EA Continues to Loot BioWare's Corpse

originally posted by: willzilla
I would rather rot my brain out playing games when I can, than rot my brain out watching the news. My time is mine. Yours is yours. I suggest you mind yours and not mine.

a reply to: EequalsMC2

Hear hear! 100% agree

a reply to: ketsuko

Yeah, I never finished them all and been wanting to go back for ages, so I'll go for the remasters providing they aren't just lazy cash ins.

a reply to: valiant

I have 4 Sheperds I've carried across all three games. I'd have more, but ME2 wasn't really to my taste.

a reply to: ketsuko

To be fair, I was kinda burnt out of those kinda games by the time I played mass effect. It just felt kinda hollow compared to their earlier games. Flashy and full of cutscenes but lacking the substance of the earlier games.

I dunno, i'd spent a bunch of time crafting a couple modules in NWN, played through the Kotor games a bunch of times, played a bunch of other rpgs, I dunno, tons and played just a bunch of games in general full of depth by the time I tried Mass Effect, it just didn't really click with me. I preferred the choice system in their earlier games, I prefer unguided nonlinear exploration type stuff like metroid,I preferred the ambiguous moral choices with an actual ingame effect of the Kotor series, morrowind had a giant world full of things, i'd finally rid myself of my diablo 2 addiction.

Mass effect was just sorta bland by comparison. Dragon age was the same way. They both felt like shallow imitations of bioware's earlier games full of shiny graphics.

originally posted by: ketsuko
a reply to: valiant

I have 4 Sheperds I've carried across all three games. I'd have more, but ME2 wasn't really to my taste.

FEMSHEP all the way. Deleted my male shep ASAP. I also got EVERYONE to the end of ME2 and none died. I been bugging MICROSOFT to buy Bioware from EA. EA is eventually going to tank.

a reply to: yuppa

My problems with ME2 were that I felt it was a weak game storywise. It wasn't so much that the companions were necessarily bad, but they felt out of place after the first group. The game itself felt like someone wanted to make something completely different than ME1, so they were working hard to scrub it and say, "Here! You'll love this even better ..."

I also felt like I spent 90% of the game babysitting their daddy issues in one way or another.

That said it was enjoyable enough gameplay wise and I loved the final mission. It just felt like a long slog through the family issues of a bunch of characters I never really wanted.

a reply to: ketsuko
Well they did announce not to long ago that they are remastering the mass effect trilogy and are working on a mass effect 4... with the original team who created the first three. I’m just not ready to give up on BioWare. Been a fan for a long time.

originally posted by: EequalsMC2
a reply to: ketsuko


Maybe stop playing children’s games and make better use of your time... just an idea

Totally agree! I ignored PC's, the whole console distraction and all that non-intellectual children's play and came up with a new invention last year! Not a single soul on this planet has witnessed it yet!

Haha, eat your heart out naysayers, my new invention!

I've just always been a game player at heart. It doesn't matter what kind. Tabletop board games, strategy, RPG, etc., so eventually finding my way into video games was just a natural progression. I was also that kid who always signed up for every season's sport too. I just like to play, at anything.

I would say to naysayers that you're only as old as you let yourself be. There's a difference between taking care of business in the adult world and calcifying into some fuddy-duddy who has zero sense of enjoyment in life.

a reply to: XXXN3O

Oh those are the day's, A friend when I was very young indeed had one or rather his father did, it was about the size of most people's dining room table if a bit lower to the floor and had a face up old fashioned black and white TV built into it under a glass top, on both ends there was the rotary control and it only had that one single game built into it, that said it was the first experience I had with a computer game and it was highly addictive but then the AI was your mate on the other side of the table, sometimes it is not the game but the interaction with your friends that makes the game fun.

I Remember the game we used to get for Christmas when our parent's (or mom in my case single parent) could not afford a home computer but I had been pestering her all year for one (kid's don't really have a grasp on how expensive something is they just want it), Grandstand LED games like Astro Wars, you would show your mates all excited and then they would show you there new Vic 20 or Dragon 32 or Sinclair ZX spectrum, they were great little games but I do wonder how many got thrown around by ungrateful kid's in a temper tantrum (I did not I loved mine but I played it to destruction as a 10 or 11 year old and it wore out with first one LED dying them others and the controls infuriatingly not working right).

