>Perhaps most alarming, it’s a story about a studio in crisis. Dozens of developers, many of them decade-long veterans, have left BioWare over the past two years. Some who have worked at BioWare’s longest-running office in Edmonton talk about depression and anxiety. Many say they or their co-workers had to take “stress leave”—a doctor-mandated period of weeks or even months worth of vacation for their mental health. One former BioWare developer told me they would frequently find a private room in the office, shut the door, and just cry. “People were so angry and sad all the time,” they said. Said another: “Depression and anxiety are an epidemic within Bioware.”
>One mandate from Anthem’s directors had been to make the game “unmemeable,”
>waste budget on marketing instead of development game >hire incompetent diversity tumblr cunts >stakeholders want results ASAP >Upper management sets deadline >rush the game >release in half-assed alpha stage >??? >flops And then everybody pretends they have no fucking clue how this could've happened. American AAA studios are fucking retarded. Journalists are even more retarded. Fuck off and go suck on giant nigger cock.
Same shit. Also they're owned by EA AMERICA, who call the shots in the end. Fucking retarded mutt.
Jonathan Adams
>mutt Yuro...
Gavin Thompson
You forgot the part where they're in pre-production for 5 years and still don't have a more solid idea than shooty game in iron man suits on alien planet.
Joseph Howard
>7 years >rushed game pick one, your other points still stand though, it was a grossly mismanaged project through and through
James Thompson
Who cares? It's freaking Bioware, at this point I have more hope in Spiders or any other B- tier developers.
Jonathan Bennett
Don't forget they were still working on other projects during the development time of Anthem. The rushed game part also applies to Dragon Age Inquisition and Andromeda which also flopped hard.
Ryan Nguyen
Kinda sad, but Bioware has been dead for a long time. Needs to be put down.
Zachary Howard
>kotaku shilling fuck off
Christian Turner
>success of 2014’s Dragon Age: Inquisition was one of the worst things that could have happened to them. DAI success was underserved. The game what pretty crap but people fell for the open-world meme and journos gave it good reviews because it was progressive. Looking back, it was shit and in many ways even worse than DA2
Jacob Martin
They made some shitty fucking game nobody wanted instead of continuing their series like anyone with a functioning brain would have. Bioware deserves to drown for being so retarded.
Jace Flores
I don't care about bioware anymore
Daniel Stewart
If you read the article, the blame is on the heart of Bioware Edmonton, and especially "old bioware", pompous idiots who tried to act like a discount Valve with no direction. Literally the closer a person was to being important in Bioware's heydays, the worse their influence has been in nu-Bioware.
Jaxson Harris
>.Square Enix struggled for years with their shitty in-house ingine >Bioware had the same issue with Dice’s shitty FPS shooter. I bet the entire Frostbite engine is written in arabic, they are a Swedish studio after all.
Just Use Fucking Unreal
God i cannot wait for EA to finally drop Frostbite, that way DICE stops being untouchable.
So wait, you wanted Mass Effect/Dragon Age to be a looter-shooter Destiny clone?
Anthem wasn’t shit because it was a new IP.
Brandon Scott
So what should they use instead?
Samuel Cox
This is what happens when EA is involved.
They're the Shinra corp. of the game industry.
Ethan Butler
>rip off destiny >make it even shittier than Destiny I didn't think it was possible.
Dominic Davis
Even the first Mass Effect had fairly large maps
Samuel Carter
I’d rather they start a new IP if the game is going to be shit, that way nothing of worth get’s tainted.
Although after ME3 ending and Andromeda i’m not sure Mass Effect has any integrity left.
Kevin Barnes
>So wait, you wanted Mass Effect/Dragon Age to be a looter-shooter Destiny clone? I wanted them to do something that's not out of their area of expertise.
Camden Flores
>it was depression all along
isnt bioware full of trannies though?
Lucas Sullivan
That were cut down with elevator rides. Not the definition of open world.
Josiah Anderson
An open world engine, do you have brain damage or something?
