145 réponses à ce sujet

[UriahJob]

KLF_uh_HUH_uh_HUH wrote...

Agent_Dark_ wrote...
Valve is also a privately run company that doesn't have to answer to shareholders.  EA is not. 

Valve is in the business to make games.  EA is in the business to make money, by selling games.  I don't automatically hate EA because of that (they're a huge corporation in a capitalist society... I'm not sure what the point of getting mad over that is, unless you're a genuine socialist), but it's fairly clear that there is going to be a different focus by each company in regards to how they operate. 

Yay for capitalism -- the objection is to the precise mode of capitalism being used.  You don't have to make mass market products to make money.  That's how EA does things, but it doesn't seem to have been Bioware's approach until it was taken over by EA.  Like I said, the essential difference between EA's approach and Bioware's old approach was that EA is more interested in selling commodities than it is selling branded products.  Their models -- based on the FIFA and NFL series -- suggest they would rather sell big mass market products than sell products -- as "action" RPGs, or RPGs generally are -- that appeal to a smaller niche.

I suspect Bioware didn't quite realise how much pressure they'd get towards making mass market games when they agreed to sell to EA.  I suspect all they saw was EA's massive cash reserves and their own big dreams of how much bigger and greater games they could make with access to that cash.  They might have considered the difference in approaches, but probably got some "puffery" from EA to the effect that "We'll see that you keep the artistic integrity of your franchises, we want to support the kind of games you make".

Reality probably set in around the time ME2 -- not ME3 -- was being considered.  Whatever EA had said before or during the acquisition process, Bioware was now in EA 's hands and EA determined how much money was to be spent and what time limits were set.

In passing, I shudder to think of how bad a shape ME3 must have been in at the point where Bioware got an extension on its release time limit -- given the models, even the beancounters at EA must have been convinced that ME3 needed another 2 months to make ready for release.  Sheez.

EDIT: Failing grammar is fail.

     So, what "mode of capitalism" are you referring to, and what mode do you actually want? In the case of EA and Mass Effect franchise I do not see any reason to complain as each contract was made by consenting parties. BioWare's boss(es) agreed to have a contract with EA because what EA was offering was what they wanted. When you or I buy Mass Effect 3, voluntarily, we also agreed to exchange money for the game. Even after that, any of us could have demanded their money back. If not from the retailer, then possibly from EA.
      If you do not think the way EA runs their things you could explain what alternative you'd want. I don't mean "they should make games with better endings" but business wise. I mean, would you seriously want some government agency to step in and tell EA to do something differently? Best way to go about it is to voice your opinion about the corporation's practices is to stop giving money to them. Don't you think?
     Agent_Dark is correct to point out EA being a share holder owned company whose goal is to make money. Usually it actually doesn't require going against the fans' wishes, but I guess this time it did. 
Also think about whether Mass Effect 2 or 3 would have been made at all without funding of EA. I don't know if they would have been.

[hangmans tree]

NoxNoctum wrote...

Got a link? Sounds interesting. I googled but couldn't find anything.

About the company or CEOs interviews?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CD_Projekt
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CD_Projekt_RED
interv. , most recent I guess:
www.youtube.com/watch
and older:
www.pcgamer.com/2011/11/29/interview-cd-projekts-ceo-on-witcher-2-piracy-why-drms-still-not-worth-it/
www.youtube.com/watch
www.joystiq.com/2012/03/08/witcher-2-publisher-we-will-never-use-any-drm-anymore/

There are others, you will have to look through 'em in some gaming sites media section on TW2. There were several that I remember.

Most interesting:

"We release the game. It's cracked in two hours, it was no time for Witcher 2.
What really surprised me is that the pirates didn't use the GOG
version, which was not protected. They took the SecuROM retail version,
cracked it and said 'we cracked it' -- meanwhile there's a non-secure
version with a simultaneous release. You'd think the GOG version would
be the one floating around."

What would that tell you?

Modifié par hangmans tree, 24 avril 2012 - 01:20 .

[Sanunes]

I think people forget about the negatives when trying to compare BioWare games, I remember playing Jade Empire and the first half was great, but then the second half felt like the ending of Mass Effect 3 and people still beg for a sequel.

If you include that people are calling BioWare liars based on developer comments during production of the game Valve talked a pretty extravagant game too when they were hyping Half-Life 2 and the different episodes, for weren't we to get a new episode every six to eight months and I only have up to Episode 2 and Half Life 2 was released eight years ago. There are other cases that show valve doing similar things as BioWare does, for I remember the Left 4 Dead sequel which was no better then a BioWare release schedule.

