6 ms·
BioWare is laying off 50 employees
- bitwize 3y agoBioWare hasn't been BioWare since the founders left. It's just a name now, thoroughly digested by the EA sarlacc.
- JakeAl 3y agoEA ruins everything.
- izzydata 3y agoDoes any company remain being the same company after ~20-40 years then?
- SSLy 3y agoNintendo is the same as ~ever.
- chaostheory 3y agoWell, in BioWare’s case it’s been reduced to a sticker that EA haphazardly slaps onto random games and random internal studios. The Bioware that most people think about was only based in Canada. Pretty sure that the DNA that made it great is mostly gone if not completely nonexistent at today’s EA. EA likely destroyed it during 2010-2011.
- nicce 3y agoI am still waiting for new Dragon Age… but can’t keep hopes too high
- purpleflame1257 3y agoDragon Age II was where I lost hope lol
- nicce 3y agoIt was so bad that I even did not buy it. But the Inquisiton was good one. Still not even close to the first.
- D13Fd 3y agoDragon Age 2 had some unfinished parts and cringey parts but fundamentally was still a decent game. I’ve tried Inquisition three times now and can’t get through it. It’s just a slog IMO.
- drw85 3y agoInquisition was like a single player MMO. Grindy, level restrictions everywhere. I was extremely bored by it and didn't finish it.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- cgh 3y agoFrom Software? The new Armored Core is coming soon.
- Barrin92 3y agoAlso Kojima. Death Stranding may have been the most Kojima game he's ever made. Noteworthy that the three examples mentioned here now are Japanese, might also throw in PlatinumGames. There is still a remarkable strong artistic vision in the games coming out of Japan. It seems weirdly immune to the ironically named gamification everywhere else.
- nmfisher 3y agoWhile I do agree with you to an extent, let's not forget where the word "gacha" came from..
- CoastalCoder 3y agoSeems like an instance of the Ship of Theseus [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus
- m0llusk 3y agoWhich, on the Internet, is quickly replaced by the Shit of Theseus.
- oneepic 3y agoIt's not the same, but the most recent games aren't total disasters IMO. I liked the character story quests in SW: The Old Republic, for example -- Jedi Knight's storyline was enjoyable. (Plus the game is f2p.)
- chpatrick 3y agoThat's already 13 years old though.
- brucethemoose2 3y agoThe Old Republic would be a fine game, if it wasn't an MMO. And I don't mean multiplayer, that is fine. But the hotbar mashing combat, the grindy areas filled with standing mooks, all the padding and instancing... Bioware Austin did a great job changing it to be more KOTOR-like over the years, but at its core its a hotbar MMO. On a seperate note, Andromeda was tragic, but I still liked it. Anthem was... Just tragic. I am literally the target demographic (a ME3 coop fan) but was not the least bit interested.
- A_D_E_P_T 3y agoAndromeda was very hard to like and deeply flawed on every level. Anthem, despite interesting art direction, was impossible to like. It's almost odd that Bioware still exists as a large studio (>300 employees) when it seems they've forgotten how to release a good game. Baldur's Gate -- which is 25 years old -- was released in 1998, and its sequel was released less than two years later, in 2000. All of the Mass Effect games were released in a 4.5 year period from late 2007 to early 2012. ...Now they're in a state where they haven't released a good game in over a decade. They're a zombie studio. If you ask me, EA, despite its reputation and the way they have botched the decision-making process at the studio (e.g. by forcing Bioware to use the Frostbite engine,) has shown admirable patience, tolerance, and forbearance.
- superchroma 3y agoIf you set your teams up to fail by getting them to work on bad ideas that are not in their skillset, forcing technical choices on them that hamper them, controlling their inputs (budget) and outputs (marketing) and setting the deadlines to please shareholders without taking reality into account you can hardly be said to be patient, tolerant or forbearent. Allowing teams to fail repeatedly is bad management. Someone at EA should be fired.
- ljm 3y agoThat is the entire history of gaming though, no? It's the same churn you are working with now but you're not making games or fun, you're making productivity tools or better graphics or whatever, and other people are using that for games.
- pauldenton 3y agoIt's just marking the end of an era. Maxis wasn't the same after Will Wright left, and the writing on the wall was how EA put him in a box with Spore. Rare wasn't the same after the brother founders left and sold it to Microsoft. Origin wasn't the same after Richard Garriot and Chris Roberts left.
- ljm 3y agoFunny how the era started with pay to win (coin-op arcades where the games depend on you spending money on them and are completely unforgiving) and ended a generation or two later with pay to win (micro transactions, subscriptions, etc etc)
- brucethemoose2 3y agoEnshittification seems to be the entire history of humanity. Good things deteriorate. If we are lucky, parts of them will dissolve and reincarnate.
- aidenn0 3y agoTIL there are two "C"s in "sarlacc"
- User23 3y agoEA hungers like Stormbringer for the souls of top tier RPG developers.
- Arrath 3y agoThis is Bullfrog, Origin, and Westwood erasure. (okay Westwood did the pretty great Nox, so maybe they are covered but still)
- User23 3y agoBullfrog’s big hits were very much RPG adjacent too. I think it’s fair to say Syndicate is something of a tactical RPG. Populous is more of a stretch, but if you squint… And Origin did Ultima, which is practically the PC RPG archetype.
