Nightwriter wrote...
glacier1701 wrote...
While this may be true you can tarnish your own image. BioWare certainly did not do itself any favours with how its treated its fans lately. Nor has it won much in how the DA franchise is going. While what it has done may make sense from a business point of view from our side it does not look so good. As I have said before BioWare tried to make ME appeal to more and while it has had great sales I do not think it is close to what they may have hoped for internally. Certainly it does not seem to be that much more than their ME1 sales. In other words they lost a lot of people and gained only enough to maintain the status quo. In the process they did cheese off a lot of ME1 fans and may not have attracted enough new fans who will stick with ME3 when it finally comes. Moreover we do know that they are looking at trying to get sales of 10 million units. In other words selling 3 million (which I believe is the latest figures we have) is NOT enough for the game to be called a success internally.
It sounds harsh to say so but ME2 did not show me that ME3 can earn that 10 million mark. While LotSB is a good step there is still much that needs to be done to get anywhere close to a game that could get that mark. I would have said in the past that BioWare could do that but considering what we hear from the devs and what we got in ME2 I do not think they are capable of doing that with the current team. I do not say that ME3 will be bad, quite the opposite in fact, I am sure it will be a good game perhaps even equal to what they have done in the past but ME2 has muddied the pool too much for it to have any sort of decent chance.
Well... just how exactly has BioWare been "treating its fans"? They gave me an amazing first game, they listened to fan feedback and fan complaint, tried to address every issue they heard about, gave me a second game that they put an amazing amount of work into even if I strongly disagree with its story design choices, gave me great DLC on top of that which addressed even more of my complaints, and haven't all shot themselves in the head after seeing that the combined Disappointment threads have probably reached 1000 pages.
And who have they lost? I was disappointed with ME2's story direction - quite - but they haven't lost me as a fan. I still bought the game and I don't wish to un-buy it or un-play it. Even the majority of people who were disappointed are still avid members of the fan community.
Now I agree that ME2 has muddied the waters a bit. If there's one thing a sequel shouldn't do, it's make the third installment about damage control, and it may be that that's what ME2 did. But I think if there's any company that knows that sales aren't a measure of quality, it's BioWare, and I think that if there's any company that tries to achieve quality and not just sales, it's BioWare, so I'm not going to turn on them because of what is, in my opinion, one sort-of-slipup in a long track record of making great games.
Okey this did actually interest me.
First I think Bioware has stirred little bit they fans. Also what they did with ME2 was not win or lose situation, more like it did not really go any direction with fan base size. ME1 and ME2 sales as total starts to be allmost same now and both games supports other sales. Because most of us want to play both of them, because both of them are good games.
Now I have also followed DA2 stuff and that's where my conserns comes more. Mostly because it present the newest direction of they game development. Some comment and feeling what I have got there, as what developers have sayed does consern me alot. One of them is developers seem to work very much now as cost efficient style. That's not good at all. Because best games aren't done by effient business sense, but love of gendre and thinking what customers could like. Developres current ways is more like cut anything off what isn't really cost efficient enough. Some people may call it simplifying as taking off what aren't really needed, more practical vs impression.
So, my point is, I'm not sure that quality product is Biowarers number one interest, it's seem to come as second and business side seem to be guide development too much. Example they removed many option and customation from DA2 design, because they wanted more "cooler" visual animation. I don't mean quality as technical way here, I mean as making games what are best in players eyes. Now Bioware is making good games and we could trust they will continue it too, but I have few conserns. I don't meen they games isn't gonna be good, I think they will be, but they may not be same way best what they use to be. If business is affecting too much to what will be included in games. Really good games are design with love and time, without so much afffect how much it cost to make it.
It worries me that what if ME3 is also done same way, cost efficient with business sense? Mostly because in my opinion, ME serie is more about impression and cost efficient is wrong way to do it, those impression details are there to create better impression as game world to feel more alive. Sometimes impression has not other reason to exist, it can be alot of work for so small detail what has not much gameplay value. But it can make game feel better. Like any of us remembers the elevators from ME1.
I hope I'm wrong here, but that's the feeling i got from they comments here in forum. Like developers will do best what they can with money and time they have, but in the end because those business limits, it's not best what the product could be.
Modifié par Lumikki, 31 octobre 2010 - 07:43 .
Retour en haut
Heretic! I'll get the kindling and ropes, someone else find a torch!
