RedlineRonin
Member
But it's true ¯\_(ツ_/¯
I'm not gonna repost the list (from 2017 alone) of games, as it's been posted enough in this thread, but you can't honestly believe that
-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
Jason Schreier: Visceral's game was not canned because it was single-player
- Thread starter mdubs
- Start date
I'm not gonna repost the list (from 2017 alone) of games, as it's been posted enough in this thread, but you can't honestly believe that
Traditional single player games in the AAA space without micro-transactions and loot boxes will be a rarity from now on. You can deny that all you want but it's true.
RedlineRonin
Member
You wanna quote the post where I said the bolded?
Sure, there might be loot boxes and microtransactions. And there just as easily might not be (as there weren't with a long list of critically and financially successful single player games this year).
So what am I denying? What you're seeing in your crystal ball?
No, it's V.
ronaldthump
Member
if the game was indeed a mess, people need to stop defending visceral. Given a AAA budget; they fucked it up
also, jimquisition did a thing about this and said "fuck EA" and mentioned Bioware - but lets not forget that Mass Effect Andromeda has many many years and $$$$ pumped into it.
Sometimes the studios fuck up.
also, jimquisition did a thing about this and said "fuck EA" and mentioned Bioware - but lets not forget that Mass Effect Andromeda has many many years and $$$$ pumped into it.
Sometimes the studios fuck up.
So EA are lying to investors instead of throwing the devs under the bus? That's very un-EA of them.
I kinda assumed there was more to it, as regardless of quality the game would have made a fucktillion bucks, but I also think being unable to fully microtransaction it up played a part too.
Also, a second mega high-profile disaster in a row for Hennig can't be good either. I really hope she doesn't just peace out.
I kinda assumed there was more to it, as regardless of quality the game would have made a fucktillion bucks, but I also think being unable to fully microtransaction it up played a part too.
Also, a second mega high-profile disaster in a row for Hennig can't be good either. I really hope she doesn't just peace out.
Glass Rebel
Member
As I said in the other thread, it was naive of us to think theyd make an Uncharted/SW1313 style game to be released post-2017. With the codename Ragtag, Id be surprised if this isnt some cooperative affair.
Takamura-San
Member
So EA basically fired a bunch of people by closing the studio. They release a statement to at least safe face, not just for them, but for the people working there for them to be able to find new work.
People on forums go ballistic, as they tend to do. Jason clarified that the project is a mess from what he heard. Wonder how the jobless people at the studio feel now.
This doesn't answer what the issues were. Why was the project a mess? Was the developer to blame, or publisher meddling? We've seen many stories of publishers demanding too much and/or changing development goals wholesale mid-development for one reason or another. The question comes back to, based on what EA is saying about their plans for the game going forward, is that what they were attempting to foist on Visceral during development, therefore leading to the downfall of of the game and studio?
What was the first one?
Takamura-San
Member
I guess it is about her version of Uncharted 4.
Story behind that?
Im_So_Pringles
Member
This and, "The focus groups wanted more things that will distract them from an actually rewarding experience. The game remains a rewarding experience and has not yet introduced anything to make it worse. This is unacceptable."
Development messes in the game industry rarely come down to the lower common denominators of developers. Most of them would be fine for finding other work in the event it comes out that the project truly was an undeniable mess.
RedlineRonin
Member
Its a whole chapter in Jasons book
El_Cinefilo
Member
This was so obvious. A studio doesn't look at a game that's been in development for three + years and is shaping up to be a great single player experience and go "wait, it's single player? How are we meant to put loot boxes in it?! Scrap it, close the studio and start again!"
Although I imagine they'll take the assets and try to turn it into something like that now to try and get their presumably massive investment back.
EDIT: also a studio is never going to come out and say," hey that project we've invested millions in is a mess and we're cutting our losses and turning it into something safer" . Hence their statement
Although I imagine they'll take the assets and try to turn it into something like that now to try and get their presumably massive investment back.
EDIT: also a studio is never going to come out and say," hey that project we've invested millions in is a mess and we're cutting our losses and turning it into something safer" . Hence their statement
dr_rus
Member
It's their studio so it's as much about not throwing themselves under a bus too.
IsntChrisL
Member
I don't have trouble believing this happened for multiple reasons. The game may have been going through a rough development but EA's wording makes it easy to think they're killing 3 birds with one stone. I have no doubt that this game, if it ever releases, will be filled with MT's. At this point, it would be hard to expect anything different from the big publishers.
hellishimp
Member
As if anyone would just say it was due to single player. They would forever deny that the new reality is MP with microtransactions
AusRoachman
Member
I need some leaked footage to see just how bad this was .
