http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2017-10-23-manveer-heir-bioware-mass-effect-ea-monetisation
Which one of you did this?
"Gameplay designer Manveer Heir spent a long time - seven years - working for Electronic Arts at BioWare Montreal, making Mass Effect 3 (mostly multiplayer) and then Mass Effect Andromeda, and he had some illuminating information about the company's mindset to share with Waypoint at the weekend.
It was to do with EA's recent closure of Visceral Games and the "pivot" in direction of the Star Wars game in development there - but it also tied into Star Wars Battlefront 2 loot crates as well.
In the Visceral Games statement, EA executive vice president Patrick Soderlund said: "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 are shifting the game to be a broader experience that allows for more variety and player agency..."
It read like a declaration EA will move away from single-player experiences in favour of open-world or shared open-world games. It's what Manveer Heir said he saw happening firsthand there.
"It's definitely a thing inside of EA," he said, "they are generally pushing for more open-world games. And the reason is you can monetise them better. The words in there that were used are 'have them come back again and again' [not quite but that's the gist - see above]. Why do you care about that at EA? The reason you care about that is because microtransactions: buying card packs in the Mass Effect games, the multiplayer. It's the same reason we added card packs to Mass Effect 3: how do you get people to keep coming back to a thing instead of 'just' playing for 60 to 100 hours?"
Which one of you did this?