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[boingball]

So Amy Henig's story driven Star Wars game now becomes a PUBG clone with loot boxes?

 

[retardedrockstar]

Included the corpse of BioWare because reasons...

Zombie Bioware looking in from the background would make more sense.

 

[Ammogeddon]

lol

Pivot the design.......wankers

 

[SJRB]

Pivot. Pi-vot. PI-VOT!


Fucking EA.

 

[Rien]

2008 was soo good for EA. Dead Space and Mirror's Edge in the same year.

Didnt the first Skate release that year as well?

 

[border]

It doesn't sound like that at all. The press release spells out pretty clearly why the company was shuttered and game canceled, and it has nothing to do with quality.

They're honestly not going to kick Visceral while they're down and say "Yeah this game sucked and was beyond the point of repair." They mention "play testing" and you're meant to read between the lines a bit there.

There's really nothing to stop them from having EA Vancouver build their own separate game without shutting down the Visceral project. At the end of the day I feel like you kinda have to assume Visceral's game wasn't up to EA's standard.

Nowhere does EA say that they are turning this into an "online focused, service based game".....that just seems to be everyone's assumption. Their statements are exceedingly broad descriptions of scope and player agency in the new game. People have simply chosen to interpret those to mean it's an online multiplayer title.

 

[Colossal Moo]

Games being mediocre or worse has never stopped EA from releasing something before. Need For Speed (2015) says hi, so does Star Wars Battlefront 1 and FIFA Legacy (WiiU) all those games make Mass Effect Andromeda look good in comparison.

Also the idea that the Untitled Star Wars project would lose money is ridiculous. 1 because its a star wars game and 2 because adding it to the origin vault increases the valie proposition of EAs subscription service


The PR on this title never said it was bad. It talked about focus groups rejecting it (the same focus groups that approve of the creatively bankrupt games EA normally releases) and because it wasnt GaaS or online multiplayer.

This is just another case of EA being short for Evil A**holes rather then Electronic Artists

So you are arguing EA canceled a good game because they are "evil" and because they don't know how to evaluate games. That doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

First, you claim that the PR statement didn't say the game was bad. PR statements are designed to make a company look good and they frequently contains lies, half-truths and omissions. No company is going to say "we spent millions developing a crappy Star Wars game which was going to bomb." When ever you read a PR statement about a cancelation, layoff, etc. you have to ask yourself why would a company do that? How does it benefit from what it is doing?

I believe that they almost certainly canceled the Star Wars game because they believed it wouldn't sell. You do not spend 2 years on video game development and then cancel the game on a whim. If the game was good, they would have finished it, released it and made some money. The could have simultaneously worked on the other game they talked about in the press release.

Second, you also argue that any Star Wars game will sell and make money. That is bullshit. Its hard to prove or disprove that argument because we do not get complete sales data and because video game budgets are not released. Basically, without historical profit data (i.e. game cost - game revenue), you cannot say that every Star Wars game will be profitable.

Another problem with your argument that Star Wars games are always profitable is you are assuming people will buy them even if they are horrible. I don't buy that argument. Gamers aren't dumb and they have learned how to avoid buying bad licensed games. Even if the game sells initially, its sales will stop once customers tell their friends to avoid it.

One final problem is you claim EA is evil. I really do not think you know what evil is. A company is evil if sells weapons to tyrants, kills people, knowingly sells defective products, knowingly sells products which hurt customers, sells nuclear weapons parts to North Korea, sells spy gear to repressive regimes, etc. EA is a mediocre video game company which tries (and often fails) to make popular games. That's not even close to being evil.

 

[Ywap]

Horrible news. All the Dead Space gamers were masterpieces.

 

[Steroyd]

Yeah, it's crazy to think that they would give up after spending all the time and money on a game, but it's not that complicated when you think about it. "This project has gone very wrong: will it cost more money to fix/finish the game than it will cost to cancel it now?"