Of course then it moved from the race between early game consoles and home PC's to the younger kid's just a few years younger than us getting those pocket Nintendo LCD games and up from there many of which tried to clone the Arcade machines most popular titles.

I believe that is really were the division between modern PC and Console gamers originated, some grew up with console and stuck with what they knew while other's with Computers were happier with a keyboard in front of them.

Here is some nostalgic computer sound's to bring back the good old days of having time to cook a whole sunday roast dinner in the time it took for your game to load from an old Philips cassette tape (Best on a commodore 64 since we actually used to get excited by the loading screen's - well it was a simpler time).




Try not to laugh this was cool back then.

Then there were the high street stores that had computers the kid's could come and look at and we used to race to put our own tiny basic program onto it so the shop owner did not know they were advertising some 12 year old sprog's coolness to the world from there shop window.

10 CLS
20 print "what's his face is Cool"
30 GoTo 20
that kind of thing though I can't remember Basic after all these years.

a reply to: LABTECH767

I recall the original Oregon Trail game that we used to be traumatized by in the classroom.

I have a tee I wear that says, "You have died of dysentery".

a reply to: ketsuko

Over here our school's had the BBC micro computer and there was a game on it that was used for education but at heart was an real time strategy, send out your ascii character peon's to chop down tree's, build farm's (So yes it was teaching us to burn down the Amazon hahaha) and fight off bandit's as you helped your character go from hunter to king).

Not sure it was intended for educational purposes but back then computers in school were a new idea.

Here is an archive of BBC micro computer games you can actually play online complete with the ropey ascii character graphic's of that old machine, some may be more addictive than modern games but there is no getting away from the fact a BBC micro computer was no match for the main stream home computers of the day and was marketed more as an educational or business machine.
www.bbcmicro.co.uk...

So I have fond old memories of playing Bards Tale, Simcity, Populous and Baldurs gate on my old amiga 500, so EA has made some great games, I'm just not interested in what theyve done over the past 10 yrs or more.

Big money likely ruined them. AAA console titles are all any of the big studios want now, and they generally produce crap or something unimaginative or regurgitated.

I worked back in the day for a tiny game dev company on one of the first Xbox LOTR titles, and we had a fairly small local publisher too, but Sony/Universal got wind of the game we were making and they simply bought our publisher, TADA! Now our honchos calling the shots are all Hollywood douchebags with no game dev exp at all, then they proceed to crap all over your image/product, which was why the estate trusted us to do this title in the first place.

The business of creating quality games is complicated and often ugly, because large media companies with no souls are calling the shots typically and they just want a huge return.

a reply to: Aliquandro

Maybe in there early day's when they ran alongside other old games studios such as Ocean etc but not the modern corporate franchise, Oh I will give them that they do make the odd good game but these days you are as likely to find loot box's in there - and OTHER studio's (Bethesda even jumped on the bandwagon) titles.

And they are or were dead set on pursuing the online multi player model and so side lined many single player games, it really is not like it was back in the days of the old Amiga or ST or indeed before that back in the 8 bit era.

Yes company's have to grow, to move on with the time's and to make a profit but at what cost, greed has gotten the better of them and many other industry giant's which is a real shame given were they originally came from at the start of there history and what the original game developers own moral's and ideal's once were.

originally posted by: LABTECH767
a reply to: Aliquandro

Maybe in there early day's when they ran alongside other old games studios such as Ocean etc but not the modern corporate franchise, Oh I will give them that they do make the odd good game but these days you are as likely to find loot box's in there - and OTHER studio's (Bethesda even jumped on the bandwagon) titles.

And they are or were dead set on pursuing the online multi player model and so side lined many single player games, it really is not like it was back in the days of the old Amiga or ST or indeed before that back in the 8 bit era.

Yes company's have to grow, to move on with the time's and to make a profit but at what cost, greed has gotten the better of them and many other industry giant's which is a real shame given were they originally came from at the start of there history and what the original game developers own moral's and ideal's once were.

Standard disclaimer of working for a major studio and as such my thoughts are not an official statement of the company or our larger org ...