Austin Morris
I was expecting a lot more shit from EA but it seems like the worst thing they did was force them to use frosbite Expecting a game to come out after 7 years of pre production and development is pretty reasonable
In fact they only put back the flying, which is the only decent thing about the game, to impress the EA exec. The game would have flopped even harder if they took it out like they were planning to
They were pissed about people making fun of Andromeda's bad faces and animations and everything about it in general so they wanted to make the game something no one could make fun of.
They certainly managed that to some extent. No one makes fun of it because it's just fucking bad and unmemorable.
Landon Cook
are you forgetting about the mako maps?
Charles Reed
Spellborn, a MMO.
Ayden Reed
This is true but their depiction of Söderlund is amazing.
“Just make it shiny and pretty, hel’ll love it” what an absolute brainlett, it’s hilarious hearing this stuff.
Dominic Ortiz
Like Gamebryo?
:^)
John Adams
Good thing then that the next Dragon Age is going to be even more progressive and political.
The year it came out was dry as fuck as well. It never had real competition.
Jaxson Mitchell
>Square kek
Brandon Howard
You could give them unity and they'd cry for better documentation 10 years is more than enough to rework the engine to fit your needs
Charles Thomas
Won't happen, they're Japanese companies not held to ransom by their EA overlords.
Also feel like people need to accept squeenix is an average dev now (or rather have been for nearly a decade)
Ayden Richardson
EA was barely involved in this shitshow, though.
Mason Foster
Not if you spend 6 years thinking about what genre the game is going to be and just 1 year making the game.
Nolan King
That's what they'll tell everyone.
Michael Stewart
>forcing frostbyte >taking devs away and putting them on FIFA
I mean it's still mostly Bioware's fault but EA was definitely involved.
Elijah Turner
>loading screen >fps goes over 9000 >cpu goes straight to 100%
Lucas Price
>fill your offices with women >suddenly everyone is stressed out fucking lmao
Thomas Davis
EA calls the shots. EA mismanaged the studio. It's completely EA's fault.
Gavin Bailey
>One mandate from Anthem’s directors had been to make the game “unmemeable,” i mean, i don't think i've ever seen a meme of it it's just a garbage fire of a game, so congrats on that I guess
Wyatt Russell
Yes, same continent.
Daniel Butler
by making it unmemeable they've made it so it's barely remembered at all, unlike andromeda which is still mocked to this day
Parker White
>feel like people need to accept squeenix is an average dev now
yeah kinda. But at the same time they still do some things right. They are the only major studio that puts quality games for phones, having all the classic DQ and FF on mobile is nice. And their freemium stuff is good too.
Eli Clark
Back to your discord, tranny, nobody is buying your shitty damage control for Bioware.
I can’t wait for more Bioware trannies to get the boot.
Joseph Butler
>the guy that has the first spot on the game credits came onto the project 1 year before release
no wonder this game feels like it was cobbled together last second it actually was
the game is literally so shit it kills consoles so i'm sure it'll be remembered for that if anything
Liam Powell
>square
I'm not so sure about that.
Hudson Clark
don't put your blame on me
Jaxon Cox
>he thinks studios make their own decision on who they do and do not hire You retarded faggot. Ever since the forced diversity quotum every major company (EA included) decided to purge all their studios from cis-gendered white males and hired more trannies, faggots and pakis to show the world how diverse they were so they could sell more games on this popularity. Only problem was nobody stopped to check if these people were competent enough to do their jobs properly. I'm not defending Bioware in any way since they're a lost cause already. Bioware died years ago when the actual competent people left/got fired to make room for other priorities.
Benjamin Young
>unmemeable how retarded can a man be sweet Jesus. Nobody likes their game to be mocked by the internet I get it, but memes is one of the best viral marketing strategies out there I mean Goat Simulator , 5 Nights, etc.
Sure. Everybody should get hired based on how brown, gay, or transsexual they are instead of how competent their skillset is for the job at hand. Man wouldn't the world be a much better and more efficient place if we all did this.
Hunter Sullivan
I am sure that former employees with anonymity will go out of their way to protect EA and will not tell anyone about their meddling. Well, maybe "barely" was too much, but I feel that bad engine was a small problem in comparison to 5 years without figuring out what game do they even want to make.
Nathaniel Ward
>No one makes fun of it because it's just fucking bad and unmemorable. Yeah i guess it doesnt have much of any content at all so no one cares about it.