Clearly they didn't think the game could earn back whatever additional funds they might spend on it, which must mean they already spent a ton of cash.

When you read the PR statement it reads more like "We want to implement lootboxes and multiplayer into the game so we're absorbing it into our own game factories"

 

[UpDownLeftRight]

I simply don't have the time/energy for every game to become some shared-world loot grind. Sometimes it's nice when a game can just end. Most of the time, if I'm being honest. Everyone chasing the Destiny bandwagon is in for a hard-learned lesson. There simply isn't enough mind share for every game to become a "service" that people play day in, day out. Destiny, PUBG, League of Legends; these are anomalies, not something sustainable for every game. Maybe this Star Wars game comes out and does really well, or maybe this delay pushes it back far enough that the bubble has already burst on these types of games. It's like the knee-jerk reaction to open world games, every publisher scrambled to make every big game open world and people got tired of it.

As for Visceral closing, it is indeed sad news. It's never easy to see people lose their jobs, and Visceral had quite a bit of talent in house. This is concerning for gamers because it seems more publishers are coming to the conclusion that story-driven single player games just aren't worth making in their current, $60 state. To remedy this, loot boxes/aggressive microtransactions get injected into games where they so clearly don't belong, or as is the case here, the game is re-purposed into some grotesque Destiny pseudo-MMO designed to keep players invested for years so the publisher doesn't need to invest in a whole new game/new idea as soon as they previously would have. I can't fault publishers if these single player games truly aren't profitable enough in their current state (they are absolutely profitable) but that is indicative of a problem within the AAA space. It's a problem for the publishers and developers to solve, though. Not consumers. Over the next few years, these shared-world/games as services/whatever you want to call them will be their next major push to make AAA development more profitable. I don't think it's a viable long term, however. And speaking selfishly, I don't want this to be the answer, either. I love playing single player, story-driven games. And I love FINISHING games. Destiny 2 is fine, but I only have room in my life for one Destiny 2 at a time.

I don't have the time for any shared world loot game to be honest. I tried with Destiny. I tried again with Destiny 2 but fuck I hate that crap so bad. I play games because I want to. I feel like Destiny wants me to play because I feel obligated to. GaaS in general does.

I think at this point I need to just steer away from them in general. As soon as I feel I'm missing out on stuff for not spending enough hours with a game per week is my jump off point now.

 

[Pattycakes]

Fuck EA

Worst Company in America 2017 again please

 

[border]

When you read the PR statement it reads more like "We want to implement lootboxes and multiplayer into the game so we're absorbing it into our own game factories"

Where does it read anything like that at all? Am I looking at the wrong statement or something?

"we are shifting the game to be a broader experience that allows for more variety and player agency, leaning into the capabilities of our Frostbite engine and reimagining central elements of the game to give players a Star Wars adventure of greater depth and breadth to explore."

 

[Mubrik]

EA gon EA.
smh.
sorry to the folks losing out.

 

[Mr. Tibbs]

 

[Steroyd]

Where does it read anything like that at all? Am I looking at the wrong statement or something?

"we are shifting the game to be a broader experience that allows for more variety and player agency, leaning into the capabilities of our Frostbite engine and reimagining central elements of the game to give players a Star Wars adventure of greater depth and breadth to explore."

Throughout the development process, we have been testing the game concept with players, listening to the feedback about what and how they want to play, and closely tracking fundamental shifts in the marketplace. It has become clear that to deliver an experience that players will want to come back to and enjoy for a long time to come, we needed to pivot the design.

"Closely tracking fundamental shifts in the marketplace" "players will want to come back to and enjoy for a long time" "we needed to pivot the design"

Given what EA is, I don't see how you can read this as anything else.

 

[silva1991]

They made the last EA game appealing to me(Dead Space 2)

not really that sad, because it's not like EA will make this studio make an interesting game again.

 

[zoukka]

It's sad indeed since I loved DS1 and 2, but the martyr mentality is pretty ridiculous in this thread. Studios that cannot turn in profit get closed, that's not EA's invention.