Don't get me wrong I will probably buy Half-Life 3 when its eventually released, but I don't think Valve is any better then BioWare. The real question is would the community be complaining here if BioWare took eight years to make Mass Effect 3?

[t_i_e_]

EA / Bioware need to change directions!

Nobody should be buying any EA products if their going to endorse lying and not completing products before release. Then making players pay to get key points from games or to pay for their product they didn't complete in time.

Others companies are going to follow their lead if you let them do it. Be a good consumer. Complain and do not buy their products. Rent, buy pre-played or borrow games that you must absolutely play. Make them hurt and listen.

I remember when Blizzard cancelled StarCraft Ghost. I was floored. All I could think about is how much money they had lost because it looked like they had an alpha already built. But then I stepped back and thought. Holy smokes! If their willing to lose that kind of money to ensure their products have quality then that is a company I want to do business with.

[KLF_uh_HUH_uh_HUH]

UriahJob wrote...

KLF_uh_HUH_uh_HUH wrote...

Agent_Dark_ wrote...
Valve is also a privately run company that doesn't have to answer to shareholders.  EA is not. 

Valve is in the business to make games.  EA is in the business to make money, by selling games.  I don't automatically hate EA because of that (they're a huge corporation in a capitalist society... I'm not sure what the point of getting mad over that is, unless you're a genuine socialist), but it's fairly clear that there is going to be a different focus by each company in regards to how they operate. 

Yay for capitalism -- the objection is to the precise mode of capitalism being used.  You don't have to make mass market products to make money.  That's how EA does things, but it doesn't seem to have been Bioware's approach until it was taken over by EA.  Like I said, the essential difference between EA's approach and Bioware's old approach was that EA is more interested in selling commodities than it is selling branded products.  Their models -- based on the FIFA and NFL series -- suggest they would rather sell big mass market products than sell products -- as "action" RPGs, or RPGs generally are -- that appeal to a smaller niche.

I suspect Bioware didn't quite realise how much pressure they'd get towards making mass market games when they agreed to sell to EA.  I suspect all they saw was EA's massive cash reserves and their own big dreams of how much bigger and greater games they could make with access to that cash.  They might have considered the difference in approaches, but probably got some "puffery" from EA to the effect that "We'll see that you keep the artistic integrity of your franchises, we want to support the kind of games you make".

Reality probably set in around the time ME2 -- not ME3 -- was being considered.  Whatever EA had said before or during the acquisition process, Bioware was now in EA 's hands and EA determined how much money was to be spent and what time limits were set.

In passing, I shudder to think of how bad a shape ME3 must have been in at the point where Bioware got an extension on its release time limit -- given the models, even the beancounters at EA must have been convinced that ME3 needed another 2 months to make ready for release.  Sheez.

EDIT: Failing grammar is fail.

     So, what "mode of capitalism" are you referring to, and what mode do you actually want? In the case of EA and Mass Effect franchise I do not see any reason to complain as each contract was made by consenting parties. BioWare's boss(es) agreed to have a contract with EA because what EA was offering was what they wanted. When you or I buy Mass Effect 3, voluntarily, we also agreed to exchange money for the game. Even after that, any of us could have demanded their money back. If not from the retailer, then possibly from EA.
      If you do not think the way EA runs their things you could explain what alternative you'd want. I don't mean "they should make games with better endings" but business wise. I mean, would you seriously want some government agency to step in and tell EA to do something differently? Best way to go about it is to voice your opinion about the corporation's practices is to stop giving money to them. Don't you think?
     Agent_Dark is correct to point out EA being a share holder owned company whose goal is to make money. Usually it actually doesn't require going against the fans' wishes, but I guess this time it did. 
Also think about whether Mass Effect 2 or 3 would have been made at all without funding of EA. I don't know if they would have been.

Asking me what alternative I want is not relevant.  I'm not in the business of making games and marketing them.  EA and Bioware are.  That does not prevent an outside from noting errors or mistakes.  If a fielder fails to catch a ball, anyone in the stands can see it -- no amount of shouting by the right fielder or the coach makes it otherwise.

I also don't know where the "government agency" angle comes into it - rest assured the *last* thing I'm interested in is government control of a market.  Nor do I think that's contended or contemplated in any case. The Better Business Bureau intervention isn't really what we're talking about; regulation of markets is required because a market without the rule of law is anarchic, not libertarian, but we're going well outside the bounds of our discussion now.