Josiah Adams
>EA has a long history of ruining every single studio they've ever owned >Studios still sell themselves to EA I will never understand how these morons don't learn.
The people selling the studio don't give a fuck since it won't be their problem
Evan Harris
they aren't selling "themselves" it's whatever suit at the top that's selling them, and why should they care? as soon as they sell them it's not their problem anymore
Andrew Kelly
board of directors and investors do not give a shit about anything but money. so fuck bioware
>g-guys it's all EA fault, it's not like the studio is just shit and went full retard thinking all the time about SJW shit instead of making the game good! yeah sure thing, kek.
Isaac Lopez
>Game is a boring looter chasing after Destiny's ass when Destiny isnt even that hot anymore >Give it to a studio that was claimed (in the past) for their RPGs >But they shoehorned these dumb online modes in their last games so its all right, trust me
>not understanding how management works >not realizing it's EA that pushed this SJW shit >defending EA in the first place This board is reddit and retarded as fuck. I wish all you tumblr trump cuck zoomers would fuck off and die
At a guess I'd say it sold reasonably well (by normal standards, not EA standards) but player retention has been absolute dogshit. Basically they ended up copying Destiny in more ways than one, since the whole point of these games is to be WoW 2.0 and keep your players playing and buying shitty microtransactions.
Josiah Nguyen
Its fucking hilarious how hard EA is squandering their SW license. Say what you will about Bioware, we all know they suck. But if they made a new KOTOR it would sell. It would sell like fucking mad.
Kevin Bennett
Stay mad tranny, bioware wa like that before the acquisition and no one will fall for your "everyone is a newfag but me" shit. Resetera wants you back.
Nathaniel Stewart
>EA BAD GAMERGATORS UNITE!!
How fucking cringe can you possibly be? Anyone with an IQ above 80 already moved on from that dead horse. I’ll explain so even idiots like you with room temperature IQ can understand. Bioware had 7 years to make the game. They spent 6 of them memeing about survival elements. EA was counting on Anthem for their fiscal year, they gave Bioware the most possible time, right at the end of the fiscal year. Am i defending EA? Sure, in your little 2011 anti-publisher “fight the system” cringe brain. EA is shit, but Bioware is to blame here.
Angel Allen
selling a $60 boxed game isn't good enough for publishers anymore
games need to be live services and provide constant revenue streams. KOTOR would need to be a looter shooter or MMO
Dylan Cooper
>triggered newfags
Kayden Morales
>guys it's all EA fault It is. Dragon Age: Origins was the last genuinely great game BioWare made, even if you hate the fact that there was an NPC in the camp that existed to tell you about DLC. It was only so good because it was almost finished by the time EA acquired BioWare.
Mass Effect 2 was a copmpletely pointless game, Dragon Age 2 was made in like 14 months, ME3 was rushed AND had to make up for ME2 being pointless, etc. BioWare's acquisition by EA has brought nothing good.
Chase Lee
>meanwhile both BG1 and NWN1 were developed alongside their house built engines Man, the talent really has left Bioware a decade ago
Jackson Martinez
You guys forget the bit about "bioware magic" Apparently it was common for them to have chaotic development that would magically come together and shit out a good product at the end. They counted on this so much they didn't care about the dozens of red flags about the project
Evan Edwards
I think you can use twitch numbers and compare them to other similar games, then use the player count of that other game to calculate a rough equivalent.
Apparently EA is still pushing for long-term monetization plans on every release, even the full price ones, despite all the bad press about their pay models. Apparently someone high up breaks into a rash at the thought of people beating a game then trading it in to Gamestop or something.
Liam Butler
So bioware is 100% for sure gonna get killed off now right? Before this article they probably could have skated by and quietly dropped anthem support around the same time as announcing DA4, but now they've been put on full blast and exposed which EA hates.
Aaron Butler
>Square Just because ff14 is doing well doesn't mean they're out of their hole. Remember, since Nier automata they have had Taro working on mobile games, in spite of how successful the game was.
