BioWare veterans confirm they were laid off by EA, including senior Dragon Age and Mass Effect devs
BioWare veterans confirm they were laid off by EA, including senior Dragon Age and Mass Effect devs
So EA put way too high of a sales target on the game, obviously held it back from becoming what it could be, and now are blaming the studio with layoffs, ensuring the next game will flop.
I don't care what their "numbers" and "projections" were. The game was on the top 10 list in Steam. Even if it wasn't an A+ game I'd say it looked like it at least hit Assassin's Creed numbers, I'd hardly call that a failure. Sounds more like a failure to accurately predict, maybe they should fire their business analysts instead of the people who you know, make the games.
But the business analysts are the most profitable group, anywhere! If you don't believe me just hire a business analyst to analyze things and they'll prove it to you!
As a Data Analyst / Business Analyst, let me assure you: Not all of us are stupid (some are, for sure), but there's only so much you can do about stupid managers. If they decide that a certain measure is key, it can be really hard to explain why it isn't that important or where a certain distortion comes from. To compound this, some managers genuinely don't understand their business processes and are unwilling to have it explained to them. They'll make assumptions about how things work, then base their demands on those.
For an entirely made up example, consider a department manager looking to monitor a software development team's workload. That workload, to them, consists of bug tickets and feature implementations. Not counted here are feature requests because, apparently, fielding them and discussing their feasibility isn't actual development work. That's management work, which is the Product Manager's job... Except the Product Manager can't unilaterally decide whether something is feasible without consulting those actually familiar with the code, taking up the developer's time. On the other hand, since it's an internally developed tool for other units, they can't just say No to every request or else they risk people calling their team's funding into question.
Now, you have the choice between frustrating yourself and annoying the manager by trying to explain all that, or gritting your teeth and just giving them the stupid chart on bugs closed and feature implementations completed over time. Guess which one is healthier for your employment prospects?
And we haven't even started talking about the variance in effort of bug fixes or about non-feature work for code stability or QA. Eventually, we'll reach the point where the measure becomes a target and you have to start reframing bug fixes as features and splitting features up into smaller features just to make the figures look nicer.
What I'm getting at is this: Sometimes, the analysts aren't to blame, but the managers making decisions.
That's not to say there aren't absolutely shitty business analysts out there that will gladly figure out ways to polish the figures and then cash the check for making the figures look better.
Ordered merch from Bioware mid-November for an xmas present. It arrived Jan 4th; they shipped the wrong product.
Contacted them 3 seprate times through their 'contact us' page and got ignored for 3 weeks. It wasn't until I filed a chargeback with my cc that they finally emailed me (4 days after submission).
I had asked for my money back in my various emails; but they didn't respond to that at all and just shipped me a new package.
Still haven't gotten that, so no idea if they actually shipped the right item this time. It's not listed on their site anymore; so they likely don't have inventory to ship.
We'll see what's in the box whenever it gets here.
I'll never spend another dime with EA/BioWare.
Siiiigh, its a fine game but shareholders want MOAR MOAR MOAR
Fucking leeches ruining games. Miss private companies making games
There are tons of private companies making games. They're usually called indy's
And there's some really good stuff out there in the Indy scene
and nothing of value was lost
Veilgaurd was a perfectly good game. It's not a 10/10, but despite some flaws, I've had a great time playing it. Too bad some business suit says it's not "successful" enough to warrant a follow-up.
I'd like to see how they measured success. Was it to break even? Well from what point? Including the time that it was supposed to be a live service game? Through the committees and executives shutting down ideas? It was in the top 10 for games on Steam that week and had generally favorable reviews. If that didn't match their plan, that's on them.
There's going to be some cool studios coming in the next 5 years
Yeah, the silver lining of the whole gaming industry fallout is that the indie game scene has never been better. I was lamenting the fact that we hadn't had a good top-down zeldalike in a long time, echoes of wisdom notwithstanding even though the formula is pretty altered. Someone pointed me in the direction of Master Key and it was an incredibly satisfying time. Almost like it would have fit in perfectly between LoZ 1 and Link's Awakening.
Time to build the new giants.
You can't build a game studio without funding, and that is where the problem lies...
Publishers have become very risk-averse ever since Embracer went downhill. They basically only invest in
<literally the same game as some previously successful title>
...There are also going to be lots of talent who permanently leave the industry because there are no longer any stable decent paying jobs at larger studios.