[Massively] Fanbase negativity responsible for Bioware founder exit? - Page 8

The games they made that were good were complete hits that made them massive amounts of money. Why would they move away from that formula on their own, it doesn't make any sense. It has to be EA. Even with DA:O, you could feel them turning the corner... for the worse. They tried to focus on graphics... and failed. Their graphics engine was the most overhyped, unoptimized disappointment I've ever experienced in gaming, and that's saying quite a bit. There were multiple game-breaking glitches that went unaddressed by developers for MONTHS, where modders fixed the majority of problems in 30 minutes by altering a few flags and scripts.

The developers honestly just didn't seem to care. Although more likely, it was EA hamstringing what they could and couldn't say and EA delaying patches with red tape for simple problems that were demonstrably easy to fix.

Never bought a Bioware product after DA:O.

You do realize that DA:O was in development for 7 YEARS before it finally came out right? So for 6 of those years or so, EA had NOTHING to do with DA:O. And the graphics engine was FAR from the most hyped thing. Trust me, no one was talking about how good the graphics were going to be even before it game out. It was actually the opposite, they were talking about how it had okay graphics, because most things had been designed so many years before.

I don't know if graphics engine is the right term, maybe game engine is the right term. And yes, it was hyped, quite a bit in fact. They promised massive scale battles with good performance and optimization. Of course that didn't happen, there were no massive scale batles, and optimization was in fact the opposite.

You also cannot tell me that EA had nothing to do with patch release. After the game came out, EA was by then in full control and their seeming inability to fix simple, yet game breaking issues really peeved a lot of fans. Their forums were absolutely flooded for the first several months.

Yea, I will give you the patching issues. They never did fix the memory leak that caused the game to start dropping textures after a while. Keeps you from using to many texture mods, which sucks.

IMHO, when companies (their shareholders/board/owner) sell-out to bigger entities, they are after security - I want to be an employee, get paid, get profits (if any) ontop of my paycheck, don't dig into my savings while the game is in development etc.

Surely EA would like to force stuff if those were dragged around, but it was Bioware and whichever other company that made promises the first place.
They promised growth, they asked for money, they got money.
EA wanted a return of investment. If the design team was "delivering", why would they interfere ?
If there was a winning team, why change it?

Surely founder's are emotional and attached to their "child", but lets be realistic: they made their choices and chose to have less "skin" in the game, exactly to be able to "bail" if things would go wrong.
It is the low-to-mid-end bioware studio employees that will get @@@@ by EA now, not the big boys - unless all their wealth is stock options that will disappear overnight. The latter is usually the case for the ambitious employees further down the scale, which were the ones to probably kill themselves over the developing phase, and now have been abandoned on the ship by their captain.

As sticks already mentioned, DAO was in development long before EA had any involvement in the decision making process... At most, EA would have been able to influence marketing, distribution and subsequent post release content. As to why they moved away from their original formula, which is only partially true, I already addressed that(the desire for broader market appeal vis`-a-vis´ courting multiple genres by borrowing various action/FPS design/gameplay elements and reducing/removing certain rpg elements). They've kept the portions of their formula that they believe have the broadest appeal, IE story driven with a focus on companions... That said, even when they tried to reinvent the Biowarian wheel with DA2, they simply created a microcosm of their prior game structure(humble beginnings, meet new people, grow into powerful champion, save the day, ect), reduced/streamlined/eliminated certain RPG elements and missed the potential of an engaging city adventure(IMO).

Their older games may have been hits amongst their target audience, but that was a relatively niche market demographic(cRPG fans with DnD crossover). Perhaps they fell for the "PC gaming is dying" and then the whole "RPGs are clunky, have too many numbers, lack fast paced/twitchy combat, take to long to complete, have bad GFX, ect"...

It would be enlightening to see the sales figures for BG and BG2. My guess they are no where near that of GTA, COD, Sims, Halo, GoW ect ect. And thus the impetus to evolve was born...

As far as DAO's failings, there are quite a few, FWIW they seem small when juxtaposed against certain all of DA2 elements.
Edited by MasterKromm - 10/9/12 at 12:42pm