EA will decide Anthem's fate this week

[FakeSympathy]

Bloomberg - Are you a robot?

www.bloomberg.com

TL;DR
Title. If EA approves, the development of Anthem Next will require triple the current manpower (30 people right now), in order to produce new content and continue attempting to overhaul the game. This means more budget costs for EA.

I personally think EA won't go through with this. They have consistently shown they do not care for the quality of their games, as long as it generates them profit. And considering how hard it bombed, they might as well as axe the project entirely.

On the other hand, I would more than welcome their decision to keep the project going. It happened with No man's Sky and A Realm Reborn, so maybe they can shown a bad game can be revived with enough care and effort

 

[laggyteabag]

I'll be very interested to see how the game turns out if they proceed with development, but I wouldn't be surprised if the game died here and now.

The game has potential, but I feel like the rework needs to be way more substantial than just fixing the loot or whatever. MMO looter shooters that aren't called "Destiny" all seem to end up in the same spot, and I honestly wouldn't be surprised if a rebuilt Anthem ends up exactly where it started.

As far as I am concerned, unless the game is rebuilt with a proper BioWare singleplayer story, they may as well not even bother.

 

[Elvis Starburst]

Even if they "fixed" it, who's gonna bother going back? Didn't it lose, like, 90% of its playerbase? I doubt those people they lost are all gonna flock back and make the effort worth it

 

[CriticalGaming]

They are likely to kill it with fire.

If they do anything other than that, the next itteration of the game better be fucking free.

 

[happyninja42]

Even if they "fixed" it, who's gonna bother going back? Didn't it lose, like, 90% of its playerbase? I doubt those people they lost are all gonna flock back and make the effort worth it

Eh, I dunno, they might. The allure of "new content" is a strong motivator for a lot of gamers to try something they gave up on. And if EA doesn't force them to pay money for the new content, thus they have access to it immediately, well, it wouldn't surprise me if they poked their head back into the game just to see if it's worth their time. I mean I had a friend try out Anthem for the first time like....I dunno, 2 months ago or so? And he said he enjoyed it quite a bit. That it was way more engaging than the Marvel game of similar design. Not sure if he's still fiddling with it, but given the people who really like the premise of Anthem seem to be REALLY into it, I can see them, being optimistically hopeful for something worth their time, to give it another pass. If it sucks, they'll drop back out as quickly as they did before.

 

[SilentPony]

Oh shit this game still exists? I thought it was shitcanned years ago!

 

[BrawlMan]

Yeah, I really don't care. You have fun with that EA. I'll be playing better games.

 

[CriticalGaming]

Yeah, I really don't care. You have fun with that EA. I'll be playing better games.

Hello Kitty Island Adventure? That game is dope!

 

[BrawlMan]

Hello Kitty Island Adventure? That game is dope!

I was thinking D.D Crew, but close enough.

 

[wings012]

I feel like Anthem could've been an alright game if they just made a proper fixed length experience focused around JETPACKS. But everything needs to be a live service skinner box that constantly generates income. There's this new expectation by both industry and some gamers even, that every bloody game needs to be a second job or something. What's wrong with having enjoyed a game for 20 odd hours and moving on once it's over?

 

[Elijin]

I'd go back to it. The world was pretty and flying around in a mech suit was fucking cool. It just had no staying power due to an uninteresting loot/repeatable activity model.

 

[Silvanus]

It's such a scummy thing for game marketers to promise years of ongoing support, or a "roadmap" of content, and then lose interest when the project turns out not to be popular. As far as I'm concerned it's false advertising. It's not the purchaser's problem if the developer made promises based on poor projections; they still sold the fucking game on the basis of those promises.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

I'll bet a dollar to a bent dime that EA cuts its losses, deep-sixes Bioware and lets Anthem fall off the map. Why shouldn't they? They've gotten plenty of money from the suckers who bought it, and trying to draw in more would cost more than it's worth. And they can depend on gamers at large to forget all the promises they made about "ten-year roadmaps" the moment they trot the next new, shiny thing out.

