Mass Effect Andromeda is abandoned by EA. A big warning sign for the "Games as a Service" Culture.

[Jonbodhi]

I imagine that they way they see it, they can afford to half-ass most of their games, because they have the license to make FIFA, NBA2K, and Madden; if their other games don't sell, they don't give a shit because they know that their sports games will.

If their other IPs make money? Great! If not, sweep them under the rug and keep churning out sports games every year.

I have a hard time believing it's really that simple. They definitely half-ass when they think they can get away with it, as in DA2, although they were wrong then too, but a business spending the time and money they spent to simply not care about the result seems suicidal. I'm inclined to think they assumed the Mass Effect name would do most of the work, and they could put the A team on the studio golden child, Anthem. I think it's darkly funny that their response to this was to kill the offending studio (not funny for the people affected), as though the B team should be punished for producing B (or C) level work. Ironic too, since they probably gained tons of useful experience which would have benefited their next project. If they had been given a B level assignment, without the glare from a prominent title, they might have prospered. Better management would have helped too, but they'll never take the blame.

 

[Kerg3927]

I imagine that they way they see it, they can afford to half-ass most of their games, because they have the license to make FIFA, NBA2K, and Madden; if their other games don't sell, they don't give a shit because they know that their sports games will.

If their other IPs make money? Great! If not, sweep them under the rug and keep churning out sports games every year.

I have a hard time believing it's really that simple. They definitely half-ass when they think they can get away with it, as in DA2, although they were wrong then too, but a business spending the time and money they spent to simply not care about the result seems suicidal. I'm inclined to think they assumed the Mass Effect name would do most of the work, and they could put the A team on the studio golden child, Anthem. I think it's darkly funny that their response to this was to kill the offending studio (not funny for the people affected), as though the B team should be punished for producing B (or C) level work. Ironic too, since they probably gained tons of useful experience which would have benefited their next project. If they had been given a B level assignment, without the glare from a prominent title, they might have prospered. Better management would have helped too, but they'll never take the blame.

Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. Hard to speculate what was going through their minds with this. MEA had a budget of what, $40M+? Maybe even $80M? That's not chump change, even for a big company like EA. So I doubt they just didn't "give a shit." They wanted it to sell enough to at least make their investment back, and they likely expected it to sell because of the Mass Effect brand.

My guess is they made a decent profit even though it was panned. A ton of die hard Mass Effect fans probably pre-ordered it and bought it on day one. Then the reviews came in and the internet blew up. EA was like, okay, with all this negativity, future sales are probably not going to be good, let's quit while we're ahead and not sink any more money into this turd.

 

[DrownedAmmet]

I don't think there's a problem with that in theory. It's kind of how all businesses work, you make a thing and hope it makes enough money to justify making more things

I'm just pissed that the Quarians are getting the shaft, they were easily my favorite race in the Mass Effect series

 

[Saelune]

I'm super glad EA killed Mass Effect so they could force Bioware to make a stale Destiny clone that will be dead within a year.

super glad.

cause thats what I think when I think of Bioware. A story-free loot grinder.

If they were a Japanese company, they would already be forcing [Bioware in name only] to make Pachinko machines using Mass Effect characters.

 

[sXeth]

I don't see how Andromeda fits the "game as a service" model. That model, as I understand, is to have a core product and add to it over time. MMOs are an example of this, in that they'll only operate as long as the servers are running. So you pay a subscription fee (in the classical model) to continually get content. Even without such a fee, the idea still exists.

Andromeda is more a single game with DLC. There was no preposition of Andromeda being supported indefinately. In theory, there'd have been a Mass Effect 5 if it had sold better.

I didn't play more then an hour demo of it, but my understanding is its considered to have ended with loose threads that were possible DLC hooks or whatever.

So my general take is its probably like Half Life 3, where some bit of the plot had possible continuations, so "OMG THERE WAS SEQUEL AND EA/VALVE IS DELIBERATELY NOT RELEASING IT".

That's not really "Games as a service" though. That mentality involves pushing unnecessary online elements into games (or consoles), or weird forced hybrid multiplayer systems. If No Mans Sky (someone mentioned up there), required you to be connected to play, for instance, even though you would never see another player (you did if you wanted to persistently name things for others to see, and for the weird Dark Souls-esque multiplayer thing they have now). MMOs where the game won't function without the developer provided servers. If you had to login to an online lobby to play an AI game of Rocket League or Evolve.

To the best of my knowledge, you can (other then patches), turn your internet completely off and play through whatever content Andromeda has, and the multiplayer is an optional (I vaguely recall in 3 it wasn't an option, you had to do it to fill the win condition). The game might be crap, but once you have the game, you have it.

 

[shrekfan246]

There have been so many warnings about how shitty "games as services" will be over the past four+ years that at this point it's not "a big warning", it's just "the new status quo".

People should've been cottoning on to this sort of thing back when microtransactions started being shoved into Dead Space 3.

 

[Vendor-Lazarus]

There have been so many warnings about how shitty "games as services" will be over the past four+ years that at this point it's not "a big warning", it's just "the new status quo".

People should've been cottoning on to this sort of thing back when microtransactions started being shoved into Dead Space 3.

I'd argue for when online activation became a thing..then always online and steam and origin and uplay and etc.
At least..
Though those appear to be two separate instances of what people mean when they say "games as a service".

Both meanings are correct though.

 

[madwarper]

And if you don't want to be "complacent," you have exactly two options...

1) don't buy it
2) convince others not to buy it

Anything else is just shaking your fist at the weather.

Option 3; Convince others to shake their fists harder.

If they were a Japanese company, they would already be forcing [Bioware in name only] to make Pachinko machines using Mass Effect characters.

I'm Commander Shepard, and this is my favorite Pachinko game on the Citadel.

 

[Satinavian]

Personally i like DLCs.

DLCs allow developers to make new game content and sell it, when most of the engine, UI, development tools, modelling etc. is already done. So DLCs can theoretically provide better content per price than normal games. As they are limited by thenumber of sold base games however, that advantage gets diminished.

DLCs also force developers to patch bugs. If the base game doesn't work, DLCs won't sell.

DLCs also force developers to aim not only at huge sale numbers at release but also on a game that seems enjoyable for a longer period, so players would actually want to buy more of it.



The only downside is that using DLCs encourage cliffhangers which won't ever be resolved if the game fails. But the same was true years ago, when those cliffhangers were abozut the next installment of the series, not about the DLC.

 

[Zhukov]

But now, it seems like enough of us think that way that we hold out. And where does the problem lay? In the fact that enough of us want a less buggy and more polished game that we're not told from the beginning "You're not getting the whole story for full price!" that we wait... which harms their sale predictions and desires... and then they decide if they want to really finish the game or not from how many people said that what they received is good enough.

...

You didn't come for portions of your meal. You came for the meal. You came for the same kind of meal they served you for years. The proportions you like, the flavors you love, this is the only reason you come to the restaurant. You stop going. And frankly, a lot of other people stop as well. Of course they'll be shuttered down after a month or two of this, not getting the funds they are accustomed to.

Doesn't matter if there's a few million other people buying.

DLC and whatnot has been common for nearly a decade now. If it wasn't making money I think they'd have stopped by now. EA don't appear shuttered to me.