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If 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, contro

If 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.

A_D_E_P_T 3y ago
Right, but they've been working on the new Dragon Age game for something like eight years at this point, and it's still nowhere near release. They've released nothing since ill-fated Anthem, now nearly five years ago. This really has to be put into perspective: It took them less than five years to release all three Mass Effect games, and it took less than three years to release the complete Baldur's Gate Series. So Bioware is a lot like NASA: No longer able to do the things they were once capable of. In Bioware's case -- via mismanagement or poor corporate direction -- they've forgotten how to develop and ship games. Now, at this point, it's really quite surprising that EA has kept them around for so long. With these layoffs, it might be that their patience is beginning to run out.
- brucethemoose2 3y ago
  > they've been working on the new Dragon Age game for something like eight years at this point, and it's still nowhere near release This is especially worrying in light of Andromeda's development. The devs (allegedly) wasted years making tools and systems that didn't work, then rushed and cobbled the game together at the very end.
- nerdix 3y ago
  Part of this is just because AAA dev cycles are incredibly long now. Much, much longer than they used to be. Its to the point where its not unusual for a studio to only release 1 AAA game during a console generation (7-8 years). If they time things just right, they might fit 2 in. Naughty Dog released Uncharted 1-3 and the TLOU during the PS3 era so 4 games. They released Uncharted 4 and TLOU 2 during the PS4 era which is 2 games. And so far they haven't released any game during the PS5 era (not including remasters/remakes). They will likely only release 1 new game before the PS6 is released. Lets take Starfield as another an example since its the next big studio RPG to be released. Its been in development since 2015 so basically 8 years.
  - A_D_E_P_T 3y ago
    Why is this the case? Mass Effect 3, which is by no means a small or content-poor game, however controversial its ending, was released just two years after its predecessor. It incorporated a number of obvious mechanic/gameplay updates, engine tweaks, and QoL improvements. It even incorporated a popular multiplayer mode. All of the music, all of the voice acting, all of the motion-capping (if they did any of that) was done quickly. Bioware could release "Mass Effect 4" with the same mechanics and systems, if the story's good enough, and people would be (extremely) happy. So what now takes them >8 years that previously took them two? Also noteworthy: Content can't possibly be the bottleneck, as Pillars of Eternity (a Baldur's Gate-like RPG) and its sequel were released within a roughly three year period, and those games contain millions of words of content. The second game is also fully voice-acted.
    - kipchak 3y ago
      A couple of places fingers are pointed at are increased fidelity requirements and complexity as hardware has improved, increased use of outsourcing (see Halo Infinite and Star Citizen), churn and larger teams which makes effective collaboration harder, executive meddling in order to chase after trends (it needs a battle pass/battle royale/zombies) and it becoming increasingly realistic for devs being able to splinter off and make something with a smaller more effective team. For example on Infinite you had a scenario where people might not be around long enough to learn the in house tooling which was troublesome enough to cause some to want to drop what's been done and switch to Unity whiplashed around by directions set by different parts of the company and half the workers were 18 month contract workers.[1] If you compare the credits for the Mass Effect trilogy series for example there's a good amount of people who left by the end of ME3 and fewer are still there for a ME4. Mike Laidlaw, Steve Gilmore for example. Drew Karpyshyn is lead writer on only the first two ME games. Aaryn Flynn, James Ohlen and Casey Hudson both went off to make their own studios. [1]https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-12-08/how-microsoft-s-halo-infinite-went-from-disaster-to-triumph https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-12-08/how-micro...
- FreshStart 3y ago
  They reached the end stage as talent pool for other EA games, were they Park burned out developers till it's time for another buzzword death march?
- superchroma 3y ago
  "they've been working on the new Dragon Age game for something like eight years at this point" Also bad management. We also learn that usually teams aren't actually working for such periods as they get dragged around. Cyberpunk was only actively developed for a few years it turned out, despite the claim being they had been working on it that entire time.

