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[rakkadakka]

Jason,

My understanding is that DICE is supposed to have part of their studio dedicated to support frostbite. What happened there? Seems like it was non existent when it came to supporting other EA teams.

 

[Bisnic]

If they really made the bulk of this game in just 18 months, I'm kinda surprised to be honest. It's not nearly as bad as it should considering that(especially after the few patches the game got).

The thing that's hurting this game a lot imo is how bloated it is in easily avoidable/mediocre side content. They could have cut all of those quests under the Additional tasks section and the game would have been a lot better for it.

And really, what was the point in creating a hundred of planets in dozens of systems, if only ~10 of them can actually be landed on. I mean, it's nice having a populated cluster I guess(I saw some pretty nice vistas by just clicking on a lot of useless planets), but when it isn't even worth visiting a system unless you got a quest pointing to it, I wonder what was the point. At least in ME1 or ME2, you could discover new explorable planets by just visiting a system simply for curiosity.

 

[Harlequin]

Well, how many of those "mistakes" can be patched?

Story? Not likely...
Animations? Yes.
Bugs? Yes.
Fun? Humm....

I mean, whether sth is fun or not is ultimately subjective but I know plenty of people who greatly enjoyed their time with the game despite its flaws.

 

[nynt9]

I mean, whether sth is fun or not is ultimately subjective but I know plenty of people who greatly enjoyed their time with the game despite its flaws.

Ok, but that's not a counter point to the post you quoted. The game is technically and creatively a mess. One can still enjoy it, but that doesn't make it not bad. It's ok to enjoy bad things, we all do. But many aspects of the game are of poor quality by measurable metrics.

 

[AgentOtaku]

phenomenal write-up Jason!

 

[Renekton]

Ok, but that's not a counter point to the post you quoted. The game is technically and creatively a mess. One can still enjoy it, but that doesn't make it not bad. It's ok to enjoy bad things, we all do. But many aspects of the game are of poor quality by measurable metrics.

What measurable metrics?

 

[JohnnyFootball]

I have to wonder if Shinobi knew about this.

 

[Coxy100]

I have to wonder if Shinobi knew about this.

why is that important?

 

[Brerlappin]

Though I had to laugh at this part:

Good luck with that, guys

Yeah this made me laugh. A little tip for future reference, if youre setting out with the intention to create a genre busting piece of timeless art that will be remembered for decades to come, you are setting yourself up for failure.

I sincerely doubt any movie, game, or album that is considered a timeless classic today, was created with the express intention of being a timeless classic.

 

[nynt9]

What measurable metrics?

Bugs, animation errors, amount of choices that matter, and slightly less quantifiable but still pretty clear things like believability of writing, consistency of character noticed and actions, etc.

 

[Skux]

Development woes always show in the final product. Always.

 

[truly101]

I don't see DA2 and MEA as very similar beyond being very flawed.

DA2 actually has very clear vision and focus, just not enough development time allotted by EA.

MEA had unclear vision and focus and was given enough time by EA only for that time to be squandered by said lack of cohesion.

This article also explains why MEA felt so safe. Once everything creative and ambitious fell through BW had to scramble to piece together a game that they knew how to make.

Fair points, though I think the two things that I equate between the two are the short programming and actual development cycles and the really apparent rush to hit target date despite glaring flaws in both product. I think there was a piece posted here about DAII's development and while the theme of it taking place in a large city remained consistent I think there were some other changes to it during its brief cycle. Nothing to the degree of ME:A admittedly.

 

[Lime]

I have to wonder if Shinobi knew about this.

I think the person(s) who were his sources were using him as a channel for PR damage control and/or hype for the product. Many of the statements we saw from him proved to be wrong and incorrect (squad customization, Pro 1080p/60fps support, among other things).

