But let's play devil's advocate for a moment. Suppose they were vehemently opposed to the buyout. Would you expect them to issue a press release saying "Yeah, we're pretty bummed about this, and though we expect the worst, we're going to hope for the best?" That sort of high school passive-aggressive stuff doesn't fly in the business world. Under EA - a publicly traded company - saying something like that would directly affect the perceived value of the company's stock. That would be, as they say, "legally actionable" by EA.
No, of course I don't expect that. I may not have inside information, but I'm not blind to politics - though I despise the concept.
I'm just saying their attitude was such that I honestly thought it was completely amiable and that they made the deal gladly.
If this was forced upon them, I'd expect a somewhat less enthusiastic and more neutral disposition. Something which didn't inspire legal action, without misleading the audience - intentionally or unintentionally.
The funny thing is, I personally see what you call the "downward slide" (and I call "streamlining") as starting with NWN. But I'm a real old school RPG'er. I sit on my porch with a cane and a C64 shouting about the kids these days and their fancy-schmancy Fallout 2. In my day, we had Wasteland, and we loved it!
I started gaming in '81 - so I'm right there with you. Though I think the first CRPG I fell in love with was Bard's Tale.
Anyway, streamlining is a tricky word because it's not necessarily what I'm talking about. It really depends on the motive for the process. If you're streamlining to improve the GAME - then that's great and there are countless examples of that being successful, like the WASD movement scheme made mouse/keyboard the number one way of controlling first person perspective games.
However, if you streamline to improve SALES - then that's not necessarily a good thing for the GAME.
Kidding aside, after every game, BW - like most companies - does a post-mortem to judge what did and didn't work. Over time, those have focused us down to a few key "pillars" and strong points that we focus on. You can Google to see how much of that is in the public domain. If something's confidential, I don't want to take the rap for spilling it. Obviously, a relatively linear, story-driven plot with Luke/Han/Vader dialogue trees are a big part of it. Bethesda does non-linear, story-light worlds, Square-Enix does (by my personal standards) animated films interrupted by turn-based strategy games. We're somewhere between the two.
I don't think it's fair to call Elderscrolls games story-light. They do have a lot of story actually. In my mind, it would be more accurate to call them story-poor or writing-crap, because they're simply not good writers.
Anyway, I understand and appreciate that process. However, I don't think I understand why you had to simplify and "do away" with deep and interesting RPG mechanics just because you dumped or lost the D&D license. Your strengths are clear enough - but to forget such essential basic appeals of the typical RPG was a bad judgement call from where I'm sitting. It might not be a problem for the casual gamer - but for passionate gamers, it's really sad that Jade Empire and Mass Effect have such ridiculously boring and simple mechanics underneath the production values. At least, that's what I think.
My point is that the games we make today are a result of that post-mortem winnowing process, focusing down on what made the game unique and successful. When I first played KotOR and NWN (before I worked here) I was surprised at just how structurally simple they were. Like I said, I've been playing these games for 20 years. I hesitated to open locked doors in KotOR because I still expected that 10 hours down the road, that decision could bite me in the butt
.
I'm not sure I agree that NWN was structurally simple. In terms of campaign and story presentation - sure - but in terms of overall technical flexibility and complexity it's FAR beyond Baldur's Gate. The fact that it's a huge CRPG with both cooperative/competitive multiplayer, as well as a deep construction set with an added DM mode is simply amazing. I think that's one hell of a structural step forward over Baldur's Gate - which with its Infinity Engine never handled multiplayer that well. But it DID have a much superior campaign - but I don't relate that to structural superiority.
KoTOR, though, I agree with to an extent. It's obviously compromised to fit the Xbox format and perceived audience. But I still think the quality of the D&D rules implementation and the overall setting and story/NPCs was of the usual high Bioware standard. Much better story than JE/ME anyway, in my opinion.
For as long as I've been here, BioWare's mandate has been to make huge, "event" triple-A titles - we don't do
"The Lady With the Dog," we do
"War and Peace." (Sonic Chronicles was a first experiment with
Yeah, but you don't really need to insist on that mandate if you can't improve your games along with it. At least I don't think so.
The BW that made the Baldur's Gates was about 50 people in a run-down building infamous for its lack of air conditioning or functioning toilets. Today's BW is ten times that size, with offices in Edmonton (3.5 stories of an office tower), Austin, and Montreal - the last a small satellite studio that hires local talent to make game cinematics for the other two offices. Just think about that. We have an entire office that only produces cutscenes. That's how expensive and complicated it is to make a story-driven triple-A title for today's gamers.
My point is that Bioware never HAD to get that big, and you don't HAVE to focus on a few mega titles - you could instead adapt to smaller markets and make greater games with more modest production values. Not every game MUST look like a Hollywood movie. The investment just needs to match the potential market.
Thus there's a spiral; as games become more expensive to make, each one has to sell more to break even, so they have to appeal to a broader population of gamers, so they have to lose some of their nichier accouterments. This isn't just the case with RPGs; you can see a trend of "consolization" (as some have called it) across all genres.
Yeah, that's the crappy and unnecessary spiral I'm talking about. It's only necessary in the minds of greedy people. There's no rule that says you MUST invest big and earn big. Invest small and earn small is a possibility as well. If you have a huge team, then spread it out a bit more perhaps. I think it's a dangerous loop of greed that can only end badly in the end - to hunt for the ever more aesthetically pleasing and impressive game that gets more and more hollow over time. You're forgetting basics and you're trying to make games into something they never really should be - aka movies. Games are unique and in my opinion should keep to their strengths. Mass Effect is much more like a movie, which is why so many people like it. People like movies, true, but we already have movies - why convert games to that format? That's ignoring the strengths of games which go beyond merely "interacting". The same thing is happening with so many games these days, like Bioshock which was also highly praised. Why? It's a great movie but nothing but a mediocre game that failed to live up to the shock legacy.
The irony is that these movie elements are responsible for a HUGE amount of the costs associated with making these AAA games. You never needed that big a market - you just got more and more greedy and now you need fans from all over the entertainment spectrum to cover your investments.
Note, that when I say "you" I don't mean you personally. I'm talking about the general attitude of the big shot developers like Bioware.
You could make the argument that BW made the wrong choice a long time back. That instead of making "event" RPGs, it should have continued to make titles designed exclusively for the RPG niche, like Black Isle and Troika did. You see the likely outcome of that option just from the studio names. (EDIT: Which Should not be interpreted as disrespect of those guys - I still have Fallout, Fallout 2, Arcanum, and Vampire: Bloodlines installed on my home machine.) At any rate, it's been too late to do that for many moons.
Something like that - but let's not oversimplify and think of mass market versus niche. Something like The Witcher proves there's a reasonable big middle-market for deep and rich gameplay.
I don't know if this necessarily answers your questions. Anyway, as my sig notes, I don't speak for the company. This is all just my own musings.
I know I will never get a straight answer and I understand why - so no worries. I really appreciate you taking the time to explain some of this to a random whiny ex-fan. Few people would bother, so I thank you.