Gary McKay, General Manager, BioWare: "Hello Everyone,
Today, we are turning towards the future and preparing for the next chapter in BioWare’s story. As we announced in August 2023, we are changing how we build games to meet the needs of our upcoming projects and hold ourselves to the highest quality standards.
Now that Dragon Age: The Veilguard has been released, a core team at BioWare is developing the next Mass Effect game under the leadership of veterans from the original trilogy, including Mike Gamble, Preston Watamaniuk, Derek Watts, Parrish Ley, and others."
Former Santa Monica Studio writer Alanah Pearce has shared some insight on the game industry, and it's not great.
AAA has gone downhill as they focus on huge profits. Indie and other smaller games however have been amazing not chasing trends and the next big thing.
In all honesty, a significant majority of indies and smaller games fail. At best a you might hear about 10-20 indies that get attention or do well, but 100s more fail. AAA games can still be the bread and butter of the industry, but greedy executives would kill a good game if it doesn't make them a lot of money
Nail on the head. AAA has lost the magic and focused on profits and "player engagement". Gaming is an art form, and like always the CEO fat cats roll in to capitalize at the cost of innovation, passion, wild experimentation. We need a major realignment in the industry and it starts with gamers voting with their wallets.
I think that's already happening, we're seeing commercial successes in studios like Larion and whoever made Kingdom Come for example. Double Fine is another good example. Studios who are filled with and run by people who give a fuck that aren't hamstrung by money men. That's the answer and consumers are favouring it more than the soulless AAAs that have been put out. I don't doubt there is talent at Ubisoft for example but when they're told exactly what the end product needs to be by people who don't know what consumers actually want, it's always going to result in the same rehashed but slightly shinier slop.
Exactly. I do believe we are starting to see a shift in consumer habits. The market is saturated with GaaS and battlepasses, seasons, etc. We can't all play the same four games until the end of time. Fatigue is setting in and the industry needs to get back to making new experiences rather than chasing the latest "money maker".
I was wondering whether this is perception or actually happening but it feels to me, as a semi old gamer, there is more choice than ever and as such people are now much choosier about how they spend their time and money gaming. Certainly noticing this when it comes to GaaS as you mentioned, the question always has to be why would I play this instead of what I'm already playing. Anthem is going to have a real hard time prying away people, especially with a premium price tag that screams money men as a decision.
Nah. Devs need to pay the bills. Uninspired games fail, but artsy games usually fail even harder.
She didn't even call out Stanfield's PNG file planets when she flew through one. She just 'yelled' something stupid like 'flat earth'. She wasn't even taken aback in the slightest. I am not sure she isn't a part of the problem.
She's always been a narcissist bimbo, I'm even more surprised she's not in only fans yet.
I wasn't sure of the actual number of years just seemed like it wasn't that long ago when I heard that she got a job as a writer there, guess time flies. 4 years being "pretty good" or not is subjective depending on ones perspective. The question might be, was four years long enough to make a discernible writing contribution to a video game based on how long development cycles are these days?
She left SMS because she needed to go back to Australia to support a parent with cancer.
She quit SM studio to focus on her own stuff, There was a video where she explained all of it.
Okay, explain like the other 50 jobs she's had and hasn't held......
I think she likes to bend the truth a ton on how involved she is and when her lies catch up with her she moves on to start a new batch.
Greed , lack of innovation and agendas
Why do we rave about a good indie game but we avoid a AAA game.
The worry is that at some point down the line, Nintendo's Switch 2 eShop will close – just as the Wii U and 3DS eShops did – and these Game-Key Cards will be dependent on Nintendo's servers supporting downloads of existing titles long into the future.
"Seeing Nintendo do this is a little disheartening".
Let's ignore the fact that this is 3rd party devs who are opting to do this to save on manufacturing costs. Is Nintendo supposed to just tell them No?
nintendo will also publish games that are on key cards. nintendo should tell them no because what is the point of purchasing a physical game and having it be a digital download. that entire debacle should be outlawed and banned.
The key cards are kinda garbage. The only plus is that you can resell them.
I think anyone buying a Switch 2 should only buy the full game cards and ignore the key cards. If you have a PC or PS5/Xbox you'd probably buy the third party titles for one of those anyway since they will look and run better, except for the ones lighter on the hardware of course.
Baldur's Gate 3 developer Larian Studios is officially working on two games at the same time to become a more efficient company.
Matthew McConaughey: alright alright alright.
So... next Mass Effect will be another The Veilguard... Personally, I don't like the idea. But maybe it has its public. Good luck.
"Today’s news will see BioWare become a more agile, focused studio that produces unforgettable RPGs."
Agile is definitely an euphemism for layoffs.
Careful Gary, don't ever EVER stand in front of an EA exec if they're taking you for a walk. Hope they've renovated their graveyard to make it a little more cosey. Seems to me that going by the news, they've got one foot in the grave . Another cautionary tale of why independent studios are better off staying independent, most of what Bioware their name have long since gone.