Inside the 'Dragon Age' Debacle That Gutted EA's BioWare Studio

Comments

• seat6@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  This game felt like it was written by 2 different groups of writers, who also hated each other. The first group wrote about a world where everything was dying and dark.

  The second group was a PR team, who wrote about “wouldn’t it be fun to go camping!” And “the pirates and assassins are unambiguously good”.

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  • cyd@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    According to the article, that’s exactly what happened ;-)

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  • propitiouspanda@lemmy.cafe ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    It’s the safe reddit-writing that has become very prevalent in western studios.

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• 60d@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  tldr; EA does EA things. Tries to make Dragon Age: Fortnight edition. Fails miserably again lol.

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  • cyd@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    It’s on Bioware not EA. This is the third flop out of Bioware, and the post mortems for the past failures have all indicated that Bioware’s management has a dumpster fire for years, with EA often uncharacteristically serving as a voice of reason to protect them from their own mistakes.

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    • 60d@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      “EA said, ‘Make this a live service.’ We said, ‘We don’t know how to do that. We should basically start the project over.’”

      I read this article as EA interference to the point that the games were made to suck ass.

      We’re past the point of adding gambling and live service. Consumers are more savvy imo.

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    • propitiouspanda@lemmy.cafe ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      Honestly, closing down bioware would be a mercy-killing at this point.

      This is what happens when creators let people who don’t care infect their art.

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• catalyst@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  I wasn’t aware they tried to make it a live service game, but that’s also incredibly unsurprising. It explains so much.

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• commander@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  I don’t get EA/Bioware. Fantasy is consistently more popular than scifi. Inquisition was their best selling game. Yet DA was never treated like a heavyweight like Mass Effect. My expectations tanked when David Gaider left

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  • ampersandrew@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    Looking through each series’ Wikipedia articles, it looks like Mass Effect sold about 50% more than Dragon Age 1 and 2. And that tracks with my experience. I know far more people who’ve played Mass Effect than Dragon Age, and I’ve never played Dragon Age myself.

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    • Gerudo@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      I agree, Mass Effect was/is gaming pop culture at one point. Almost every gamer I know has played or at least very familiar with ME. That number is maybe 1/4th for DA.

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  • Stovetop@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    One factor might be just that Mass Effect came out first and was also Bioware’s last game before EA bought them.

    The rest is just my opinion, but I do believe that Mass Effect simply told a better story (multicolored endings aside) and had a better cast of characters. Not to mention the fact that it was a single narrative across the three installments helped keep engagement up. And shooters were incredibly popular at that time.

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  • propitiouspanda@lemmy.cafe ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    Inquisition was their best selling game.

    Was it? Even if it was, you have to consider the cost and time that goes into making it.

    Also, where’s the post-game monetization? Like it or not, fantasy games made for smart people unfortunately are held to the same standard as sports games made for morons.

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• MyDarkestTimeline01@ani.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  Honestly all this reads to me is “The people who made the BioWare games you liked left long ago, and the new people can’t hack it.”

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• samus12345@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  Veilguard was…okay. But coming out after Baldur’s Gate 3, the series that DA was inspired by, really showed the massive gap in storytelling and character quality. I pirated it and was glad I did, as it was NOT worth anything close to $70.

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• ZeroHora@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  Basically confirming what I suspect.

  I just don’t like the tone of putting the blame on EA, 80% of this mess is Bioware’s fault alone.

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  • ampersandrew@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    How do you figure? That’s not what I got out of this article.

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    • ZeroHora@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      Search for the story of Anthem and David Gaider opinions about how they handle their writers, they fucked that up on their own.

      And reading this article is basically: The DA team blames the ME team for diverting them to Andromeda. Then they blame Anthem. Then they blame EA. Then they blame the pandemic. Then they blame EA. Then they blame the ME team again.

      The only moment that they actually put some blame on the DA team is with the tone of dialogue and they quickly blame EA for saying “you guys doesn’t have time to make changes”. The ME team made changes, it’s because of favouritism from EA or the ME team just has better management and know how to negotiate?

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• cyd@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  there may be strategic reasons for EA to keep supporting BioWare… In order to grow, EA needs more than just sports franchises… Trying to fix its fantasy-focused studio may be easier than starting something new.

  Ironically, EA grew out of Origin, one of the original grand-daddies of computer RPGs and the maker of the Ultima series in the 1980s-1990s.

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• propitiouspanda@lemmy.cafe ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  If you look at it critically, Dragon Age Origins and Awakening are really the only good games in the series.

  It went to shit, fast. Now they’re just pandering to the wrong people expecting it to save their game when everyone who was interested in the original has long since moved on.

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  • Crankenstein@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    Only slightly disagree.

    Inquisition and Veilguard aren’t bad games. They are each fun in their own ways and cater to certain audiences.

    That audience just so happens to not be in any way related to the Dragon Age fandom.

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