397 réponses à ce sujet

[Ariella]

Dormiglione wrote...

David Gaider wrote...

Myounage wrote...
Yes. DA:O outsold DA2 by a ton. That sends a message clearer than words to any business.

To a point, yes. One must also consider, however, that DAO took five times longer to make than DA2. In a development world where time equals money, that means DAO had to sell five times as many copies in order to be profitable. If it makes it easier to understand, take whatever sales numbers you believe DA2 had and multiply that by five-- that's an indication of its profitability relative to DAO.

Do you really think that we are that stupid? What has a longer development time to do with the sells of a game? 

Let's make this clear, it has to do with profitablitiy of a game, Since DAO took 5 times as long to make, and during that period Bioware is paying for staff, rent or mortage on the office building, utilities, office supplies, machines to develope on etc... DAO has to generate more sales to counter the debt and be profitable. I don't see how this is a difficult concept.

[Dormiglione]

Realmzmaster wrote...

Longer development time does not guarantee quality. Longer development time does not guarantee better polish or testing. You have to be careful to avoid feature and scope creep or you can make a crappy game even with a long development time.

Also if the development time is too long you can start losing key people who go on to other pursuits. The right balance of cost, time and personnel must be achieved.
Additionally If the game takes to long in development it will look outdated compared to newer games. On the other hand if the development time is to short the game will look rushed.

Edited for additional comment.

You are absolute right. It doesnt guarantee that it had more test cycles, that bugs were consequently tracked down and eliminated. You can only guess and hope that it has higher quality.

Realmzmaster wrote...
you can make a crappy game even with a long development time

finally there we go. Thats what i am saying. Its the final product, his quality, his functionality that matters how its received by the audience. Not the development time.

[Icinix]

Dormiglione wrote...

Icinix wrote...

Dormiglione wrote...

ipgd wrote...

Dormiglione wrote...

What has a longer development time to do with the sells of a game?

Really? Really?

Yes, really. A product, it doesnt matter what product, is judged by his functionality, his quality and a lot of other measures. A lot of the measures are objective and a lot of them are subjective. How long does it took to produce a product including research, planning and so on, doesnt guarantee how much you can sell this product.

A much simpler product that has similar functionality, that is produced with a third of the investment can outsell the product that cost much more to be produced.

Longer development time guarantees that the product was better polished, better tested, that some of the components were changed during development time. But still, it doesnt guarantee you, that you can sell it more than the cheaper produced one.

Maybe not, but at least you retain standards.

You are right. The product that costed more to be produced could also be the better one as the cheaper produced. Still it remains the customer who decide which product does he like more, that suits more for him.

The point that i try to make is, that more development time is not the factor that gives you higher sale numbers. Sale numbers reflect how well or how bad a product was received by the audience.

A whole other story is how profitable was the product. There you need to sum up the complete production (planning, research, testing and so on) divided by the sale numbers and the price you sold the product. Im sorry that i cant explain it well. English is not my native language.

Oh I agree with what you're saying.

I just don't like the fact we live in a world that is prepared to sacrifice quality for money.  Not pointing fingers at any game developers in particular, and I understand the need for profits and growth - but profit and growth should have EQUAL footing with quality.

The juries out, but I'm borderline vitriol about the way gaming is seemingly becoming a money grabbing monopolistic empire at the expense of story telling and evolution.  Peoples views will differ, to me though its becoming painfully obvious the vast, vast majority of pro-gaming evolution is occuring in the indie scene.

Thats a whole 'nutha disucssions / debate / ragequit for another day.

[ipgd]

Dormiglione wrote...

David implied that development time was one reason because DAO had that high sale numbers. Not true.

No he didn't. He was answering the assertion that DA2 had to be less profitable than DAO because it sold less. That has nothing to do with why DAO sold more or the quality of the games or anything else.

[bEVEsthda]

ipgd wrote...

bEVEsthda wrote...