TheSpaceBetween
Member
The way EA spoke made it sounded like the game was focus tested to hell and back and Visceral's vision didn't seem to align with what they EA saw as being marketable.
Isn't that what kinda happened with Dead Space 3?
Isn't that what kinda happened with Dead Space 3?
NinjaTehFish
Banned
I don't get it?
My impression from the press release was that the game was too linear with no room for true player agency. Not that its focusing on multi now?
If anything the impression I got was moving towards a more open world style game with sandbox elements.
shrugs.
My impression from the press release was that the game was too linear with no room for true player agency. Not that its focusing on multi now?
If anything the impression I got was moving towards a more open world style game with sandbox elements.
shrugs.
Uncharted 4. It was apparently very unfocused and not shaping up well, though also possibly under staffed.
There's much more in Jason's book.Jason Schreiers book Blood said:
I'm pretty sure more of her plans (gameplay and story) leaked too, but I can't find it at the moment, I remember it not sounding good and definitely backs up the second claims.
Yeah, suppose that's true enough.
EA CEO Andrew Wilson in May, "EAs games today are live services."
EA CFO Blake Jorgensen in July, "We had a great start to the fiscal year, primarily due to our event-driven live services."
EA in its blog post about why it's canceling Visceral's game and rebooting it at the studio that does FIFA Ultimate Team: "In its current form, it was shaping up to be a story-based, linear adventure game. 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."
EA is not trying to hide its motivation. It is so weird that people won't believe it when EA is just flatly admitting it.
Well, you just said 'single player games aren't dead!!' so i presumed you referred to the classic (and honestly, better) model. Sorry if i got that wrong.
Of course single player games won't die. Stuff like Uncharted 4, though, will become really scarce from now on.
Suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuure.
digoutyoursoul
Member
So when can we expect to see some of what they now have planned for this game? 2019? 2020?
ronaldthump
Member
but yeah, sterling's schtick is his thing. He has no idea outside of what's on the surface.
DangerMouse
Member
This. EA themselves were the biggest reason for those hot takes and view on what types of games EA is going to favor in the near future. So they're not really typical hot takes if that's the message that EA themselves wanted people to have.
johannesbergcrantz
Member
Don't really get the hype behind amy hennig.. but then again I dont really like any of the uncharted games. So yea, im missing something I guess. Still hoping for a sp sw game though.
If that
Morrigan Stark
Arrogant Smirk
Soul Reaver, yo
That's the last good thing she did and what makes me like her. Idk what exactly she did on Uncharted and if she wrote the chars but Drake is an embarrassing amalgamation of badly used tropes so much that all the supporting cast is better than him.
Here's the thing, Dead Space 2 a critically acclaimed and well made game in every sense....but was not really profitable. Dead Space 3 was a collosal financial disaster and critically not as well received. It had been 4+ years since Dead Space 3's release and in this time Visceral didn't produce anything and the only project it was working on was being mismanaged and taking too long.
Considering all this can you honestly blamed EA for shutting down Visceral ? There's only so much loss that a company is going to let by. We are talking like 7-8 years of loss from a studio.
The people with their hit takes on how EA is a shit company have no idea what they are talking about and need to consider these things.
Edit: Oh yes they did make Battlefield Hardline after Dead Space 3. Which was a failure too.
Considering all this can you honestly blamed EA for shutting down Visceral ? There's only so much loss that a company is going to let by. We are talking like 7-8 years of loss from a studio.
The people with their hit takes on how EA is a shit company have no idea what they are talking about and need to consider these things.
Edit: Oh yes they did make Battlefield Hardline after Dead Space 3. Which was a failure too.
Nightengale
Member
It wasn't.
From what I can find out on the internet, it sold less than Dead Space 2 and it got price drops pretty quickly, plus there were barely any people playing it and most people went back to BF4, that's not good for a MP game. I wouldn't be surprised if it failed.
SargerusBR
I love Pokken!
There were more people playing BF3 than Hardline.
AFAIK non-mainline sequels usually have their expectations adjusted downwards quite a bit. I bet it was neither a big success nor a big failure.
CamHostage
Member
If all the Visceral Star Wars game needed was multiplayer component, they could have just contracted EA Canada to do it and bolt it on ala Battlefront 2 (SP) or Mass Effect 3.
Multiplayer did not kill this project; multiplayer may be the only reason the project wasn't mothballed entirely and just scavenged for assets. The result is not the game that I (or apparently anybody else) wants right now, but the choices were most likely that it was this or nothing, that nobody at EA Canada or any other EA studio was going to be able to save the project as it was, and that a rethink and a clear path of progression to getting an actual sellable game was the only way out.
