Ah yes, we have a couple of Bioware folks over at Cyonan's board as well.
If we're getting competitive, how about this for a follow 
Seriously, though, whether it is promoting uBSN, TSG or new BSN, the people behind those activities are doing it because they care.
The community will inevitably consolidate, let's not upset each other while we do it.
And while we're on the subject, let's not forget the People's Front of Judea...
Looking at it now. Literally no support and all anger at the decision. Pleasently surprised because we are told by a few here that non BSNers are happy.
It seems that , Bioware is about to taste the TOXICITY of the open internet.
I think they will simply block, avoid and ignore any negativity. From August 26 on, they will have to actively seek out negativity to find out about it. I rather doubt that will happen.
It would be nice if that didn't happen though...
Twitter is worthless. Reddit is censorship happy, Tumblr is worthless, wikis are infodumps only.
How is this in any way a good idea, again? Oh wait, because EA is shooting Bioware in the head and finding ways to make me want to not buy Bioware games because they got criticized about their creation.
Welcome to the internet, dear.
Oh man, I have so many totallynot!Patrick Weekes questions that will never be answered.
To be a fly on the wall in the office after that little bomb drop...
I need to catch up on things, I've missed this. There was a leak about ME3 development and people figured out it was Weekes who was the source?
As someone who would have never have known that they were closing this place down and eradicating it from existence unless it was mentioned on VSN, I'm still sad to see it go.
I feel bad for those that just joined here recently, those that won't experience the community as it used to be. Make no mistake, off-topic was not a hive of toxicity, it was one of the most consistently laid-back, friendly and genuinely entertaining communities here. I'd made some great friends there, would have loved to have made more, but... y'know, gotta close down that nastiness.
I hope that those losing their 'home' here as I did last year find a suitable substitute.
Oh, before I forget, the Party Temple (also an off-topic thread originally, now buried somewhere in ME Fan Creations) was great fun and I'm incredibly sad to see that go. Many hilarious nights were spent there and I will remember them forever.
"Non-stop renting because I'm strong." - Grunt
I wonder which new forum the BioBots will join secretly because deep down, I think they they will miss BSN a lot.
Randomly messaging people telling them they have a warning point for being clever; starting threads only to ask them to be closed... gif spamming then editing to include some token text...
I think maybe the attributes you like in games are simply not the attributes that I like in games. For instance, story, writing, design, and direction. Perhaps there are other attributes besides those that BG, Origins, DA2 and Inquisition all equally excelled at.
No, I'm pretty sure that I like all that stuff. I just think the writing, design and direction were just as good in Dragon Age: Inquisition were just as good as in DAO and DA2. Superior in some areas, actually. (The main story was indeed not as good. Until Trespasser, anyway.)
Opinions. We all have them.
Reading those Glassdoor reviews, while not necessarily objective, did remind me of something. Every year Maclean's magazine in Canada does a list of the Top 100 Canadian Employers, based on criteria like workplace benefits, work atmosphere, performance management, training and development, employee health and well-being and general work-life balance, etc. Bioware made the list in 2004, 2005, 2006, 2008 and again in 2010--and never again since.
I know that doesn't necessarily "mean" anything either, but it does make me a little sad. I remember being super impressed at the time to see a video game company appear on a list like that, given their broader reputation for being meat grinders.
Anyway, in the interest of the new status quo, let me sum up with an appropriately hyperbolic, click-baity pronouncement fit for social media consumption:
Bioware: officially worse than Monsanto
So I only heard about this now in the SW:TOR forums and .. uh, really?
Twitter is the anti-thesis to communication.
Tumblr is for porn.
Instagram is for pictures.
Facebook is only good for news updates.
Reddit fails because of censorship.
Any other brilliant ideas, BioWare?
Do you honestly expect your fans to have actual discussions and conversations about your games on those sites? Tell me, how is that supposed to work?
Can you name one other game studio that doesn't have their own forum? Do you think not having one is in any shape or form better? I'm sure your competition was amused at the news.
I can't imagine that you don't have the resources to run a forum. You're an EA division, you should have the spare money for a forum. Hell, if your fans can run them, so can you.
So this isn't about money, it's about something else. You do not want feedback anymore, is that? Or you only want positive feedback? Have you ever talked with someone who has a clue? Because you need negative feedback just as much, otherwise your result will be inaccurate.
Ever tried to post something negative about Mass Effect or Dragon Age on Reddit? It gets downvoted on principle and no one gets to see it ever again.
This is a huge mistake, made for all the wrong reasons. You could have revitalized these forums years ago. It's simple, really. But it isn't easy and it requires commitment, something you seem to want to avoid.
You've already lost me as a fan, now you lost me as a customer, too. The probability that I'll buy ME:A without having this community to enjoy it with is in the single digits now.
Yeah, yeah, you don't care. I've know that for years.
Good luck. Won't take all that long until you launch a new forum because you'll realize you're better off having one. You know, like any other game studio out there.
Seems like the common complaint is about the crunch time periods during production. Those must be sweat shop level brutal.