Yes, one must certainly hope they are only considering the events of the DA2 story-plot, and nothing else, when they say such things as "moving the franchise forward".
I simply cannot imagine that they are so daft that they don't realize that maybe the majority of DA2 sales just occured due to DA:O, and customer assumptions that they would get something similar.
I see little reason for why DA2 would sell beyond of five-figure numbers on it's own. Well, maybe EA marketing muscle.

If it were hypothetically retooled and marketed as a different IP, it wouldn't have received the hysterical They Changed It Now It Sucks backlash it did. Origins is as responsible for its sales drop as it is for its preorders.

With this level of hyperbolized memetic ****** I'm not sure DA2's sales are really a reliable indication of anything other than the internet's ability to band together in a concerted effort to resemble monkeys as much as is humanly possible.

Yes. That point has some merit too. I have myself many times argued that I would have been a lot happier with DA2, if it hadn't been so obvious that it was supposed to be the new direction of DA.

However, even if I would have played it, and thought nothing much beyond that, and got on with my life (as I do anyway ) , I would NEVER have bought the game if it hadn't been part of the DA franchise. Never. Why the h* would I ever, normally, waste time and money on some mediocre splatter game, with very confused art direction, for teens?

No, the thing that would have made this work for me, would be if Bioware had announced they would also release 'different' games within the DA IP, and that this 'DA:Kirkwall Champion' was such a game. Yes. I would have bought it just because it was a DA game, played it and been happy enough, as I was still waiting for DA:O2, the real RPG.
But without DA:O? Not a chance.

Modifié par bEVEsthda, 03 juin 2011 - 11:18 .

[Dormiglione]

ipgd wrote...

Dormiglione wrote...

David implied that development time was one reason because DAO had that high sale numbers. Not true.

No he didn't. He was answering the assertion that DA2 had to be less profitable than DAO because it sold less. That has nothing to do with why DAO sold more or the quality of the games or anything else.

ok, then explain me please the bolded text.

David Gaider wrote...
To a point, yes. One must also consider, however, that DAO took five times longer to make than DA2. In a development world where time equals money, that means DAO had to sell five times as many copies in order to be profitable. If it makes it easier to understand, take whatever sales numbers you believe DA2 had and multiply that by five-- that's an indication of its profitability relative to DAO.
Does that mean sales are the most important thing? Not really. It's not to us just as it's not to you. I'm not sure a large amount of sales would mean a fan would like a game any more or find it any more worthwhile, so a fan citing a lower amount of sales as being suddenly meaningful strikes me as a bit specious.

[Ariella]

CoS Sarah Jinstar wrote...

David Gaider wrote...

Myounage wrote...
Yes. DA:O outsold DA2 by a ton. That sends a message clearer than words to any business.

To a point, yes. One must also consider, however, that DAO took five times longer to make than DA2. In a development world where time equals money, that means DAO had to sell five times as many copies in order to be profitable. If it makes it easier to understand, take whatever sales numbers you believe DA2 had and multiply that by five-- that's an indication of its profitability relative to DAO.

Does that mean sales are the most important thing? Not really. It's not to us just as it's not to you. I'm not sure a large amount of sales would mean a fan would like a game any more or find it any more worthwhile, so a fan citing a lower amount of sales as being suddenly meaningful strikes me as a bit specious.

The whole "10 million sales figure, CoD audience" thing gets repeated a lot around here, after all, but that's a self-referencing interpretation that has nothing to do with our realistic sales expectations. We're not in the business of making games just to go out of business, yes, but it's also not a good idea to mortgage a franchise for short-term gain. So hopefully there's a middle ground to be found here, and certainly there are a number of things we feel we can and should improve on (as Mike has said)-- as much because it will help sales as because we want to make them better. If we don't talk about what those specifics are, it's because we're not ready to... and because it would be better to eventually show you what we mean rather than simply discuss them.

While I'm obviously not privy to why Origins sat on the back burner for as long as it did, I don't think citing it's development time vs DA2 being rushed out half baked in 18 months really has a whole lot to do with one another.

