Andromeda's Troubled Development

[BloatedGuppy]

Girlfriend, who is a huge Mass Effect fan (and who was highly disappointed in Andromeda) sent me this article. Apologies for Kotaku.

http://kotaku.com/the-story-behind-mass-effect-andromedas-troubled-five-1795886428

It's a good read, and reminded me of a similar article I read a while back, about Ultima IX's troubled development.

http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/ultima/ultima10.htm

"Okay thank you BloatedGuppy that is very interesting but what of it", I can hear you saying. My question is this...both articles basically describe development studios in complete organizational disarray, mishandling their projects and running them into rocky shores as a result. EA, typically the villain of the piece, appears to be a rather passive victim of incompetent minions.

To what degree do you think EA's oversight of these botched games is coincidental, and to what degree do you think these organizational problems "begin at the top", so to speak? Could a different production company have achieved better results? Are companies like CDPR, with no masters to be beholden to, at a distinct competitive advantage?

 

[pookie101]

thanks for the link and its an interesting read.

i hated the game initially but it grew on me after around 20-25 hours but finding out the history of the game it frankly explains a lot, its dumbfounding they they tried to pump this game out in basically 18 months

 

[Saelune]

EA poisoned Bioware a long time ago. Now the illness is nearing its final and fatal phase.

 

[BronzeHeart92]

So sad to see Mass Effect redused to such a state...

 

[Kerg3927]

This is just pure speculation, but I think the main problem can be summed up by looking at #10 on the following list...

best selling video games of all time (Wikipedia) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_video_games]

Bioware (or EA) saw Skyrim sales figures and got greedy. They were the best in the world at what they did well, making confined, mostly-linear, story/character-driven RPG's in which you meet and get to know a handful of well-written, interesting, and likeable characters, and together you go out and save the world against all odds.

They were the Michael Jordan of those types of games, and they threw it all away to go play minor league baseball.

And who knows? It may have been a successful shift in direction from a business standpoint. There are obviously a ton of people who love to wander around aimlessly in massive open world games. Not much of a story required... just give those people a huge map full of quest markers, some nice scenery, and time to kill. So even if the response was lukewarm, DAI and Andromeda's profit margins may have ended up exceeding those of DAO and the original ME trilogy. But in shifting to that other market, which is made up of an entirely different type of gamer, they took a huge dump on their existing fanbase who made the company what it was.

 

[CritialGaming]

I think the industry as a whole is being polluted by big AAA publishers. The money has gotten too big, the budgets too big, with expectations too high for developers to remain stable. Now these publishers have investors, and board rooms, and it has all become such a business...that I think publishers to too far detached from what it takes to develop games now. I don't think there are reasonable expectations to making a great game. They simply want as much money in as little time as possible and the end result doesn't matter so long as it made money back for them.

Ubisoft, EA, and ACtivision are the biggest obvious problems in the gaming industry right now. Hell Ubisoft is a perfect example when you look at For Honor. For Honor is a shell of what the game could have been, but they forced microtransactions into a game that was half-baked at best. The story of For Honor looks to me like Ubisoft saw what Overwatch had done, and wanted a piece of that arena PvP type thing, and pushed the game out the door before it was ready. Now 93% of For Honor's playerbase is gone, barely 3 months from release.

EA is the worse of the bunch though, because they like to see with how much they can get away with. Battlefront for example, they could have let that game cook up a single player campaign, but they pushed it out the door figuring that nobody will care. They figure people play Battlefield and COD for Multiplayer so why bother making a single player for Battlefront. Titanfall was the same way. But to their credit, they usually make up for it with the second game, so long as the first game made enough money to justify another try.

Frankly we are in a weird spot. The biggest developer that is still making games with passion and integrity IMO is probably CD Projekt Red right? They develop like an indie, yet have the backing of a borderline AAA studio. Everything they push out only gets better and better. I guess you could also throw Rockstar into this grouping as well right? GTA and Red Dead 2, they don't really make bad games and they never rush anything.

What AAA Publishers don't understand and don't seem to want to understand is how complex game development has become in the last 15 years. Games need time to cook and come together. It's only then that we truly get good shit. When a game is rushed people can tell, it's so stupidly obvious now that publisher's can't pull the wool over our eyes anymore. Though they sure as shit wanna keep trying.

 

[fix-the-spade]

To what degree do you think EA's oversight of these botched games is coincidental, and to what degree do you think these organizational problems "begin at the top", so to speak?