That's a common problem throughout the Game Development industry though. Got to reach those deadlines and games get more complicated all the time
Remember that signatures aren't visible on the mobile version of the site, so you might want to consider putting those links in the body of your posts.A reminder, we can salvage a lot of BSN members on VSN and TSG, links are in my signature.
Can you name one other game studio that doesn't have their own forum? Do you think not having one is in any shape or form better? I'm sure your competition was amused at the news.
Even Turtlerock (the makers of Evolve) kept their forums despite the shenanigans behind their skins DLC and declining playerbase. Most of the small indies don't have a forum but they do communicate on steam.
Why contain it? Let it spill out into the streets. People need to know.
By the way, have you guys seen the Glassdoor page for Bioware (http://www.glassdoor...iews-E22998.htm? What a hoot. Sounds like the place is circling the drain.
Just wanted to bring this up again.
Holy hell, most of those reviews do not sound promising. Most people is mentioning that there's a huge political factor, and unless you are friends with someone on the top, you're a nobody. And they seem to be really closed minded.
The site insists I sign in / sign up to continue checking reviews (not gonna happen), but for what I can see it's a downhill. At first they had a positive image, but latest reviews are bringing up the negative points I mentioned above. Downhill indeed.
Not looking good at all.
I need to catch up on things, I've missed this. There was a leak about ME3 development and people figured out it was Weekes who was the source?
From what I've gathered "allegedly" Mr Weekes was posting on a somewhat popular forum , he had an alias but it was known it was him.
After the ME3 ending , "allegedly" he posted his version of what happened with ME3 ending."allegedly" Casey Hudson and Mark or Matt Whateverhisnameis (lead writer guy) wrote the ME3 ending all by themselves and refused peer review.
"Allegedly" Mr Weekes said in a very diplomatic manner the ME3 ending was crappy.
When the story hit internet and the press jumped on it Bioware went on full Deny all the Thing mode.
Kevin Lynch!Wow.
They stopped providing us with company long ago.They care. They care about our money, and our credit card info. It's just our company they can't stand.
From what I've gathered "allegedly" Mr Weekes was posting on a somewhat popular forum , he had an alias but it was known it was him.
After the ME3 ending , "allegedly" he posted his version of what happened with ME3 ending."allegedly" Casey Hudson and Mark or Matt Whateverhisnameis (lead writer guy) wrote the ME3 ending all by themselves and refused peer review.
"Allegedly" Mr Weekes said in a very diplomatic manner the ME3 ending was crappy.
When the story hit internet and the press jumped on it Bioware went on full Deny all the Thing mode.
His comment about Thane:
Yah, that's true, too. They could be shutting down the forums because they've had so many leaks in the past. As soon as it enters "beta" phase (which none of us ever see), someone invariably posts links to the script. Then they have to go in and rewrite, tweak it, and just overall do all of the facial animations over again.
Anders is the protagonist in DA2. One of the big reasons (and there are many) why I disliked DA2 was that I wanted my character to be doing what Anders was doing. Anders got to be the one with vision and ambition, and all Hawke got to do was react.It never ceases to amaze me that people love Elf Hitler but everyone hates Anders.
DA2's release wasn't so long ago.Having been here since around DA2's release, I can say that both of them have always been like that. They weren't embittered by the trolls, their attitudes are probably what made a lot of people troll.
Furthermore, people representing a business are expected to conduct themselves with some degree of maturity. Minimum wage employees at Wal-Mart and McDonald's are held to professionalism standards and they have to put up with all sorts of abuse. They definitely aren't allowed to take out their frustrations on the customer base as a whole. These excuses that they shouldn't be held to the same standards are minimum wage grunts is an asinine excuse.
this isn't the place to bring up all of DA2's many failings, we have forums here and splinter groups for that.
With that said.
DA2 is garbage.
True, it was pretty terrible. However, I still believe it had the potential at least, to be the best in the franchise with some of it's more unique ideas. It was just potential that was not even close to being realized.
DA2's release wasn't so long ago.
In the long development of DAO, from 2004-2009, this was a great place to interact with devs, both writers and non-writers. Lots of them posted here. And they were nice. Mary Kirby in particular was hilarious. The writers would even have conversations with each other out in the open where we could read them. They'd answer questions (explaining to me why DAO didn't insert <CHARNAME> into dialogue like NWN did, for example - the answer was localization).
When I first met Gaider online, he was working on BG2 and posting in character as Jaheira on the old Interplay forums. It was terrific.
Ah, the good old days when people were actually passionate about making good video games instead of gender politics and "White tears" cup collections.
So I only heard about this now in the SW:TOR forums and .. uh, really?
* venting *
Yep, many of us had that moment, I told Conal what i thought, glad to still have the same number of warning points...
Retour en haut
having argued successfully that Cortez shouldn’t automatically die in that shuttle crash, and c) having written Tali’s goodbye bit, as well as a couple of the holo-goodbyes for people I wrote (Mordin, Kasumi, Jack, etc).