On another note, the most annoying thing in hindsigt was the massive pushback by other posters against people who were worried or critical about the game before release. When people saw the flaws and faults of the game despite the marketing coverup of the game, a lot of us were told all kinds of ad hoc arguments. "it'll get fixed in 2 months", "it's nitpicking to say that the Nomad is clipping through its wheels", "internal reviews are tracking well, what you're seeing isn't real", "I think the game is amazing, the critical previews and Access impressions are wrong", "it'll get much better after the first 10 hours", "it's a technical showcase, of course it'll be a boring unveiling." and so forth.

The worst cases I've seen are people who are blaming consumers for not buying the game day one and that pointing out hte flaws of the game is the reason why the series is now dead.

 

[iceblade997]

It's sad to see this happen, especially considering how well the ME trilogy did . Hopefully they can get back in form for their next title... Hard too to not feel bad for the devs.

Great article - thanks for posting.

 

[Kumquat]

I think the person(s) who were his sources were using him as a channel for PR damage control and/or hype for the product. Many of the statements we saw from him proved to be wrong and incorrect (squad customization, Pro 1080p/60fps support, among other things).

On another note, the most annoying thing in hindsigt was the massive pushback by other posters against people who were worried or critical about the game before release. When people saw the flaws and faults of the game despite the marketing coverup of the game, a lot of us were told all kinds of ad hoc arguments. "it'll get fixed in 2 months", "it's nitpicking to say that the Nomad is clipping through its wheels", "internal reviews are tracking well, what you're seeing isn't real", "I think the game is amazing, the critical previews and Access impressions are wrong", "it'll get much better after the first 10 hours", "it's a technical showcase, of course it'll be a boring unveiling." and so forth.

The worst cases I've seen are people who are blaming consumers for not buying the game day one and that pointing out hte flaws of the game is the reason why the series is now dead.

As someone who was pointing out the flaws to much derision I take no joy in this. I especially take no joy in the series being shelved. It was one of my favorites and it has been brought low by politics and management missteps.

This sums it up rather nicely.

And yes, there was a Shinobi snow job going on. I'm not going to hate on the guy though. He was just parroting what his contacts were telling him and he was used to try and mitigate the damage.

I think it really hurt that they launched int he same time frame as those monster games. If they had realized all the problems and just pushed it back six months to work out the issues and launched in a less crowded window I think they would have made their 80ish MC score.

 

[almostjuliuscaesar]

at least i now what happened to my favorite series :-(

 

[Mr. Phellps]

I'm reading between the lines here, but it sounds like in the rivalry between Edmonton and Montreal communication broke down, and some of the solutions that Edmonton found to the Frostbite problems weren't handed over to Montreal.

I don't think Edmonton would refrain from sharing solutions with Montreal. I mean, they stepped in to help finish the game as much as possible before the release, and Mass Effect is their baby, I don't think they'd want Montreal to fail. It sounds a lot more like Montreal was the one too proud, which is corroborated by the claims that they took to long to let go of ideas that clearly weren't going anywhere. Edmonton just didn't think what they had going for a Mass Effect game was very impressive, and they didn't take it lightly.

 

[prag16]

I mean, the game was broken in some ways at launch

I don't know, not really. Definitely not in my experience. I know I was "luckier" than most with bugs and stuff. But it wasn't a fundamentally broken game. Just an unpolished one with a few unfortunate design decisions.

, and the development story makes it sound like it was indeed in total shambles.

Sure, the backstory and process sounds like a clusterfuck, and explains some of the issues the game does have. But I give them credit for cobbling together a final product that will be my game of the year (barring a miracle). Obviously many don't agree, but it's not like it is objectively a horrible horrible game, and I don't doubt that a lot of the people shitting on it in this topic haven't played it.

The writing/story are pretty shit.

This is very subjective, and a lot of people don't agree with this statement. The writing can be weak in spots, but the overarching story is fine (not "great", but "fine") and many of the characters are very strong imo, clearly better than OT characters when just limited to the first game.

It's not that inaccurate.

It's kind of inaccurate. At best extremely subjective.

