Poll: Anti-BioWare backlash?

[WWmelb]

How can a company that has to make money in order to exist, "sells out"? I never really understood that line of though.

Well, it's a good thing I know how to use Google. You should try it. Here's how:

- Open a new tab
- go to https://www.google.com/
- in the search box type "sell out"

Since I am nice though and want to make it easier for you, I will just drop the definition here:

Anyone who sacrifices artistic integrity in an effort to become more successful or popular (generally in music); someone who forgets their roots.

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=sell%20out

You're welcome.

Instead of trying to be funny, you should read the other post I made.

I did and I wonder how naive you really are. Well, they must make money so they are permitted to do anything to reach that goal.

ME3 is part of a trilogy, to take the third game and shift the goalpost towards Kinect and multiplayer is just wrong. DA2 went in the wrong direction too considering it was the second game in a series designed to BRING BACK CLASSIC PC RPG GAMEPLAY. Bioware: "Let's take a series made for PC's and make the sequel for consoles and let's disable controller support for PC gamers making the console version the superior one".

There's more to it that just "they need to make money".

You call it being "naive" I call not being buthurted about trivial things. You can always try to run your own business tho.

Oh the classic "make a better game or don't complain" defense.

Hint: I am the consumer here, not the competition. I have a right to complain and I don't need to make a better game.

Bioware hasn't done right by it's fans and as a result many won't be giving Bioware any money for their latest releases. There is nothing wrong with talking about it and we don't all need to be business owners to have an opinion.

And the amount of people that will still buy games will still be superior to the "fans". It´s just a fact of life. You re perfectly free to not buy their games.

..and I am perfectly free to complain about their games too.

How many people really wanted another MMO? How many would have preferred KOTOR 3? Did they care?

Let´s, I played Kotor 1 and 2. So Kotor 3 never came out. Shrugs, life goes on, I would have found another thing to keep me interested. If other people want to play MMO, more power to them. I don´t really care about WoW and think the art style is cartoonish and the game boring, but I don´t say Blizzard has "sold out" or anything like it. I just don´t play the game, but I also realize that with the am mount of millions that play the game, my vote is meaningless. In all it´s just a waste of air, just like bitching about say.. Twilight or such.

It's fine that you're passive but we are here to discuss these things.

Blizzard did sell out, people wanted another Warcraft RTS and they got an MMO. You can't do anything about it but there's nothing wrong with having an opinion and discussing it on a gaming forum.

Want another example, nobody want Age of Empires Online, people wanted Age of Empires 4. Guess what we got?

I hope we get a Fallout 4 instead of a Fallout MMO.

Bioware has just played "follow the leader". Suppose no one complained, would that have prevented an MMO instead of a full game. Will complaints today prevent a Fallout MMO or an Uncharted MMO?

This one finally got me... Blizzard developed WoW before release for what ... 7 years? i think it was, which i believe overlapped with the warcraft 3 developement process but i may be wrong, that was a long time ago.... and when WoW was released.. there wasn't much money to be made in MMO's, it was a fucking MASSIVE GAMBLE.. and so far from selling out it's not funny.

 

[Matt King]

I like DA2

holy shit someone else who likes it, high five

 

[Smegma]

Prior to TOR's release, BioWare was considered one of the best developers out there. Highly respected for the stories they put in their games, and the relative accessibility of the gameplay in said games.

So, I'm just curious. Has your opinion of BioWare changed?

BioWare has lost the plot.

They haven't even KNOWN what the plot is since Neverwinter Nights. The original - not #2, which was a syphilitic pile of shite, coded by drugged up platypuses.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

holy shit someone else who likes it, high five

I liked it too, but I can understand why people are such angsty babies about it. It was definitely half-baked.

 

[Rallus]

I don't see the point in judging games based on their developers or publishers. If Bioware were to make a terrible game I would say it's a terrible game, but I wouldn't say Bioware is a terrible developer. It's the same with publishers like EA and Activision (just as an example, since they are judged to be the most evil), I own games from both publishers and I love them all equally. I won't hate games just because EA or Activison have published them and will wait to play the game or hear from a review to judge the game, rather than see the little logo in the corner and immediately go "Worst game ever! Its EA!".

 

[Phisi]

It seems they are still making good games but not for the purpose of making good games but to please their overlords. Just can't help thinking of Westwood's story. R.I.P C&C, hopefully BioWare can resurrect Generals successfully and not go down your path.

