#bioware is just as invested in making $$$ as their parent company

[askagamedev]

Could multiple poorly received releases in a row put a studio or franchise in danger? To use Bioware as an example, both Anthem and Andromeda were not very well received. In the event that the same thing happens with DA4 (knocks on wood), would that be enough for EA to determine a 5th installment (of ME or DA) is not worth the investment, despite their previous large scale successes in both franchises?

Repeated poorly received releases may (temporarily) put a franchise on ice, but such actions are rarely truly permanent. Killer Instinct, for example, launched in 1994, had a sequel in 1996, and then lay dormant until 2013. There were three Marathon games released in 1994, 1995, and 1996 respectively, and then it lay dormant until Bungie announced the new Marathon game just a few weeks ago. IP never truly dies, it just hibernates until such time as its current owner manages to secure the funding to try to resurrect it again.

Studios, on the other hand, are much less resilient and more fragile than IP. A string of failures can honestly doom a studio. I will note that a failure in this context is a release that does not reach its revenue targets. If a studio has multiple sequential failures, it is in a bad position. Its financiers will be less willing to provide funding since the chances of recouping that investment are lower. It will have trouble hiring new talent since job seekers are usually less interested in working for a studio that is consistently unsuccessful. It will have trouble retaining its existing talent for similar reasons. Studios have employees and those employees are constantly draining money from their parent company in the form of salaries, benefits, overhead, and so on. Operating a studio for the multiple years it takes to develop a game without financial sustainability is a very tall order.

Publishers are not charities, they are businesses. In my experience, they will give successful studios freedom to do as they please, and they will give opportunities for unsuccessful studios to rescue themselves, but these self-rescuing opportunities are limited in number by necessity. If the publisher doesn't think the studio is salvageable, then it makes business sense to shut it down.

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[thebookworm0001]

Unless we get some hard evidence that DA4 is heading in a bad direction I ain’t putting any stock into the theories that it is and it’s caused/causing x y or z

there’s just entirely too much we don’t know and I’m not going to stress out over a game we know almost nothing about because it might go a direction I don’t want

-anyway rant in the tags-

[elevanetheirin]

Rant to the Gaming Community

Disclaimer:This is a rant on the gaming community and does indeed contain discourse. This is also my opinion and nothing more. 

Games like No Man’s Sky...NEEDED changing it was an unfinished game but we’re not talking about those types of issues.

Let me tell you guys from experience what happens when a company gets too much shit, when players encourage other players NOT to buy their games.

Sony Online Entertainment was making decent money, but Sony itself was on the verge of bankruptcy. SOE was getting LOTS and I meant LOTS of shit from the gamers of their games...Everquest, Everquest 2, DCUniverse Online, etc etc. Sony needed the money to help it’s parent company survive. The gamer base spent so much time bitching, demanding better than what they had even though SOE had almost 100% catered to their loyal customers. For Godsake Everquest is a game that was over 10 years old and was still running with regular expansions annually.

Sony sold SOE to a company, they claimed it was the same company but running by a different name, same devs, same Customer Service reps blah blah blah. Turns out, the company that now owns what is now called Daybreak Gaming Company is an INVESTMENT firm, meaning all they want is to raise the profits of this company and sell it off. Over the last 4 years or so Daybreak has successfully turned their FTP option into half assed expansions that require monthly subs even though you’ve purchased $100 expansions, you can buy half the stuff in the store, their Leads have been replaced, some of their best devs have left, and they let their Head of Community Support go. (she now works for Trion Worlds, at least one Dev now works for Bioware although her reasoning for leaving was immigration based) 

They immediately began to pull money from their MMORPG’s and put it into Mobile games. Their reasoning was “No one is interested in anything other than casual games now, mobile games are where the future is.”

The point of this is, if you like what a studio is making, even if you don’t like ALL the games they are creating then that’s what you need to focus on. I’m not saying you should never ask for what you want, but there is a way to go about it. The way the community lost it’s shit over Mass Effect Andromeda, to the point where not just EA but Bioware said Fuck it! We’re done! Is not the way to go about it. (by the way I love MEA and I didn’t see the “major” issues people STILL complain about even though Bioware made several large updates to satisfy the gaming community)

EA may indeed suck, they suck majorly and yes, you should let them know when they fuck up, however hatred, major discourse etc isn’t going to get you what you want. It’s going to get you an Investment company buying your favorite gaming studio and shutting it the fuck down. Cursing out EA, Bioware, Leads etc serves no purpose but to make you look like nasty ungrateful trolls. Yes, you are the customer but there is a point when you are no longer asking/demanding valid things. Some things cannot be done in an update, some things cost too much to just slap into an update. Someone has to work on it, someone has to get paid to do the work. Not a single one of us will always 100% be satisfied and they cannot satisfy everyone or the result is death of the game/studio you love. We should be asking for things in the NEXT game. 

“Oh this game was nice, but next time could you...” Yes, the CC changes in MEA needed to be done asap, the need to be more inclusive needed to be addressed immediately but the pissing and moaning about the Quarians, the Elcore etc, the BS whiny shit not the mechanic things was a major let down to the people who worked hard on the game and the attitude made EA say “Look, if the gamers aren’t happy then let’s just move forward and let this go permanently.” We ourselves caused this and we as a community need to make sure it doesn’t continue to happen. So, if you want something changed, ask nicely, ask for it to be in the next game, stop being assholes about it. Social media has turned us into fucking monsters.