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Kotaku (Jason Schreier): Sources: EA Canceled A Star Wars: Battlefront Spinoff Last Year
- Thread starter poklane
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I don't really have the affinity for Star Wars that many people do but Fallen Order was cool. However EA has probably burned alot of money and time trying to make these games and my hope is that they get back to what they used to be when they would create original content. Star Wars probably is not worth it anymore.
I think it's the inability of the executive team to recognise and fully support a creative vision (Amy Hennig at Visceral) combined with a desire for short term profits over building long term IP value (Mass Effect, Anthem, et al).
From where?
game development is more complex than just following a person's creative vision. Sometimes things don't work out.
In the technical sense. We only saw like, five seconds of ragtag and never saw anything from the next project.
More entertaining than any Star Wars game released in the last 15 years.
Just give me a new Rogue Squadron game EA.
I would love a new Empire at War too but I know EA isn't going to make a PC only RTS so I'll make do with the Star Wars mod for Sins of a Solar Empire.
I would love a new Empire at War too but I know EA isn't going to make a PC only RTS so I'll make do with the Star Wars mod for Sins of a Solar Empire.
I'm sure you're aware of how people generally feel about EA's management of the SW IP. It's nothing personal, but it's not crazy to think a different publisher would have handled the license more competently.
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lmao, this has to be the strangest take ever. Fallen Order came out mere months ago, and is rated as one of the best games of 2019.
battlefront 2 post updates is also getting great word of mouth.
I bet they thought the complaints would simmer down after the single player Star Wars game fans were clamoring for got released to very good critical and commercial success. But you're here defending what's basically shitposting.
Three games in that IP this generation alone. How many other licensed properties have more frequent game releases?
Needless to say that all three games sold very well and have made lots of money for Disney.
what's the bar for success? 5 Star Wars games in 7 years? 6?
Star Wars is probably the most versatile IP for gaming there is. Basically every major genre you could do, and even most of the niche ones.
Realistically, Ubi should get SW license.
Hope Disney will review their decision with EA after the deal has expired. What a travesty.
Hope Disney will review their decision with EA after the deal has expired. What a travesty.
Star wars prints money. Battlefront and Fallen orders mediocrity, plus Battlefront 2s millions despite being a literal dumpster fire at launch prove that. Its not Rocket Science.
The bar for success is what we once had in Star Wars games. Games spanning different periods and genres. From shooters to strategy games to RPGs the IP was incredibly versatile.
Also this gen Warhammer had a lot of high quality games in different genres released. 2 high quality left 4 dead style games, 2 very high quality strategy games and smaller stuff like Action RPGs and SRPGs too.
Star Wars games need to go back to licencing out and not being exclusively sold to one publisher. It doesn't benefit anyone, not even Disney, since they get a lot of bad PR because of this and how the IP is handled.
That would not be the case if projects would be announced regularly from different publishers.
Does anyone remember the last decade of LucasArts? Internally they developed 2 Star Wars games between 2006 and 2016. 10 years, 2 games. What games might you ask? The Force Unleashed, and The Force Unleashed 2 (The one that is only a few hours long, and filled with reused assets).
I feel like people also forget that during this time, the vast majority of the licensed out games were also terrible, with the exception of debatably Empire At War and The Old Republic. Take a look at this list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_LucasArts_games
I feel like the IP itself got cursed in 2006.
This is to say nothing of the way Disney has been handling it. That's also what gives me no hope for _any_ publisher doing anything good with it. Changing something like the color of someone's boots in the game can take weeks of back and forth with Disney, let alone, you know, actually designing the worlds/story/gameplay. Even if UbiSoft, Activision or whoever else makes Star Wars games, they are also going to be stuck under the same rules.
As far as I know, Pandemic was never working on a Battlefront III. Free Radical Design was, however. EA had nothing to do with that.
You speak the truth. They could have released $15-$20 or so 20 minute missions with some replay value. That would have sold pretty well, especially if the just used Battlefront assets.
