Just an amusing observation about that image. Ah yes, "METRO", the prestigious and highly regarded experts in all matter video games. Best known for their littering of London (and any public transport in and out of) on a daily basis with rubbish; a free, daily tabloid newspaper. A trusted review source, indeed.

They could if they'd actually learn some lessons from their own biggest flops and change their business model.

The smaller development studios that haven't yet been gobbled up by a gigantic publisher like EA or Microsoft can still to this day make a healthy profit off of even average games that they make with a fraction of the money and staff. So the big companies should be able to do the same thing without bloating every release into something that costs tens of millions of dollars to make, requires hundreds of staff to build, and has to sell five million copies in order to turn a profit.

If the bigger companies would show a little more restraint and pay a little more attention to the fans of the games they're making, they could stop the cycle of spending millions of dollars and years of development time on games that they end up canceling because they don't see enough of a future profit margin in them, and also releasing games that sell millions but still get labeled a failure because it's not ENOUGH millions.

I firmly believe it comes down to corporate greed. Offhand, I cannot think of a single game studio that has been able to continue putting out the quality of games they were known for when they were still independent once they get bought up by a big publisher. As a smaller studio, they're usually run by people who love gaming and make the games they want to play. Once EA or some other giant is running the show, it ends up becoming strictly about the profit margins, no matter how much the people in the formerly-independent studio might wish otherwise. They have to answer to a higher master than what they think would be fun to play, and they're rarely free to do things the way they want anymore. Even when it starts out that way, it almost never lasts.

I've used Maxis as an example in other threads here; as many people will remember, they were the studio behind SimCity, The Sims, and most other Sim-something titles back in the day. Not all of their games were giant successes like the first couple versions of SimCity, but they had enough success to be a profitable company, valued at $125 million when EA bought them in 1997 (which would be close to $250 million today). Maxis technically still exists, but very little remains of the original company. All of its studios have been closed, and it is so thoroughly integrated with EA thanks to the Sims franchise that for all intents and purposes, the studio that was Maxis no longer exists. What does exist basically does whatever papa EA tells them to.

There are so many other similar stories where the studio in question is simply gone, as are the games or franchises they were known for. BioWare is well on its way to being the next. Most of what the studio once was is long gone, and it shows in their more recent game releases.

True. Clueless moneymen moving into anything, not just gaming, often spells doom.

There are some exceptions occasionally. For a recent example - Warhorse with Kingdom Come, where the extra money from a big publisher clearly showed in the scope and quality of the sequel. But even then, the budget was still mostly reasonable at the supposed $40 million. Which is about the max of what I'd expect from a major production. Not the ludicrous multiple hundreds of millions of some of the recent big flops.

But again, for every positive example, there are like 5 bad ones. It is very difficult for a studio to retain its identity in these cases.

The implosion makes complete sense from all angles. EA had a death grip on Bioware since they were acquired. They ended up making some weird games that're nowhere in Bioware's wheelhouse. Remember Anthem?

What really killed Bioware was the downfall of the only thing they were really good at: writing. You know if even Angry Joe is mad at your narrative, then you really messed up. It is my hope that the writers who worked on Veilguard learn from their stupid blunders, but somehow, I have a feeling they might actually double-down. There's been a massive saturation of soft yet preachy games in the same manner that there's been a saturation of such shows/movies. Tough topics are avoided or tipsied around while a certain message is front and center as if you're at a rally. Cringe like that takes one out of the narrative completely. When writing is sacrificed for that, a good game it does not make.

We'll always have good memories of Bioware. I just hope that they quietly go the way of Westwood so they stop living long enough to become villains.

It does, and I would broaden your point a step further. Offhand, I cannot think of a single company that went public, as in "is on the stock market", that resulted down the line in a better experience for the consumer. If there is an example where the consumer wins out over the profit-seeking, it's surely an unintended anomaly. The consumer experience is always worse by my view, because the interests of the consumer are diametrically opposed to the interests of shareholders. So, it is indeed corporate greed; despicably entrenched corporate greed.

