
BioWare Working Staff to Tears and Calling Its Mental Abuse “Magic” - pdkl95
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GN1uV57hE_w
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manfredo
I think it's important to understand that development studios are really just
a name and an office building. Games are made by people and people join and
leave studios. The Bioware that gave us Baldur's gate, Neverwinter nights,
Mass effect, and KotOR isn't the same Bioware as the one that exists today.

On a somewhat unrelated note, I think that the idea of big budget games is
demonstrating itself to not be such a good business practice. I feel like more
and more AAA games are collapsing under their own weight. I've been playing
the total war series since childhood and I actually feel like the widening
scope of Rome 2, Attila, and Warhammer have actually made the experience
worse. If I look honestly at the games I enjoy most they're actually much more
focused and narrow. I'm planning Sekiro: shadows die twice now and it really
demonstrates that less is more. The game added a few things, namely stealth
and much greater mobility through grappling hook. But it cut out effectively
all gear and armor, drastically simplified weapon upgrading to just one
incrementing value, eliminated the stats system. Multiplayer was also removed
in entirety. It largely cut more content than it added as compared to the Dark
Souls series and the game is better for it.

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theandrewbailey
> Games are made by people and people join and leave studios.

I came to this conclusion years ago when I was interested in the 'spiritual
successor' thing. The same person/people make vaguely similar games that would
have been sequels, but aren't due to IP laws. Examples:

1\. Chris Taylor (made Total Annihilation, then Supreme Commander)

2\. Chris Roberts (made Wing Commander, then Starlancer/Freelancer, now Star
Citizen)

3\. Ken Levine (made System Shock, then BioShock)

(I'm not clear on the exact names, but when companies break up, the same thing
happens):

4\. Former Blizzard North people made Hellgate London and Torchlight

5\. Former Lucas Arts people founded Double Fine and Telltale

6\. Former Interplay people founded Inexile and Obsidian

7\. Former Rare people made Yooka Laylee

It's kind of like watching several mutations and species compete and die out,
then resurrect. It's a shame that people often lose jobs in the process, but I
think it helps make better games in the end.

~~~
manfredo
The analogy of mutations and species I think is really good. The best games
aren't just made, they are evolved. The best games are often built by teams
leveraging past experience, and probably also extending the technology they
built previously to support newer features. It's probably while sequels and
series are so prevalent in games. It's often much better to evolve past work
than to create stuff from scratch. I think this is why Anthem fell flat. The
team was making something they've never done before, a genuinely open-world
looter-shooter, using tech they hadn't mastered (Frostbite engine).

While there are stories of teams launching great games in genres they've never
touched (e.g. Minecraft, GoldenEye 007) such endeavors probably fail more
often than they succeed.

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honkycat
Bioware has written a masterclass in bad management.

Bioware products are an exemplar of what happens when you treat your staff
like crap, and all the senior people take their ball and go home.

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jammygit
I applied for an internship there in the past but didn't hear back. Thank
goodness

