It really feels like EA is changing their strategy for what games they'll release in a good way. It sucks for Motive's devs, but I hope they start working on something else soon.
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[Jason Schreier] EA has cancelled Gaia, the new IP that the Motive studio had been developing for more than five years
- Thread starter dex3108
- Start date
They must have had literally nothing working or of any worth to cancel 6 years of development. Otherwise there should have been enough content to cobble together some kind of best of compilation vertical slice (a la MGS5), even if it's a $39 title. This must have been $75-100 million down the drain.
By letting this kind of thing get released after 5 years of development?
I guess you are right though, Vince did keep it from getting cancelled...
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Hopefully this leads to more smaller-scale, focused games like Squadrons. Ones that have clear visions of what they want to be from the start.
They can't let their studios spend years in pre-production hell on games anymore.
They can't let their studios spend years in pre-production hell on games anymore.
5 years with little to show for it? Yeah cancel that shit, don't fall into a sunk cost fallacy. EA making the right moves here.
While true, my hope is that Fallen Order has made them realize there's benefits to diversifying. Dragon Age is never going to bring in more money than FIFA ultimate team, microtransactions or not. But by having some single player output, they are hitting an entirely different and more predictable market, where with proper management there's money to made with less risk of complete bombs or cancellations like Anthem.
At some point the industry needs to realize that AAA GAAS mindshare is limited, and that it only gets riskier the more crowded it gets. It seems like EA might be starting to realize that and adjusting accordingly.
OP
OP
By letting this kind of thing get released after 5 years of development?
I guess you are right though, Vince did keep it from getting cancelled...
You made a thread about it you know that Respawn took it to stay afloat before EA bought them and then they got chance to work on things they really want but they were stuck with it. And compared to other EA studios they did a lot in 5 years.
The sunk cost fallacy has been EA's modus operandi up to this point, though! 😂
It's surprising and welcome that they're learning when to pull the plug, though.
When I look at the Anthem/Gaia cancellations, and view them in such close proximity to the statement that they're going to "let the studios drive the direction of their franchises" (or whatever the exact quote is), here's what I see:
- Someone at EA sat up and said "hey, huge swaths of our non-sports games division has been underperforming for about half a decade now, and at some point that's more than just a string of bad luck. We need to figure out what we're doing wrong."
- EA management decided they needed to do a deep-dive review of all of their current projects and revist the post-mortems on their past projects to figure out what's going on. Lengthy interviews were conducted with both upper management and developers to collect facts and get everyone's input on what they think is and isn't working.
- At the end of all the interviews, I'm guessing one of the key takeaways was that EA corporate was tying their studios' hands creatively by imposing certain design elements in response to budget requests. Like, if you want more than $50m budget for your game you need to include monetizeable GAAS elements, and if you want more than $100m you need an extra layer of these elements plus a 24-month defined release plan to support them.
- So they decided they needed to stop the bleeding with the old ways, and instead of throwing good money after bad just shut down what's not working and give their studios a fresh start and more creative freedom. (That's not to say they won't still try to control the purse strings in some way. But just that they're going to give the studios have more self-determination creatively.)
This is sad to hear, give them the Dead Space IP then.
Can one hope for Dead Space ?
Five years is a pretty long time... Must have been not good at all if they cancelled it like that. I feel bad for the dev team.
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Giving too much freedom was issue with Anthem and probably this new IP. Sometimes you really need someone above you to tell you when to stop.
Same. Also, to add to your number 3 on corporate limiting creativity, I wonder if Gaia was started back when EA mandated all of their games to be made with Frostbite, to save on money. The executive who forced that mandate is no longer at EA, but lots of projects suffered for it. Maybe one of the reaons Gaia had so much issues was because it started on Frostbite.
if anything, the creative freedom also comes with the "you have 6 months to work out he core gameplay loop and design document or it's canned"
because it sounds like this and Anthem didn't have those things
The Riccetiello mandate to move everything to Frostbite hindered that company last gen more than anything else I think.
New IPs are officially dead at EA. For those who proclaim it to be the house of sports games, Star Wars, and Bioware....well, you aren't wrong.
or maybe you shouldn't spend 5 years of very rocky development on a game if you want EA to release it
At this point if you are in charge at EA why would you rock the boat with a new IP? Anthem spooked them on that front and on the GaaS front.
My heart goes out to the Dev team.
Years of your life goes into something (let alone five) and POOF! Gone.
From my own experience, it is absolutely SOUL CRUSHING.
Years of your life goes into something (let alone five) and POOF! Gone.
From my own experience, it is absolutely SOUL CRUSHING.
I almost wonder if the team on this game at Motive is more relieved than upset.
This takes a ton of pressure off of them.
This takes a ton of pressure off of them.
Ahhhhhhhhhhh - now it falls into place!
EA-Motive was the studio that was essentially created to lure Jade Raymond from UbiSoft and the original Assassin's Creed is what she's best known for!
I feel like this is what happens when you give people a blank check and unlimited choice in what to make. People just becomes paralyzed with too much freedom. Sometimes deadlines and budget restraints helps focus a team.
Most likely because they gave him more freedome and less pressure than other devs got.
I mean its no coincidence that so many devs under EA are struggling while the one dev who has the most freedome/influence on his studio is doing good.
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From the Bioware stories that is not true. Bioware had all the freedom for Anthem and they failed.
I mean giving freedome to them is one thing but there more to it:
Edit: wrong tweet wait a sec
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I can't imagine spending 5 years of my life on something and then it just gets cancelled before anyone can even see what I worked on. Talk about soul crushing.
Big oof, imagine working on this thing and having the fruits of your labor thrown in the trash.
Announced that Anthem Next was cancelled and that Dragon Age 4 would be single player focused.
Depends. if its your second project in 5 years being canceled it could lead to you just giving up in the industry. It can destroy your moral.
Not of all, but maybe some. Like feeling stuck in failure.
Or... just realizing that mistakes where made and trying to refocus?
It seems as if they wanted to just wish 5 well running big money service games into existence after it became the new standard with last gen and fell hard with it.
Taking a step back and reevaluating the direction is not directly risk-averse. Maybe it leads to more reasonable risks? (smaler scale projects that actually get finished in a reasonable timeframe)
More like putting out fires. Never heard of Gaia, but after Anthem, I doubt EA wanted another trash fire.
I would seriously be suicidal if I'd poured half a decade of creative blood, sweat, tears and crunch only to see it all flushed away. Developers, you have my utter respect.