Support NeoGAF

[Nirolak]

Now I'm wondering when did this ramp up.

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

It was only ~40-ish people when the division started, and Mass Effect started development in 2012.

This is also why the "Why not UE4?" questions aren't actually a good fit. Basically no one was using the engine then, especially for anything like this, and UE3 was not a good fit for this kind of design either.

They basically were going to have to build a lot regardless.

 

[arturo2666]

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.

This makes me wonder: what kind of attachment rate is there for Season Passes, DLC, etc. for AAA releases? Because for the people that buy all that stuff, games are kind of already $100 minimum.

 

[Kikorin]

To be honest seems are the devs that fucked the game so hard. I understand the struggle with Frostbite, but if they lost so much time on the procedural world idea, is not an engine fault. Probably if they would have developed the game in the way they did last year and half, but for 5 years, now we would have a pretty good new entry in the Mass Effect series.

Also the animations are not that bad if they did biggest part of the work in so little time.

 

[adj_noun]

Wow. This article is the kind of thing I was hoping to see re: behind the scenes of the Mass Effect 3 ending. Very good stuff, albeit of a debacle that serves as a slow blade twisting in my gut. Sigh.

 

[Mar Nosso]

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

Well then. They're not exactly doing a great job at it, are they?