Connor Adams
> Early mock reviews—critical assessments provided by outside consultants—predicted that Anthem’s Metacritic score would land in the high 70s. This was low for a BioWare game, but company leadership was fine with that, telling staff during company meetings that with some last-minute polish in the months following those mock reviews, they could get even higher. A few months after launch, maybe they’d have something special on their hands.
>American AAA studios are fucking retarded. Same shit is happening to square enix, but they have a retarded fanbase of muh final fantasy and muh kingdom hearts that will gladly swallow any turd they shit out, so they manage to stay afloat and don't go bankrupt.
Christian Perry
They probably have 1 year to make the next Dragon Age look good or the project gets cancelled and developers get absorbed into EA.
Justin Fisher
The future's looking grim for them. They might get a third strike with the next Dragon Age, but EA's already canceled DA4 projects before, according to the article, and they probably won't have the patience for another three-to-five years of pre-production.
Joseph Morris
I give as good as I get I'm afraid. Don't be a racist idiot then whine when I do it back.
Levi Collins
desu I think Anthem could have gotten mid to low 70s if it wasn't for the public absolutely shitting on the game. Game Journos are spineless cretins and just follow the trend so if there hadn't been as much outrage they would have sucked daddy EA's cock.
Eli Lewis
Oh you can trust EA for that. They never fail to that task
Juan Peterson
Oh no it couldn't, you can't have constant crashes+game breaking bugs and expect a 70.
Brody Foster
Between the myriad bugs and the terrible load times, I don't think they were going to get any sort of positive public attention.
Michael Lopez
I keep reading in the article how dragon age inquisition was a big success. Was it really? Am I confusing it with DA2 or something? Because I remember people not liking it
Caleb Peterson
People didn't like it on Yea Forums (and were right, in my opinion), but it did win Game Awards.
Isaac Stewart
Most resent trade ins. It's why they love bloated sandboxes that take 30 hours to finish but have 5 hours of actual fun. I love how despite this reasoning, Nintendo's properly paced shit that's fun to replay doesn't get traded in.
Landon Collins
It was the most successful launch in BioWare's history, and though there was some negative criticism, the response was largely positive.
Easton Hughes
>“Depression and anxiety are an epidemic within Bioware.” *AHEM*
>hire blue haired trans dyke land whales >everyone becomes depressed Pottery
Cooper Brown
Good, now those fuckers can focus on making a new ME game.
Nathan Jones
Corporations could use some horizontality.
Cooper Cruz
and yet without him there wouldn't even be flying in the game fucking lol what a shit storm all around
Isaiah Morris
>Mfw us normal retail workers get severe anxiety and depression from dealing with way worse than what these designers deal with and we can't get days/months of sick leave
The bitter person in me says they're a bunch of special snowflakes that need to grow up
Please tell me the Anthem team was in full on diversity mode too, that would really be the icing on the cake.
Anthony Moore
Have you considered the confounding variable that gays and trans people are made to feel unwelcome in society?
Hunter Campbell
Have you considered that you don't need to be in game design to be gay and trans and have that on top of other work pressures? It's not an excuse
Grayson Robinson
I can smell your asshurt in that post btw. Bioware was ruined by no tallent hacks who only got the job because of their skin color and sexual fetishes.
Nicholas Anderson
Find better work you literal wage slave
Luis Davis
I was watching a twitch streamer earlier watching doomer memes on YouTube being like "dude lol that's so me"
The guy literally gets paid to play video games for a living and has children and manbabies donating him their weeks wages while he sits on his day ass. I was disgusted.
Bentley Torres
9/10 bait for bluntness, but i know you aren't so retarded you think it's that simple user. Literally millions of people work hard as fuck and still wind up stuck in retail for various life complications. Some get lucky, most don't
Samuel Sanders
>unmemeable that's why they catter to reddit?
Austin Mitchell
>only ones trying to make advances are NPC men and they get waived off immediately >everyone is brown except for the bad guys and some women >anita sarkeesian visit
Lincoln Price
>but it did win Game Awards. Yea totaly legit like. I wonder how much in bribes they paid. You know with them pushing that fucking ugly elf that had greese all down her skin.
Nathaniel Smith
Which fetishes are they hiring for? I have experience in belly stuffing, wg, bimbofication, femdom, and vore
Bentley Lee
Those are not progressive enough you bigot.
