BioWare Warns Hostile Replies Make Developers Less Likely to Engage

Megalith

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BioWare appears to be fed up with the pessimism surrounding Anthem and the antics of its players: in a lengthy post on r/AnthemTheGame offering insight on the company’s lack of communication, community manager Jesse Anderson admitted that many developers have made a conscious decision not to engage fans and answer their questions due to their increasing negativity, which has hit “an all-time high.” Some believe BioWare deserves all the hate they can get for releasing a subpar product, while others are blaming gamers for being "entitled."

“Why would a dev team member take time away from working on the next update to post when they know it’s likely to be met with hostile replies, or they get flamed because [they] can’t answer other questions that players are asking? I don’t mind posting here when things aren’t so nice, but that’s because it’s my job. For the devs it isn’t their job, and I’d like to ask that people remember that when replying to them. When some people say ‘be nice or the devs will stop posting’ it’s 100% true.”
 
While I agree that a lot of people can get toxic with replies and stuff but I think I'll stick with my first reaction to this: What a load of bullshit. They're looking for any excuse they can to not answer for the ton of bugs and mistakes they keep making over and over and over. This comes after they posted that load of crap "cost of transparency" post where they tried to excuse all the bullshots and lies they made during Anthem's development.
 
Isn't that how all games are released? Released but its actually still a beta, then patches come in later
 
I play Anthem each day ;)

I can only state the obvious which is brought to you by team obvious even when you have a great game developers prolly won't respond to hostile posts either ;).

I figure if I spend $60+ I'm entitled to a complete, functional product. Not this fallout 76/anthem triple-a nonsense.

The sooner this industry collapses in on itself, the better.

None of this nonsense was around when Diablo 3 launched and they completely overhauled that game as well pretty soon after people were playing it on higher levels.

Waaaah think about us poor developers and publishers!!!

How about you think about the customers when you release a unfinished and bug filled mess of a game!
Yeah welcome to the wonderful world of capitalism where you are the sheep and you need to purchase things. As long as they can get away with this behaviour they will keep doing it and harsh comments towards game developers is not really the right way to do this. Game developers tend to only have a little influence. The other game title that springs to mind is SWTOR and that Bioware release was plagued the same way , launched to early because prolly of the same reasons , find 10 not completely insane game developers that are going to do back flips out of sheer joy of releasing a game in that state .... You won't find any .......
 
think i will agree, there is alot of hostile and not very constructive hating. but then again, i played anthem for 1-2 hrs. and it just isnt something i would play anyway. but in similar way BFV was a real fuckfest. so u have to wonder. but u have to accept the fact that most games have bugs no matter how well done they are.
 
None of this nonsense was around when Diablo 3 launched and they completely overhauled that game as well pretty soon after people were playing it on higher levels.

I disagree, maybe not to the extreme it is now but that's thanks to how much more prevalent social media has gotten. Diablo 3 was not the Diablo people were expecting and I remember a lot of people on the Blizzard forums and even gaming news sites complaining how it wasn't what they expected and a huge downgrade from Diablo 2. It got better overtime but it still wasn't exactly great and the expansion was a load of trash.
 
I disagree, maybe not to the extreme it is now but that's thanks to how much more prevalent social media has gotten. Diablo 3 was not the Diablo people were expecting and I remember a lot of people on the Blizzard forums and even gaming news sites complaining how it wasn't what they expected and a huge downgrade from Diablo 2. It got better overtime but it still wasn't exactly great and the expansion was a load of trash.
Find youtubes about that then look again what Anthem has such a onslaught of negative nonsense videos about what people are complaining about not even what they are experiencing ...

Don't get me wrong if you feel duped or cheated out of your money you are free in expressing your opinion ...
 
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I disagree, maybe not to the extreme it is now but that's thanks to how much more prevalent social media has gotten. Diablo 3 was not the Diablo people were expecting and I remember a lot of people on the Blizzard forums and even gaming news sites complaining how it wasn't what they expected and a huge downgrade from Diablo 2. It got better overtime but it still wasn't exactly great and the expansion was a load of trash.

I remember when Diablo 3 launched, we had a lan party with two groups of 4 playing through the campaign (sorta racing each other). We had alot of fun and we'd all played diablo 1 and 2. It was playable and I didn't feel like it was full of bugs or anything. Sure it could have been better but I liked it.
 
Yeah welcome to the wonderful world of capitalism where you are the sheep and you need to purchase things. As long as they can get away with this behaviour they will keep doing it and harsh comments towards game developers is not really the right way to do this. Game developers tend to only have a little influence. The other game title that springs to mind is SWTOR and that Bioware release was plagued the same way , launched to early because prolly of the same reasons , find 10 not completely insane game developers that are going to do back flips out of sheer joy of releasing a game in that state .... You won't find any .......