I have been a gamer for just as long as everyone on this thread..Playing MUDS , playing-learning on a TI or PS1 or AMiga , playing pong to Zork to whatever else came in between . I also lead raid guilds and was in the number 1 ranked World Wide raid guild in a very popular MMORPG . I'm currently an active gamer because of where I work though the only game i actually play is one of the most popular FPS games out there. Hell my first job was at a Babbages almost 30 years ago.

I am not trying to change the mind of anyone or convince anyone of anything on this topic. People always think they know what is true, what the reality of something is, how something really works regardless of if they have no true tangible facts of specific situation. That is just human nature so all I try and to do is report facts of where I work and leave it at that.


Of the people on this thread how many currently work for a game studio or publisher regardless of size?

It's easy to sit on the outside of anything, form thoughts on leaked info, disgruntled employees or media releases and talk about how companies sell out. How greed is all they care about how , it's not how it was 30 years ago.

There isn't a single person in my specific company that wouldn't trade what it is now for what it was just a decade ago . There are multiple things that frustrate employees across every element they could be frustrated by but make no mistake about it, when payday roles around those same employees push for every cent they can. Some of the most heated internal discussions, across the whole studio , are around compensation and how multiple people feel they aren't getting enough. Even with that frustration though I dont think any of us would give up the opportunity or chance to work for a major game studio vs not.

a reply to: opethPA

Very good point and I agree, we are Spectators not players in that sense of the word, every sport has it's spectators, back seat managers in football and I guess we are not so different in that sense while you the programmers and developers are the actual Sportsmen so to speak and see it on the ground not from up in the air as we do.

I mean no offense to you or your colleagues whom do work extremely hard and have family's and lives built around this industry, I do not want to see EA crash though some do but I do want to see them clean up there act and go back to caring about both the Players and there own Employees.

Sadly as we all know that is NOT how the corporate world work's, it will pay you as little as it can, get as much out of you as it can and then sell us what you have been squeezed of for as much as they can.

I miss games that told a moral tale, kid's could play them and still have a sense of right and wrong.

Sadly corporations seem not to know the difference and that is foisted down onto you the employees in there race to make hit's regardless of morality or lack thereof.

a reply to: opethPA

Interesting reply, as I was about 20 years ago looking to get my start in the industry. My background is coding, everything from BASIC up to C#, and that naturally led in learning scripting languages as well. So I decided to start talking to folks in the industry to see how to get started. While the folks seemed to enjoy the work, they also warned me away from it due to the poor compensation and stress levels.

I went a different direction in my career due to that, and I know I made the correct choice. I think the glamour would have worn off eventually and I would have come to dread the job.

I have several friends now that work for a Epic, and I've talked with them over drinks about their career choices. For the most part they love it, but feel compensation could be better. So it's nice to get another perspective about it as I never went into the industry, although quite a few of the larger companies fall in my client base just unfortunately I never the perspective from the development side of things. So thanks for sharing it, I always like insight into what may have been my life at one point.

Over the past 26 years I have practiced my chosen IT or IS career path (Telecom and Collaboration Engineering) in just about every vertical there is: Sales, CRM, Defense, Healthcare and now Entertainment (video games).

Unexpectedly 2 years ago that current phase of my career path has lead me to Blizzard Entertainment which as part of the larger org has lead me to working with and for peers at Activision, many of the studios that are part of ATVI and King.

I can honestly say that this specific company is the most fun I have had professionally and has presented me opportunities that i never thought I would experience. Playing a major design and support role at Blizzcon. Meeting amazing people. Traveling out to our main campus which people have literally traveled from around the world to tour. With that being said It's hard for me to complain about compensation because I am far into my career and I am in a senior or lead or principal level position so my reality is going to be much different then say a person just starting out or even at the mid level .

What I would say though is this , every company has issues. Every company has problems. Sadly, to an extent, every company now is focused on turning a profit because that is how a company succeeds.

originally posted by: opethPA


Of the people on this thread how many currently work for a game studio or publisher regardless of size?

The giant publisher that bought our tiny one put my company out of business after they poached our Tolkien rights. I haven't had a chance at a video game job since, they want you to model, animate and create your own textures. I was just a specialized texture artist on the game I worked on. Very little specialization now. I just paint and have a part time delivery job now, few needs.