 

[Adam_Vania]

i read this story. it was really good. sadly, it is all too believable. i do work for corporate websites and this kind of stuff happens all the time. projects get re-scoped, valuable people leaving and new people getting brought in that have their own ideas, people not being consistent w decision-making, trying to change designs at the last minute, etc. i don't want to say "poor management" but perhaps inflexible management and the natural, painful struggle of a creative process born from robotically minded bureaucracy.

kinda feel like this is how most business is done, in every industry, in the public and private sectors. explains why the world is so fucked.

 

[Renekton]

slightly less quantifiable but still pretty clear things like believability of writing, consistency of character noticed and actions, etc.

How do you measure or rate these without subjectivity?

 

[prag16]

I think the person(s) who were his sources were using him as a channel for PR damage control and/or hype for the product. Many of the statements we saw from him proved to be wrong and incorrect (squad customization, Pro 1080p/60fps support, among other things).

On another note, the most annoying thing in hindsigt was the massive pushback by other posters against people who were worried or critical about the game before release. When people saw the flaws and faults of the game despite the marketing coverup of the game, a lot of us were told all kinds of ad hoc arguments. "it'll get fixed in 2 months", "it's nitpicking to say that the Nomad is clipping through its wheels", "internal reviews are tracking well, what you're seeing isn't real", "I think the game is amazing, the critical previews and Access impressions are wrong", "it'll get much better after the first 10 hours", "it's a technical showcase, of course it'll be a boring unveiling." and so forth.

The worst cases I've seen are people who are blaming consumers for not buying the game day one and that pointing out hte flaws of the game is the reason why the series is now dead.

Oh come on, this is revisionist BS. The "defense force" you're talking about were in the minority. Most of those topics were largely a huge string of snarky driveby shit posts bashing the game. And I don't remember anybody getting mad at consumers for not buying the game day one. More just people frustrated with the hyperbolic circlejerk that emerged from the gif storm. Most of that DID end up getting fixed in the first couple months but it obviously had an impact on the reception.

And I've said it before and I'll say it again. The way Shinobi was treated here was absolutely embarrassing, and many posters in those threads should be ashamed of themselves. It's not like he was on an island. The game got some 8s and 9s from professional reviewers, and some gaffers see it as an 8 or 9, myself included. Sure that wasn't the consensus obviously, but I guess we live in a world where if you don't fall in line with the consensus, you will get shit on relentlessly.

How do you measure or rate these without subjectivity?

You don't. Troubled development, rough around the edges, some unfortunate design decisions: Absolutely. Objectively horrible game: No; very far from it.

 

[Kill3r7]

i read this story. it was really good. sadly, it is all too believable. i do work for corporate websites and this kind of stuff happens all the time. projects get re-scoped, valuable people leaving and new people getting brought in that have their own ideas, people not being consistent w decision-making, trying to change designs at the last minute, etc. i don't want to say "poor management" but perhaps inflexible management and the natural, painful struggle of a creative process born from robotically minded bureaucracy.

kinda feel like this is how most business is done, in every industry, in the public and private sectors. explains why the world is so fucked.

Ditto.

Another way to think about it is that they spent 3.5 years with nothing to show for it. As I said earlier in the thread, based on previous articles from Jason, Waypoint, documentaries etc, it is easy to see that game development is a tumultuous process that is either incredibly poorly managed or the creative spark only seems to occur during crunch/chaos.

 

[wildbite]

This is such a sad story but Jason did a fantastic job on it. My only hope is that Bioware eyes the future success of CyberPunk 2077 and the rumored new Starfield from Bethesda and reconsiders a sequel.

 

[prag16]

Ditto.

Another way to think about it is that they spent 3.5 years with nothing to show for it. As I said earlier in the thread, based on previous articles from Jason, Waypoint, documentaries etc, it is easy to see that game development is a tumultuous process that is either incredibly poorly managed or the creative spark only seems to occur during crunch/chaos.

Yeah. As I said earlier in the topic, if they really did largely build the vast majority of this game in 18 months, that it launched in even as good a state as it did is a feat.

 

[Harlequin]

Ok, but that's not a counter point to the post you quoted. The game is technically and creatively a mess. One can still enjoy it, but that doesn't make it not bad. It's ok to enjoy bad things, we all do. But many aspects of the game are of poor quality by measurable metrics.