Yes, it does. Part of DAO's problem is that it straddled two different time periods in the RPG genre, and a lot of the delay had to do with finding a publisher. DAO probably would have been a very different game if it had come out a year or two after it was announced. Probably PC only for one thing, not as cinematic for another.... There's a lot of things that would have been very different. But by EA publishing it in 2009 we got a lot of what Bioware was doing in other games and saw other companies do, which was most likely added to DAO. But we live in a different world now where competition is a lot more fierce for luxury goods like video games, and they have to come out on a reasonable schedule. 5 years isn't reasonable in this market.

[Azzlee]

Icinix wrote...
Oh I agree with what you're saying.

I just don't like the fact we live in a world that is prepared to sacrifice quality for money.  Not pointing fingers at any game developers in particular, and I understand the need for profits and growth - but profit and growth should have EQUAL footing with quality.

The juries out, but I'm borderline vitriol about the way gaming is seemingly becoming a money grabbing monopolistic empire at the expense of story telling and evolution.  Peoples views will differ, to me though its becoming painfully obvious the vast, vast majority of pro-gaming evolution is occuring in the indie scene.

Thats a whole 'nutha disucssions / debate / ragequit for another day.

I agree.

Except for in the case of LA Noire. Good development time, wonderful end product. But then R* were publisher and with their Big Daddy Take-Two they remain the only developer to shower me with gaming love.

[ipgd]

Dormiglione wrote...

ok, then explain me please the bolded text.

David Gaider wrote...
To a point, yes. One must also consider, however, that DAO took five times longer to make than DA2. In a development world where time equals money, that means DAO had to sell five times as many copies in order to be profitable. If it makes it easier to understand, take whatever sales numbers you believe DA2 had and multiply that by five-- that's an indication of its profitability relative to DAO.
Does that mean sales are the most important thing? Not really. It's not to us just as it's not to you. I'm not sure a large amount of sales would mean a fan would like a game any more or find it any more worthwhile, so a fan citing a lower amount of sales as being suddenly meaningful strikes me as a bit specious.

Money / Time = Profit

Because DAO took five times as much time (read: five times as much investment in overhead, salary costs, etc) it would have to have made five times as much money to be as relatively profitable as DA2. This is speaking in terms of relative comparison of profit. This was brought up because the issue of DA2's profitability was raised and he was addressing that specific issue and not tangential arguments regarding quality.

Modifié par ipgd, 03 juin 2011 - 11:17 .

[Dormiglione]

Ariella wrote...

Dormiglione wrote...

David Gaider wrote...

Myounage wrote...
Yes. DA:O outsold DA2 by a ton. That sends a message clearer than words to any business.

To a point, yes. One must also consider, however, that DAO took five times longer to make than DA2. In a development world where time equals money, that means DAO had to sell five times as many copies in order to be profitable. If it makes it easier to understand, take whatever sales numbers you believe DA2 had and multiply that by five-- that's an indication of its profitability relative to DAO.

Do you really think that we are that stupid? What has a longer development time to do with the sells of a game? 

Let's make this clear, it has to do with profitablitiy of a game, Since DAO took 5 times as long to make, and during that period Bioware is paying for staff, rent or mortage on the office building, utilities, office supplies, machines to develope on etc... DAO has to generate more sales to counter the debt and be profitable. I don't see how this is a difficult concept.

You are right. 5 years of development time means that you have to pay salaries, taxes and many more like advertising and so on. DAO was for sure a really expensive product to develop.

Lets assume for whatever reason that customer didnt like it all. The product development cost remained the same. Sale numbers only a third of what it really did.

DAO had to sell much more than DA2 to be profitable. But it was not due to 5 years development time that it sold so well. It was because DAO was and is still a very good product.

Thats what im saying, not more not less.

[Realmzmaster]

Dormiglione wrote...

Realmzmaster wrote...

Longer development time does not guarantee quality. Longer development time does not guarantee better polish or testing. You have to be careful to avoid feature and scope creep or you can make a crappy game even with a long development time.

