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Legendary Game Studio Bioware Shuts Down
- Thread starter bigdogchris
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You notice a trend somehow...or still in denial?
tell me the "trend" as it pertains to Rocksteady
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M76
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These people were never in charge of story and art direction. They are politicians. They don't give a rat's ass about games, stories, ideologies. They make decisions based on what their underlings feed them. If lower management says if we only made our products just a little bit more woke then we'd surely unlock the vast invisible "modern audience", then they embrace woke. I'm not saying they are victims either, they are some of the most vile people on Earth, only caring about their legacy. But they are not directly responsible for the wokification of entertainment media. The blame is entirely on the people who are in charge of creative decisions, not business ones.
1 game is a trend?...do you know the definition of the word 'trend'?...here's a trend- Arkham Asylum, Arkham City, Arkham Knight
Bioware's downfall started with Star Wars: The Old Republic. They bit off way more than they could chew with that MMO and it was the reason they sold out to EA. It was the only way to get the funds to finish the game.
The other projects begun before the EA buyout but released under EA were still good but the writing was on the wall simply because they were now owned by EA and everyone knows what happens then.
It's a surprise Bioware lasted as long as it did after selling to EA. The final nail in the coffin was the woke era. Most of the original guys were already gone and then they went full woke and it trashed the games and ruined one franchise. Failguard was the culmination of all the shit being put into one package and called a game. Everyone knew it was over by then. Three large failures in a row guaranteed the studio was going to be shut down. It's a surprise it didn't happen before.
I know some people hoped ME5 was going to be the last chance but that was never going to happen. It's unlikely there was anything to that other than pitched ideas. The reason Bioware announced anything about it was to drum up whatever support possible to have an undeserved chance at another game to keep their jobs. It was never about them working on an actual game. And it's good it's not going to happen. There is no talent left at Bioware. There are none of the people left who started these games which is what made them great. Even if ME5 was made I had every expectation it was going to be trash and shit on the previous entries in the series and it's good it never got made.
Good riddance zombie Bioware.
The other projects begun before the EA buyout but released under EA were still good but the writing was on the wall simply because they were now owned by EA and everyone knows what happens then.
It's a surprise Bioware lasted as long as it did after selling to EA. The final nail in the coffin was the woke era. Most of the original guys were already gone and then they went full woke and it trashed the games and ruined one franchise. Failguard was the culmination of all the shit being put into one package and called a game. Everyone knew it was over by then. Three large failures in a row guaranteed the studio was going to be shut down. It's a surprise it didn't happen before.
I know some people hoped ME5 was going to be the last chance but that was never going to happen. It's unlikely there was anything to that other than pitched ideas. The reason Bioware announced anything about it was to drum up whatever support possible to have an undeserved chance at another game to keep their jobs. It was never about them working on an actual game. And it's good it's not going to happen. There is no talent left at Bioware. There are none of the people left who started these games which is what made them great. Even if ME5 was made I had every expectation it was going to be trash and shit on the previous entries in the series and it's good it never got made.
Good riddance zombie Bioware.
RPG Creators Mourn BioWare, as Warren Spector Blasts Those Behind Its Closure
In a LinkedIn post, Warren Spector the recently retired legendary game designer behind various Ultima games, System Shock and Deus Ex vented his raw frustration at those executives who effectively executed such a historic studio and did so, in all likelihood, without any consequence for themselves:
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7518774616589316097/
CEO Larian Studios:
https://x.com/LarAtLarian/status/2113020691251642602
Casey Hudson:
https://x.com/CaseyDHudson/status/2113012091519164839
Mike Gamble:
https://x.com/GambleMike/status/2113101253337367023
In a LinkedIn post, Warren Spector the recently retired legendary game designer behind various Ultima games, System Shock and Deus Ex vented his raw frustration at those executives who effectively executed such a historic studio and did so, in all likelihood, without any consequence for themselves:
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7518774616589316097/
CEO Larian Studios:
https://x.com/LarAtLarian/status/2113020691251642602
Casey Hudson:
https://x.com/CaseyDHudson/status/2113012091519164839
Mike Gamble:
https://x.com/GambleMike/status/2113101253337367023
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I like the levelling and gameplay in SWTOR, but end game was boring and the world felt a bit too disjointed. It probably should have been a single player game.
