in particular from them beyond ME3 & ME4.  ME4s MP is inferior to ME3s by quite a margin, however it's serviceable.

 

So what will Bioware do to fix this?  Probably send anita sarkeesian to Austin and have them set up more 'talk about feelings' meetings to bring Austins performance inline with other locations.  /s ... not /s

[Shreyas1]

19 hours ago, xAcid9 said:

RIP? 
 

10 years live service.

Same thing happened with battlefront 2. It seems that if the game is bad, EA will just drop it

[Eaglerino]

9 hours ago, MoonSpot said:

The mind boggling thing is that inquisition was less terrible than andromeda, was a smaller franchise and came out 1st(by 2 years?).  Take away for me there is that the Austin team is vastly superior to montreal; though I've no idea what the multi-player in inquisition is like, nor did I care to ever try it(MP being montreals 'strength' apparently).  IIRC Montreal team did the MP for ME3, don't know of any other instances of MP in particular from them beyond ME3 & ME4.  ME4s MP is inferior to ME3s by quite a margin, however it's serviceable.

 

So what will Bioware do to fix this?  Probably send anita sarkeesian to Austin and have them set up more 'talk about feelings' meetings to bring Austins performance inline with other locations.  /s ... not /s

Montreal was considered the A-team for Bioware for the longest time. I'm not too sure what happened, besides Drew leaving 15 different times and losing some other original guys, probably to bring in 'fresh developers' for a more 'diverse' experience or something. Once the original talent is gone you get the Blizzard result, where people ride of the success of things created by people far, faaaar more talented than they are

 

At this point I hope EA kills Bioware. The last thing I want is for them to make an even worse Dragon Age with DA4 and have 3 (almost 4) atrocities in a row

[inthebrilliantblue]

On 4/3/2019 at 4:23 PM, Sparviero said:

Jet packs and unforced errors by BioWare management. 

Jet packs and unforced errors by EA management.

 

Fixed that for you.

[Sparviero]

32 minutes ago, inthebrilliantblue said:

Jet packs and unforced errors by EA management.

 

Fixed that for you.

It’s been a minute however at least one of the articles mentioned specifically it was BioWare .org chart management leading the charge. Not the C-suite bois with the spreadsheets at EA Tower of Profits directing many of the blunders. 

 

I don't really care I'm still still salty they thought open world M:A was going to work and pulled the plug on it so fast. First game I haven’t finished in years. 

[Blze001]

I honestly don't get the Inquisition hate. The only problems I can see with it were the maps were too big and kind of barren.

[maartendc]

On 4/3/2019 at 6:59 PM, Trik'Stari said:

I'm gonna go ahead and say it.

 

Developers need to unionize, and strike.

While I don't disagree, it is worth pointing out that this project (Anthem) was mismanaged from INSIDE of Bioware. Not from the side of EA. So even if the developer (Bioware) was unionized, that does not prevent serious mismanagement at the upper level of the developer. It might prevent developers having to work insane hours, but there is no union "rule" you can make against just stupid decision making on a project.

 

This is something that is easily glossed over on this whole Anthem thing: EA actually did not fuck it up, the upper management at Bioware just mismanaged the project into the ground:

 

What I gleaned from the Angry Joe summary:

- Too long in pre-development (like 5+ years?)

- Could not make up their mind on the features in the game: threw large aspects in the trash multiple times

- Mismanagement between different Bioware offices. Bad communication.

- In the end had only 1.5 yrs to make the full game.

[Eaglerino]

On 4/29/2019 at 9:30 AM, Blze001 said:

I honestly don't get the Inquisition hate. The only problems I can see with it were the maps were too big and kind of barren.

it was the beginning of Bioware: Tumblr edition for all of their games. A game series that once had Leliana and Morrigan then assaults us with Sera and Josephine

[Blze001]

1 minute ago, Eaglerino said:

it was the beginning of Bioware: Tumblr edition for all of their games. A game series that once had Leliana and Morrigan then assaults us with Sera and Josephine

What was wrong with Josephine? I can definitely see Sera rubbing people the wrong way with being annoying and childish, although I thought she was humorous.

[Trik'Stari]

23 hours ago, maartendc said:

While I don't disagree, it is worth pointing out that this project (Anthem) was mismanaged from INSIDE of Bioware. Not from the side of EA. So even if the developer (Bioware) was unionized, that does not prevent serious mismanagement at the upper level of the developer. It might prevent developers having to work insane hours, but there is no union "rule" you can make against just stupid decision making on a project.

 

This is something that is easily glossed over on this whole Anthem thing: EA actually did not fuck it up, the upper management at Bioware just mismanaged the project into the ground:

 

What I gleaned from the Angry Joe summary:

- Too long in pre-development (like 5+ years?)