Also if the development time is too long you can start losing key people who go on to other pursuits. The right balance of cost, time and personnel must be achieved.
Additionally If the game takes to long in development it will look outdated compared to newer games. On the other hand if the development time is to short the game will look rushed.

Edited for additional comment.

You are absolute right. It doesnt guarantee that it had more test cycles, that bugs were consequently tracked down and eliminated. You can only guess and hope that it has higher quality.

Realmzmaster wrote...
you can make a crappy game even with a long development time

finally there we go. Thats what i am saying. Its the final product, his quality, his functionality that matters how its received by the audience. Not the development time.

But a lot of forummates are saying because DA2 did not get enough or longer development time that it why it is the mess that it is. Which unforunately is not always the case.
Bethesda (makers of TES games) are known for their open sandlot worlds. They are also known for producing infinitely bugged games on release including game breaking ones. The games usually have a 4-5 year development time and still have more bugs than a Raid commercial and a barely workable story (with the exception of Morrowind). I like TES games. I own them all so I know of which I speak.

One of the basic problem with DA2 was in execution and sloppy re-use of the environments. They could have disguised the re-used environments better than they did and make the wall blockers look like walls or have a companion find a secret door at the appropriate time.

[Captain_Obvious]

Azzlee wrote...

I agree.

Except for in the case of LA Noire. Good development time, wonderful end product. But then R* were publisher and with their Big Daddy Take-Two they remain the only developer to shower me with gaming love.

LA Noire was a great game.  I finished it last week.  It has a great story, great atmosphere, astonishing recreation of 40s Los Angeles, and the cars!  Oh la la.  Bummer that the story is over and it's not really a game that lends itself to replayability for me.  DA2, I am willing to replay.  LA Noire, not so much. 

[SmokePants]

I would argue that there were far more people who gave DAO a shot and didn't come away with any special need to follow-up with the sequel than there are people who were super-DAO fans that boycotted DA2.

Listening to customers almost never works. There is an endless list of companies that went out of business doing just that. You people should be grateful that they are at least taking your comments into consideration.

Modifié par SmokePants, 03 juin 2011 - 11:21 .

[Morroian]

CoS Sarah Jinstar wrote...

Defending them and DA2's design decisions at every turn isn't that helpful either. 

Something I haven't done. I think some of what people complain about like recycled areas are valid criticisms.

Modifié par Morroian, 03 juin 2011 - 11:21 .

[MelfinaofOutlawStar]

Captain_Obvious wrote...

Azzlee wrote...

I agree.

Except for in the case of LA Noire. Good development time, wonderful end product. But then R* were publisher and with their Big Daddy Take-Two they remain the only developer to shower me with gaming love.

LA Noire was a great game.  I finished it last week.  It has a great story, great atmosphere, astonishing recreation of 40s Los Angeles, and the cars!  Oh la la.  Bummer that the story is over and it's not really a game that lends itself to replayability for me.  DA2, I am willing to replay.  LA Noire, not so much. 

See, I'm on the other side. LA Noir certainly doesn't lend itself to replayabiliy but I can definitely see myself picking it up again despite its faults(Cole not understand good cop/bad cop requires two people) because I enjoyed the story. Same reason I love playing Heavy Rain. I felt involved. I played and beat DA2 in a week and haven't touched it since because I felt I was an observer.

[Dormiglione]

ipgd wrote...

Dormiglione wrote...

ok, then explain me please the bolded text.

David Gaider wrote...
To a point, yes. One must also consider, however, that DAO took five times longer to make than DA2. In a development world where time equals money, that means DAO had to sell five times as many copies in order to be profitable. If it makes it easier to understand, take whatever sales numbers you believe DA2 had and multiply that by five-- that's an indication of its profitability relative to DAO.
Does that mean sales are the most important thing? Not really. It's not to us just as it's not to you. I'm not sure a large amount of sales would mean a fan would like a game any more or find it any more worthwhile, so a fan citing a lower amount of sales as being suddenly meaningful strikes me as a bit specious.