The post I mentioned implied the game wasn't any fun so yes, it is a counterpoint to that post. And I also don't agree that it's a bad game. That is, again, subjective. It's not a great game, it's a flawed game, but it's not bad IMO.

 

[D23]

damn i want a documentary made out of that article.

so well written!

 

[Vamphuntr]

Great article. Pretty sad overall. They more or less had to make the game in 18 months. Many people were saying it was a Rockstar type strategy not to show anything. Guess we now know it's wrong they just had nothing to show. Most of the footage released before launch had crappy animations, visual glitches and even a reverse gun firing which implied that it was they best they could show. It must have been heartbreaking to expect 85 and get 70 with a bunch of 50 reviews. Can't say it was undeserved though. Just to show how the context of the release in regards to competition is really important.

Pretty sad to see the series go out like this.

EDIT : Can you stop talking about the guy that had a meltdown and left? Last thread that went in that direction got locked because of this.

 

[Kaelan]

Oh come on, this is revisionist BS. The "defense force" you're talking about were in the minority. Most of those topics were largely a huge string of snarky driveby shit posts bashing the game. And I don't remember anybody getting mad at consumers for not buying the game day one. More just people frustrated with the hyperbolic circlejerk that emerged from the gif storm. Most of that DID end up getting fixed in the first couple months but it obviously had an impact on the reception.

And I've said it before and I'll say it again. The way Shinobi was treated here was absolutely embarrassing, and many posters in those threads should be ashamed of themselves. It's not like he was on an island. The game got some 8s and 9s from professional reviewers, and some gaffers see it as an 8 or 9, myself included. Sure that wasn't the consensus obviously, but I guess we live in a world where if you don't fall in line with the consensus, you will get shit on relentlessly.



You don't. Troubled development, rough around the edges, some unfortunate design decisions: Absolutely. Objectively horrible game: No; very far from it.

Agreed. It was just sad IMO, we're better then that

 

[Wolfgunblood Garopa]

Agreed. It was just sad IMO, we're better then that

People on the internet are chomping at the bit to jump people's shit. It could be Shinobi or any member here, nobody is immune. It sucks that it's the case even on gaf.

 

[Firenze1]

Did you read the article? Frostbite doesn't have animations in their engine. Bioware had to build them into the engine from scratch all by themselves. EA forcing them to use Frostbite isn't the main reason why ME:A failed but it sure as hell didn't help.

So how does Dice make animations without problems then? Battlefield 1 has excellent animations. Sounds like a big talent gap to me.

 

[rhandino]

Did you read the article? Frostbite doesn't have animations in their engine. Bioware had to build them into the engine from scratch all by themselves. EA forcing them to use Frostbite isn't the main reason why ME:A failed but it sure as hell didn't help.

So how does Dice make animations without problems then? Battlefield 1 has excellent animations. Sounds like a big talent gap to me.

Well...

One thing that I'd like to correct or at least add to from the article is that Frostbite does have an animation system "out of the box" namely ANT, which is EA's long standing in-house animation framework/system. ANT is very sophisticated and powerful, and has a decade plus of feature development by EA's sports teams. ANT has a steep learning curve and the team may have struggled moving to it, but it would be a misconception to say Frostbite doesn't have native animation support.

 

[Nabbis]

Another press sneak fuck article and another engine fuck up. Games becoming too complex for development?

I kinda miss the days where you had a game made by a smaller team in two years and it was awesome. I would gladly trade lipsync etc for that.

 

[gogosox82]

I think the person(s) who were his sources were using him as a channel for PR damage control and/or hype for the product. Many of the statements we saw from him proved to be wrong and incorrect (squad customization, Pro 1080p/60fps support, among other things).