- Could not make up their mind on the features in the game: threw large aspects in the trash multiple times

- Mismanagement between different Bioware offices. Bad communication.

- In the end had only 1.5 yrs to make the full game.

They got little to no support from EA, and were likely forced to work on the project by EA. Or at the least, the culture behind EA strongly suggested that they focus on live services games instead of what they are actually good at.

 

What I don't get is why companies are so damned terrified of moving back release dates? I'd rather they take their time and make the damned thing playable and enjoyable, rather than rushing it out.

 

Jim Sterling recently did a fairly good video on what happens when you have a publisher, like EA, that results in developers having to compete with one another for funding and support. Part of the original article and Angry Joe video was that Bioware got little to no suppot fore frostbite from the frostbite team, because they were told to focus on FIFA instead.

[Thaldor]

3 hours ago, Trik'Stari said:

They got little to no support from EA, and were likely forced to work on the project by EA. Or at the least, the culture behind EA strongly suggested that they focus on live services games instead of what they are actually good at.

 

What I don't get is why companies are so damned terrified of moving back release dates? I'd rather they take their time and make the damned thing playable and enjoyable, rather than rushing it out.

 

Jim Sterling recently did a fairly good video on what happens when you have a publisher, like EA, that results in developers having to compete with one another for funding and support. Part of the original article and Angry Joe video was that Bioware got little to no suppot fore frostbite from the frostbite team, because they were told to focus on FIFA instead.

Only things EA actually forced were the use of Frostbite and the second E3-release video. The release time was decided by the management of Bioware based on that then EA had the big release event for many games then.

 

Mainly there's only few release windows per year to get into "the high sale" areas: right before holiday season, around mid-spring/late-spring and beginning of autumn, then there's only few events to release a game to the masses with huge visibility: E3, Gamescon and the publisher events. So, for a high value game there really isn't that many times a year it can be released and that's why E3 and Gamescon have grown to the size they are because everyone wants to but their stuff to the display because there's a lot of visitors and a lot of press. There's also that you need to be aware what might be released at the same time, like you don't really want to release anything even remotely half-assed at E3 because there's a lot of tech demos and early releases going and all of those can easily steal the spotlight of the show and they don't even need to really release anything for the public outside of a video, just like CES is on one hand the best place to release hardware but on the other hand there's a lot of others releasing their hardware also so there's a high chance to fuck up everything by releasing something half-assed like Intel did last year with their fishtank coolings.

 

Basicly pushing the release back for a AAA game really means they might need to even push it back only couple of months to hit the next release window or a year to hit the same window and hope that no one is coming up with anything more shiny at the same time and your release is still up to date with technologies and looks.

 

That Frostbite problem is really EA wide cancer. EA want's to put it everywhere because it's basicly free for them unlike using Unreal or Unity or anything out-sourced even remotely. The engine is "build" (more like slapped together) only for Battlefield which already makes it a hard case to adapt to a different enviroment and, what I have heard, it's a total dumpster of mismanagement and lacks good documentation which brings us to; There's only few people within EA that really understand the engine and EA prioritizes them to support presumably high profit projects which also means they don't have time to teach others to understand the engine and so there's no hope for helping hands to manage the engine and the helpdesk. And more or less Bioware didn't need to compete for the funding of Anthem with anybody else than themselves because they burned most of the funding into being idiots and chasing something that they didn't even know (also what I have heard EA is actually very open handed with the funding of projects, but often that causes Anthem-like situations because the management of studios aren't used to that kind of money and start to chase dreams too big for any budget and when the time comes to show something for that funding, they rush something that will please the reviewer and this also includes monetization and income promises. Don't take me wrong here, EA is still one piece of shit, but quite often behind failed EA game there's a studi othat has grown fat and lazy while EA is showering them with money and shit hits the fan when someone notices that they need to show something or face the problem of swimming in a money they didn't earn, more problems arising when the studio breaks and tells EA that they need help and EA sends over people who have no glue about the project and that usually happens way too late and there just isn't time or budget to fix everything; And I believe this is what happened with Anthem in short, lacking pre-development and development kicks in just before funder comes to see what their money is doing and then the late realisation that everything is late and broken and the management can't handle anything alone and EA drops some more funding but this time directly hiring people who they think can fix everything with the remaining time and money).

[maartendc]

22 hours ago, Trik'Stari said:

They got little to no support from EA, and were likely forced to work on the project by EA. Or at the least, the culture behind EA strongly suggested that they focus on live services games instead of what they are actually good at.

 

What I don't get is why companies are so damned terrified of moving back release dates? I'd rather they take their time and make the damned thing playable and enjoyable, rather than rushing it out.

 

Well that is true too.