Money / Time = Profit

Because DAO took five times as much time (read: five times as much investment in overhead, salary costs, etc) it would have to have made five times as much money to be as relatively profitable as DA2. This is speaking in terms of relative comparison of profit. This was brought up because the issue of DA2's profitability was raised and he was addressing that specific issue and not tangential arguments regarding quality.

Honestly, thank you for the explanation. Look, this was the initial.

David Gaider wrote...

Myounage wrote...
Yes. DA:O outsold DA2 by a ton. That sends a message clearer than words to any business.

To a point, yes. One must also consider, however, that DAO took five.....

DAO outsold DA2 by a ton. Not because its development time was 5 years. I was not the one who brought up the argument of  5 years development time as an answer why DAO outsold DA2.

[CoS Sarah Jinstar]

Ariella wrote...

CoS Sarah Jinstar wrote...

David Gaider wrote...

Myounage wrote...
Yes. DA:O outsold DA2 by a ton. That sends a message clearer than words to any business.

To a point, yes. One must also consider, however, that DAO took five times longer to make than DA2. In a development world where time equals money, that means DAO had to sell five times as many copies in order to be profitable. If it makes it easier to understand, take whatever sales numbers you believe DA2 had and multiply that by five-- that's an indication of its profitability relative to DAO.

Does that mean sales are the most important thing? Not really. It's not to us just as it's not to you. I'm not sure a large amount of sales would mean a fan would like a game any more or find it any more worthwhile, so a fan citing a lower amount of sales as being suddenly meaningful strikes me as a bit specious.

The whole "10 million sales figure, CoD audience" thing gets repeated a lot around here, after all, but that's a self-referencing interpretation that has nothing to do with our realistic sales expectations. We're not in the business of making games just to go out of business, yes, but it's also not a good idea to mortgage a franchise for short-term gain. So hopefully there's a middle ground to be found here, and certainly there are a number of things we feel we can and should improve on (as Mike has said)-- as much because it will help sales as because we want to make them better. If we don't talk about what those specifics are, it's because we're not ready to... and because it would be better to eventually show you what we mean rather than simply discuss them.

While I'm obviously not privy to why Origins sat on the back burner for as long as it did, I don't think citing it's development time vs DA2 being rushed out half baked in 18 months really has a whole lot to do with one another.

Yes, it does. Part of DAO's problem is that it straddled two different time periods in the RPG genre, and a lot of the delay had to do with finding a publisher. DAO probably would have been a very different game if it had come out a year or two after it was announced. Probably PC only for one thing, not as cinematic for another.... There's a lot of things that would have been very different. But by EA publishing it in 2009 we got a lot of what Bioware was doing in other games and saw other companies do, which was most likely added to DAO. But we live in a different world now where competition is a lot more fierce for luxury goods like video games, and they have to come out on a reasonable schedule. 5 years isn't reasonable in this market.

I have a hard time buying this only because there are plenty of people who were quite content with how RPG's were being made. NWN I thought sold pretty well, the Kotor games I thought sold very well. It's not like there was this huge shift in the industry towards RPG's becoming simplier due to bad sales.

The streamlining is more than likely due to budgets balooning so much higher, its far more profitable these days to streamline things to the point of simplistic and shove it out the door.  Something I expect lesser developers to do, I guess it's partly my own fault for holding Bioware to a higher standard considering their pedigree and track record over the last decade.

I'm not saying they need to take 5 years per game (or 6+ if you're Blizzard), and to be honest I somehow get the feeling Origins was shelved or at the least not focused on as much in lieu of other titles being given higher priority during that time period.

18 months however is just not enough time for any developer to meet or pass the quality of BW's past titles like DA:O or a BG2/BG2TOB . It's just not going to happen.

[Ariella]

Dormiglione wrote...

Ariella wrote...

Dormiglione wrote...

David Gaider wrote...

