Bioware has been on a downward trajectory ever since they sold to EA.
Look at how much worse Mass Effect 2 was than 1. They turned a crpg into an action shooter for mainstream appeal. Simplified the class system and ruined the lore with those absurd heat clips. ME was great because of its deep sci-fi lore approach but the lore came second to EA’s corporate profits and their ideas about what kind of gamer wants to see Tali’zorah’s boobs. (Hint: it’s actually the sapphic engineering nerds)
In recent years, we got Andromeda and Anthem. Bioware has been a shuffling zombie of itself for a decade.
Bring back the mineral scanning and let us have a four way with Tali, Garrus, and Legion! (the only good part of ME 2)
Oh by the way I’d just like to add that Dragon Age Origins was underwhelming and I lost interest right after beating the second area. I think they leaned too much into WOW-style combat. KOTOR had better medieval combat and it’s a Star Wars game.
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This industry has taken a wrong turn and is now at an impasse.
We need to step back to when small teams of developers made lightweight games. It’s not like anybody’s got the RAM or GPU compute to run some of these newer titles anyway.
Developers, if you’re serious about making a game, take your ideas, leave the company you work for (before they let you go), and make it alone or with friends and close colleagues.
Let’s right this wrong. Let’s make affordable games that run on affordable hardware again.
So do what Supergiant and Embark did? I agree with the sentiment: it is clear the main thing missing from games is the passion of the people making them. All the great games in the past were made by groups of people with a shared passion and vision, without overbearing corporate greed or executives watering down good ideas just in case they didn’t appeal to absolutely everybody.
However unless someone in that group has a rich relative, or they start early in life (see Arrowhead for example), the reality is it is hard to afford to live for years before finding out your dream project is a failure.
You going to personally fund these guys before they’re able to sell something like?
Welcome to every industry under capitalism. The business/finance majors have it under control. They have no idea what it takes to make anything or what even makes the products/services valuable to others but they are positive it can be done cheaper.
You take a money bag, bury it, then three money bags sprout out of the ground. It’s simple economics.
Take2 seems to get it at the highest level, it is rare
Zeschuk nails it, and it lines up with something Nate Hagens talked about on The Great Simplification: a company doesn’t need a single villain at the top to behave like a psychopath, it just needs to be structured so that extraction beats CRAFT every time. That’s what “none of these people have ever made a game” feels like to me. BioWare was built on people who loved the work and took the time it needed; the PIF/private-equity model wants annual sports titles and predictable margins. Hagens’ talks about traits out-competing values, so the people with the values (Zeschuk) walk away from the crucible and the people with the extraction reflex keep hammering forward. We ALL have this SAME problem people… wtf are we going to do about it is the question.
Yup. Ain’t no war but class war, babay.
Well, the final destination of the extraction economy is eating itself, so it’ll end one way or another.
100% agree. Protect yourself and your loved ones. Build community and figure it out together.
Put bounties on MBAs and execs.
… /s … kinda
I’m close to a doctor, and they were telling me how their clinic demanded a schedule that leaves only 15 minutes per patient, and how it’s causing huge burnout. They asked how it got that way, so I explained the great simplification, how missed diagnoses are not a metric that can be measured, let alone put onto a spreadsheet
The only real answer I can come to is that we can’t let organizations survive so long they become entrenched, or become too big for a single person to know on a human level. Also, we need to seriously regulate consulting companies, they are a tool to diffuse responsibility away so no one has to take it
But in the meantime? It’s not easy but it’s simple - we need to fight against the tightening ratchet. We need to be the person who pushes back, who continues this endless struggle until the next generation takes over.
The doctor can go to the CEO and ask for a slight reduction in workload so they can spend a bit longer with a few patients a day at their discretion. It’s not a solution, but it pushes against the straps squeezing us to death.
It’s minor and will go away if it’s not continuously fought for, but each person who does this impacts many thousands of lives for as long as they the line
Also, we need to seriously regulate consulting companies, they are a tool to diffuse responsibility away so no one has to take it
Consultants aren’t an issue by themselves. The issue is accountability of decision makers. A consultant — per its name and role — just consults. They don’t decide. If a manager uses consultants in their decision making that is fine, but the decision to do so and to follow their advise is on the manager.
The bigger issue is that (seemingly) managers get bonuses for short term monetary goals and don’t get punished for longterm ill affects. If, after shit goes south, you could sue a former manager for damages, this could change. Although it might also cause managers to avoid any and all risk, which is also bad.
It’s tricky
Nowadays consultants are being used as fuses everywhere. It shows how accountability is faring :(
Same with AI usage. If we allow people and companies to get away with “the AI did it; it wasn’t my fault” we are fucked. If you fail to supervise your tools (or the people you hire), you failed your job/duties and should be on the hook, unless there is clear malicious cheating by the other party (if you probably tried to do everything right and were cautious but the other side subverted that and acted in bad faith, then it’s a different matter).
MBAs will ruin the planet
God damn fucking vultures.
Come the revolution they will be first ones up against the wall.
Yeah, that will be the pantzing of a lifetime.
They’ll never live down the shame.
*have ruined