I am of the opinion that you'd need to gut Battlefront 2's gameplay to actually make _playing_ it fun. (This is my personal opinion. I played 100s of hours of each of the past 3 Console Battlefront games.)
Yup. EA hasn't really been making the magic happen, but let's not jump into the "It's all EA's fault", when it's only like half their fault."
Working with Disney is quite a challenge from what we could see in the Fallen Order "making of" documentary. So seeing these cancelled projects isn't much of a surprise. All I ever wanted from that deal was a Kotor/Bethesda like RPG where you can forge your own path and character.
Hmm, MAYBE they're not as mediocre as you think, considering these games have a consistently big player base and sales. Whatever fits your narrative I guess.
Yeah, I wouldn't want to work with all their rules. I can't stop laughing at the idea that they have some clause that you must prevent t-bagging. :lol
I see a lot of people here discussing if Disney will want to renew the contract, but I'm not even sure EA will want it. They weren't really successfull with the IP (but maybe the mobile games are enough to justify this deal).
Fixed
What the fuck are you on about?
While Battlefront has been tainted by mtx the game itself is really good and Jedi Fallen Order is an awesome game and a really solid project.
Oh, 1 decent complete game in the 7 years of exclusivity
Meanwhile 2003:
Obviously, but they didn't give Hennig the resources that she was expecting. They thought the studio was too expensive so didn't provide enough staff and wasted her time on Battlefield Hardline DLC rather than focusing on what could have been the Star Wars game many have been waiting for.
The one success was with Respawn, who seem to have strong creative leadership and the resources to complete a project.
Keep this movie tie-in crap as fuck away from CDPR as physically possible, please. We already have about half of the industry working on various Hollywood (meaning "Disney") tie-ins and it's already a sad outlook for the next several years thanks to that.
Oh, 1 decent complete game in the 7 years of exclusivity
Meanwhile 2003:
great! There are 9 years between 2003 and 2013 when EA secured the exclusive license where are the flood of Star Wars games between 2003 and 2013? by your logic, we should have had about 36 great games, right?
Truth be told, it makes no sense to do a direct comparison between then - when games were much cheaper, less risky ventures - and now when games are risky, expensive and can easily fail.
finally, the Battlefront series are actually quite good. Can EA truly be blamed because you don't like multiplayer shooters?
Those years were under towards the end LucasArts and the beginning of Disney's acquisition. That is in no way a comparison of what to expect if Disney doesn't renewal a contract with EA.
But if you think the options is either a variety of uncertain quality releases spread over a large amount of time. Or to continue with the IP locked into a cancerous company that continues predatory practices, limits the overall scope and design of their games, with intent to lock players into a a game designed to make them spend more money. I rather choose a decade of lower quality games made by a variety of companies.
Meanwhile in 2003 you could make an industry leading game with 50 people and ~2 years of development time, game budgets were consequently a small fraction of what they are today, and there were a huge number of work for hire studios who were capable of making games that were "high budget" for the era. Regrettably we don't live in 2003 anymore.
Electronic Arts was an attractive partner because they were willing to assign ~1000+ developers to the licence on their own money. It's almost inconceivable to imagine Ubisoft or Activision in the same era just throwing 5 studios on it like EA did, because it would have meant massive disruptions to their own franchises.
We might have got some creative AA tier stuff if the licence was open to whomever was willing to make games in it, but developing AAA titles when you don't have any kind of exclusivity to the IP seems very unlikely. It's not like Marvel stuff where "Avengers" and "Spiderman" are attractive IPs in their own right.
With it's current ownership it's always going to be under hostage. EA is only part of the problem, you can probably make a stronger argument that Disney is the main issue with how controlling they are.
Stig built a team to make a melee combat focused game and Disney wanted them to make a shooter. Square Enix gets alot of shit for taking so long to make a Kingdom Hearts game, but Disney is making them submit the same cutscene multiple times because they're slightly concerned about the expression that Woody is making. They struggle just making normal Star Wars movies and video games are even harder to make and it's an area that they have little to no experience in.