 

[VargRaev]

I actually like DA2 better than Origin

The Combat in Origin was slow, boring and altogether not very interesting. The story was not very good. and last but DEFFINATELY NOT least, The character creator was kinda boring.

In DA2 they replaced the boring old combat with more actiony hack'n'slash combat, wich was imho much better. The story didnt become any better, though.
and while they did remove parts of the character creator, Humans were the only ones that i could really do anything with, Elves looked lame no matter what i did with them and dwarves were merely a question of "how well-groomed do you want you character to be?", so all-in-all, not a very big loss.

I guess i'm just not the target audience for old-school rpg's ^^

 

[MelasZepheos_v1legacy]

I never went crazy for them in the first place. I acknowledged that like all developers although they might put out games that are above industry standard and appeal directly to me they are not infallible and every so often may misstep.

For example, I never ever got Dragon Age. I've tried to play through that game more times than I can count, after having waited unitl it was five quid in a bargain bin and came packaged with Fallout 3 before I even considered it, and I just don't like it. I can see the classic Bioware style evident in it, I can see why a lot of people do like it, but I just never got on that bandwagon to start with. And when I was a younger gamer I missed the Neverwinter Nights thing entirely.

So yeah, my whole opinion of Bioware came from KoToR and Mass Effect, so it was kind of hard to build up the insane undying adoration they get from some.

 

[Yureina]

Absolutely.

Though... it has more to do with EA than anything else. The fact is that Bioware, thanks to EA's bullshit, is now a whore doing what its master commands. The result is stupid Day 1 DLC, Alot of unnecessary shit to be put in ME3, and, of course. EA using this upcoming game for its Origin extortion program.

So yeah... I don't like Bioware anymore.

 

[WynneL]

Dragon Age, Mass Effect, and TOR were made by DIFFERENT TEAMS OF PEOPLE. So few gamers appear to realize that.

I chose "somewhere in-between." EA's business model is in a poor period, but it could turn around if enough customers complain. At least they haven't turned ME3 into Gears of War or something. Clearly, they like the idea of seeing where a cinematic approach goes, since it's done well so far for the series.

If EA was anti-experiment, DA2 never would've happened; it would've stuck to the safe, formulaic holding pattern of DAO. Hilariously, people hate DA2 not because it failed to evolve, but because it did so (and because it was rushed, obviously.)

I think the various Bioware teams (they have SIX studios now, mind you) are doing their best to adapt to EA's new business model, and some will do better than others. Considering how good LotSB was, I have to think the Mass Effect team isn't doing half bad.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

Dragon Age, Mass Effect, and TOR were made by DIFFERENT TEAMS OF PEOPLE. So few gamers appear to realize that.

I chose "somewhere in-between." EA's business model is in a poor period, but it could turn around if enough customers complain. At least they haven't turned ME3 into Gears of War or something. Clearly, they like the idea of seeing where a cinematic approach goes, since it's done well so far for the series.

If EA was anti-experiment, DA2 never would've happened; it would've stuck to the safe, formulaic holding pattern of DAO. Hilariously, people hate DA2 not because it failed to evolve, but because it did so (and because it was rushed, obviously.)

I think the various Bioware teams (they have SIX studios now, mind you) are doing their best to adapt to EA's new business model, and some will do better than others. Considering how good LotSB was, I have to think the Mass Effect team isn't doing half bad.

completely agree with this.

the phrase "haters gonna hate" comes to mind...

i mean yeah i really liked DA2, regardless of it's half baked "polish". but that doesn't mean it is a sellout and instantly represents all of bioware and everything they are striving towards as many seem to think..

 

[Kahunaburger]

I honestly don't get the Bioware hate. Its all so...disproportionate. Honestly, why even bother to call yourself a fan of something if you're going to turn on it the second it makes something you don't like?

That's why I tend not to consider myself fans of things unless those things are very, very, consistent.

Re: why so much backlash, I think that there are two things that contributed to it:

A. The magnitude of DA2's suckitude. That's a game that you can take apart, examine each individual element (the combat, the level design, the writing, the artstyle...), and point out how that element drags the game down. This is compounded by...

B. the fact that people have very high expectations for Bioware because in general the company makes very good games. In other words,

Spoiler: that is Bioware's fanbase in the bottom right.

Personally, I was in a particularly busy time in my life when DA2 came out, so I barely registered its existence for the first few weeks. But if you look objectively at the game's quality vs. the average quality of a Bioware game, you can see why the fanbase was disappointed.