What's wrong with having enjoyed a game for 20 odd hours and moving on once it's over?

Because that doesn't make the developers all the money.

 

[meiam]

It'd be a shame to just abandon it, it seems like you have 90% of a great game there just ruined by a couple of things here and there. Shouldn't be hard to fix and get something decent out of it.

I do wonder if the game made a profit.

 

[wings012]

Because that doesn't make the developers all the money.

I do wish they will learn that it is impossible to earn all the money. What happened to diversifying investments seriously?

 

[Inazuma1]

So Bioware wants to revamp and relaunch a game that's been stillborn since the womb and EA has been keeping on life support just because they wanted their own Destiny clone. Right now my only thoughts are, "What's the point?" The game's been dead for at least a year and a half and EA already has two "Live Service" perpetual motion machines in Battlefield and Battlefront 2. I highly doubt it made a profit because it sold far below the 6 million EA wanted out of it.

I do wish they will learn that it is impossible to earn all the money. What happened to diversifying investments seriously?

EA is run by incompetent smoothbrains who are terrible at business.

 

[sXeth]

I'll be very interested to see how the game turns out if they proceed with development, but I wouldn't be surprised if the game died here and now.

The game has potential, but I feel like the rework needs to be way more substantial than just fixing the loot or whatever. MMO looter shooters that aren't called "Destiny" all seem to end up in the same spot, and I honestly wouldn't be surprised if a rebuilt Anthem ends up exactly where it started.

As far as I am concerned, unless the game is rebuilt with a proper BioWare singleplayer story, they may as well not even bother.

I mean, Destiny got dropped by their publisher and has mutated into a free to play(*) game with full priced expansions


* You still got locked out of a ton of base activities "passively" cause you can't get max light gear without doing the stuff in said expansions
** The free segment of the game had like 80% of its content removed cause apparently their handcrafted engine can't actually handle regular content updates and just outright breaks, and of course they axed the oldest stuff that was included in the now free version

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

So Bioware wants to revamp and relaunch a game that's been stillborn since the womb and EA has been keeping on life support just because they wanted their own Destiny clone. Right now my only thoughts are, "What's the point?" The game's been dead for at least a year and a half and EA already has two "Live Service" perpetual motion machines in Battlefield and Battlefront 2. I highly doubt it made a profit because it sold far below the 6 million EA wanted out of it.

I don't understand why every company wants a Destiny clone.

No one likes Destiny, and Destiny wasn't all that successful. If it was successful Activision wouldn't have just let Bungie have it.

 

[BrawlMan]

I don't understand why every company wants a Destiny clone.

Because their stupid, narcissistic, blinded by greed, and constantly believes...

​

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

Because their stupid, narcissistic, blinded by greed, and constantly believes...

​

But that's the thing I don't understand. If a company is "blinded by greed" why jump into a game genre where the majority of the games have failed, and the ones that haven't failed didn't actually make all that much money.

I understand companies looking at Call of Duty making a billion dollars per game and going "I want to get a piece of that" and then making call of duty clones. After all, a call of duty clone is a short 5 hour game that's easy enough to churn out, and an unsuccessful one isn't going to ruin a company.

A Destiny clone is immediately a risky proposition because the most successful one was still only moderately successful, when you make one you have to make TONS of content for people to not burn through it instantly, and you're tied to years of upkeep even if the game isn't successful. It just seems like a bad investment all around for a "greedy" company.

Like I said, if Destiny had been a goldmine Activision would still be holding onto it. They literally just gave it back to Bungie because they didn't want to deal with how much resources it took to run versus the return they were getting. What greedy company looks at that and goes "I need me a piece of that headache."

The only other successful version of this model is Warframe, and that's not exactly a huge cash cow either. It's a good successful free to play game, but it doesn't exactly print money on the scale all of these companies seem to expect. I'm just not sure where this expectation of making "all the money" comes from.