On another note, the most annoying thing in hindsigt was the massive pushback by other posters against people who were worried or critical about the game before release. When people saw the flaws and faults of the game despite the marketing coverup of the game, a lot of us were told all kinds of ad hoc arguments. "it'll get fixed in 2 months", "it's nitpicking to say that the Nomad is clipping through its wheels", "internal reviews are tracking well, what you're seeing isn't real", "I think the game is amazing, the critical previews and Access impressions are wrong", "it'll get much better after the first 10 hours", "it's a technical showcase, of course it'll be a boring unveiling." and so forth.

The worst cases I've seen are people who are blaming consumers for not buying the game day one and that pointing out hte flaws of the game is the reason why the series is now dead.

That seems to be the case sadly. I'm not going to blame him tho. That's what his contacts told him so what can he do but report what he heard.

As for fans, well they are fans so you can't expect fans to be rational about stuff like this especially if its a product they love so I think that kind of stuff has to be expected.

So how does Dice make animations without problems then? Battlefield 1 has excellent animations. Sounds like a big talent gap to me.

BF is an fps. It uses different animations than a rpg/tps. Many things were taken out of the game because they couldn't make it work in Frostbite apparently. Both DA and ME are squad based rpgs. Frostbite doesn't have anything that lets them program that stuff you would want in a squad based game which would explain why its heavily reduced in DA and non existent in ME. You also need a UI which is something I doubt Frostbite had either or at least not on the level you need for an rpg which explains why the UI is such a mess. Also the way Bioware tells their story is mostly through cutscenes which all have to be animated for every person in the cutscene. You also have to account for the player character to be customized so it won't just be one static guy you have that that can be animated, you would have to account for multiple different sizes, shapes, and features for both male and female characters. You don't have to do any of that in a BF game. All of this is explained in the article if you read it btw.

Edit: I will that the DA team found a way around it so I think this is mostly a case of poor management by the Montreal team and mostly not on EA even though most people will try to blame EA, I don't really think they did much of anything wrong. 5 years should've been enough to create a really good ME game if wasn't mismanaged.

 

[thechristoph]

What an incredibly sad article. The ending of the piece is kind of abrupt; it seems like they had plans to continue working on the game.

 

[EatinOlives]

What an incredibly sad article. The ending of the piece is kind of abrupt; it seems like they had plans to continue working on the game.

They were definitely thinking ahead in terms of sequels and what could be fixed.

It's very sad in that an exploration-heavy Mass Effect was exactly, to the letter , what I wanted in a Mass Effect sequel. It sounded like the perfect game for me, since I always kind of disliked the reduced scope of Mass Effect 2 and 3 into setpiece-heavy, more linear shooting action.

Unfortunate that they got shoehorned into Frostbite. It sounds like UE4 would've been a far, far better fit, but EA gonna EA. It must be really frustrating working on a project like this, being able to identify the poor decisions happening in real-time, and then the same people making those poor decisions tell you "well YOU fucked up so we're cutting this series". No wonder people hate working at EA.

 

[Mar Nosso]

Jason,

My understanding is that DICE is supposed to have part of their studio dedicated to support frostbite. What happened there? Seems like it was non existent when it came to supporting other EA teams.

EA should have created a team akin to Sony's ICE team. I mean, they require every single one of their studios to use the new engine yet don't provide support and continuous development? That's a terrible decision.

It sounds like BioWare was expected to create the needed RPG systems all by themselves, despite having to work with an engine that had been created by a completely different studio with completely different objectives in mind (FPS based).

 

[Nirolak]

EA should have created a team akin to Sony's ICE team. I mean, they require every single one of their studios to use the new engine yet don't provide support and continuous development? That's a terrible decision.

It sounds like BioWare was expected to create the needed RPG systems all by themselves, despite having to work with an engine that had been created by a completely different studio with completely different objectives in mind (FPS based).

...They do. It's a 200+ person support and development division these days.

 

[epeternally]

Another press sneak fuck article and another engine fuck up. Games becoming too complex for development?

Not to complex to develop, too complex to develop without sinking far more money into the game than it will ultimately make back. As long as AAA game development remains a very high risk investment, publishers are going to rush games and cut corners to avoid going massively overbudget. How can we insist on a premium product no matter how long that takes when we aren't willing to pay a premium price for that? There is no price differentiation based on quality in the current AAA market which is a huge problem if you want great games.