Tbh i'm beyond caring for the developers.
The developer studios are also to blame for all of this, they know this kind of backlash will happen when they make those deals with the publishers.
They could also try and be more firm when telling the publishers that the game isent ready for release.

When a product i'm working on wasent ready i would at least tell my boss about it, i see nothing indicating that has happened here or in many other AAA titles that has been released in a sorry state.

I know that most blame lies with the publishers but the people making the product has a responsibility too.

I do agree with your capitalism point, we consumers need to stop buying into all the crap thats made to today and be more careful where we use our money. Looking at stock prices there does seem to be a small light at the end of the tunnel though.
 
I have a code for this game and I haven't bothered installing it. And I played the shit out of Destiny.
 
while the games should be more complete or working period in some cases the gamer base has a very entitled group in there that does seem to be the move vocal. Look at the bitching about Jade in mortal kombat 11. People were pissed that she wasn't a mostly nude character. The game has more playable characters than any other fighting game at launch and people are still bitching that their favorite character didn't make a return. For Spiderman on the PS4 they had 40 different versions of spiderman and yet people bitched and review bombed the game because it didn't have the version from one of the movies. Even for Fallout 76. The game that was released while it did have some bugs it was exactly the game that they stated they were making when they first announced the game. An open world experience with no NPCs in the world. Just you, a small group of other players and robots / computers to give you quest while the game being designed for you and your friends to make your own little camp area by taking the building and resource mechanics from FO4 and expanding on that. They never stated the game was FO5 with built in multiplayer. Yet even here people are using that as a game to show developers making a terrible game. It isn't terrible, it might not be what players wanted, but they didn't lie to people and show one thing and release something else like no man sky. People just don't listen or pay attention to anything in regards to what to expect. You have games come out that are fine, but don't have some special thing that people thought it should have or would have and people hate the game. A series changes something between versions as far as gameplay and people hate that.... While there is the people with valid concerns / issues that will come out, you also have the toxic culture that will rise up and be far more vocal. People that have never played a game, have no desire to play a game but will help bash a company on every page they can, will make sure to down vote everything they can. Just because "the man has to be taught a lesson".

Its the same reason that some games (like Half Life) never got sequels as the developers decided why bother spending time to make something that some will enjoy but most will bitch that you either didn't change enough or you changed to much and ultimately you spend the time and effort making something for the toxic side to just bitch about.

So I could see where it is hard for a company to try to decide when you should say something and when you should just sit back, listen to the people and try to fix what you can till things die down some then start to interact with the people that are still out there.
 
More like entitled devs. Too much bitching on the web these days, shits gettin old, better to wait a few months for the beta to finish up or just don't buy the game at all, they'll get the message.

Yeah welcome to the wonderful world of capitalism where you are the sheep and you need to purchase things.

lol, are being serious right now? So socialism/communism would produce better games? Or perhaps a new unicorn economy made from a fake vocabulary word salad like mmt?
 
while the games should be more complete or working period in some cases the gamer base has a very entitled group in there that does seem to be the move vocal. Look at the bitching about Jade in mortal kombat 11. People were pissed that she wasn't a mostly nude character. The game has more playable characters than any other fighting game at launch and people are still bitching that their favorite character didn't make a return. For Spiderman on the PS4 they had 40 different versions of spiderman and yet people bitched and review bombed the game because it didn't have the version from one of the movies. Even for Fallout 76. The game that was released while it did have some bugs it was exactly the game that they stated they were making when they first announced the game. An open world experience with no NPCs in the world. Just you, a small group of other players and robots / computers to give you quest while the game being designed for you and your friends to make your own little camp area by taking the building and resource mechanics from FO4 and expanding on that. They never stated the game was FO5 with built in multiplayer. Yet even here people are using that as a game to show developers making a terrible game. It isn't terrible, it might not be what players wanted, but they didn't lie to people and show one thing and release something else like no man sky. People just don't listen or pay attention to anything in regards to what to expect. You have games come out that are fine, but don't have some special thing that people thought it should have or would have and people hate the game. A series changes something between versions as far as gameplay and people hate that.... While there is the people with valid concerns / issues that will come out, you also have the toxic culture that will rise up and be far more vocal. People that have never played a game, have no desire to play a game but will help bash a company on every page they can, will make sure to down vote everything they can. Just because "the man has to be taught a lesson".

Its the same reason that some games (like Half Life) never got sequels as the developers decided why bother spending time to make something that some will enjoy but most will bitch that you either didn't change enough or you changed to much and ultimately you spend the time and effort making something for the toxic side to just bitch about.

So I could see where it is hard for a company to try to decide when you should say something and when you should just sit back, listen to the people and try to fix what you can till things die down some then start to interact with the people that are still out there.

WTF does "Toxic" mean, other than "I don't like what you're saying, so shut up!"? Another meaningless term meant to shut down speech the receiver is not satisfied with merely ignoring, but insists must be unsaid?
 