- Arrath 3y agoYeah I guess I outed myself as a Wing Commander fan without saying I'm a Wing Commander fan, huh? To be brutally honest I've never played a single Ultima game in my life!
- tibbydudeza 3y agoThe doctors left the house literally - same as Origin once the key folks left. Ultima Wing Commander Strike Commander
- cauthon 3y agoWhen was the last BioWare game that was actually excellent? ME2 in 2010?
- SSLy 3y agoExcept the infamously underwhelming ending, ME3 was excellent.
- LegitShady 3y agoDeus ex mankind divided was a great game that just feels like it ends too early. Apparently square enix is to blame for that.
- SOLAR_FIELDS 3y ago> We are doing everything we can to ensure the process is handled with empathy, respect, and clear communication. Zero mention of what these employees are getting in terms of severance. Passing mention that there are “other roles in other studios”. Spends the rest of the announcement talking about what it means for the games in development, doesn’t even mention the people involved again
- HonoredHeadline 3y agoI don't see how not mentioning how much they are getting in severance has anything to do with what they mentioned. You may wish to know for curiosities sake but frankly it's none of your business.
- Volundr 3y agoIt can be helpful to tell the employees left behind the severance structure. Knowing their cohorts are being well taken care of can help alleviate the bad vibes for those left behind. General public? Yeah I don't see any benefit to sharing that info.
- SOLAR_FIELDS 3y agoIt signals to the public how much you actually care or don’t about your employees by announcing it. Presumably if they didn’t have anything to say it is gonna be garbage, since the companies who are generous always shout it from the rooftops if it’s good because it’s great press. Click through a few of these to get an indicator: https://techcrunch.com/2023/08/14/tech-industry-layoffs-2023/amp/ https://techcrunch.com/2023/08/14/tech-industry-layoffs-2023...
- HonoredHeadline 3y ago> Presumably if they didn’t have anything to say it is gonna be garbage You are wrong. -Signed, an employee who was laid off today
- steno132 3y agoI’ve heard rumors Microsoft was going to buy BioWare from EA, but when that fell through, they pursued Activision instead. It’s too bad. With MSFT they wouldn’t have had to do this.
- littlestymaar 3y agoPlease remind me how many people Microsoft has laid off over the past 12 month?
- biglyburrito 3y ago10k layoffs announced in January 2023, and an unspecified number of additional layoffs announced in July 2023: https://techcrunch.com/2023/08/14/tech-industry-layoffs-2023/ https://techcrunch.com/2023/08/14/tech-industry-layoffs-2023... https://www.cnbc.com/2023/07/10/microsoft-confirms-more-job-cuts-on-top-of-10000-layoffs-in-january.html https://www.cnbc.com/2023/07/10/microsoft-confirms-more-job-...
- brucethemoose2 3y agoAAA development seems to be broken. With a few exceptions, mega publishers put a stupendous amount of manhours into delayed and ultimately mediocre games. "AA" seems to be the sweetspot now. Big enough for economies of scale to kick in, small enough to take targeted risks and avoid scaling issues. And I think software advancements (especially gen AI) are going to make that discrepancy even more extreme, as AAAs lose the content volume edge they have over smaller studios.
- chii 3y ago> AAA development seems to be broken. it is broken because they are putting in too much money into single titles, and therefore, want to "reduce risk". This basically means following a known formula and IP, because previous success means they're likely to get at least brand recognition for the sequel. But this means you get mediocre games as it rehashes the same property over and over again. That's why indie games are so fantastic, because they love risk taking on new ideas.
- drw85 3y agoThey're actually putting too little money into the actual development. A huge part of the budget is marketing.
- chii 3y agoYes, and yet that is a symptom of the problem, not a root cause. You'll find the same issue in big budget movies these days. Huge marketing budget, huge special effects budget, etc. But the contents and script writing is terrible, or at best mediocre. The ultimate root cause is the fact that the money invested in a single movie is too high, and thus the studio/production company cannot have it fail. So they do everything in their power to make it succeed (financially), even if it goes against an artistic vision.
- blitzar 3y agoAAA gamers seem to be broken. They are all preordering the next AAA ultimate Edition with bonus cosmetics for $100 after spending the last year complaining about how terrible the previous title from 6 months ago is. If I had a steady stream of customers willing to pay for garbage, I too would happily deliver.
- tibbydudeza 3y agoBioware does not exist anymore. Mass Effect on the Xbox 360 will always be one of my fondest gaming experiences of my life just like Halo and Horizon Zero Dawn on the PS4. I am going to buy an Xbox Series S just for playing Starfield - hope they don't disappoint me like they did with Fallout 76.
- animal531 3y agoI stopped reading when I got to the agile part, which these days has just become a buzzword for dis-empowering employees and to move even more power towards the company.
- gumballindie 3y agoAgile is an euphemism for factory work.
- chrisandchris 3y agoI couldn't start reading because disapproving to cookies let to "processing my request" for half a minute. Las time i checked, this was just a fake timeout by the coonie banner provider. What a sad state the internet has reached.
- yuppie_scum 3y agoAgile in my experience is very easy to game. Just overestimate all your tasks and you can pretty much work as slow as you want.
- add-sub-mul-div 3y agoThat doesn't work if you like coding and want to be productive, not mediocre.
- ulfw 3y agoWho isn't?