With Electronic Arts this is such a monotonously regular occurence that they have to shoulder almost the entirety of the blame.

Mass Effect: Andromeda
Mirror's Edge Catalyst
Dungeon Keeper
Sim City
Army of Two: The Devil's Cartel
Battlefield 4
Dead Space 3
Fuse
Medal of Honor: Warfighter
Mass Effect 3
Need For Speed: Most Wanted
Syndicate
Battlefield 3

Some of those came good in the end and the rest of them weren't Battlefield games. EA is synonimous with games being beudgeted and planned solely around the shareholders. If a game is releasing Q1 2017, it's releasing Q1 2017 whether it's finished or not. Altering the budget or the release window is not even discussed.

EA have a library of IP that any other publisher in the world can only dream of, yet they have systematically run almost all of it into the ground with this short sighted and ruthless approach.

This is all on top of the usual big publisher phobia of anything that isn't grey brown and accompanied by a Hans Zimmer-ish soundtrack with lot's of BWWWAAARRMMM.

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

I blame consumers and pre-order culture. This happens all the time with every major franchise. Devs or publishers start by creating a game that everyone loves, then they start thinking "hey, I bet we could make more money if we make the next one appeal to a wider audience and also let's milk it with a shitty business model or something". Of course, their next products and business models become increasingly anti-consumer, and that leads to consumers getting frustrated (still pre-ordering though. That never changes!) and eventually that corporation ends up releasing a disaster of a product. Then what happens is fans start to rage and they swear to every potential deity to never buy their products. Then the corporation (which is being run by corporate sociopaths by the way) has to do damage control. They start by apologizing and making promises. Then maybe they'll release something that will soothe the pain of the fans (you'll probably still have to pay for it), maybe they'll take a year off or maybe they decide that just once they'll cut the crap and abandon the shitty business model. But just once. Because they fuckin' know that most people are impulsive and they have short memories. And they'll be back at being their same old sociopathic money grabbing Satan's minions. And that's how you get your Mass Effect Andromeda and your [insert Ubisoft title] or your [insert Activision title] or your [insert Square-Enix title]. You get the point.

 

[TheVampwizimp_v1legacy]

That was an interesting insight into how badly Andromeda was mishandled. And it definitely reaffirms my belief that my experience with the game was saved by waiting to play it until 6 weeks after release. I never ran into those bugs and glitches and bogus facial animations, which was enemy number one for the reviewers and early access players, and it felt to me like a much more complete game than most people had implied. It's bullcrap that it came out in such an unfinished state, but I bet if the game had 2 more months of development, and everyone's first experience with the game was in the same state I played it in, the reviews would have been far better and, even with its other issues (lackluster story, inconsequential quests), the planned sequels would still be on track. Very sad.

 

[bastardofmelbourne]

I haven't read the article yet, but if it's anything like the similar breakdown of Destiny's development, it has more to do with decisions made by higher-ups in the studio than the publisher.

Publishers can exert negative influence on a game's development, but it's important to remember what their role actually is; they fund the game, set the release date, handle the marketing and get it to the distributors. They can screw over a game by not funding it enough, by rushing it to shelves or by sinking it in marketing but most of the time? A bad game is the result of bad game developers. Or good game developers, behaving badly.

So if Andromeda was rushed and buggy, I can blame that on EA. If the facial animations were outsourced, I can blame that on EA. But if the story is boring as shit and the characters are made of cardboard, that's Bioware's fault. From what I hear it was a mix of everything, so I'm inclined to blame everyone involved and ask why they didn't try doing something new, like what the Killzone devs did with Horizon: Zero Dawn.

Like, I'd like to see a Bioware space cowboy RPG. When people were like, "oh, Andromeda is looking like a space cowboy RPG", the first thing I thought was "then why the hell did they bother putting Mass Effect in front of the title?"

And then the game comes out and lo, it is neither a space cowboy RPG nor is it a very good game. It's just "Hey, Mass Effect! But some more, for some reason, and also without the plot and characters you liked!"


Edit: Okay, I've read the article now, and it seems like EA's influence was pretty minimal. Unless EA made the decision to use Frostbite, because a lot of the problems with animations and such seem to come from the decision to use Frostbite instead of something more malleable.

Really, it seems like a game where they faffed about for a while, changed what they were doing halfway through, kept replacing the tech they were using, kept replacing the people who were using the tech, and never really got a clear sense of what the fuck it was they were trying to do. Maybe some fault lies with EA for pushing the release date, but at that point the game had been in development for five years. I dunno.

