Getting out of early development has been the problem for at least 3 of their games of we include this. 2 others were Anthem and Andromeda, they had bad project leadership.
Why do game companies with successful, groundbreaking IPs keep trying to branch out with new projects and wear themselves thin when it's time to work on their mainstays with millions of fans? Looking squarely at you, Bethesda.
With bioware it was already reported that they got lucky with a couple of their games going super nova so it made leadership believe in bioware magic. So they didn't feel the need to improve on any of the issues with production because in the end bioware always came through because of their bioware magic....until they didn't
Plenty of things you can critique Nintendo for, but managing their studios is one thing they do right. Farm out smaller titles and spinoffs, use spinoffs of mainline IP to train partner studios, use specific tasks for the larger games to bring partner studios even closer, and then use your internal studio and closest partners for the mainline IP and only the mainline IP. That way the internal and partner studios can focus, get stuff done, and produce quality stuff while everyone else turns out smaller games to fill the gaps in-between releases.
Oh, and let each studio/group focus in on what genres and style they are best at rather than forcing a "jack of all trades" approach.
With Microsoft owning so many of these studios they could have leveraged expertise for some amazing AAA titles. Instead we get long development times, unrealistic expectations, and inconsistent quality over and over
Might not be a popular opinion but it’s well known in the biz that BioWare was pretty successful early on because they benefitted hugely from the huge amount of engineers and software developers Alberta had in excess due to layoffs in the oil industry at various points.
But the demographics of the company changed over time quite a bit, and like a lot of game studios they eventually just become adult daycares.
Because they get copy and self righteous and start working on things they want, pet projects, etc instead of what sells and what people want. This is one of the only industries where employees think they are at fun time and not at WORK.
Billionaires who invest in videogames want a massive return on their invesment. Bioware is going out of business because of the same people that make our groceries more expensive, our housing unaffordable, and our future bleak.
Every shitty thing we're experiencing can all be traced back to the same small group of people demanding more and more of our money while giving less and less in return for it.
Except they don't just make Souls games. They make Sekiro. They make Armored Core. They branch out into a multiplayer Souls game. They can make new things and still be good because they have talented people who know what they're doing.
For the last 15 years Fromsoft has released one of the best action RPGs you could ever play every 2-3 years, sometimes even less. Absolutely insane when you compare them to so many other studios that can't get anything out the door and what does come out just sucks.
Dragon age veilguard too. Initially it was a single player game but got scrapped so EA could have them focus on anthem. Then it became a live service game because it was the new hot thing and AAA industry was going through their “single player games are dead” phase. Then they remade that into the single-player game it became today when single-player action-rpgs became popular.
Veilguard was most likely a MMO that got gutted into a singleplayer suit when they realized the IP wasn't strong enough nor the content written on par with Origins. That's why Rook can only be a flavor of Paragon and choices have no major consequences. Veilguard's development started right when Final Fantasy 14 and New World proved there was potential room for more fantasy MMOs besides WoW.
The main difference being FF14 has an amazing story to carry it while Veilguard... didn't. New World just shot itself so we don't know if it would've lasted under any other company.
There's at least one big reason why games seem to be having more and more trouble earlier in their development cycles. I'm sure most people don't remember, but a little over 15 years ago, gaming CEOs like Bobby Kotick made a big deal (at least in the gaming industry) about how important it was for executives to get involved in the game development process as early as possible.
Over the past decade or so, this meant more games with predatory designs, fewer little hidden secrets, more crunch time, and most of the horrible things people keep complaining about in the current gaming industry. To give you an idea, Kotick said back in 2009:
I wonder if its a maxis style "we're used to train our parent company's executives and they want to revamp everything to put their fingerprint on the game" failure or star citizen "Whats scope creep?" failure
I'd rather have a new good game every 2-3 years than one excellent game every 10-12 years. Not everything has to be AAAA quality. It just has to be fun and memorable.
Unless you are cool with graphics, engines, and limitations from 15-20 years ago, the current games do take that long to develop because games have become exponentially more complex.
And yet game engines have also become much more advanced and capable. Single devs or small teams are able to create astonishing games in reasonable time. Much of the time bloat for recent games isn't their complexity, but poor leadership. Owlcat games have been able to provide constant support for a game released 3 years ago while also developing 2 games that are due to release within the next year.
Except those advances haven’t kept up at all with the complexity of games. Blaming it on something like leadership is extremely silly. I am not saying that leadership is great, I am just saying it wasn’t any better 15-20 years ago.
What limitations? Modern games (and gamers) are far too focused on stupidly good graphics and hyperrealism instead of, you know... gameplay? The actual game? The state of the gaming industry is due in large part to consumers drooling over and demanding ever-better FPS and resolution and ignoring that they're playing bad games. You want expensive and shiny slop? Boy, do they have a deal for you!
Buddy, you’re barking up the wrong tree. I am in my 40s and play games mostly games from early 2000s and early 2010s more than I do anything modern. The last modern game I bought was BG3 when it came out and Total War Warhammer 3 before that.
But the market, like you said, wants hyper realistic open world games. Believe or not, those take a ton of work making anything in the environment interact with everything under the latest graphics.
It’s not for me, and you and I can consider it slop all we want, but it doesn’t change the fact that those graphics, physics, and environments require a lot, several factors worth more in fact, work than even the best games of early 2000s.
311
u/Rancid_Lunchmeat 7h ago
"early development" on Mass Effect? No wonder all these studies keep getting shut down.
That game should be ready to be released within the next two years, not still be in early development.