BioWare - Changed in 2017

[HiddenX]

Mark Darrah talks about Bioware in 2017:

How 2017 Changed BioWare 1000 Ways

Thanks Couchpotato!

More information.

 

[Andrew23]

Long line of corporate bullshit. The pattern is always the same. Large corporates grow by buying new entities, which increases corporate value for investors. That is the real value for corporate top management. Individual entities just generate money to cover operating costs, which is black hole in any large corporate. They are not invested into and in long run, when (not if, as its just matter of time) they get in red numbers, they are reorganized and closed, eventually.

 

[danutz_plusplus]

Indeed. Making good games is hard enough without all the corporate malfeasance and internal politics.
I'm kinda sad now for Veilguard and the difficulties the team went through.

 

[Lucky Day]

I've said this before, but issues at Bio starting happening around BG2 when. They first started praising Diablo 2 and added action rpg elements into it. NWN was an outright ARPG as was Jade Empire. In other words, they started chasing the dollar instead of keeping to their vision.
I'm not complaining about these games but there was already a trend away from the games we like in the company and there was a root to this. I noticed they started drinking their own kool aid believing their were Bioware fans that would buy any game they made regardless of the platform eg the Sonic RPG. They lost touch with their own fan base rejecting any and all critique. The pinnacle of this was the Bioware Social Forums where access to your own games was lost for the slightest criticism and you got banned. Their heavy handedness created the very toxicity they complained about after.
With KotR the good doctors became really out of touch because that became their total focus and at that point it was just a division of EA. Everything associated with Bio after that was IP.

 

[Stingray]

Not sure why you'd call NWN an "outright ARPG". Sure, it brought in a lot of the dumbing-down that went along with BW's transition to ARPG's, but can't really see it fitting into any real definition of an ARPG.

Spot on for the rest, though. They wanted to chase big money by appealing to the masses, which especially back then, meant the console crowd. Happened long before EA bought them too. Really got what they deserved in the end for repeatedly and determinedly abandoning their audience(s).

 

[JDR13]

Eh...what action-RPG elements did Baldur's Gate 2 have?

 

[Andrew23]

I think that around 2000, consolification of videogame production was rather common issue. Together with early 3D, well ... not my favorite gaming period. But I think it was more problem of fans that didt like it (like myself), then developers. I mean, some of best selling Bioware games came long after they moved from PC to consoles.

 

[JDR13]

I mean, some of best selling Bioware games came long after they moved from PC to consoles.

Isn't that to be expected though? You're going to sell more copies when you start catering to the mainstream more.

 

[Andrew23]

Isn't that to be expected though? You're going to sell more copies when you start catering to the mainstream more.

Sure, I just reacted to claim that Bioware issues started around the time of beginning of consolification of their production. I believe the real issues started rather by becoming part of corporate.

 

[Stingray]

I believe the real issues started rather by becoming part of corporate.

Yeah, it really depends on what you mean by "issues". From my reading of Lucky Day's post, the issue from his point of view is them abandoning/betraying their original audience (eg BG1/BG2 etc) and chasing big money in the action world. There's no real question that they greedily abandoned that original audience, but from the point of view of making money, they still did quite well afterwards, so if all you care about is the dollars, perhaps it was a good call. That happened before EA. Big success in the following era with KOTOR1, ME trilogy, DA:I, etc. Then later on, they eventually also abandoned that 2nd audience they had acquired, with stuff that (1) no one asked for (Anthem), and (2) stuff that people did ask for but, in the end, wished that they hadn't (Veilguard). Perhaps doing it twice is just too much for them to escape the karmic justice - the company is more-or-less dead now although it's quite possible, perhaps even likely, that EA will still use their name on some future products. At this point, that's basically the equivalent of EA putting out a new game with the Origin or Bullfrog name slapped on it.

 

[Andrew23]

Yeah, it really depends on what you mean by "issues".

I dont disagree with your point of view. For me, as big fan of BG1 and 2, every later BW game was disappointment in some way.
Biggest being probably NWN as over the time my expectations lowered significantly.

Anyway, I was focused on "issues" being events leading to Bioware possible existentional troubles, which they face today. Because
that is how I interpret content of the video, this discussion is related to. And I strongly believe Bioware would most likely be in much
better condition, if they were not under corporate umbrella. Despite any controversial decisions they undertook before acquisition.
Of course any company can make bad decision, but to shit on its own head for more then decade? Very unlikely ...

 

[Stingray]

Oh yeah, many of those things have little-to-nothing to do with the video that this thread is for. But it seemed like L.D. had opened a wider discussion on the numerous failings and hubris of BioWare.

For me, as big fan of BG1 and 2, every later BW game was disappointment in some way. Biggest being probably NWN as over the time my expectations lowered significantly.

For me, NWN1 was one of the biggest disappointments in the history of gaming, but over the years I haven't seen tons of people agreeing with me on that. I'm not a big RTwP fan, but have no problem admitting BG1/BG2 were legendary games despite it. And then we went from that, to a dumbed-down game with bad 3D graphics, barely-existent companions, and an absolutely horrible campaign?

 

[Couchpotato]

Foolish gamer it's not the bad NWN campign that everyone plays the game for. It's because it had custom mod tools that allowed 100's of better player campaigns.

NWN 2 was the same but at least it had better campaigns.