The Warren Spector part links to Larian X post.
thanks...fixed
Bioware started dying as soon as they sold out to EA back in 2007. EA let them release a few more solid games, but I can't think of anything good after the Mass Effect series. Zombie studio since 2012. Hopefully the Saudis sell off the rest of their IP. Larian did a great job with Baldur's Gate 3. Hopefully the rest of the old Bioware franchises find similar homes. As for "Bioware" getting the axe... I really don't care. It's been Bioware in name only for a long time. I hope the Saudis sell off all EA's "non-Sharia" IP. Preferably cheap, since I want it to go to small studios that might actually make a good game. This might actually be a good time for lP liquidation for us gamers. Seems like all the big corps are cutting back on gaming, like lots of cuts at Microsoft too. If that keeps them from buying up the cast offs from dead studios... good!
Mass Effect to CDPR and Dragon Age to Larian would be gold.
No way in hell. CDPR is in the same spot as Bioware from 10 or so years ago. At this point that studio will be coasting on past successes. About the only way that doesn't happen is if they scrap most of what they had setup for The Witcher 4 and put Geralt back in as main character.
Geralt has retired, let the man enjoy his wineyard with the girl of your choice in peace... The ending for B&W was perfect, don't water it down.
My logic here is that if there is a company that can make a scifi shooter RPG, CDPR is a strong contender thanks to their experience (good and bad) with Cyberpunk.
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1 bad game can kill off a studio yes, try asking Firewalk studios how that works.
So do you see a trend or are you still in denial?
The game I was wishing CDPR had made is Bloodlines 2. I don't love Mass Effect or Dragon Age enough to use up a CDPR dev cycle on them. I'd rather have more Witcher & Cyberpunk. But some devs quit, started a new studio and made Blood of the Dawnwalker so that actually worked out way better than expected.
At any rate I just want all the good IPs from Bioware to land in independent studios that might give us something good rather than more corporate shovelware, which is pretty much all we get out of MS, EA, etc.
Everyone likes to blame investors, but investors don’t shut down profitable enterprises. Saudi Arabia didn’t kill BioWare. Not delivering what the customer wants killed BioWare. EA corporate no doubt had something to do with their inability to do so as well. The guys who made BioWare great are no longer there, and they were replaced by activists who decided to turn their software into their own personal political platform. The customer doesn’t want that.
For me, it was Mass Effect 3 that was the beginning of the downfall. Way worse gameplay than 2, and they used the subverted expectations trope for the ending, salting the earth for the future of the franchise. An entire long story mod was made to fix the ending.
Dragon age 3 had some issues but you could mostly ignore it or mod it out.
ME4 was their death rattle.
The hail mary of DA4 was the final nail in the coffin.
Dragon age 3 had some issues but you could mostly ignore it or mod it out.
ME4 was their death rattle.
The hail mary of DA4 was the final nail in the coffin.
The gameplay of ME3 wasn't worse than 2. That said, I basically agree with the rest.
Oh yeah, the gameplay itself was fine in ME3. But regarding how it handles companions was a major step back. In ME2 it felt very personal when you talked to your companions, you chose what to answer. You felt more like you were engaged in a proper dialog. 3 on the other hand used mostly canned lines with no options to response, much like the DLC characters of ME2. You walk in the room and the lines start. While there were some gems like the famous "emergency induction part" of drunk Tali, it all still felt very impersonal and detached with no role playing chances.
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Lol, they must be the worst CEO's in the world. Hmm... we're losing millions, maybe I should see what's going on? Nah... *the next year*. Hmm... we're still losing millions, maybe I should see what's going on? Nah... *the next year*. Hmm... we're still losing millions, maybe I should see what's going on? Nah... *the next year*...
That's half right. There was a bunch of auto-dialog but there was also far more actual dialog that you could respond to. The only real problem was that some characters like Zyeed were effectively stuck with only auto-dialog options. Several characters had both conversational dialog and auto-dialog. We actually had the same thing in ME2, but it was only with Zyeed and Kasumi.
Yeah and I didn't like that with Zaeed and Kasumi either, it basically watered their characters down.