 

[Zhukov]

From what I hear it was a mix of everything, so I'm inclined to blame everyone involved and ask why they didn't try doing something new, like what the Killzone devs did with Horizon: Zero Dawn.

According to the article them trying to do something new was half the problem.

The started out to make an exploration game with spaceflight and hundreds of procedurally generated (huuurk!) planets to land on. So yeah, basically No Man's Sky with a Bioware story somehow integrated.

Surprise, surprise, that turned out to be a bad idea. The tech never came together and they ended up making everything by hand anyway during the last year or two as reality set in.

It's bizarre to me that so many presumably otherwise intelligent people keep thinking that procedural generation is good for anything other than cheaply producing reams upon reams of utterly forgettable paint-by-ones-and-zeros crap.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Really, it seems like a game where they faffed about for a while, changed what they were doing halfway through, kept replacing the tech they were using, kept replacing the people who were using the tech, and never really got a clear sense of what the fuck it was they were trying to do. Maybe some fault lies with EA for pushing the release date, but at that point the game had been in development for five years. I dunno.

I tend to agree, it's just...this seems to happen a lot to developers under EA's portfolio. Might just be a coincidence...EA is a mega publisher with a LOT of developers working under their umbrella...but you wonder if there isn't some bad corporate oversight involved.

 

[bastardofmelbourne]

According to the article them trying to do something new was half the problem.

I meant like, a new IP. New setting, new story, new characters for me to get interested in. Like, with the exception of the robot dinosaur hunting, H:ZD wasn't a very technically innovative game. It was Sandbox Type B-1 for the most part. It was the robot dinosaurs and the story that made it interesting.

It's bizarre to me that so many presumably otherwise intelligent people keep thinking that procedural generation is good for anything other than cheaply producing reams upon reams of utterly forgettable paint-by-ones-and-zeros crap.

Procedural generation is good for when the environment is not terribly important to telling the story. But for a Bioware RPG, the story is fairly heavily embedded into the environment. You can't happen across a scientist saying "We were experimenting on Rachni, but they escaped and trashed the lab!" when that scientist is standing in the middle of a space-desert with no Rachni or lab to be seen.

 

[AD-Stu]

I knew Montreal had worked on ME3 add-ons, but I didn't realise the Omega DLC was their baby... that says a lot. Omega had a bunch of weird animation and cinematic bugs as well (remember Aria's big speech where she keeps turning randomly and popping in and out of picture?!?) But I thought it had solid level design and some very pretty bits.

That's all sounding very familiar when we look at Andromeda...

I blame consumers and pre-order culture. This happens all the time with every major franchise. Devs or publishers start by creating a game that everyone loves, then they start thinking "hey, I bet we could make more money if we make the next one appeal to a wider audience and also let's milk it with a shitty business model or something". Of course, their next products and business models become increasingly anti-consumer, and that leads to consumers getting frustrated (still pre-ordering though. That never changes!) and eventually that corporation ends up releasing a disaster of a product.

While I agree those things are real problems that happen, it doesn't sound to me like they were what sunk Andromeda?

It seems from the article that EA forcing them to move to Frostbite was a huge part of the problem, followed by not letting go of the procedurally-generated worlds idea soon enough and not having enough resources in key areas.

I don't necessarily see anything in this game where they screwed up by trying to appeal to a wider audience, and if anything it's less anti-consumer than ME3 (no obnoxious day-one DLC, etc.)

This is just pure speculation, but I think the main problem can be summed up by looking at #10 on the following list...

best selling video games of all time (Wikipedia) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_video_games]

Bioware (or EA) saw Skyrim sales figures and got greedy. They were the best in the world at what they did well, making confined, mostly-linear, story/character-driven RPG's in which you meet and get to know a handful of well-written, interesting, and likeable characters, and together you go out and save the world against all odds.

They were the Michael Jordan of those types of games, and they threw it all away to go play minor league baseball.

The thing is I don't necessarily think this was a bad direction to take Mass Effect, having a big galaxy with open maps to explore, if they'd gotten the other stuff right. One of my biggest non-ending bugbears with ME3 was that while you technically did missions on Sur'kesh and Thessia, it never felt like you actually went there: you just did one 30-minute mission in one building then skedaddled. For better or worse, I at least feel like I've been to Havarl and Kadara and the other planets in Andromeda.