Jonathan Cox
>bimbofication Kill yourself nazi incel, they'd never hire someone for such a demeaning fetish
Nolan Turner
But I unironically do think women should rule the earth
Jayden Sullivan
It is that simple you're just too dumb to figure out how
Ryan Reed
How do you make an unmemeable game guys? I'm lost here
Carter Ortiz
Literally what didn't happen but thanks for outing yourself as a retard
Jonathan Peterson
The bimbos I write about hit nazis with bricks honestly. Even bimbos know fascism is shit
Jason King
That's only because it makes your dick hard, and you can't have any of that in the progressive dystopia. Yuo have to submit to women and also hate every moment of it, only then you can be hired based on your fetish.
Sebastian Perry
Well Bioware want you. Please send a Resume that lists how much you hate Trump along with all your pronouns, make sure you are black as night and have conveted to Islam and are a marxist-lenninist. Rememmber user if you don't get the job just accuse one of the interviewers of rape on twitter with the #meetoo hashtag. They will get you a place in san fran.
Sebastian Rodriguez
Why are we posting this same thread for two days straight. My guess is that kotaku is trying to see how many clicks they lose from archive.
Aaron James
Naw, you're just privileged and spoiled. Go on and tell me some made up story about how you worked yourself up from the gutter though so somebody else can read it and respond, i'm done caring about people that think like you
James Bailey
Capcom used to have around $140 million in their company and everyone thought they'll be brought out by someone, looking back it's insane they've got out from that
Benjamin Wilson
It gobsmacks me that people actually think this is how a company would hire.
Lincoln Cooper
Welcome to 2019 you bigot.
Ethan Rogers
>even mentioning the word Destiny was taboo at BioWare. (Diablo III was the preferred reference point.) A few people who worked on the game said that trying to make comparisons to Destiny would elicit negative reactions from studio leadership. “We were told quite definitively, ‘This isn’t Destiny,’” said one developer. >Because leadership didn’t want to discuss Destiny, that developer added, they found it hard to learn from what Bungie’s loot shooter did well. “We need to be looking at games like Destiny because they’re the market leaders,” the developer said. “They’re the guys who have been doing these things best. We should absolutely be looking at how they’re doing things.” As an example, the developer brought up the unique feel of Destiny’s large variety of guns, something that Anthem seemed to be lacking, in large part because it was being built by a bunch of people who had mostly made RPGs. >We really didn’t have the design skill to be able to do that,” they said. “There just wasn’t the knowledge base to be able to develop that kind of diversity.”
Just fucking imagine what kinds of indecisive wet rags for project leaders these idiots have. Even your average joe off the street would gather up the senior devs for beer and dinner and talk basic stuff like this through
Nicholas Richardson
>those are not mainstream enough Fixed
Carter Russell
Any sportsfag here? I heard Fifa runs like like shit from transitioning to Frostbite is this true?
Julian Nguyen
>Destiny was banned word Why do i get the feeling that any mention of it caused them to break down and sperg the fuck out? Imagine it, a game that is shit is still better than what you have and you know this and so still try to Harry Potter it's name. You know if they had any sense at all they would have looked at what Destiny got wrong and worked on improving it. At leas then they could have marketed it as >Anthem:Better than Destiny is atm
Brody Morris
They couldn't even make a game better than D1 was at launch.
Carter Peterson
The senior leaders are to blame for this. All of them acted like needle-dicked, five-figure pants-shitters. No one took charge, no one wanted to take responsibility, no one listened to the fucking grunts who actually had to work on this thing... They degraded themselves to fucking tribal mentality with "we're the OG BioWare!" even though its veterans left a long fucking time ago
But this is the environment EA cultivated. Letting marketers dictate how the game is designed. Pressuring studios to perform under unreasonable constraints for fear of employment being terminated. Forcing everyone to use an ass-backwards engine that wasn't calibrated to develop an MMO. Neglecting studios that need their help the most, because they don't make as much money.
The higher-ups should be fired. Their heads are so far up their own ass, they're not capable of seeing their own problems. People head's need to the roll for this, might as well be the people in charge of the situation.