A_D_E_P_T 3y ago

Right, but they've been working on the new Dragon Age game for something like eight years at this point, and it's still nowhere near release. They've released nothing since ill-fated Anthem, now nearly five years ago. This really has to be put into perspective: It took them less than five years to release all three Mass Effect games, and it took less than three years to release the complete Baldur's Gate Series. So Bioware is a lot like NASA: No longer able to do the things they were once capable of. In Bioware's case -- via mismanagement or poor corporate direction -- they've forgotten how to develop and ship games. Now, at this point, it's really quite surprising that EA has kept them around for so long. With these layoffs, it might be that their patience is beginning to run out.

brucethemoose2 3y ago
> they've been working on the new Dragon Age game for something like eight years at this point, and it's still nowhere near release This is especially worrying in light of Andromeda's development. The devs (allegedly) wasted years making tools and systems that didn't work, then rushed and cobbled the game together at the very end.
nerdix 3y ago
Part of this is just because AAA dev cycles are incredibly long now. Much, much longer than they used to be. Its to the point where its not unusual for a studio to only release 1 AAA game during a console generation (7-8 years). If they time things just right, they might fit 2 in. Naughty Dog released Uncharted 1-3 and the TLOU during the PS3 era so 4 games. They released Uncharted 4 and TLOU 2 during the PS4 era which is 2 games. And so far they haven't released any game during the PS5 era (not including remasters/remakes). They will likely only release 1 new game before the PS6 is released. Lets take Starfield as another an example since its the next big studio RPG to be released. Its been in development since 2015 so basically 8 years.
- A_D_E_P_T 3y ago
  Why is this the case? Mass Effect 3, which is by no means a small or content-poor game, however controversial its ending, was released just two years after its predecessor. It incorporated a number of obvious mechanic/gameplay updates, engine tweaks, and QoL improvements. It even incorporated a popular multiplayer mode. All of the music, all of the voice acting, all of the motion-capping (if they did any of that) was done quickly. Bioware could release "Mass Effect 4" with the same mechanics and systems, if the story's good enough, and people would be (extremely) happy. So what now takes them >8 years that previously took them two? Also noteworthy: Content can't possibly be the bottleneck, as Pillars of Eternity (a Baldur's Gate-like RPG) and its sequel were released within a roughly three year period, and those games contain millions of words of content. The second game is also fully voice-acted.
  - kipchak 3y ago
    A couple of places fingers are pointed at are increased fidelity requirements and complexity as hardware has improved, increased use of outsourcing (see Halo Infinite and Star Citizen), churn and larger teams which makes effective collaboration harder, executive meddling in order to chase after trends (it needs a battle pass/battle royale/zombies) and it becoming increasingly realistic for devs being able to splinter off and make something with a smaller more effective team. For example on Infinite you had a scenario where people might not be around long enough to learn the in house tooling which was troublesome enough to cause some to want to drop what's been done and switch to Unity whiplashed around by directions set by different parts of the company and half the workers were 18 month contract workers.[1] If you compare the credits for the Mass Effect trilogy series for example there's a good amount of people who left by the end of ME3 and fewer are still there for a ME4. Mike Laidlaw, Steve Gilmore for example. Drew Karpyshyn is lead writer on only the first two ME games. Aaryn Flynn, James Ohlen and Casey Hudson both went off to make their own studios. [1]https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-12-08/how-microsoft-s-halo-infinite-went-from-disaster-to-triumph https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-12-08/how-micro...
FreshStart 3y ago
They reached the end stage as talent pool for other EA games, were they Park burned out developers till it's time for another buzzword death march?
superchroma 3y ago
"they've been working on the new Dragon Age game for something like eight years at this point" Also bad management. We also learn that usually teams aren't actually working for such periods as they get dragged around. Cyberpunk was only actively developed for a few years it turned out, despite the claim being they had been working on it that entire time.