 

[Agent_4Seven]

 

[Broseybrose]

It's was a business decision. The team size + development time (sunk and needed still) for a single player story driven game at high production values just wasn't worth the additional investment. It doesn't just end with making the game. Releasing something like this means tens of millions in marketing as well. As shitty as it sounds, there is just way more profit potential in a GaaS title than whatever it is they were making. Before falling further behind in the market, they thought it better to transition now rather than later

But it makes for worse, less imaginative games. And like the poster above said, there just isnt enough mindshare for every AAA game to become a GaaS type game.

I really hate this new direction the industry is heading because its leaving behind even the good, imaginative, linear, action-adventure games with an actual story that ends and leaves you feeling satisfied.

 

[border]

"Closely tracking fundamental shifts in the marketplace" "players will want to come back to and enjoy for a long time" "we needed to pivot the design"

How does that necessarily translate to lootboxes and multiplayer?

Comments about scope and player agency point to anything from an MMO to a large Mass Effect-style RPG to an open-world game like Horizon or Zelda.

Most Games As A Service titles don't have "player agency" as a buzzword. Most of those titles are pretty razor-focused. In Destiny your choice as a player is to shoot aliens or shoot players.

Electronic Arts already has a Star Wars MMO. They already have a Destiny competitor in Anthem. They already have a space RPG (though it sounds like ME is being shelved for a bit). Open world is one of the genres where they don't have any in-roads, and I would probably anticipate that's where they would be looking to steer this game.

 

[Razgriz-Specter]

Why? Would do you think EA should do? Release a bad or mediocre game? Release a game which loses money?

When you see a company shutdown a studio, they are not shutting it down because the studio is producing great games customers want. They are shutting it down because the studio's current project is so bad that they think they will save money by shutting it down. Think about that. That means the following statements are true:

1) EA's senior leadership thinks it's better to close down a studio and transfer the project to another studio. This is a very expensive thing to do and it indicates that Visceral's game wasn't fun and wasn't that good. It also means EA's senior leadership doesn't think Visceral could fix its problems.

2) EA basically canceled the current game and asked another studio to salvage what it could and create a new game. That will cost more money then just finishing the game Visceral was working on. Why would EA want to spend more money? The answer is easy. EA's senior leadership thinks the current game would sell poorly and that they would make more money if they made a better game which had better sales.

3) EA has released a lot of games Neogaf has hated. For example, they released Mass Effect: Andromeda and Neogaf savaged that game. I think a lot of the criticism was unfair but still, a lot of people were very angry at EA for releasing it. If EA was willing to release ME: A, what does it say about the quality of the game they canceled? My guess is Neogaf would have savaged it if it had been released because it would have been a mediocre or bad game.

4) I have worked in failed organizations and on bad teams. There are two sides to this story and my guess is a lot of people at Visceral weren't the best. This includes senior managers, middle management, leads and individual contributors. When you have a failed organization, usually the organization failed because the staff failed. Visceral's employees almost certainly bear a lot of the responsibility for the studio closure and solely blaming EA's senior leadership because the team failed is probably unfair.

I think people get scared when they see mass layoffs, closures and firings. I get that because losing a job is painful (its happened to me). The problem is we cannot have it both ways. If companies don't cancel bad games, they get released and then some of us end up wasting our money on them. If good money is thrown after bad, we end up spending more money on bad games and there is less money available for good games.

A good example of this is Duke Nukem Forever. A friend bought it and it sucked. The game development team had over a decade, plenty of money and the game still stunk. It's was so bad a lot of people are mad at Randy Pitchford for releasing it. It would have been better for everyone if the game had been canceled after it had spent 5 years in development.

You don't have an understanding of this situation at all.
The issue here is that it always comes down on EA fuckery that gets these companies shut down.

Andromeda for example,
A Mass Effect DLC team was put on a huge AAA game, EA forced them to change engines as well that further complicated matters.

