Goodbye BioWare, Hello Indie

Tanakh

New member
Jul 8, 2011
1,512
0
0
dcfedor said:
Woohoo! Indeed you are the first Yukon Edition owner :) Sounds like I need to call up the printers about some postcardage!

Hope you enjoy the game so far, and I look forward to your feedback!

Oh, and don't forget to vote on new features, if you see any that catch your eye!
Well... i might be overestimating the Escapist bump, but heck, this game has the potential to sell like pancakes here. You should have said it plays like and feels a lil like a beta of old school Fallout with some very interesting changes; this is nerd central, people here are in love with Fallout, and an old school fallout that you can influence the development and vote on features? It will be several posters wet dream.

The old Bioware spirit is strong with this one.

(You guys are the first EVER to make me quote starwars)
 

dcfedor

New member
Mar 6, 2012
10
0
0
Tanakh said:
Well... i might be overestimating the Escapist bump, but heck, this game has the potential to sell like pancakes here. You should have said it plays like and feels a lil like a beta of old school Fallout with some very interesting changes; this is nerd central, people here are in love with Fallout, and an old school fallout that you can influence the development and vote on features? It will be several posters wet dream.

The old Bioware spirit is strong with this one.

(You guys are the first EVER to make me quote starwars)
You're giving me chills, man. I'm glad to hear you think it's moving in the right direction. I've been somewhat light on marketing so far, just because GDC and ME3 are big on everyone's minds.

But before long, I hope to start marching around forums, flash portals, and the like, and hopefully drum up some more interest.

So thanks again! And I promise not to tell anyone you quoted Star Wars ;)
 

Canadish

New member
Jul 15, 2010
675
0
0
EA: Masters of pretending their customers and employee's aren't human beings.

Interesting to get that insight into the Bioware offices.

I guess that's why they've been going down the shitter lately.
 

Mayhemski

New member
Feb 21, 2012
43
0
0
Hi just been playing Neo Scavenger. Very cool once I got the basics, down, love the premise so far. Only 1 question any chance of getting a larger font at all? Guess playing all these games has done for my eyesight?
 

rapidoud

New member
Feb 1, 2008
547
0
0
Draxyle said:
And some people try to say that publishers only just provide the money needed for the creative process. Hardly, they have Bioware leashed and trained to do exactly what needs to be done for the highest chance of profit. Nothing necessarily wrong with that, but I'm allowed to be bitter about corporate needs being more important than creativity or public relations.

This is really no surprise that the internal "atmosphere" changed, since their games did too. I do pity the veteran developers in that situation. I would hate to be a part of a big conglomerate, no matter what my job was.
The reason corporates do this is because of you. Your Super/Pension plan/whatever more than likely uses shares to get you returns, people who have no idea those 'evil corporations' are actually owned partially by them, invested for the maximum returns.

Indies on the other hand, there's 2 sides: The one who does well with their creativity, and the one that gets rooted by piracy, ruining their life (more often than not, it's the latter).
 

Xeriel

New member
Nov 9, 2011
1
0
0
As sad as it is we all knew it was happening all along, ever since EA acquired bioware and started using more and more slaves to work on the game the spirit of what used to be a bioware game just evaporated.

There is a reason why the quality from DA:O to DA2 went down hill with skiis.
 

dcfedor

New member
Mar 6, 2012
10
0
0
Mayhemski said:
Hi just been playing Neo Scavenger. Very cool once I got the basics, down, love the premise so far. Only 1 question any chance of getting a larger font at all? Guess playing all these games has done for my eyesight?
Cool, glad you're enjoying it so far!

Re: the font, I think it's possible. I may have to abandon the 800x600 resolution to accommodate a larger font, but the small res was mainly to fit the demo version on Flash portals. Since the Beta is exclusive to Blue Bottle Games, maybe I can just increase the resolution?

Lemme look into that. Can't hurt to try!
 

Awexsome

Were it so easy
Mar 25, 2009
1,549
0
0
MammothBlade said:
Surely there must be a way that you can create a large game and still remain a relatively tight-knit development team, without all that antagonistic corporate bullshit.
With making big games comes big budgets. With big budgets comes the corporate bullshit. I'm no insider but I bet it would be very, very hard to keep them separate especially if the developer is owned by a publisher.

It hits hard for me being a real huge fan of Bungie. They tried to spin it well but when Microsoft butted in and started marketing ODST as a full 60$ game when it was intended to be an expansion you could feel Bungie's uncomfortableness with the whole thing. Their split from being owned by Microsoft was hard fought and by giving up all of their rights and claims toward the Halo franchise tells how much Bungie was willing to give up in order to gain true independence.
 