As to what mode of capitalism I'm talking about -- like I already said, I meant different ways of making money, which therefore is a different mode of capitalism.  Mass market versus niche.  High customer service model versus the "Soup ****" method.  Bioware previously was selling to a (large-ish) niche, not a mass market.  But ME2 and ME3 were made for mass markets, which is EA's model of making money.  Nothing wrong with that -- if your main customer base wants nothing more than mass market style games.

That's where personally I think the marriage with EA was poorly-thought out, as evidenced by the results: too short a dev time, not enough thinking or planning, poor final results and alienated fanbase.  I'm sure Bioware and EA were happy with the initial match, mostly because one or both of them didn't think out properly all the consequences of Bioware being bought out in terms of how it would change Bioware's products.  It's going to cost Bioware its reputation if it already hasn't, but as you say the only people who have a say in that are EA and Bioware.  *shrug*  It's not as if a bunch of keyboard jockeys on BSN, myself included, are going to convince EA and Bioware to part ways.  You are quite right that the best way to convince BEware it's got it wrong is to withhold your funds.  As, I think, the silent majority eventually will.  That's the only kind of democracy a corporation ultimately understands.  But commentary as much as currency has an impact, too, so I think the comment shoul continue.

EA can and should run its company any way it wants.  It's also true a company's existence is only to make money for its shareholders -- but, as decades of corporate law and experience tell us, there are many ways to "make money" which ultimately destroy the company or the goodwill in the company that generates those funds.  You can sell every asset a company has, thus "making money" in the short term, but in the long term you'll destroy that company and therefore the profits that the shareholders expect.  Concordantly, EA can choose to turn Bioware into a mass market husk, as it were, but it will have to accept the consequences that flow from it -- the alienation of the core Bioware fanbase and the resulting drop in sales over time.  As I said, that will be sad, but other makers of games will rise to fill the niche.

[thunderhawk862002]

KLF_uh_HUH_uh_HUH wrote...

Agent_Dark_ wrote...
Valve is also a privately run company that doesn't have to answer to shareholders.  EA is not. 

Valve is in the business to make games.  EA is in the business to make money, by selling games.  I don't automatically hate EA because of that (they're a huge corporation in a capitalist society... I'm not sure what the point of getting mad over that is, unless you're a genuine socialist), but it's fairly clear that there is going to be a different focus by each company in regards to how they operate. 

Yay for capitalism -- the objection is to the precise mode of capitalism being used.  You don't have to make mass market products to make money.  That's how EA does things, but it doesn't seem to have been Bioware's approach until it was taken over by EA.  Like I said, the essential difference between EA's approach and Bioware's old approach was that EA is more interested in selling commodities than it is selling branded products.  Their models -- based on the FIFA and NFL series -- suggest they would rather sell big mass market products than sell products -- as "action" RPGs, or RPGs generally are -- that appeal to a smaller niche.

I suspect Bioware didn't quite realise how much pressure they'd get towards making mass market games when they agreed to sell to EA.  I suspect all they saw was EA's massive cash reserves and their own big dreams of how much bigger and greater games they could make with access to that cash.  They might have considered the difference in approaches, but probably got some "puffery" from EA to the effect that "We'll see that you keep the artistic integrity of your franchises, we want to support the kind of games you make".

Reality probably set in around the time ME2 -- not ME3 -- was being considered.  Whatever EA had said before or during the acquisition process, Bioware was now in EA 's hands and EA determined how much money was to be spent and what time limits were set.

In passing, I shudder to think of how bad a shape ME3 must have been in at the point where Bioware got an extension on its release time limit -- given the models, even the beancounters at EA must have been convinced that ME3 needed another 2 months to make ready for release.  Sheez.

EDIT: Failing grammar is fail.

Yeah.  You can tell BioWare got cold feet by streamlining your choices in the game.  The council, Udina/Anderson, Rachni, Collector Base, for/against Cerebrus,  etc.  How easy would it have been to just lock the Rachni mission if you didn't save them in ME1.  I thought the whole point of the series was living with your choices and seeing the ramifications of them through three games.

[Sanunes]

thunderhawk862002 wrote...

Yeah.  You can tell BioWare got cold feet by streamlining your choices in the game.  The council, Udina/Anderson, Rachni, Collector Base, for/against Cerebrus,  etc.  How easy would it have been to just lock the Rachni mission if you didn't save them in ME1.  I thought the whole point of the series was living with your choices and seeing the ramifications of them through three games.