 

Companies like EA are publicly traded. They need to be seen as having a steady flow of product (in this case games) come out, otherwise their revenues might fall and the stock price might fall. All this is what drives these release dates.

[FiveSquared25]

On 4/3/2019 at 1:43 PM, RejZoR said:

I wish people would finally stop with this bullshit that Bioware, Ghost, Westwood or whatever EA's internal studio name are some poor independent studios bullied by EA. This crap always blows up my kettle and people just keep on saying it. It's all EA. EA owns them entirely and 100%. If Bioware fucked up, that means EA fucked up. There is no Bioware anymore. Bioware as an independent studio was gone when EA bought them. Period. Ende. Finito.

 

I've seen this bullshit on NeedForSpeed subreddit when I complained what a stupid garbage NFS Payback was and how it's missing things that NFS games had freaking 2 decades ago and how that is absolutely and entirely inexcusable. And queue in excuses by dumb gamers how Ghost Games (another EA's internal studio name) is this and that and how they are trying and blablabla. I. DON'T. CARE. You made a game with name from one of longest running franchises in existence and that's the crap you served me for 60€? Are you kidding me? Yeah, NFS Payback was the final nail in the coffin and a point when I decided to just start boycotting EA the same way I do Ubisoft. Which means I shit on them on every opportunity and not buy or play any of their games. Because that's the only thing they deserve.

OpenRA man, no Fifa, no Madden, no BF, no EA games at all for me!

[Avus]

https://www.gamesradar.com/dragon-age-4-becomes-biowares-next-big-focus-as-anthem-loses-its-lead-creators/

 

This ship is abandoned.

[Eaglerino]

4 hours ago, comander said:

The skills required for modern game development are different from what had been needed in the past. 
On top of that, the target audience for games has gotten broader. 

It's MUCH harder to make a game for a wide audience than a narrow, geeky audience that has a lot of cultural similarities to the developers themselves. 

At some level, the spiraling costs of game development has meant that game developers can no longer target the "traditional" gaming crowd. 

There's also management issues. 

I would argue games like God of War and Sekiro prove this to be absolutely wrong

[Trik'Stari]

19 hours ago, maartendc said:

Well that is true too.

 

Companies like EA are publicly traded. They need to be seen as having a steady flow of product (in this case games) come out, otherwise their revenues might fall and the stock price might fall. All this is what drives these release dates.

The problem there is with the attitude of shareholders and the systemic problem without our current stock market.

 

The goal should be to make money off of the dividends, not get rich quick buying and selling. It's lead to a toxic market that can only climb until it crashes hard, which is leading to bad corporate policies and an entirely unsustainable economy.

 

The bigger problem is the reaction a lot of ill informed college kids these days have, that capitalism is just evil and can't work, and this odd desire to move to a system that fails miserably and kill millions in doing so, every time it has been tried.

 

We need regulation on buying and selling of stocks and shares, mainly on how frequently it can be done, but I have no idea how that would be done in a way that wouldn't just choke the market. I feel it would need to come with blanket tax reform (to discourage outsourcing) as well as patent/copyright reform that would allow the government to severely punish companies that behave in ways harmful to the market and society.

[Results45]

I do have to ask: why are there so many stories of dysfunctional relationships and non-unified visions of the final game between development teams and subsidiary studios to the point that games are being released as half-finished? Can large VG studios not collaborate with one another like in the film industry or indie studio?

 

I mean, if it's really this bad and games like Call of Duty, Destiny, and Anthem fail this hard, why do studios* like Square Enix, BioWare, Bungee, and Activision keep on operating this way?

 

 

*The Quiet Man, Destiny, Anthem, Aliens: Colonel Marines, and ALL CoD games since BF4

[ravenshrike]

On 5/3/2019 at 5:38 AM, Trik'Stari said:

We need regulation on buying and selling of stocks and shares, mainly on how frequently it can be done, but I have no idea how that would be done in a way that wouldn't just choke the market

The first step would be to ban computerized high frequency trading. The next would be for profit on shares not held for at least 3 years to be subject to be triple the capital gains tax(currently 15% IIRC) but 1.5 the normal tax write off for losses. This would discourage flipping stocks without penalizing losers in the market.

[Trik'Stari]

9 hours ago, ravenshrike said:

The first step would be to ban computerized high frequency trading. The next would be for profit on shares not held for at least 3 years to be subject to be triple the capital gains tax(currently 15% IIRC) but 1.5 the normal tax write off for losses. This would discourage flipping stocks without penalizing losers in the market.

Sounds good to me, but how do you punish people that move their money overseas to other companies to avoid this?

 

Can't prohibit a behavior here, that they can engage in elsewhere, without providing penalties for doing so, and rewards for taking "less profit" in return for more stability.