Pandemic was shut down because they had EA fuckery on Mercenaries 2 and Battlefront 3 was a LucasArts clusterfuck
Mercenaries 2 could have been huge but EA rushed the hell out of and put so much money into marketing it could never have broken even.

Visceral was forced to make a Police skinned Battlefield that bombed
and EA themselves fucked Dead Space 3 up.

Watch "The Rise and Fall of Command and Conquer"
& "The Rise and Fall of Medal of Honor" for additional bits of EA fuckery

Look at the mess they turned Criterion Games into.

 

[NightShift]

Just wanna stop by to say FUCK EA again.

 

[Endo Punk]

Uncharted in Space would have been cool. Just never felt it was EA's thing to make a SP game like that so not really surprised. Feel bad for Amy though, this was her dream IP to work on.

 

[Tookay]

How does that necessarily translate to lootboxes and multiplayer?

Comments about scope and player agency point to anything from an MMO to a large Mass Effect-style RPG to an open-world game like Horizon or Zelda.

Most Games As A Service titles don't have "player agency" as a buzzword. Most of those titles are pretty razor-focused. In Destiny your choice as a player is to shoot aliens or shoot players.

Electronic Arts already has a Star Wars MMO. They already have a Destiny competitor in Anthem. They already have a space RPG (though it sounds like ME is being shelved for a bit). Open world is one of the genres where they don't have any in-roads, and I would probably anticipate that's where they would be looking to steer this game.

Because "coming back to" a game in this age where "fundamental shifts in the marketplace" has occurred means GAAS, where the game is a shared community that is continually updated, where lootbox gaming is the spur to your returning to the grind, and where you are encouraged to engage in multiplayer-connected gameplay. The"player agency" comes from your willingness to grind, tackle the hub worlds with your friends, and customize your characters with loot to tell your story.

.... You're willing to read between the lines in some senses, but not into what they're very obviously telegraphed inclinations to copy what is currently popular, which is anything but an open-world single-player-centric game.

 

[Panajev2001a]

Where does it read anything like that at all? Am I looking at the wrong statement or something?

"we are shifting the game to be a broader experience that allows for more variety and player agency, leaning into the capabilities of our Frostbite engine and reimagining central elements of the game to give players a Star Wars adventure of greater depth and breadth to explore."

Did you miss the “that players will be able to come back to for a long time” bit, it is the one you never seem able to quote here ?

 

[Temp_User]

EA management is toxic as fuck.

 

[border]

.... You're willing to read between the lines in some senses, but not into what they're very obviously telegraphed inclinations to copy what is currently popular, which is anything but an open-world single-player-centric game.

Zelda and Horizon weren't popular? Assassin's Creed is not popular? Fallout 4 and Skyrim Remaster bombed? Did The Witcher 3 not win dozens of GOTY Awards at the end of last year?

I know some people have an axe to grind about GaaS titles, but I don't see the point in pretending like open-world games are dead.

Did you miss the ”that players will be able to come back to for a long time" bit, it is the one you never seem able to quote here ?

It's a phrase that's pretty well open to interpretation. Plenty of RPGs, MMOs, and open-world games are hailed for their longevity.

 

[Tagg9]

I'm usually extremely positive about the video game industry but the announcement of Visceral's closing, as well as EA's moronic reason for shutting them down (suddenly it's impossible to recoup investment on a quality single player game?!) has just filled me with pessimism and doubt.

For the first year in the last decade, I'm going to be skipping next year's EA press conference at E3. Not that they'll miss me, but I don't think I can stand to see their smarmy Australian CEO gushing about how this year's FIFA is going to revolutionise the sport.

Get fucked, EA. I just cancelled my Battlefront 2 order. I bet the single player campaign in BF2 is going to suck anyway.

/Edit: I just checked out their executives page: https://www.ea.com/executives. What a bunch of pompous-looking, self-entitled, arrogant, cherub-faced dickheads. Ugh, I'm getting myself all worked up again.

