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[Kotaku] How BioWare's Anthem Went Wrong (Jason Schreier article)
- Thread starter dex3108
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I mean did you play BFV right when it launched?
It was R O U G H and it took them a really long time to fix the really major game breaking stuff.
They may have the best handle on the engine out of all of EAs other studios but they do not have a good handle on the engine at all.
Battlefront 2 still has major bugs that are in it since launch. Netcode and hit detection are a mess. Sound bug took > 1 year to improve and still happens on certain maps.
That dev from DICE has no right to trash talk other studios management of Frostbite given how shittily DICE themselves handle it.
They were already heavily catered towards something more... corporate in their image than their previous entries like Mass Effect 2 (1 especially though) or DA2 or DA:O.
They had "That was fucking... awesome" written all over them and not in a good way.
Wow, Bioware's response, and Jason's response to their response.
The game we got makes complete sense to have been made in 18 months. It definitely shows.
Also, said it several times, but all they had to do was glance at Destiny or something else in the genre and take note of what they did right/wrong. Funny to see that they actively avoided doing this.
The game we got makes complete sense to have been made in 18 months. It definitely shows.
Also, said it several times, but all they had to do was glance at Destiny or something else in the genre and take note of what they did right/wrong. Funny to see that they actively avoided doing this.
That's fair. It seems like BioWare is looking for a flathead though.
they were tied to the engine before EA bought them. at some point i don't think they'll be allowed to do that anymore though, unless apex legends got them enough clout to do whatever they want.
Yup yup. I feel with Sony studios there is at least much better communication, management, clear vision, and leadership. Same with Activision as someone mentioned before in this thread. Bioware just kinda fell apart over a period of years with no clear direction, vision, or leadership it seems.
Anthem looked like a game developed in 18 months, that wasn't surprising. To be honest, I don't care about that. Stuck on preproduction too long, reboots, that's not my concern. If it was a relatively happy dev team that spun in circles for too long, I wouldn't be too worried.
But workload, low morale, talent leaving, management issues, and frostbite again, all these things make me worry Bioware of old is no more.
But workload, low morale, talent leaving, management issues, and frostbite again, all these things make me worry Bioware of old is no more.
Exactly. Frostbite is a fantastic Engine for what it was created for. Trying to force everything else into Frostbite is the problem and that is not to say it cant be solved. The problem is EA is not going to dedicate the manpower resources to addressing the bigger picture which is tool support etc. for other types of games
EA needed it out by the end of the fiscal year and I guess either Bioware had to get something out or piss off EA. Gotta appease the shareholders.
Honestly, I'd imagine it'd be a pretty good day.
I've worked in offices with similarly lacking leadership, and normally complaints about leadership and other frustrations would be vented behind closed doors and in hush whispers. Seeing all your frustrations just out there, communicated to the wider public, could be pretty cathartic
Probably because they are a more recent acquisition.
Also, saying Bioware "chose to do X" is rather meaningless without knowing what kind of pressure they were put under to make that choice.
Like, the fact that their senior developers were being reassigned to FIFA because that makes more money tells them that they had better target GaaS, or else they'll be treated as a second rate studio.
I'm trying to but I'm afraid I'm not getting your point. What does "corporate" mean here and why were two perfectly fine games "catered towards it"? And why exactly do they lack artistic integrity?
Actually, how does Anthem lack artistic integrity when it's exactly what BioWare wanted to make, despite taking ages to decided what it even was?
This is the part that made me put my head in my hands. By all accounts TOR has become a great game, and the examples of advice bioware austin gave that were completely ignored all sound like really insightful things that should have been listened to.
Also the whole thing about how gamers' derogatory views of the non Edmonton studios seeped into the studio culture itself sounds like a nightmare. Talking shit on forums without any perception of those you're slamming as real people can actually lead to their job being marginalized and made worse. Cool.
Tell me when there is a multiplayer shooter that have performance and visuals good as battlefield and battlefront.
Calling it dumpster fire is just rude.
Two primary reasons I can think of:
a) the game had already taken 6 years, in a sense. At some point, the fucking thing needs to get out there and make some money
b) metacritic scores in the 70s is a perfectly fine base to work off of. Destiny and Division both scored roughly around the 70s, and became juggernauts for their respective studios. Broadly, multiplayer service games tend to be less dependent on metacritic scores compared to single player games
Most definitely got vibes from his similar article about D1's development. I actually checked a couple of times to make sure I hadn't switched tabs or clicked a weird link by accident when coming back to it.
Of course it's about money but with all these EA devs coming out all the time complaining about how much Frostbite is hindering their development, with devs in this article saying that Frostbite turns quick fixes into week-long ordeals, one has to wonder whether licensing Unreal or having each studio build their own tech wouldn't actually be cheaper in the long run. The least EA could do is actually build a univeral in-house engine that is coded and designed from the ground up to be a universal in-house engine. It's pretty clear from all these articles and reports that Frostbite was never meant to be used by other studios or for things other than first-person games.
I mean, think RE2 even if you will. I think way more games go through this kind of process than we realise. It's just as if BioWare is this special blend of messy, inept management of hackneyed programming solutions with indecisive top-level decisions.