To a point, yes. One must also consider, however, that DAO took five times longer to make than DA2. In a development world where time equals money, that means DAO had to sell five times as many copies in order to be profitable. If it makes it easier to understand, take whatever sales numbers you believe DA2 had and multiply that by five-- that's an indication of its profitability relative to DAO.

Do you really think that we are that stupid? What has a longer development time to do with the sells of a game? 

Let's make this clear, it has to do with profitablitiy of a game, Since DAO took 5 times as long to make, and during that period Bioware is paying for staff, rent or mortage on the office building, utilities, office supplies, machines to develope on etc... DAO has to generate more sales to counter the debt and be profitable. I don't see how this is a difficult concept.

You are right. 5 years of development time means that you have to pay salaries, taxes and many more like advertising and so on. DAO was for sure a really expensive product to develop.

Lets assume for whatever reason that customer didnt like it all. The product development cost remained the same. Sale numbers only a third of what it really did.

DAO had to sell much more than DA2 to be profitable. But it was not due to 5 years development time that it sold so well. It was because DAO was and is still a very good product.

Thats what im saying, not more not less.

But that's not the question Mr. Gaider was answering. He was pointing out that DA2 didn't have to sell as many units to be considered a profitable game by Bioware and EA in response to:

Yes. DA:O outsold DA2 by a ton. That sends a message clearer than words to any business

The implication is that DAO was more profitable because it sold more, where the truth of the matter is that since DA2 had a lower overhead it can be as or more profitable by company standard, depending how much above overhead Ea and Bioware brought in with this game.

[_Aine_]

I personally don't care what the development time is set to be, I care about how flexible that end predictive is ultimately only for one reason: the product it nets me as a consumer for my purchasing dollar. There should be every reason to finish on schedule, but if they end up with a game that ends up looking incomplete and sloppy when an extra 3-6 months could release something wonderful, why not look at what you have at 18 months compared to a) your objectives for it and your competition and reassess before release. If you as a company are continually pushing back release dates and disappointing fans through that extension, then you re-evaluate either your staff numbers, development time, staff quality etc. A smart company constantly re-evaluates, both against their own standards and that of the competition. Feedback doesn't necessarily change what you do, but it *should* impact your strategy and to some extent, your objectives.

You also have to make sure your comparisons are compatible: comparing development time and dollar from one genre to another can be very misleading as RPG have so many ( or should ) variables that you don't see in a single playthrough that adds $$ to a single playthrough experience. Because of this it would make logical sense ( though in actuality it may not be true, I am not sure) that 30 playthrough rpg hours may equal many more hours *real* playable time.

Modifié par shantisands, 03 juin 2011 - 11:31 .

[Dormiglione]

Realmzmaster wrote...

Dormiglione wrote...

Realmzmaster wrote...

Longer development time does not guarantee quality. Longer development time does not guarantee better polish or testing. You have to be careful to avoid feature and scope creep or you can make a crappy game even with a long development time.

Also if the development time is too long you can start losing key people who go on to other pursuits. The right balance of cost, time and personnel must be achieved.
Additionally If the game takes to long in development it will look outdated compared to newer games. On the other hand if the development time is to short the game will look rushed.

Edited for additional comment.

You are absolute right. It doesnt guarantee that it had more test cycles, that bugs were consequently tracked down and eliminated. You can only guess and hope that it has higher quality.

Realmzmaster wrote...
you can make a crappy game even with a long development time

finally there we go. Thats what i am saying. Its the final product, his quality, his functionality that matters how its received by the audience. Not the development time.

But a lot of forummates are saying because DA2 did not get enough or longer development time that it why it is the mess that it is. Which unforunately is not always the case.
Bethesda (makers of TES games) are known for their open sandlot worlds. They are also known for producing infinitely bugged games on release including game breaking ones. The games usually have a 4-5 year development time and still have more bugs than a Raid commercial and a barely workable story (with the exception of Morrowind). I like TES games. I own them all so I know of which I speak.