Lt. Rocky

New member
Jan 4, 2012
158
0
0
At least there's a possible bright side to Bioware's dwindling: all these veteran and experienced people from the company leaving to form their own studios could likely become standard companies themselves in the future with enough luck and success, and will start looking for their own talent, creating more jobs for eager people wanting to work in the industry. I myself live in Edmonton, not too far from Bioware's own headquarters, and in a few years will be out on the field as a software programmer, so hopefully some of these indie studios will be hiring by the time I get out :)
 

xPixelatedx

New member
Jan 19, 2011
1,316
0
0
DressedInRags said:
EA's restrictive policies prevented him from finding a creative outlet on his own. They claim ownership over any competing product - this includes indie games - done by employees, even on their own time.
Whoa whoa whoa - fucking what?!

That's obscene!

No, really. That's fucking obscene!
I already knew stuff like this was going on, and that is one of the many reasons why I am kind of ok with the idea of there being another game crash. I would like to see most of the current biggest names in gaming gone, bankrupk and living under bridges. Gaming has no future if these are the kinds of people gaining more and more control over it. And if there is a crash, and history repeats itself (as it often does) the next time gaming appears it will be all the better for this.
 

Lord_Gremlin

New member
Apr 10, 2009
744
0
0
This makes me think - what if game industry eventually collapse after all? I suppose the big problem here is that copyright laws don't protect the artist at all.
Seriously, it's outrageous how it's perfectly legal worldwide to claim ownership of something you didn't create. The original author should be the owner of IP. EA claims bloody ownership of any game it's employees create in their own free time?
And you, world, try to pass stuff like SOPA and ACTA? Really? First deal with real thieves of IP, aka companies like EA and Activision. You know, those are the pirates that actually hurt the authors, so to speak.
Seriously, claim ownership of something your employee create in his/her free time? That's entering slavery territory, no less.
 
Dec 16, 2009
1,774
0
0
dcfedor said:
Mayhemski said:
Hi just been playing Neo Scavenger. Very cool once I got the basics, down, love the premise so far. Only 1 question any chance of getting a larger font at all? Guess playing all these games has done for my eyesight?
Cool, glad you're enjoying it so far!

Re: the font, I think it's possible. I may have to abandon the 800x600 resolution to accommodate a larger font, but the small res was mainly to fit the demo version on Flash portals. Since the Beta is exclusive to Blue Bottle Games, maybe I can just increase the resolution?

Lemme look into that. Can't hurt to try!
Chief, your game looks promising, going to play the demo when i get home from work. I was wondering if with the changes of late, would the old school BioWare staff want to move on to less mainstream games.
I'll try my best to follow what you create in the future
 

ThunderCavalier

New member
Nov 21, 2009
1,475
0
0
Probably the most depressing thing about all of this is that, in the cutthroat, streamlined, standardized industry that we've created, going Indie starts to have more risks than it's worth, and creativity is being stifled as all hell.

As games take budgets exceed millions, then tens of millions, it's somewhat understandable to see why big budget companies like Activision and EA are afraid of pursuing new IPs, when expanding on old ones or farming old ones (World of Warcraft, Call of Duty, etc.) tends to rake in more of a profit due to their name and familiarity with gamers than new titles (Catherine, Brutal Legend, etc.).

As that's gone on, people have just started genre farming, and that's also why we see so many cut-and-paste shooters, MMOs, and sometimes the occasional Action-RPG.

Probably the most depressing thing is that, as games get more and more expensive and time-consuming to make, and pose more of a financial risk to the company, this isn't going to end. Ever. Everyone can hope for a bright light at the end of a tunnel; a metaphorical Good End where the big boys can get their money and the developers can make whatever the hell they want, but as long as new IPs can't seem to gain support to land it up with a net profit, along with games having movie budgets and higher, it's not happening.

And no offense, but I'm starting to think that Indie games may also suffer this same fate, what with companies like Zynga showing great success with their methods. It really does look like innovation, originality, and simple, plain fun, died with the third-or-so year of the seventh generation and it isn't coming back any time soon.
 

Goenitz

New member
Jul 22, 2008
234
0
0
Fantastic read. Kinda scary though as someone that's entering the job market and looking to join one of those big companies, albeit in a different industry.

Regardless, great article.
 

CardinalPiggles

New member
Jun 24, 2010
3,226
0
0
And the lesson is, don't be a games developer? What a horrible story this really is.

Oh and EA don't want a team of artists, they want peons to run their money printing machines.

Also, I think the biggest problem for me with Indie games is they usually have one niche, or maybe two. A guitar with two strings is not worth buying really.
 

Zom-B

New member
Feb 8, 2011
379
0
0
dcfedor said:
Tanakh said:
Will be interesting to see what this guys can do in a non publisher game.
You need not wait much longer, NEO Scavenger just released yesterday!

http://bluebottlegames.com/main/node/2

I'm Dan Fedor, from the article, btw. Brook included the link in the article, but it might've gotten snipped out in the editing process by accident.

I'd love to hear what you guys think!
Oh this looks cool. Looks like it might suck up a bit of time at work today (I sit in an office, in front of a compute, dealing with clients in social housing- lots of downtime).

If I enjoy the demo, I'll definitely be willing to support the game, especially since I don't have a gaming PC but this can run on my Mac in browser. There's not enough good games that can, without me booting up parallels.