As a contrast, a hypothetical indie company who gets bigger to the point of being able to acquire other companies, might not necessarily have a decline in product quality, so long as they stay private. Though, I would still say having individual and smaller scale companies is superior.

With the games themselves, others opinions may vary, but imo it is no coincidence that I find the best titles that devs make while under corporate umbrellas tend to be the first ones. Bioware is a great example; Mass Effect 1 and Dragon Age Origins are the best in their series. Not to say I wouldn't like the sequels to come to GOG, same for Dead Space (could skip Dead Space 3, no need to tempt GOG's Galaxy-pushing corporate tendencies with that one), but fans who share my ranking will always wonder "what could have been" in terms of keeping true to RPG mechanics and depth.

It's about $ to publishers. Did they (dev's and pub's) say spend more $ on development & marketing than the actual sales? Did EA throw truckloads of $ at BioWare and not recoup? Did they lose money? Did they break even? Was there any profit here?

Then, it's a failure - esp. according to EA, 2K, Microsoft, Square Enix, and any of the AAA's. It's about making $ for them.

If we wonder why publishers in the AAA space complain the game's a "failure" and "it didn't sell enough," it's the above stuff: they spent a fortune, but either loss money, barely broke even, or barely made profit. They all need to stop throwing country's worth of $ at a game. $100-200 million or more is a lot of $ - not every game can be COD's and Rockstar's GTA games or RDR2 & recoup that very quickly after a game's version 1.0 official launch.

Even Shawn Layden, former boss of Sony, pointed this out about $100-200m+ games in the AAA space - https://www.ign.com/articles/former-playstation-boss-shawn-layden-departure-avoid-burnout

About making DA: Inquisition 2 - why would they do that? After MEA, which had the same problems by magnified times 100 b/c of other problems (i.e. "meh" on both storytelling and choices; it felt like an open-world Far Cry game in space, which is not what BioWare fans want from their games) - well, BioWare got the message: open-world Skyrim-like and UbiSoft side-quest collect-a-thons and filler elements were pulling their games down. There's enough of those open-world games with filler-a-thons for side stuff alone that can get in the way of playing the game - heck, and that could be just talking UbiSoft alone, nevermind the rest of the market copying them and Bethesda, such as Mafia 3 and Watch Dogs: Legion.

Open-world games were special when mainly Rockstar & Bethesda were doing them (think GTA3 Trilogy era and ES3: Morrowind era) - now, you got a zillion of them. Market's saturated and loaded with them.

They (BioWare) probably had the right approach w/ DA4: Joplin version (that's the DA4: Heist single-player game before EA cancelled that) with a smaller game w/ more choices that mattered that was single-player - but, EA canned that b/c they wanted Live Service DA4: Morrison version (which became VeilGuard). More key people by or in 2019 left BioWare, after Joplin got canned. And then the Live Service elements got pulled from VG too, after Respawn's STAR WARS: Jedi Fallen Order (single-player only game) did very well sales-wise.

Also, see Jason Schreier's article on DA4 and the two versions that existed - https://kotaku.com/the-past-and-present-of-dragon-age-4-1833913351

Normie audience, oh please..... You are talking about yourself here, you do realize this? You give absolutely no input what so ever, i'm trying to keep a sane conversation here, you do realize this, yea?

That said, what really stood out for me is the game's optimization, at least from a 3090Ti perspective ;p

there are not a lot of recent games out there that provide 75+ fps for less than 200 Watts, another noteworthy candidate in this segment is of course Doom but, let's wait for the slayer himself to speak with their upcoming grand release

Pardon my transgression. I'll humbly bow out of your "sane" conversation and no longer taint it with my "non-input" :)

Nice, thanks for the read, the link to the article, though if i read through the lines it all comes down to a lot of bullshit. We were coming back from a negative experience blablabla ... like where's your senior young one ;-)

It also reminds of that Discworld novel that describes live in show bizz
or your regular food for thought what you get when creative minds work together...

I don't buy it. EA screaming failure seems more as a cheap attempt at keeping your workforce at bay, your investors reasonable happy and the public confident (though don't get me wrong here, i'm nowhere a 6 number salary)
oooh booo, you started the normies talk... be a man and swallow ;p