Making the best of a bad situation, more like. They're telling investors that there's still a way to get money out of this, which is probably true. (Also, I understand the gamer hatred towards EA, but when has EA thrown a developer under the bus? Most of the time, they simply drop the axe and kill a studio's projects without comment. I don't know of many publishers that publicly kick a development team in the ass on the way out the door, even though in private, there have been many, many, many, many ugly dissolutions of development offices.)
Right? I'm kind of more surprised that there is surprise at this news than that it happened. We've known about this game since 2013, have only seen a few seconds of test footage in all that time, and everybody thought the project was coming along swimmingly?
I hate that this happened, but after yet another E3 of practically nothing out of this game, my alarm bells were ringing like crazy.
Right, these things happen, and sometimes a company has to do something radical to course change ... sinking more effort into getting the team lost and drowning in the middle of the fuck-up to un-fuck it is unlikely to work. Know when to hold em, know when to fold em, that old cliche.
Especially given this studio was on its own campus, Electronic Arts would not have pulled this trigger if the situation didn't call for extreme measures. It's got to be a miserable time at EA; Visceral Games is what became of much of the operations of EA Redwood, Electronic Arts' home studio at its Redwood Shores headquarters, so I'm not sure how many game developers are still at that office after the Visceral dissolution (there are some other teams there, but lots of EA projects are done at EA Canada / Bioware up north or Tiburon in Florida or DICE in Sweden or elsewhere,) but that's a huge number of people walking out with boxes past the working offices of execs and producers and other EA workers who shared their building. If EA could have transitioned that talent away from Visceral in the same way it funneled the talent into a team called Visceral in the first place, that'd be great (moving these folks to make more Rumble Racing and 007 EoN would have been fine by me,) but it probably wasn't an option at this point. For one reason or another (and BTW, it has been verified by former Visceral members of GAF that the project had its problems,) this decision was made.
Multiplayer did not kill this project; multiplayer may be the only reason the project wasn't mothballed entirely and just scavenged for assets. The result is not the game that I (or apparently anybody else) wants right now, but the choices were most likely that it was this or nothing, that nobody at EA Canada or any other EA studio was going to be able to save the project as it was, and that a rethink and a clear path of progression to getting an actual sellable game was the only way out.
Making the best of a bad situation, more like. They're telling investors that there's still a way to get money out of this, which is probably true. (Also, I understand the gamer hatred towards EA, but when has EA thrown a developer under the bus? Most of the time, they simply drop the axe and kill a studio's projects without comment. I don't know of many publishers that publicly kick a development team in the ass on the way out the door, even though in private, there have been many, many, many, many ugly dissolutions of development offices.)
Right? I'm kind of more surprised that there is surprise at this news than that it happened. We've known about this game since 2013, have only seen a few seconds of test footage in all that time, and everybody thought the project was coming along swimmingly?
I hate that this happened, but after yet another E3 of practically nothing out of this game, my alarm bells were ringing like crazy.
Right, these things happen, and sometimes a company has to do something radical to course change ... sinking more effort into getting the team lost and drowning in the middle of the fuck-up to un-fuck it is unlikely to work. Know when to hold em, know when to fold em, that old cliche.
Especially given this studio was on its own campus, Electronic Arts would not have pulled this trigger if the situation didn't call for extreme measures. It's got to be a miserable time at EA; Visceral Games is what became of much of the operations of EA Redwood, Electronic Arts' home studio at its Redwood Shores headquarters, so I'm not sure how many game developers are still at that office after the Visceral dissolution (there are some other teams there, but lots of EA projects are done at EA Canada / Bioware up north or Tiburon in Florida or DICE in Sweden or elsewhere,) but that's a huge number of people walking out with boxes past the working offices of execs and producers and other EA workers who shared their building. If EA could have transitioned that talent away from Visceral in the same way it funneled the talent into a team called Visceral in the first place, that'd be great (moving these folks to make more Rumble Racing and 007 EoN would have been fine by me,) but it probably wasn't an option at this point. For one reason or another (and BTW, it has been verified by former Visceral members of GAF that the project had its problems,) this decision was made.
privitsan02
Member
I mean we were told that Visceral were working on a Star Wars game like in 2013? I knew it was in trouble when they didn't show it at E3 this year. I mean EA showed nothing besides Anthem and more Battlefront 2.
Hope Amy Hennig finds a new home. I think Insomniac or Crystal Dynamics would suit her well.
Best wishes.
Hope Amy Hennig finds a new home. I think Insomniac or Crystal Dynamics would suit her well.
Best wishes.
Well CD is looking for a new Creative Director.