The problem for me was they just didn't get all the other stuff right...

 

[TheVampwizimp_v1legacy]

Edit: Okay, I've read the article now, and it seems like EA's influence was pretty minimal. Unless EA made the decision to use Frostbite, because a lot of the problems with animations and such seem to come from the decision to use Frostbite instead of something more malleable.

Really, it seems like a game where they faffed about for a while, changed what they were doing halfway through, kept replacing the tech they were using, kept replacing the people who were using the tech, and never really got a clear sense of what the fuck it was they were trying to do. Maybe some fault lies with EA for pushing the release date, but at that point the game had been in development for five years. I dunno.

Oh, it was certainly EA's edict that they change the engine to Frostbite. DICE, another EA subsidiary, developed Frostbite for Battlefield, and EA went "Hey, Battlefield makes us money. Let's have Dragon Age and Mass Effect use Battlefield's game engine, so they will also make us money!" Bioware as a studio has never prioritized graphics, and trying to adapt a very specialized engine to a design it wasn't made for, just for the sake of pretty graphics, is the kind of one-dimensional thinking that publishers use to make decisions in spite of developers knowing better.

 

[Zhukov]

I meant like, a new IP. New setting, new story, new characters for me to get interested in. Like, with the exception of the robot dinosaur hunting, H:ZD wasn't a very technically innovative game. It was Sandbox Type B-1 for the most part. It was the robot dinosaurs and the story that made it interesting.

Ah, righto.

And yeah, I agree. While it wouldn't have fixed the many core problems, I often found myself thinking that Andromeda would have been better as a new IP. Keep the colonization/exploration thing, but with a fresh setting. Perhaps something a little less Star Trek and more like the Terrans of Starcraft. (Is that what you mean by "space cowboy"?) I don't think people would mind so long as they were open about it being Mass Effect with a new coat of paint. Just call it a spiritual successor, like Bioshock was to System Shock, or hell, like Mass Effect originally was to KOTOR.

As it turned out, the Mass Effect tag didn't end up meaning much without the characters and lore and setting that made the series what it was. The only things that connect it to the trilogy are the aliens species, biotics and... a few guns I guess? As much as I love me some Salarians and Krogan... meh, not really worth it.

 

[AD-Stu]

And yeah, I agree. While it wouldn't have fixed the many core problems, I often found myself thinking that Andromeda would have been better as a new IP. Keep the colonization/exploration thing, but with a fresh setting. Perhaps something a little less Star Trek and more like the Terrans of Starcraft. (Is that what you mean by "space cowboy"?) I don't think people would mind so long as they were open about it being Mass Effect with a new coat of paint. Just call it a spiritual successor, like Bioshock was to System Shock, or hell, like Mass Effect originally was to KOTOR.

As it turned out, the Mass Effect tag didn't end up meaning much without the characters and lore and setting that made the series what it was. The only things that connect it to the trilogy are the aliens species, biotics and... a few guns I guess? As much as I love me some Salarians and Krogan... meh, not really worth it.

Yeah but if they'd done that, I suspect they'd still have people hounding them for a "proper" new Mass Effect game too

I also suspect that even if Bioware had wanted to do that (and there's no indication that they did: it seems from the second ME3 was finished they were planning another ME game) EA probably would have pushed them to make this a Mass Effect game for marketing reasons.

 

[mavkiel]

If memory serves, that article also doesn't cover the racist they hired? Or the women who was raped in GTA 5?

Could have sworn they had some major issues with some of their staff.

 

[pookie101]

its interesting too that they were going the route of no mans sky but dropped it as unfeasable

 

[Zhukov]

Yeah but if they'd done that, I suspect they'd still have people hounding them for a "proper" new Mass Effect game too

I also suspect that even if Bioware had wanted to do that (and there's no indication that they did: it seems from the second ME3 was finished they were planning another ME game) EA probably would have pushed them to make this a Mass Effect game for marketing reasons.

I can't speak for what people at Bioware personally wanted, but given how hard they fucked up the trilogy ending, I'm not sure if either of those other two reasons apply.

I mean, were people really howling for a new Mass Effect? Every single conversation I saw about it before Andromeda came out revolved around the question of, "Yeah, but how do they do it after That Ending?"

Bioware and EA both knew that they done fucked it up. I think at that point they would have garnered more goodwill and excitement by saying "Hay, a fresh new IP!" than by saying, "Hey, a sequel to that series with the shit ending!"