EA Closes BioWare San Francisco - UPDATED
- Thread starter Andy Chalk
- Start date
Oh, this isn't a new move. Not in the video game industry, or industries in general. You buy or otherwise obtain the name of some beloved name brand, then you slap it on products that aren't doing well, or future products that might not do well otherwise.the antithesis said:
Like how Infogrames is wearing Atari's dead skin.
Hmmm, no big thing, and not surprising.
It seems like it was a team picked up specifically to build tie-in promotional games for bigger products. The first "Dragon Age" game (single player) was cute and got some positive attention. The second, more ambitious, browser game was a microtransaction hungry monster that was largely tied to a product (Dragon Age 2) that wound up getting
mixed results at the best. Truthfully it's kind of surprising that it lasted into May 2012.
Given that their stable of games seems to be dead, dying, and tied to less than successful properties (Mirror's Edge wasn't exactly a smash success despite the praise for innovation it gets). Bioware's games being the ones that seemed to give them most of their success, and with Bioware's increasingly ambigious reception it's probably a wise desician to think that their next game isn't nessicary going to inherantly carry a promotional tie in like this to seperate microtransaction based success due to pure inertia.
In short it seems like it was a "Ra Ra" team designed to be attached to the coattails of a more successful company. Bioware managed to turn decades of good will into poison over a period of 3 games. Right now it seems like Bioware is probably on it's last legs before EA takes it out behind the woodshed and puts it out of it's misery, never mind being gifted with it's own seperate-profit-seeking cheering section.
Honestly, as much money as ME3 and DA2 might have made in absolute terms, even EA can't be oblivious to the reactions they are receiving, add ToR to it, and I think there are a lot of eyes on seeing how bad the backlash is going to be with their next game(s). Attaching riders isn't something I'd do at this stage in the game either.
It seems like it was a team picked up specifically to build tie-in promotional games for bigger products. The first "Dragon Age" game (single player) was cute and got some positive attention. The second, more ambitious, browser game was a microtransaction hungry monster that was largely tied to a product (Dragon Age 2) that wound up getting
mixed results at the best. Truthfully it's kind of surprising that it lasted into May 2012.
Given that their stable of games seems to be dead, dying, and tied to less than successful properties (Mirror's Edge wasn't exactly a smash success despite the praise for innovation it gets). Bioware's games being the ones that seemed to give them most of their success, and with Bioware's increasingly ambigious reception it's probably a wise desician to think that their next game isn't nessicary going to inherantly carry a promotional tie in like this to seperate microtransaction based success due to pure inertia.
In short it seems like it was a "Ra Ra" team designed to be attached to the coattails of a more successful company. Bioware managed to turn decades of good will into poison over a period of 3 games. Right now it seems like Bioware is probably on it's last legs before EA takes it out behind the woodshed and puts it out of it's misery, never mind being gifted with it's own seperate-profit-seeking cheering section.
Honestly, as much money as ME3 and DA2 might have made in absolute terms, even EA can't be oblivious to the reactions they are receiving, add ToR to it, and I think there are a lot of eyes on seeing how bad the backlash is going to be with their next game(s). Attaching riders isn't something I'd do at this stage in the game either.
This isn't new. EA made BioWare a brand name some time ago (about around when BioWare Pulse appeared). Thus they started renaming studios to the "BioWare" brand to sucker people in... Then Dragon Age 2, Mass Effect 3, and SW:TOR came out and kinda smashed that strategy.the antithesis said:
Currently BioWare has 4 studios:
BioWare Edmonton: THE original studio and responsible for everything up to Mass Effect (that means Baldur's Gate, KotOR, Jade Empire, etc.). So if you're worried about the REAL BioWare these are the guys to watch.
BioWare Austin: A "brand name" studio formed from people from other studios that made MMOs; SW:TOR is belongs to them
BioWare Montreal: Made the ME3 multiplayer and are developing ME4
BioWare Ireland: Kind of a support studio assisting Austin with quality assurance, localization, networking -stuff like that. No games to speak of.
There's another BioWare studio that was formed when EA renamed an existing studio they had (so another "brand name") that's working on a Command & Conquer game but I can't remember the studio name; may be Ireland, I don't know.
Whoa whoa WHOA! Hey now. That ain't right. Ash is likeable.Devoneaux said:
The analogy doesn't fit, anyway. Ash didn't make his hand bad to have to lop it off. Someone else did. Clearly, the Bioware being a zombie joke must also extend from EA being a worse evil.
Ergo, EA is Bad Ash. And this...is what's happening:
Shop smart, Escapists. Shop S-mart.
I know. It just seemed to me that attributing EA to someone relatively cool and at least heroic when he can be bothered is a little unfair to Bruce Campbell. I mean, come on. EA doesn't even have moxie OR a good chin!Devoneaux said:
*Laughs maniacally*
You're right, I know you're right but even though I loathe EA, it's still sad when you say it :-(DVS BSTrD said:
Westwod, Pandemic, BioWare...may they RIP.Desert Punk said:And I am shocked no one has posted this yet!
I still have a hope there'll be a Saboteur 2 one day.
In this industry, 'Hope is the first step on the road to disappointment.'KingsGambit said:
Who knows, perhaps EA will pull a THQ and go under and allow all those delicious IP's they hoard free for the taking. But a EA collapse would leave Activision as the top dog.
I know man, it's just a glimmer of hope. I sigh wistfully any time I see a gas-mask in any gameEd130 said:
Activision are the top dog, aren't they? I think between CoD and WoW alone, they probably make more money/year than EA, Ubi, 2K, Deep Silver, Squeenix, Sega, Bethesda and Capcom's entire catalogues combined.
Exactly right. Nobody ever sets out to make a bad game, but time constraints, budget constraints, bad decisions from the publisher (which probably seem like good ones to the accounts and/or marketing department), bad decisions from the developer (that probably seem like great and innovative ideas at the time, but don't pan out), bad planning, unrealistic expectations, and so on, all conspire against certain projects.Trishbot said:
And even then, you can turn out the best and most innovative game ever, but if it doesn't sell more than the (seemingly arbitrary and increasingly inflated) sales target dreamed up by some VP of sales somewhere who probably hasn't even played the game, then it's deemed a failure. In the old days, a publisher used to go, "huh, that didn't work too well. What can we learn from this? Let's try again," whereas nowadays, when a game doesn't sell the ludicrous number of units it's supposed to, the immediate kneejerk reaction from all big publishers is, "AAGGGHHHH! Quick close the studio immediately! It's clearly ALL THEIR FAULT! If we shut them down, Wall Street will think we know what we're doing! Appease the huge, know-nothing, money-grabbing, beast of Wall Street! QUICK!"
Remember the days when selling 2 or 3 million units was nothing short of astonishing? Well now, the big publishers seem to consider this a personal insult at 'only' selling 3 million units. It's madness, and it's killing our industry.