We need to let the $60 price point go. Bringing the price of top tier AAA games to $100 wouldn't just be a tremendous boon to the AAA industry, it would allow for mid-tier development to thrive at the $60 and $80 price points. We'd see more games like Nier Automata and Dark Souls. If we want better games, we need to be willing to pay more for games. There is no way around this.

And no, the success of The Witcher 3 does not make anything that I just said less true. Get your head out of your bottom if you seriously think like that.

 

[ItsTheNew]

Regarding Shinobi, it was on him making that big thread talking about his first 3 hours of the game and how great the game was. Of course he got info from his contact at Bioware, but he painted a pretty cheery picture of the development AND the final product.

 

[datsunzep]

One of the best reads on Kotaku in a very long time. Personally, I've been enjoying Mass Effect: Andromeda. However, I have not been as enthralled to boot it up as the other 3. It lacks a certain something that this article tends to highlight the reason.

 

[Alebrije]

Nice article, hope we could read more of this kind works and not the usual click bait articles.

Also pretty sure if MEA would have launched after E3 the games reception would be better than now.

 

[Renekton]

...They do. It's a 200+ person support and development division these days.

Now I'm wondering when did this ramp up.

Maybe only recently with hindsight on Bioware and EA Canada's challenges.

 

[spindoctor]

I find it rather amusing that the mock reviewers basically pulled a con on Bioware Montreal by telling them that it was going to be an 80-85 game. Although perhaps they thought that the gaming media would continue giving inflated scores because of the Bioware name. Either way, the fact that Bioware thought they were shipping an 80-85 after all the shit that happened is something else. Maybe they were too close to the project because everyone else realized it wasn't before the EA trial was up.

I also noticed that the article takes the tone where all the mishaps were just something that happened to Andromeda when it was in fact Bioware fucking up every step of the way. The reason they only had 18 months to make the game is because they royally fucked up their pre-production and the first 3 years of the project. The reason the animators did not have time to do their job properly is because the writers didn't have a story till the end.

On the subject of animations, the article says

Another big factor, sources said, is that Andromeda lets you create your own character. Fans have compared Andromeda’s facial animations to the likes of The Witcher 3 and Horizon: Zero Dawn, but those games have predefined main characters, which makes it far easier for animators to predict exactly what their faces will look like during any given cut-scene or line of dialogue.

Well, what was the necessity to have a character creator at all if they couldn't animate the various player characters properly? Nobody forced them to make a character creator (which isn't even that good at the end of it all). They hired two models to give their likeness to the two characters they were planning to have and they could have stuck with that. Yes, Mass Effect has traditionally had a character creator but if the choice was between dropping it or ending up with animations that would become a complete joke in the gaming community, well...

To me it sounds like everything went wrong in pre-production. They couldn't implement the ideas they had or they couldn't actually make them fun. They couldn't get their technology to work. Frostbite is notoriously hard to work with but at the same time it is possible to get incredible results from it. I'll admit from personal experience that working with someone else's code is never fun, but it's a reality of software development. It sounds to me like there was a talent gap there. If they were struggling so badly then they could have called on the Frostbite group at DICE who are absolute magicians at what they do.

Can't really blame EA for the project management going sideways, unless EA was actually involved in the day to day stuff. It got so bad that they had to bring in someone else from another studio to fix the mess that Montreal had made. A lot of people blamed Mac Walters for what happened but it looks like he was just trying to salvage a disaster.

And yeah, it was really nice to read a longform article like this. It's so rare in game journalism these days.

 

[nel e nel]

When BioWare first got its hands on Frostbite, the engine wasn’t capable of performing the basic functions you’d expect from a role-playing game, like managing party members or keeping track of a player’s inventory. BioWare’s coders had to build almost everything from scratch.

I feel like this is why the combat didn't allow for more control over the squad, which - for me - was a major disappointment and a big part of my mediocre reaction to the game.

 

[SPCTRE]

Reading the article, it seems astonishing that EA management saw the project through to the end and that the game came out at all.