One of the basic problem with DA2 was in execution and sloppy re-use of the environments. They could have disguised the re-used environments better than they did and make the wall blockers look like walls or have a companion find a secret door at the appropriate time.

I agree on that. In my opinion most of the backlash is the result of the changes in DA2 compared to DAO. Some of the changes are indeed a big improvement (in my opinion). Not discussing the execution of the changes, only the concept of the changes. And i still trust the Bioware Team that they will search the middle ground between DAO and DA2.

However, i can only guess, by making so many changes, they simply ran out of time and couldnt develop / implement them the way they should have. I dont know why  DA2 had to come out in 18 month. Again, my speculation, i think that DA2 had been a lot more polished / better with a development time of 24 months. Just my speculation.

[ipgd]

bEVEsthda wrote...

Yes. That point has some merit too. I have myself many times argued that I would have been a lot happier with DA2, if it hadn't been so obvious that it was supposed to be the new direction of DA.

However, even if I would have played it, and thought nothing much beyond that, and got on with my life (as I do anyway ) , I would NEVER have bought the game if it hadn't been part of the DA franchise. Never. Why the h* would I ever, normally, waste time and money on some mediocre splatter game, with very confused art direction, for teens?

No, the thing that would have made this work for me, would be if Bioware had announced they would also release 'different' games within the DA IP, and that this 'DA:Kirkwall Champion' was such a game. Yes. I would have bought it just because it was a DA game, played it and been happy enough, as I was still waiting for DA:O2, the real RPG.
But without DA:O? Not a chance.

I prefer to judge games on their own merits rather than letting a title choice completely determine whether or not I am outraged, but wutevs. I enjoyed DA2 both as its own game and as a sequel to Origins, because I didn't expect or demand a carbon copy rehash and DA2's existence does not reach back into the past and erase DAO forever.

Dormiglione wrote...

DAO outsold DA2 by a ton. Not because its development time was 5 years. I was not the one who brought up the argument of  5 years development time as an answer why DAO outsold DA2.

He didn't say that its development time was the reason why it outsold DA2, guy. He was making a statement regarding the profitability of DA2 relative to DAO, in response to a comment insinuating that DA2 was less profitable than DAO because it sold less in unweighted figures. One needs to "account for inflation" to make an accurate comparison.

Nothing in that statement had anything to do with whether DA2 or DAO were good or bad or anything for any reason, it was entirely related to profit in order to answer a comment about profit.

Modifié par ipgd, 03 juin 2011 - 11:37 .

[Ariella]

CoS Sarah Jinstar wrote...

Ariella wrote...

CoS Sarah Jinstar wrote...

David Gaider wrote...

Myounage wrote...
Yes. DA:O outsold DA2 by a ton. That sends a message clearer than words to any business.

To a point, yes. One must also consider, however, that DAO took five times longer to make than DA2. In a development world where time equals money, that means DAO had to sell five times as many copies in order to be profitable. If it makes it easier to understand, take whatever sales numbers you believe DA2 had and multiply that by five-- that's an indication of its profitability relative to DAO.

Does that mean sales are the most important thing? Not really. It's not to us just as it's not to you. I'm not sure a large amount of sales would mean a fan would like a game any more or find it any more worthwhile, so a fan citing a lower amount of sales as being suddenly meaningful strikes me as a bit specious.

The whole "10 million sales figure, CoD audience" thing gets repeated a lot around here, after all, but that's a self-referencing interpretation that has nothing to do with our realistic sales expectations. We're not in the business of making games just to go out of business, yes, but it's also not a good idea to mortgage a franchise for short-term gain. So hopefully there's a middle ground to be found here, and certainly there are a number of things we feel we can and should improve on (as Mike has said)-- as much because it will help sales as because we want to make them better. If we don't talk about what those specifics are, it's because we're not ready to... and because it would be better to eventually show you what we mean rather than simply discuss them.

