Anthem was on bioware though. EA was almost entirely hands off until they realised Bioware had completely fucked it and had to pull the leash.
The project management was a total clown show, sending out emails telling employees not to research similar games because it would "corrupt the bioware spirit" or whatever.
Anthem was foolish idea to begin with. Chasing the live service golden goose.
Not defending Anthem, I'm saying they reassigned staff from the Dragon Age team to the Anthem shitshow.
I'd like to find the video, a youtuber did a way deeper dive on this. But originally Dragon Age Dreadwolf was pitched and written as a story driven heist game, something akin to Bethesda's dishonored. EA wanting to capitalize on life service games had it changed.
During Anthem's development struggles, they pulled a lot of the Dragon Age team off the Veilguard to get Anthem over the finish line. Plenty of the old Bioware staff and leadership working on Veilguard began to leave. The original story was abandoned and the game was modelled on live service
After Anthem's immediate failure and the success of single player RPG's they changed Dragon Age back to single player, but there was basically no story because that's not a focus on live service.
So they moved the Mass Effect team on to help finish the Dragon Age game which was basically written in less than a year.
Plenty of mismanagement by Bioware, but my point is this.
If you go to an engineering team that builds planes and tell them to build a helicopter, then in the final year tell them to instead build the original plane again and bring in a team that builds submarines to help, is it any surprise that the plane is terribly built?
It's a plane that glides like shit because it has a bunch of parts used in helicopters hastily retrofitted in a year by a team who builds subs.
Those management, design and resourcing decisions were EA. No one in development would intentionally make their life hell by making that many changes.
Funny you say that when the modern live service genre has a LOT of games that continue to stay relevant from story progression that has people continuing to come back to experience it. FFXIV/Genshin/Reverse 1999/Limbus Company- a lot of other extremely successful titles people to tell you to play even completely alone despite being an MMO or despite gacha mechanics.
It could've worked in theory it just required a level of love and creativity that neither EA and Bioware could pull off even if you gave them ten years development time and a hundred million dollars to do it.
The problem is live service games fail all the time. As you say need to really have something unique to stand out.
Bioware was always a single player rpg developer, creating a live service game is not to their strengths, I don't think it's a matter of creativity.
EA is trend follower and profit maximizer, as to some extent they should be, but should have realized Bioware was not up to the task. Creating a generic live service clone seemed to be the entire plan.
Anthem, based on the articles and interviews was a Bioware blunder. But dragon age? Your entire existing fanbase is single player RPG enjoyers. What would possess anyone to try and convert the series to a live service game? That's like converting a total war strategy game to a first person shooter.
It was a nonsense plan, and by the time EA realized it and changed it back there was not enough time. That one to me is EA's fault.
Live services game can work and be great like you say. Marketing a conversion of a single player rpg into one made by a team that is not specialized in making them is not a recipe for success.
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u/HazelCheese 8h ago
Anthem was on bioware though. EA was almost entirely hands off until they realised Bioware had completely fucked it and had to pull the leash.
The project management was a total clown show, sending out emails telling employees not to research similar games because it would "corrupt the bioware spirit" or whatever.