It has been years since I last played it but the prevalence of auto dialog is the most profound thing that stuck with me with ME3, along with the horrid original ending.
Well, as I said the auto-dialog in ME3 was mostly in addition to a great deal more conversations and more conversation options than we got in the previous games. In ME1, you could basically run through all that NPC's dialog in one go with a few exceptions. In ME2 the dialog was staged like it is in ME3, but there was far less of it overall. Way fewer lines of dialog. The auto-dialog didn't bother me, except in the few cases where that was the only type of conversation you got with those characters. Zaeed being the best example of that. Also, I really liked that character so I found that to be very disappointing.
DukenukemX
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Not the Bioware I grew up with. This needed to happen. At least they won't make another shitty Mass Effect game. Leave the Trilogy at peace.
Your only ever as good as your last thing.
Those are IP games, so I get they don't always have the ultimate call on themes, or even story elements. At the very least things need to be signed off on by the rights holder. We all know DC is a raging overflowing dumpster fire. Regardless the finger pointing at that studio started pretty quick after that turn got dropped. The founder was trying to intrude new systems months from launch, the company apparently has a "toxic positivity" problem what ever the fuck that is. They had sweet baby come in and shit up their scripts, and again to be fair that may have been from the top at DC... IP game don't always have control of that.
Bottom line is their last game lost a ton of money, and it is one of the worst games ever made. Pointing to games they made 15-20 years ago doesn't mean much. They apparently have a single player batman game yet again getting ready to get released in the next year or two. If its a return to good games that would be great. I think they may be unfortunately a little ham strung by the IP rights holder. IF DC wants some Gunn Style BS or basically forces them to make some sort of modern Batman followup well that would be a trend and kinda suck.
The leadership there that was making the bad decisions has to go.
The HR department that hired the activists needs to go.
With them gone, all you are left with are the activist employees, but how do you decide which are or aren't worth keeping? Because if all you have to judge them on is the games they released, then none of them are worth keeping.
Also, if you selectively fire them and they choose to sue because of discrimination or something, then you just have a legal headache, so you fire everybody and kill the studio.
They still own the name BioWare; nothing says they can't reopen BioWare in Ukraine, or back in Texas, or anywhere else really
He's allowed to be frustrated; the Executives should have kept a firm grip on the studios and not let them steer into oncoming Traffic.
So yes, I agree it was a 100% leadership problem, because EA did a terrible job vetting the person sitting in BioWare's driver's seat, and EA let that person make terrible hiring decisions, which resulted in BioWare producing terrible products.
So we should be glad that BioWare now has new owners who will hopefully learn from this and not make those same bad decisions.
Your lack of understanding of how the gaming industry works is showing again. You are only as good as your last game as someone else pointed out. But beyond that, the people who made those earlier Arkham games are NOT employed at Rocksteady anymore. Most game development positions are contract labor. Meaning, after a project is completed they are laid off and go find work on another project at another studio. That's how the industry has always worked. Small teams in pre-production and large teams for full production. Then they lay off people, and then move to a more support /patch model unless they have additional DLC planned. Even then, it usually doesn't require the same size team as the one that created the full game initially.
You also can't seem to grasp the fact that Arkham Knight came out in 2015 and was a technical pile of shit. It took months for that game to get unfucked by the devs and is regarded as one of the worst PC ports of all time. The company had to offer refunds to people because it was so shit. Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League came out 9 years later. Most of the people that worked on Arkham Knight would have moved onto other studios and projects by that point and it shows. Narratively, Suicide Squad is bad. Gameplay, is bad. More importantly, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League lost 200 million dollars. Rocksteady's success is more than a decade old now, as their most recent title was a colossal flop. BioWare hasn't had a success since 2014. It's one mild success was the Legendary Edition of the ME Trilogy in 2021. A remaster of games made between 2007 and 2012.
I get his gut reaction is to be pissed, but BioWare has been mismanaged from the start and the studio was internally, a cautionary tale of how not to run a studio or a business. This kind of reaction is almost certainly why EA didn't shutter the studio years earlier. It deserved it, and yeah, EA deserves the blame for ruining the studio but the problem with the AAA gaming industry goes well beyond EA or BioWare in general. It's the entire western gaming industry that's a shit show right now.