One thing is for sure, the damage to the ME franchise/brand was significant.

 

[Skinpop]

I feel like this is why the combat didn't allow for more control over the squad, which - for me - was a major disappointment and a big part of my mediocre reaction to the game.

that quote is just crazy though. Creating these systems(and the engine itself as well) is part of what making a game is. It's like they expected to be able to assemble the whole game from off the shelf components.
It's insane that lacking a pre-made party system is an issue. Just write one then.

This debacle sounds more like a management rather than technical failure to me.

 

[Nere]

I don't understand their issues with Frostbite. I mean sure they might had issues but then how did Dragon age Inquisition came out so well from a technical standpoint? Don't the teams communicate since they are all under the same umbrella? Couldn't they get help from the dragon age team in order to make it work? Same engine, same studio (in name at least), same company, same type of game (rpg) they could help each other, maybe I just don't understand game development.

 

[StereoVsn]

that quote is just crazy though. Creating these systems(and the engine itself as well) is part of what making a game is. It's like they expected to be able to assemble the whole game from off the shelf components.
It's insane that lacking a pre-made party system is an issue. Just write one then.

This debacle sounds more like a management rather than technical failure to me.

Yeap, they had 5 years. They wasted 3 of them. Party management system should have been put together in preproduction. Also, I don't buy that it's the Frostbite that prevented Bioware from putting together squad and party management systems.

Somehow DAI developers managed that. Also, Sports games use it. NFL or FIFA have squad management as they are team games. There multiple players to control. Now inventory management is a different animal.

 

[Tyraniboah]

Not to complex to develop, too complex to develop without sinking far more money into the game than it will ultimately make back. As long as AAA game development remains a very high risk investment, publishers are going to rush games and cut corners to avoid going massively overbudget. How can we insist on a premium product no matter how long that takes when we aren't willing to pay a premium price for that? There is no price differentiation based on quality in the current AAA market which is a huge problem if you want great games.

We need to let the $60 price point go. Bringing the price of top tier AAA games to $100 wouldn't just be a tremendous boon to the AAA industry, it would allow for mid-tier development to thrive at the $60 and $80 price points. We'd see more games like Nier Automata and Dark Souls. If we want better games, we need to be willing to pay more for games. There is no way around this.

And no, the success of The Witcher 3 does not make anything that I just said less true. Get your head out of your bottom if you seriously think like that.

Pffffffffffft $100 for one video game in the year of our lord two thousand and seventeen? I'm sorry but the Witcher 3 is the perfect rebuttal to your point. So is Breath of the Wild. High quality games, particularly open world ones, can be made on a budget that accounts for a $60 price point at release. It's not the consumer's fault that developers and publishers can't control costs on overly ambitious titles.

Furthermore, the assumption that unit sales would be close to or equal at a price of $100 (which is what would be required for this to be a boon for development) is flat out wrong. When the cost of buying a game is a third of the price of a console to play it on, people are going to buy fewer games. And if you think games like Dark Souls or Nier would be sold for anything less that $100 like their CoD and Battlefield brethren then I don't know what to tell you. Mass Effect isn't exactly a franchise that can sell at $100 either.

Andromeda isn't in the state it's in today because of money. The game was built in 18 months because of a poor vision, a mandated engine not built for RPGs, office politics and other factors. You read the article. Throwing more money at a problem that is so much more complex than lack of funding is not the solution. Neither is passing those extra costs onto consumers. I barely pay $60 for a game now. Most of the time I wait on sales. I'm not alone on that.

 

[dr_rus]

I don't understand their issues with Frostbite. I mean sure they might had issues but then how did Dragon age Inquisition came out so well from a technical standpoint? Don't the teams communicate since they are all under the same umbrella? Couldn't they get help from the dragon age team in order to make it work? Same engine, same studio (in name at least), same company, same type of game (rpg) they could help each other, maybe I just don't understand game development.

Different studios, different versions of Frostbite (DAI used the older one, with MSAA and without TAA, for example), different development timeframes.