 

[Militaratus]

Fuck EA.

This legitimately made me mad. Now I have to get my hands on 2ND hand copies of Dead Space games to honor Visceral, and then dream of what could have been if EA didn't buy them.

 

[NoTime]

Star Wars: Episode V (Visceral) - The EAmpire Strikes Back

 

[jdstorm]

So you are arguing EA canceled a good game because they are "evil" and because they don't know how to evaluate games. That doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

First, you claim that the PR statement didn't say the game was bad. PR statements are designed to make a company look good and they frequently contains lies, half-truths and omissions. No company is going to say "we spent millions developing a crappy Star Wars game which was going to bomb." When ever you read a PR statement about a cancelation, layoff, etc. you have to ask yourself why would a company do that? How does it benefit from what it is doing?

I believe that they almost certainly canceled the Star Wars game because they believed it wouldn't sell. You do not spend 2 years on video game development and then cancel the game on a whim. If the game was good, they would have finished it, released it and made some money. The could have simultaneously worked on the other game they talked about in the press release.

Second, you also argue that any Star Wars game will sell and make money. That is bullshit. Its hard to prove or disprove that argument because we do not get complete sales data and because video game budgets are not released. Basically, without historical profit data (i.e. game cost - game revenue), you cannot say that every Star Wars game will be profitable.

Another problem with your argument that Star Wars games are always profitable is you are assuming people will buy them even if they are horrible. I don't buy that argument. Gamers aren't dumb and they have learned how to avoid buying bad licensed games. Even if the game sells initially, its sales will stop once customers tell their friends to avoid it.

One final problem is you claim EA is evil. I really do not think you know what evil is. A company is evil if sells weapons to tyrants, kills people, knowingly sells defective products, knowingly sells products which hurt customers, sells nuclear weapons parts to North Korea, sells spy gear to repressive regimes, etc. EA is a mediocre video game company which tries (and often fails) to make popular games. That's not even close to being evil.

So much to unpack.

1. I understand PR speak pretty well. If this game had been in a bad state full of missed milestones ect the PR speak answer would have been to throw whoever was responsible under the bus. That no one problem was specifically targeted and given disproportionate blame says that the game was in a perfectly fine state.

2. You are seriously shifting the goalposts trying to draw comparison between this game and liscenced vaporwear. Cudos. Thats great PR speak. Like you said without very specific and extensive data there is no way to assume anything with good certainty. However if you assume EA are competant then the logical assumption is that liscencing the Star Wars brand was initially viewed as profitable for a reason.

3. Evil is a pretty apt description of a company that uses the psychology of gambling to monetise skinner boxes in games targeted at children and dressed up as popular liscences like FIFA, NFL, NHL, UFC ect.

grooming children into potential gambling addictions makes the Evil designation seem apt.

Plus its catchy

 

[PumpkinSpice]

Pivot the design.......wankers

Pivot. Pi-vot. PI-VOT!


Fucking EA.

"Pivot" is a word we use a lot in software projects to make it very clear that we need to take a failing idea or project in a completely different direction to salvage any of the work or research we've put in.

So it seems pretty on point here to me.

 

[Steroyd]

Zelda and Horizon weren't popular? Assassin's Creed is not popular? Fallout 4 and Skyrim Remaster bombed? Did The Witcher 3 not win dozens of GOTY Awards at the end of last year?

I know some people have an axe to grind about GaaS titles, but I don't see the point in pretending like open-world games are dead.

It's a phrase that's pretty well open to interpretation. Plenty of RPGs, MMOs, and open-world games are hailed for their longevity.

The interpretation is narrowed significantly when EA says it, they're not going to just make it open world but they're going to give you a reason to keep playing through their focus tested blender I.e multiplayer and lootboxes, I'd love to be wrong and EA are looking to make a single player open world Star Wars game that you could play for many hours because it's open ended... but it's fucking EA, we have a history to draw from, I owe them no benefit of the doubt.

 

[border]

So much to unpack.