Indeed. When you are talking about hundreds of millions of dollars wasted, absolutely. One game is enough to get a studio axed. BioWare didn't just fuck up once. It fucked up many times. As people have pointed out, it messed up with SWTOR in a lot of ways. The game was great at times, but it was also mismanaged and cost way more than it should have. Though its made money, it wasted the potential it had through various missteps. Mass Effect 3's ending and rush to market was another cock up. The ending was divisive, hated, and ultimately, robbed the game of its full potential for success. Andromeda, made some money but fell well short of expectations. Anthem was a complete and total disaster, missing EA's internal targets for it entirely. Dragon Age The Veilguard lost over 100 million dollars directly, but poor performance of it and its lead sports game that quarter caused its stock price to drop 16% or by 6 billion dollars in value.
BioWare deserved to be shut down YEARS ago. It's a hard pill to swallow, because at one point everything they did was a hit. Some of my fondest gaming memories are with BioWare games. As I've said before, I'd rather not ever see another Mass Effect game than see the franchise go through what Dragon Age did. Which BTW, is the MOST likely outcome of its continued development.
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Maybe the original company shouldn't have sold out to EA? I mean its easy to be upset at EA but there's a forgone conclusion something "not nice" was going to happen after the sale
It was not only a lot of upfront money, but the bioware founders got big exectuvive title , VPs, (and compensation that come with those) at EA has well, giving them power over on how EA will manage BioWare. Kept an independant sub-label, kept bioware one headquarters, management, culture for a while, I am sure it came with a lot of nice promise.
Would the founder stayed as EA vps.... instead of retiring, who knows. Then the rest took the big money and left, not sure how certain it was....
Pixar acquisition around that time, they are the one that changed Disney animation way more than the other way around, Riot games seem to be doing well since having been bought by Tencent.
EA forcing frostbite can be seen as a big minus or a big plus that a lot of tech for "free", I think Mass Effect 3 is a good representation of the danger but also high ceiling possibility of it working, for all the EA injected issues, it was still a giant success and money printing machine.
no one should be celebrating the end of BioWare...they were one of the all-time greats...doesn't matter if they lost their way after the EA merger...if you keep cheering for all the studios to close then pretty soon there will be no one left except maybe the EA's and Bethesda's
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Nothing lasts forever
Studios close and new ones open, accept it or move on.
Let's say you compare the company Bioware to a Ferrari.
You've got this great car that everyone loves. Now imagine the engine is replaced with a 1.1L engine from a ride on lawn mower. The wheels are replaced with stone blocks. The chassis is replaced with cheap imitation plastic. The leather seats are replaced with bean bags. the windows and windscreen replaced with plastic wrap. All the doors are removed. But they keep the Ferrari badge on the bonnet. Is it still the original Ferrari? No. Everything that made it a Ferrari is gone, it is a Ferrari in name only.
This is what happened to Bioware, most if not all the original employees are gone. The people that created the golden era are no longer at the company. Is it still called Bioware? Yes. But it is Bioware in name only, as the people that made it Bioware are gone, and have been for a long time.
d3athf1sh
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did you watch the "cyberpunk 2.5" stream they did yesterday? where the hosts were 3 women to 1 man, prob is an example of their workforce at this point? but it was a total waste of time if you ask me. the only thing i got out of an almost hour podcast is that they're adding "cozy quests"
and more . and they hired that chick from sweet baby as the head writer for witcher 4? man, i hope you don't have high hopes for that. it's also no wonder they're pushing Geralt to the side and putting a woman in charge... plus after finally getting the Red Engine to where it needed to be, they switch to UE5 for W4? well get ready for micro stutters and all the other performance problems that plague ALL UE5 games. so have fun, but i personally don't have any hope for W4 coming out unscathed. they are only doing this Witcher 3 expansion now so she can pull of a giant bait and switch maneuver just like kathleen kennedy did with Star Wars: Rogue One.
d3athf1sh
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dude, larian doesn't need dragon age, they have creatives working for them.
plus bioware only even made dragon age origins because they lost the D&D license before making another Baldur's Gate so what they were working on became dragon age.