More like entitled devs. Too much bitching on the web these days, shits gettin old, better to wait a few months for the beta to finish up or just don't buy the game at all, they'll get the message.



lol, are being serious right now? So socialism/communism would produce better games? Or perhaps a new unicorn economy made from a fake vocabulary word salad like mmt?

Speaking of sheep, here's an example of a fool, like so many millions in the last century, happy to march along with the Marxists to usher in a workers paradise. Never mind the endless examples of the misery it leads to, and the hundreds of millions left dead in the wake of Marxism, it will surely work this time.
 
... Never mind the endless examples of the misery it leads to, and the hundreds of millions left dead in the wake of Marxism, it will surely work this time.

Hey, communism would work, it just has a requirement that people work together responsibly and not take advantage of the weaknesses inherent in the system. Which means it won't work, ever.
 
Hence the name division 2 :) what happened to 1 exactly ?

You’re right but only to a point.

BioWare/EA released a looter shooter game that completely ignored every single lesson that other developers in the genre have learned over the past 10 years.

I have ~70 hours in Anthem. It’s trash. They only got two things right:

1) Flying around in a javelin, Iron-Man fantasy
2) motion capture of NPCs in cut scenes

That’s it. Everything else is complete crap.

I have almost 70 hours into Division 2 in half the time. It’s really, really good. A masterpiece compared to Anthem.
 
So many experts on here.

I personally just don't buy games at release anymore due to the fact that they are not fixed 100%.

I'll settle for 95% and the occasional model freak out, but not this "mostly works" norm.

Doesn't help to lambast devs, just dont buy it, or ask for a refund.
 
I like Anthem as the game - it's not perfect, but it is "fun" (for a free bundled game). But sadly the game in freeplay drops to 30FPS at 4k high settings. I guess my Threadripeer 2950X, GTX 2080 Ti, 970 EVO 1TB and 64GB of DDR4-3000 is not enough. Trying to fight in messy fights at 30FPS is not fun.
 
Hence the name division 2 :) what happened to 1 exactly ?

Well Anthem had a lot to look at and work from, so a lot of what they released was inexcusable.

Anthem has a ton of great stuff in it, it’s just a bad overall game. A lot of what they did shouldn’t have passed the smell test and could have been easily fixed before launch.
 
Sounds like human resources at BioWare needs to contract for some human interactions training, because there's no reason for a properly trained employee to be emotionally hurt by a bunch of nasty internet posts, and there's no excuse for circling the wagons and ceasing communication when your work group is in crisis.

There are a couple of other things that I think the developers need training on. The first is not to be the 'Sage on the Stage' - people need to be taught not to be narcissistic when they make appearances on reddit. Thinking that people will be impressed because you're a developer at BioWare is a good way to live disappointed.

The second is 'Dungeon Master Syndrome', the idea that you are failing in your job as a game master if the scenarios you created didn't kill or drastically harm people's characters. This idea is the farthest from the truth - your success as the GM is based on how much fun your players had. Although 'Dungeon Master Syndrome' doesn't sound like it relates to BioWare's reddit situation, it really does: As a GM you put in all the work developing and presenting the game, and the players got all the enjoyment. As a GM your satisfaction is that the players enjoyed the game. The players are your customer, and if you're GMing properly it is your job to entertain them. The same is true for BioWare. They may have put in a lot of creative time and effort in developing the game, they may feel a lot of pride in their work, and they may take offense at their detractors, but in the end their purpose is to entertain the customer. No amount of justification about your ideas and effort can improve a game that people didn't like.

You have to listen to your customers. Bethesda got over a half year of feedback about Fallout '76, but no one listened.
 
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Hence the name division 2 :) what happened to 1 exactly ?

1 had issues at launch as well - But remember, this was a while back when this type of game along with Destiny were a bit new to the scene, and things weren't as well worked out mechanically.

In 2019, there was no excuse to release Anthem in the state it was.
 
My oh my. Reminds me of the parental-like threat 4A made when all the Steam vs Epic stuff was going on.

just a friendly personal note to EA in response to that Bioware comment:


Try putting out a game that actually works and is interesting and fun to play and that you won't drop just 2 months after release.

BTW, there's few things in life like threatening your CUSTOMER base
 
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I kind of find it funny... every other industry pours billions into customer feedback yet they get very, very little, and most is negative... but they still want it in order to improve their products.

The video game industry on the other hand gets feedback for free and they don't want it...

Newsflash... the people who you sell games to actually know how to type and use the internet! Feedback for them is a twatter post away...

If you want to sell shoddy merchandise, be sure your targeted demographic has no inclination for feedback.
 
It's not unreasonable for consumers to be pissed when promises are not met. Maybe they should clean house with people that can make and keep realistic promises. Also perhaps they should also stop blaming the consumer for their problems.
 
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