 

[Stingray]

Foolish gamer it's not the bad NWN OC campign that everyone plays the game for. It's because it had a custom mod tools that allowed 100's of better player campaigns.

I'm talking about what we got at release. Obviously no user-made campaigns existed then, and sure, I was aware of the potential for them, but I'm also not a big user-content type of guy. But with the information I had in hand at that moment, yeah - one of the biggest disappointments in history, easily.

NWN 2 was the same but at least it had better campaigns.

NWN 2 was a perfectly fine RPG at release, I thought. I was pleasantly surprised after the NWN 1 debacle.

 

[soola]

Oh yeah, many of those things have little-to-nothing to do with the video that this thread is for. But it seemed like L.D. had opened a wider discussion on the numerous failings and hubris of BioWare.


For me, NWN1 was one of the biggest disappointments in the history of gaming, but over the years I haven't seen tons of people agreeing with me on that. I'm not a big RTwP fan, but have no problem admitting BG1/BG2 were legendary games despite it. And then we went from that, to a dumbed-down game with bad 3D graphics, barely-existent companions, and an absolutely horrible campaign?

NWN was more about the mod tools and online DM features anyway. Totally agree on main campaign and companions. Compared to any other RPG; its strengths haven’t been matched.

 

[Stingray]

NWN was more about the mod tools and online DM features anyway. Totally agree on main campaign and companions. Compared to any other RPG; its strengths haven’t been matched.

Exchanging one strength for another is fine, and a normal part of game development, but what I've always found weird about NWN1's particular situation is that it's not like you can just exchange the story/writing for the DM tools. You need a completely different set of people to work on those, e.g. programmers not writers. So what were all the writers from BG1/BG2 doing during NWN1 development? They just decided to take a year's vacation time? Maybe they were all working on KoTOR1 instead?

 

[Lucky Day]

Eh...what action-RPG elements did Baldur's Gate 2 have?

It was already RTwP so there was that. I was mainly seeing ARPG as a Diablofication of games - at 250,000 units a quarter, chasing that market had to be tempting when they had the product they did.
Throne of Bhaal was much more diablo-like when it gave you your own personal safe space to consolidate your gear.

Not sure why you'd call NWN an "outright ARPG"

Because it was. Only it had the 3e rules tacked on. Plus it was primarily designed for co-op campaigns with the bonus of a DM.

RE: the lack of a story, recall the NWN was started around the same time as BG2 was being worked on and it was late to market? Why? Because Black Isle stopped paying the royalties on the Infinity Engine games and Bioware had to sue. (This is not unique to publishers - a common tactic among publishers to try to steal the products of developers - Strategy First was about the worst offender for this).
Fortunately, Bioware was able to wrestle the IP back by agreeing to let Interplay keep their royalties in exchange for the publishing rights, the engine and the naming.
Interplay kept all the assets including the story.

Neverwinter Nights: NWN Original Plot Outline

web.archive.org

During the legal dispute Bioware kept developing the toolset in spite of not having a publisher even after the settlement. However, six months before release they decided they would have a campaign anyway because marketing discovered that was what buyers expected. So they delayed release again in order to slap one on.
With such a focus on multiplayer they were not going to add henchmen, or multiple summons so they could nerf solo play with the exception of easily killed mages and they OP'd their familiars as meat shields and easily managed relearning of spells by simple resting among other things. (They learned that lesson from the complains on IWD). They eventually conceded henchmen and slapped them together in one week.

To me, I had already expected a toolset and the OC was just an example. I've never been able to finish a Bioware official mod. But most of the buyers were expecting something along the lines of Baldur's Gate.
And Diablo fans were expecting features like 4 licenses per box for Lan play. Pirates of the game had no interest in the toolset. Actually, almost no new buyers had interest in the toolset.
Another problem, one largely ignored until NWN2, was the hak requirement. Bioware never implemented automatic download capabilities into the product so players had to go out of their way to load custom content after they finished with the OC and checked out multiplayer. Four separate people I encouraged or bought the game for came up to me after and asked, "What's a hak," before they stopped playing it completely.

It was about 2 or 3 years into the game that Bioware hired focus groups on NWN and discovered that the vast majority of players only played solo and the DM client was least used. They then stopped focussing so many resources on MP and the DM client.
But just the idea of using focus groups to market their games to me was the real line of demarkation at Bioware for when they lost touch with gamers and their vision.

 

[JDR13]

It was already RTwP so there was that. I was mainly seeing ARPG as a Diablofication of games - at 250,000 units a quarter, chasing that market had to be tempting when they had the product they did.
Throne of Bhaal was much more diablo-like when it gave you your own personal safe space to consolidate your gear.

I think you're reaching here. The reason BG 1&2 were RTwP was because Bioware were originally developing an RTS game with that engine and then decided to go RPG instead.

 

[Stingray]

Because it was. Only it had the 3e rules tacked on. Plus it was primarily designed for co-op campaigns with the bonus of a DM.

I agree that RTwP itself is already an actionification of classic turn-based RPG combat...but if you're calling RTwP games like NWN "ARPGs" then you're using your own personal definition of ARPG there really, as normally RTwP games are excluded from that label.

 

[Couchpotato]

Personally I don't care what label you all use. It was a decent RPG for me, and one of the only games, I still play almost twenty years later. No other game has done that.