1. I understand PR speak pretty well. If this game had been in a bad state full of missed milestones ect the PR speak answer would have been to throw whoever was responsible under the bus. That no one problem was specifically targeted and given disproportionate blame says that the game was in a perfectly fine state.

In what game cancellation announcements have people been "specifically targeted" or thrown under the bus? Usually these statements are incredibly vague and apologetic sentiments about creative differences and logistical problems. EA was not going to come out and admit that their own studio was making a bad game and had been poorly managed.

 

[Starbuck2907]

Nowhere does EA say that they are turning this into an "online focused, service based game".....that just seems to be everyone's assumption. Their statements are exceedingly broad descriptions of scope and player agency in the new game. People have simply chosen to interpret those to mean it's an online multiplayer title.

The game was a single player, linear adventure...now it’s not. ...that would seem to imply multiplayer with “marketplace” influenced stuff like loot boxes.

Look at all the recent EA games. Multiplayer is shoehorned into almost everyone one of them.

 

[GraveRobberX]

DICE your up next

If your BF franchises start plateauing or underperforming, their next

BioWare got lucky to be given the keys to the kingdom with Anthem
That shit has them bonded with EA

Dice I can see being chruned out and the games get EA mismanaged



Also to anyone saying EA doesn't delve into their own dev houses and forces them to tack on the latest or new mechanics to rip money out of people's wallets, have not been paying attention to EA games.

 

[kurahador]

EA still need DICE to make games for their future pachinko machines.

 

[Floody]

Don't really see Battlefield going anywhere, so DICE will be fine. They are also by far EA's fastest studio, they have what? 5 games this gen already.

 

[Melchiah]

That's disappointing to hear, as I was looking forward to a story-driven Star Wars game written by Amy Hennig.

Our Visceral studio has been developing an action-adventure title set in the Star Wars universe. In its current form, it was shaping up to be a story-based, linear adventure game. Throughout the development process, we have been testing the game concept with players, listening to the feedback about what and how they want to play, and closely tracking fundamental shifts in the marketplace. It has become clear that to deliver an experience that players will want to come back to and enjoy for a long time to come, we needed to pivot the design. We will maintain the stunning visuals, authenticity in the Star Wars universe, and focus on bringing a Star Wars story to life. Importantly, we are shifting the game to be a broader experience that allows for more variety and player agency, leaning into the capabilities of our Frostbite engine and reimagining central elements of the game to give players a Star Wars adventure of greater depth and breadth to explore.

Do not want. A linear story-driven adventure game would have been exactly what I wanted.

 

[Raitaro]

Dammit, I just wanted one good single player, story-focused Star Wars game with a big budget (which this team could have delivered for sure imo, focus-testing and market development be damned!) and now this happens! RIP Visceral.

Not to go off on a tangent but I continue to struggle to believe that the majority of people who play games - i.e. a medium that in part got big because it allowed people with anxiety, low self-confidence and other pychological problems to escape from said problems and enjoy something without the stress that comes with having to deal with other humans or compete with them - now suddenly all prefer multiplayer games with a focus on competition, loot and cosmetics.

I can't be the only one who still feels intimidated and stressed when having to compete with others and as such prefer to be engrossed in a game world offline at my own pace, can I? I truly fear it won't be long before I might as well stop gaming alltogether unless I adapt myself to like GAAS style games with a focus on multiplayer and shared experiences...

 

[Savitar]

These people I feel extremely bad.

 

[The_Lump]

"Due to market research which tells us that people will lap up any old shite as long as we make it look pretty, we decided to pivot the games design so as to avoid making something unique or taking too much of a risk."

Neagaf should get rid of th "Believe" tag line. "Thanks EA" just seems far more relevant in this day and age.

The game was a single player, linear adventure...now it's not. ...that would seem to imply multiplayer with ”marketplace" influenced stuff like loot boxes.

Look at all the recent EA games. Multiplayer is shoehorned into almost everyone one of them.