Maybe your criteria needs to move past pretty visuals and raw FPS.
Maybe your criteria needs to include the game actually *functioning* properly and having minimal gamebreaking bugs.
Frostbite is a very pretty dumpster fire.
Ok, people at EA and BioWare have repeatedly said it's not...but ok.
Very much wasn't Bioware's call to make.
As my former game instructor told us, a game is finished when the deadline hits or the money runs out. Bioware had spent YEARS the game, it had been delayed once already, and EA weighed the pros and cons of further sinking money into the game or pumping it out when they did in the hopes of recouping investment costs - which they could theoretically put back into the game post-launch for improvements.
The thing is... I doubt ANYONE at Bioware is surprised by the scores or reactions. They knew how long the load times were. They knew the glitches were there. They are well aware of the poor performance and shallow gameplay. They had to know the endgame was disappointing and the loot was subpar. None of that was surprising.
... But they had their deadline, come hell or high water, and delaying it further with no guarantee it was going to be substantially better in 6 months compared to release means that EA made the call to launch on the day they heavily promoted, even if it wasn't done yet.
FORMER people at EA and Bioware say otherwise...
I'm sure nobody is holding a gun to Bioware's head to use Frostbite, but countless former EA employees have said that they are incentivized to use the engine over others, much like how there are countless Bioware projects that have been proposed that EA has shot down, but Anthem's pitch got approved. Nobody "forced" them to make Anthem, but they weren't given the means to make anything else WITH anything else.
EA's push for Frostbite isn't a "mandate" so much as it is a heavily endorsed implication that countless former devs and studios and employees have sounded out about as something they wished they didn't use.
The article pretty much said it was Söderlund's directive though. Maybe Aaryn Flynn, your only actual source stating otherwise is just being very nice and not trying to give his former colleagues trouble for having said bad things about EA.
Heads at Edmonton thinking their shit don't stink and not listening to the Austin branch, the studio with years of experience in melding story and online is so emblematic of the game.
Really it seems like EA should have popped in and put their foot down far far earlier. Like it was mentioned by another dev, EA gave Bioware the rope to hang themselves with.
Really it seems like EA should have popped in and put their foot down far far earlier. Like it was mentioned by another dev, EA gave Bioware the rope to hang themselves with.
at this point there's enough widely documented problems with the engine that someone needs to say "this is why everyone is independently choosing to use it" then because it makes no sense otherwise
Jesus. This plus Andromeda's troubles makes Bioware seem like one of the worst places to work in the industry.
EA needs to die.
EA needs to die.
jschreier hitting us with so much well-written goodness. It's a shame that the EA mandate of Frostbite is making developers' lives hell, the war within BioWare vying for top spot amidst all this chaos, and the mental and physical degradation of employees that EA fails to acknowledge. It must be a miserable experience to try to create a project to change the world of video games without any true direction as to what it'll be before crunch starts destroying developers lives. A fucking shame, through and through.
Shedding light on an atmosphere that forces people to go on leave due to mental breakdowns isn't drumming up controversy for clicks, bud.
No. Read the entire fucking article before responding please.
Its the same story at every company I've noticed gone downhill in any industry - the amazing core team that are all fantastic at their job slowly leave and the people who replace them aren't better than them, they are B-level mediocre people who start caring more about paychecks and getting promotions than doing the best job they can. Sure, you might have 1 or 2 talented low level people but they get super frustrated and apathetic when all the manager and high level people are Michael Scott's.
Biggest difference between a mega successful company and a mediocre one is only hiring people smarter than you and doing whatever it takes to keep your team happy and together and not growing too fast, as you almost always end up with poor hires that way which doesn't bite you in the ass until years later.
I'm not slamming the rank and file who just are told what to do and try the best they can, but across EA (and Activision) there seems to be a sheer lack of "great" talent at the high level design/executive team which has a horrible trickle down effect. The only exception is Respawn.
Biggest difference between a mega successful company and a mediocre one is only hiring people smarter than you and doing whatever it takes to keep your team happy and together and not growing too fast, as you almost always end up with poor hires that way which doesn't bite you in the ass until years later.
I'm not slamming the rank and file who just are told what to do and try the best they can, but across EA (and Activision) there seems to be a sheer lack of "great" talent at the high level design/executive team which has a horrible trickle down effect. The only exception is Respawn.
Corporate heads say lots of things. Patterns sometimes say other things.
I bet they get a better deal on Source than on UE too since they're literally the only people outside of Valve that are still using it.
The way it's described in the article, everyone was so laser focused on just getting their own tasks done towards the end that most people at BioWare weren't really aware of the bigger picture anymore and it was only at the very end of development that the game was even complete enough for people to be able to make out some of the overarching flaws and shortcomings with loot drop rates, etc.
Ehhh... Just sounds like Warframe's current two open worlds. Doesn't really work with randoms though unless you're smart and implement drop in/drop out (Warframe devs haven't done that for whatever reason).
They all work very fine, BF4 at launch being an exception.
DICE however need more dev time for extra polish and content, this is true.
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