I am not sure what BioWare streamlined with the council, but I know the reason why they made the choice with Udine and Anderson was because it became canon in one of the books that Uldina was councilor and they decided to go with that because there would be people nit picking about that as well.  What I would have liked to have seen is a line added to Anderson at the begining that "he stepped down from being the councilor to protect Shepard" and I wouldn't have cared that Uldina was streamlined into being the councilor.

My opinion on some of not locking some options is that people would have been complaining that they couldn't access all the content unless they did the missions and using your example people who play on the PS3 would never be able to do the Rachni mission because they don't have access to Mass Effect 1 or people would be upset they would have to create a new game in Mass Effect 1 to access locked content.

What I am hoping is BioWare won't make a story that spans three games again, for I can see where that has tied their hands with certain aspects of the game and one of them is being a story that branches more and would lock out portions of the game or at the very least have a more noticable change on the game itself.  I know people are showing what the Witcher 2 did, but I wonder if they would have been able to lock out or change parts of the story if it spanned three games.

Edit.  Typos.

Modifié par Sanunes, 24 avril 2012 - 02:12 .

[Anaeme]

EA has its heel on Bioware...

It seems that the pressure to generate cash has overwhelmed the company's ability to consistently commit to high quality gaming content.

Look at all the DAO DLC, you can count the good ones in less than one finger...infact there was one machinima that was better than officially released DLC.

DA2 was just horrible...and Bioware knows it

It seems they realize now that something is wrong. it is not clear they know how to fix it though

[AlanC9]

thunderhawk862002 wrote...
Yeah.  You can tell BioWare got cold feet by streamlining your choices in the game.  The council, Udina/Anderson, Rachni, Collector Base, for/against Cerebrus,  etc.  How easy would it have been to just lock the Rachni mission if you didn't save them in ME1.  I thought the whole point of the series was living with your choices and seeing the ramifications of them through three games.

I wouldn't call this "cold feet." It's more like Bio had incoherent design objectives. Locking out the rachni mission would have been easy, sure; but Bio's never believed in locking out content based on previous choices. This has always been their house style, and this was only reinforced when user telemetry data proved that most players don't replay Bio's games, so locking out content means that a bunch of players never see that content. Similarly, Bio's never been very big on alternate quest paths. Usually you end up doing more or less the same thing. Think about how similar the KotOR endgames play whether you're going LS or DS. A couple of different cutscenes, but you're still fighting your way to Malak against pretty much the same enemies.

ME3 is on the high side for Bio games in terms of alternate paths and consequences.

This is just what Bio does, what Bio's always done. Somehow, ME fans got confused about this. And of course, Bio's prerelease chatter helped them to get this wrong.

[-Spartan]

KLF_uh_HUH_uh_HUH wrote...

UriahJob wrote...

Well, saying fiasco depends on how you see it. If it is about making a lot of money for EA and Bioware then they succeeded and did not have a fiasco. Fiasco would be for the upset players for buying the game.

True enough it depends on your viewpoint, but even saying it's not a fiasco just because it makes a lot of money for EA and Bioware is itself relative.  That's the old argument "there's no such thing as bad publicity" repackaged.  And that argument depends on whether you already have any goodwill stored up in the maker of the product to begin with.

Bioware's reputation, at least for some years, was first class: everything from Baldur's Gate onwards created a market 'image' that they turned out well-thought-out, well-crafted, minimal-bug games that gave people a lot of choice.  That is, high production standards.  This is not the same as simply spending a lot of money on a game.  In short, Bioware made its games a branded product.

Saying "there's no such thing as bad publicity because it gets us more sales" assumes that you are marketing a commodity - an item which, in the final analysis, is not really that different from any of its competition.  When selling commodities, the goal is to sell as many individual items as possible - typically by having a lower price than anyone else, although a higher profile will also help with that.  Bad publicity draws attention to your product without you having to drop your price.

For branded products, it's entirely different: people buy particular brands because there's thought to be some intrinsic value in the brand name itself.  And every maker of commodities generally falls over itself to try and construct a branded product, one where people buy just on the name of the maker rather than weighing up the product's price against anyone else.

I would have contended that the furore surrounding ME3's ending tends to magnify the other issues with the game - PS3 meltdown, Origin, Chobot, etc, etc.  Those are all hits to the perception of Bioware's brand -- if an impression is left in the marketplace that they're not really a cut above any other game maker (the old "pew pew shooter" argument) then people in the long run have no reason to pick Bioware as compared with any other game company.