Until Disney gets more hands off with the IP then developers are going to struggle shipping quality titles.
Again, this is a weird argument, given that EA just released a single player, MTX free game and that all loot boxes were taken out of battlefront 2.
What feels artificially limited about Jedi Fallen Order?
I already went through multiple decades of 90% of Star Wars games being disappointments or straight up awful games. I highly doubt Disney would be on board with anyone pitching something truly creative anyway.
I'm imagining Activision's Republic Commando, likely ruined by microtransactions introduced a month or so after launch. Bonus: Platinum contracted (and rushed) Jedi Power Battles. I have many fond memories of...ignoring how bad an experience it was to play that game.
Take Two presents Galactic Spacelands, made by Gearbox. It's like X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter, but with loot galore!
Some kind of open-world tactical bounty hunter game by Ubisoft, not bad but nothing special...featuring optional currency to buy time savers, so essentially yet another Ubisoft game.
Microsoft-funded KOTOR reboot by Obsidian...well that would probably be great, bad example lol
I'm imagining Activision's Republic Commando, likely ruined by microtransactions introduced a month or so after launch. Bonus: Platinum contracted (and rushed) Jedi Power Battles. I have many fond memories of...ignoring how bad an experience it was to play that game.
Take Two presents Galactic Spacelands, made by Gearbox. It's like X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter, but with loot galore!
Some kind of open-world tactical bounty hunter game by Ubisoft, not bad but nothing special...featuring optional currency to buy time savers, so essentially yet another Ubisoft game.
Microsoft-funded KOTOR reboot by Obsidian...well that would probably be great, bad example lol
EA has been reliant on licensed games for a long time. I don't think the company would survive on their own IP.
I imagine heading a Star Wars game must be so fucking stressful, EA on one side and Lucasart's on the other, with it probably getting cancelled.
Anyhow I assume DICE are working on (a hopefully modern setting) next gen Battlefield given they weren't involved with this, which I'd be far more interested in. And have high hopes for Fallen Order 2, which will probably see the current EA deal done.
Anyhow I assume DICE are working on (a hopefully modern setting) next gen Battlefield given they weren't involved with this, which I'd be far more interested in. And have high hopes for Fallen Order 2, which will probably see the current EA deal done.
I'll have to track it down, but it was a postmortem on what happened with Visceral Games and Amy Hennig's Star Wars games, with many expressing their frustrations at how Lucasfilm/Disney demanded they oversee every last minutia of their work. That meant the normal workflow of making a video game was significantly stalled as they couldn't just do a concept, get it approved, and move it on to the next team member to model and rig but instead had to pause their work, submit their ideas to Lucasfilm (in a different state at a different time zone) and then sit around waiting for their submission to get approved, which could take several hours or even days. And often the feedback wasn't an approval at all but something dumb like "change the fabric of this outfit" or "this character doesn't look like they should carry a blaster", so the process had to start all over.
When every step you take needs a day or two to be approved before you can move to the next step, it gets real frustrating real fast.
See below as well.
The games they've made are incredibly successful...not that complicated.
On the hother hand reports from the BF2 and Fallen Order devs have been positive when it comes to working with lucasfilm overseers. They get a lot of creative freedom it just has to fit within the SW universe and most designers don't inherently struggle with that idea. The idea that working with lucasfilm is a nightmare seems to be a gross exaggeration of what is a normal collaborative process where some ideas get shot down and/or and others get greenlit. On top of just trying to keep specific characters consistent so that we don't get stupid shit like this:
Like that post you quoted about the SW FO documentary, i've watched it, they never state that things are a nightmare, they state that there was a back and forth about the speed of Cal's force push.
At this point, how are Disney looking at EA's stewdardship of the Star Wars license with anything other than apoplectic rage / frustration. It's been an absolute disaster of a licensing deal.