Yep. And the line about "keeping players coming back for a long time" is clearly indicative of the usual multiplayer set up with DLC and microtransactions yadda yadda.
If EA were willing to do anything outside of their current model and comfort zone, they would have left the development as it was.

 

[Yoshi]

So you are arguing EA canceled a good game because they are "evil" and because they don't know how to evaluate games. That doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

I do not think one can conclude that the game was bad from what EA wrote, but that it is not following their vision of games going forward. The problem they outline in their own statement is the linear story driven nature, which is not a quality problem, but a direction problem. Maybe the game was shit. Afterall, my opinion of Amy Henig's work is very low after her comments on platformers and being in part responsible for Naught Dog's change of focus from Jak 1 to Jak 2 and then going forward to full-on hollywood stuff. But there is no indication that this game was turning out to be shit, just that it does not follow a business and design model that EA deems potentially successful. If the game was really shit, it would be best not to use anything of it other than maybe some visual assets, but they instead try to just remodel the game, which indicates there is a basis to the game they deem promising.

Also, I think it is a bad thing to kill studios over one game not going in the right direction. It is something that EA, Sony and MS tend to do, but it is irresponsible. Especially for a long running team with numerous successes in the past, it would be good to just cancel a project that you think is not going in the right direction and start anew with a second project. Now if the studio just continues to produce things you do not see any value in, it is OK to kill the studio, but the one misstep gets you closed mentality is poisonous in a creative environment, because it stiffles the drive to take some risks on fresh ideas.

 

[TheThreadsThatBindUs]

Not only is every new game being greenlit a lootbox grindy shared world shooter, but now pubs are shuttering development studios to turn already in-development games into that shit.

Fuck this industry sometimes.

 

[The_Lump]

Not only is every new game being greenlit a lootbox grindy shared world shooter, but now pubs are shuttering development studios to turn already in-development games into that shit.

Fuck this industry sometimes.

Preach. Thank the lord for indies who consistently provide a break to the monotony.

Edit: And of course the smattering of good single player games Nintendo and Sony still produce. Increasingly they are becoming outliers though.

 

[SomedayTheFire]

Fuck EA

Worst Company in America 2017 again please

You cannot be serious.

Y'all are children.

Fuck EA.

This legitimately made me mad. Now I have to get my hands on 2ND hand copies of Dead Space games to honor Visceral, and then dream of what could have been if EA didn't buy them.

They did not buy them. It was always an internal studio.

 

[matrix-cat]

Zelda and Horizon weren't popular? Assassin's Creed is not popular? Fallout 4 and Skyrim Remaster bombed? Did The Witcher 3 not win dozens of GOTY Awards at the end of last year?

I know some people have an axe to grind about GaaS titles, but I don't see the point in pretending like open-world games are dead.

I think the one to look at is Mass Effect Andromeda, the open world game EA themselves released earlier this year which was decidedly not popular and lead to yet another studio being killed.

 

[Adryuu]

They have already announced Last of Us Part 2.

I know but

Doubt they would go the MP centric route, but could ultimately see them doing an open world game. (I really hope they don't though)

This. Their last games feature always more open areas. They're good at least, but I feel I need some linear non rpg games in between all the open worlds and I don't even play games as a service things.

I understand they think the game wouldn't be profitable and shutting down as a business decision because they're an enterprise and not a friend, but it sucks anyway. And what rubs me the most in the wrong way is switching the approach to something not story focused linear game which there are less and less.

The industry is changing into something awful because that's what the majority of people is buying and so the major companies are adapting and this is the result: losing potentially amazing games or eventually even entire genres which made the medium great in the first place (in the AAA space at least). That's what I fear.

 

[dex3108]

 

[Bazry]

I have this scenario in my head where the EA execs walk into a meeting with the devs and ask them how they're going to incorporate DLC and loot boxes into this new game. The devs look at each other and say no we're just making a single player Star Wars game, then the EA guys get up, make a phone call and simply say shut this shit down