For the most part, I would have thought the reason EA bought out Bioware was mainly because of the goodwill they'd accrued.  Bioware didn't have its own proprietary game engine; it was doing nothing terribly unique with games in terms of actual coding wizardry or making XBoxes drink oil and crap rainbows.  What it *did* have at the point of sale was massive goodwill -- a perception that Bioware itself was a branded product.  Had that not been the case, EA would have simply acquired the assets of the company and dissolved Bioware, absorbing the assets into EA overall.  They didn't -- "Bioware, a division of EA".

Selling a lot of games off the back of "bad ending" controversy is a short-term gain for long-term loss, because like it or not Bioware has done damage to its own reputation with ME3, justly or unjustly.  They have, in effect, burned up some of the goodwill that EA paid good money for.  That would count as a loss to EA.  Higher sales initially might stop some of that loss, but seen in the long term damaging the goodwill that EA paid for is a bad, bad move.  

You seem to understand well the situation. Sadly many others do not. 

[Sanunes]

AlanC9 wrote...
This is just what Bio does, what Bio's always done. Somehow, ME fans got confused about this. And of course, Bio's
prerelease chatter helped them to get this wrong.

I agree, I firmly believe that there was too much hyping for Mass Effect 3 and that caused a lot of the issues, I also wonder if the ending wouldn't have been as negatively recieved without all the comments made before the game was released by BioWare staff and maybe got people's hopes too high to see beyond what BioWare has always done.

[BooPi]

Theory: EA acquired Bioware and forced them to rush ME3 with the knowledge that rushing it would hurt Bioware. Even though it hurts their newly acquired property, EA did it because they are trying to create a portfolio of developers that turn out lackluster products on quick schedules for steady profit; acquiring and then smothering good developers reduces the competition in the market and makes consumers more willing to accept EA's standard--more profitable--fare.

Just speculating.

The less paranoid conclusion is that Bioware has never really been all that great at endings anyway. Their track record shows that they tend to release decent-to-good games with the occasional omgwtfbbq-awesome game mixed in, and that ME3 just happened to be (very disappointingly) one of the former.

Modifié par BooPi, 24 avril 2012 - 06:58 .

[Seishoujyo]

Bioware just wants our money, period, there is no more fan/dev relationship.

[Chris Priestly]

Seishoujyo wrote...

Bioware just wants our money, period, there is no more fan/dev relationship.

Yet, here we both are. Crazy.

[Guanxii]

Chris Priestly wrote...

Seishoujyo wrote...

Bioware just wants our money, period, there is no more fan/dev relationship.

Yet, here we both are. Crazy.

This must be a soul destroying job sometimes.

[eoinnx03]

Chris Priestly wrote...

Seishoujyo wrote...

Bioware just wants our money, period, there is no more fan/dev relationship.

Yet, here we both are. Crazy.

Nice.

[RinpocheSchnozberry]

Chris Priestly wrote...

Seishoujyo wrote...

Bioware just wants our money, period, there is no more fan/dev relationship.

Yet, here we both are. Crazy.

Owned.  :lol:

[eoinnx03]

Chris Priestly wrote...

Seishoujyo wrote...

Bioware just wants our money, period, there is no more fan/dev relationship.

Yet, here we both are. Crazy.

Yeah I worry for you Chris.

[DaBigDragon]

Chris Priestly wrote...

Seishoujyo wrote...

Bioware just wants our money, period, there is no more fan/dev relationship.

Yet, here we both are. Crazy.

I do not envy you and what you have to deal with on here Mr. Priestly.

[aberdash]

Chris Priestly wrote...

Yet, here we both are. Crazy.

I assume you are here just because that's what you get paid to do. All the other actual devs seem to have abandoned this board.

[RinpocheSchnozberry]

[quote]aberdash wrote...

[/quote]I assume you are here just because that's what you get paid to do. All the other actual devs seem to have abandoned this board.
[/quote]

Go to the multiplayer board.  Bask in the Bioware tags.

[aberdash]

RinpocheSchnozberry wrote...


Go to the multiplayer board.  Bask in the Bioware tags.

Just did. 4 threads on the first 2 pages with bioware posts. All from the same person.

[Little Queen]

Chris Priestly wrote...

Seishoujyo wrote...

Bioware just wants our money, period, there is no more fan/dev relationship.

Yet, here we both are. Crazy.

Good one. 

@Seishoujyo:  Why are you here if you feel that way? Noone keeps you from leaving bsn. Just saying....