 

[Amaror]

To anyone here, who says they had to "sell out" to get money:
Dragon Age 2 made less money than Dragon Age Origins.

What was the difference in profits?

Go ask Bioware, or Ea, i don't know, i just know that it sold less copies

 

[Kevlar Eater]

The only games I've played were both Mass Effect games, Dragon Age Origins and the Dragon Age 2 demo. After playing the demo, I saw where Bioware was heading and jumped ship. Now I'm hopping back on the ship in time for Mass Effect 3, then I'm avoiding them like an STI-ridden party slut.

Also, their behavior when it comes to The Old Republic is atrocious. Temporarily making the unsubscribe button unavailable just so they can extract a monthly payment, banning people for stupid reasons, poor customer support, and worst of all, their overly inflated heads.. Meh, nuts to them.

 

[blind_dead_mcjones]

where's the 'indifferent because i'm not dumb enough to get emotionally attached to a business' option? because its stuff like that which leads to stupid asinine occurences like the 'console wars' and the 'ford vs holden' debate

seriously, i honestly don't care either way whether bioware has 'changed' or 'sold out', demographics shift, so long as the end product is good thats all that matters. same with buying a car, it doesn't matter what the badge or label is, just that it's reliable, fun, and has a manual gearbox

Your car analogy is horribly flawed. The situation is more aken to going to a car dealership after seeing an ad for a pickup truck for a company that makes good pickup trucks, buying a pickup truck, and then getting handed the keys to a SUV. That may or not have flat tires. The point of this whole Bioware thing is that Bioware is not delivering on the product that folks have come to associate with Bioware (rpgs/pickup trucks) instead, we are getting a completely different genre (action rpgs/SUV)and then there are the complaints that on top of this, their quality is slipping.

easy answer, if you don't like their product, vote with your wallet. but don't make a song and dance about it on the internet.

your point about bioware changing the product its now selling is irrelevant, because its what successful businesses do, they evolve to shifting trends, technology and demographics, as with the car analogy each successful brand has shifted its core focus several times (from sedans to station wagons to people movers to SUV's to hatchbacks before going full circle)

the real point is that a true connoisseur tries to sample as much variation as possible in their given field of interest (eg: if its food, they try everything from filet mignon and sushi to KFC) rather than stubbornly sticking to one narrow aspect of said field

businesses are in the business of making money, to expect anything else is just naive.


ps: in regards to your analogy of the SUV, the beauty of living in australia is the statutory warranty law (that if any business sells you an item thats not fit for purpose you can get a full refund) also you can't legally sell a vehicle with flat tires here either.

 

[Smiley Face]

Concerned but hopeful. EA being in charge means a loss of creative freedom and a push towards generic, 'accessible' games - and I don't know about EA's history. Dragon Age II, TOR, and multiplayer Mass Effect have me concerned - they're new stylistic directions for Bioware, which means they'll not be refined, but hopefully will take away lessons from them without financial or reputation losses. Mass Effect 3 is going to be the big test for folks, but ultimately what's going to show the real effects will be the next original intellectual property they come out with - if it doesn't stand up to their past debuts, then it almost definitely won't return to being the Bioware we once knew. I for one really, really hope that they hold their act together and EA lets them do what they do best.

 

[lapan]

easy answer, if you don't like their product, vote with your wallet. but don't make a song and dance about it on the internet.

But it's the best way to let them know about your concerns. If you only vote with your wallet it will maybe influence the next game they will make, but too late to influence the current one.

 

[Akimoto]

Here's a thought. Find an article reporting EA buying over Bioware and play "The Silent Comedy - Bartholomew" in the background. I loved the role-playing in Bioshock and ME series but with EA on board I took the life jacket and jumped. EA had sold the survival kits to fund Origin and the crew was held hostage. The captain was last seen drunk.

 

[Element Zero]

My opinion hasn't changed a bit. DA2 was a miss, but only in that it held no replay value for me. TOR is awesome in my opinion. That's all I really have to say about that...

 

[Amaror]

I think the problem is what bioware used to be.
If you liked rpgs then you could by an bioware game blindly und you knew that it would be good.
If a developer like this throws a pile of carbage (DA2) in your face, then there will be a big reaction to this.
There would be the same reaction if Blizzard fucked up Diablo 3 or if Valve made Half - Life 3 and fucked it up.