While I'm obviously not privy to why Origins sat on the back burner for as long as it did, I don't think citing it's development time vs DA2 being rushed out half baked in 18 months really has a whole lot to do with one another.

Yes, it does. Part of DAO's problem is that it straddled two different time periods in the RPG genre, and a lot of the delay had to do with finding a publisher. DAO probably would have been a very different game if it had come out a year or two after it was announced. Probably PC only for one thing, not as cinematic for another.... There's a lot of things that would have been very different. But by EA publishing it in 2009 we got a lot of what Bioware was doing in other games and saw other companies do, which was most likely added to DAO. But we live in a different world now where competition is a lot more fierce for luxury goods like video games, and they have to come out on a reasonable schedule. 5 years isn't reasonable in this market.

I have a hard time buying this only because there are plenty of people who were quite content with how RPG's were being made. NWN I thought sold pretty well, the Kotor games I thought sold very well. It's not like there was this huge shift in the industry towards RPG's becoming simplier due to bad sales.

NWN in its original form was terrible. Worse than any complaint about DA2 could be. There were reasons (vast and annoying reasons) but NWN really was only saved by the toolset and the expansions which were much better. And Bioware did only one KotOR, and that was one of the transition pieces that I was talking about. Compare NWN to DAO, graphic wise, response wise, story wise no comparison. Dragon Age was announced in 2004. Between that you have Kotor2, NWN2, Mass Effect, and various other games that did change expectation for the genre. More things had to be done for a game to be good. Voices for all the NPCs for example, more use of cinemagraphic camera techniques, plus the game now had to be viable for two other platforms. It has nothing to do with bad sales and everything to do with developers pushing the envelope between the time of DA's conception and DAO's actual release.

[Realmzmaster]

The assumption being made is because DAO sold more copies it was more profitable which is not necessarily the case. It all boils down to how much DAO cost to make versus how much it cost them to make DA2. Stakeholders are going to be looking at profitability.
Those are the numbers that matter to them. It does not matter if DAO sold 4.5 million copies vs say 1.7 million for DA2.
If DAO only returns say for example sake 25 cents for each copy (due to greater expense) sold then the profit is 1.125 million. If the profit per copy of DA2 is $1 ( due to less expenses) then the profit is 1.7 million. DA2 is more profitable.

Now this is an example not the actual figures, but it does show that you can sell many copies and not make the same amount of profit.

Number of copies sold does not mean profitability.

Modifié par Realmzmaster, 03 juin 2011 - 11:43 .

[bEVEsthda]

ipgd wrote...

bEVEsthda wrote...

Yes. That point has some merit too. I have myself many times argued that I would have been a lot happier with DA2, if it hadn't been so obvious that it was supposed to be the new direction of DA.

However, even if I would have played it, and thought nothing much beyond that, and got on with my life (as I do anyway ) , I would NEVER have bought the game if it hadn't been part of the DA franchise. Never. Why the h* would I ever, normally, waste time and money on some mediocre splatter game, with very confused art direction, for teens?

No, the thing that would have made this work for me, would be if Bioware had announced they would also release 'different' games within the DA IP, and that this 'DA:Kirkwall Champion' was such a game. Yes. I would have bought it just because it was a DA game, played it and been happy enough, as I was still waiting for DA:O2, the real RPG.
But without DA:O? Not a chance.

I prefer to judge games on their own merits rather than letting a title choice completely determine whether or not I am outraged, but wutevs. I enjoyed DA2 both as its own game and as a sequel to Origins, because I didn't expect or demand a carbon copy rehash and DA2's existence does not reach back into the past and erase DAO forever.

Oh, but it does erase the DA franchise of DAO for ever.  And gives over the IP to something else.

[Dormiglione]

@Ariella
@ipgd

I apologize. Sometime my blood heats up and im a little stubborn. Only a little? Ahh, i guess more than a little. I think you know now what my opinion is.

So lets go on with other topics.

Wish you both a good night.

Modifié par Dormiglione, 03 juin 2011 - 11:50 .