Bioware's "Anthem"

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Daidraco

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The company is definitely not the Bioware we knew from the past. It is filled with people that claim they arent racist but then make just about every white male in their game a racist, colonialism inspired slave owner, a faggot, a far right wing republican/conservative, or a cuck. Hell, if I found out the company I had been at for 22 years had turned into that kind of shit show - I'd leave and start my own company too. That just signals to me that the overall mindset of the company is no longer focused on making good games - but trying to get an agenda across. I mean of all the things you could tack onto the game when you have limited time to make content, a fourth of your characters being gay or bi-curious is kind of over the top.

The article has nice insight into what happened with Anthem, but like a comment said down below the article, the story is becoming all too familiar with the stories from their other games. Much less other games in the industry, like Fallout 76. The author of that article may be on to something with his goal of making a Union for software developers - but overall, everyone is getting the same vibe that these companies have became full of self loathing, self entitled, dumb ass snow flakes. Believing that they are better than others for working as a game developer, but scared to death of their boss because they might lose that coveted title.

There is also company software that I use on a daily basis that is slow, cumbersome and it takes me me ten minutes to do what would take 30 seconds to do with another program. The other program is also several thousands of dollars a month in comparison to the hundreds thats spent on the current program. Frostbite may not be as awesome as the Unreal engine, but you cant develop a game like Anthem in ~16 months if its so damn terrible. All these stories of a terrible engine, massive amounts of overtime blah blah blah arent even talked about until the end of a project. Does anyone really think that the first 3-4 years they worked massive amounts of overtime, were stressed out, etc.? Watching the little video clips of the early development of "Dylan", you can tell they are just doing their own thing. They looked clueless far before Casey Hudson dipped out on them.
 
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kaid

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I think game workers unionizing probably would be a solid first step to get a handle on what is becoming an endemic issue. The problem is for so long this was "just how you make games" and now people who were subjected to that go on to form their own companies and mange it like they were managed aka badly. These companies are million/billion dollar industries it is probably well past time to start fucking acting like it.
 

yeahthatisneathuh

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BioWare Boss Addresses Studio Issues, Vows To 'Continue Working To Solve Them' Another bit in this discussion. Sounds like the higher ups in bioware basically agreed with the artical but did not support calling out specific developers which is probably a valid point. If the place is that shit is going on its probably not just down on a couple specific people it seemed far more systemic than that.

Is this a studio issue that can even be fixed? They released a game in development for 5-7 years without a stat screen. That's top to fucking bottom issues. Burn it all down and start over.
 
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Zindan

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I think game workers unionizing probably would be a solid first step to get a handle on what is becoming an endemic issue. The problem is for so long this was "just how you make games" and now people who were subjected to that go on to form their own companies and mange it like they were managed aka badly. These companies are million/billion dollar industries it is probably well past time to start fucking acting like it.
How would unionizing help more than having better project management? In this case, EA / BioWare should probably take a long look at BW Edmonton and clean house. Give BW Austin all the support they need and see what they can do with Anthem in a year.
 
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Bandwagon

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The company is definitely not the Bioware we knew from the past. It is filled with people that claim they arent racist but then make just about every white male in their game a racist, colonialism inspired slave owner, a faggot, a far right wing republican/conservative, or a cuck. Hell, if I found out the company I had been at for 22 years had turned into that kind of shit show - I'd leave and start my own company too. That just signals to me that the overall mindset of the company is no longer focused on making good games - but trying to get an agenda across. I mean of all the things you could tack onto the game when you have limited time to make content, a fourth of your characters being gay or bi-curious is kind of over the top.

The article has nice insight into what happened with Anthem, but like a comment said down below the article, the story is becoming all too familiar with the stories from their other games. Much less other games in the industry, like Fallout 76. The author of that article may be on to something with his goal of making a Union for software developers - but overall, everyone is getting the same vibe that these companies have became full of self loathing, self entitled, dumb ass snow flakes. Believing that they are better than others for working as a game developer, but scared to death of their boss because they might lose that coveted title.

There is also company software that I use on a daily basis that is slow, cumbersome and it takes me me ten minutes to do what would take 30 seconds to do with another program. The other program is also several thousands of dollars a month in comparison to the hundreds thats spent on the current program. Frostbite may not be as awesome as the Unreal engine, but you cant develop a game like Anthem in ~16 months if its so damn terrible. All these stories of a terrible engine, massive amounts of overtime blah blah blah arent even talked about until the end of a project. Does anyone really think that the first 3-4 years they worked massive amounts of overtime, were stressed out, etc.? Watching the little video clips of the early development of "Dylan", you can tell they are just doing their own thing. They looked clueless far before Casey Hudson dipped out on them.
Ahh, an ESRI customer I see.
 

Daidraco

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Ahh, an ESRI customer I see.

After looking it up and seeing what the complaints were - I'm glad I'm not in using it. That is, if you're referring to the Geographical software. - I'm a Finance Director for an auto group. Speaking specifically of the difference between Dealertrack and CDK/ADP (Similar to comparing Windows to MS-DOS when using them). It just goes to show that regardless of industry, everyone faces software headaches. Much less does the average six figure job ever come with just a 40 hour work week.
 
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kaid

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How would unionizing help more than having better project management? In this case, EA / BioWare should probably take a long look at BW Edmonton and clean house. Give BW Austin all the support they need and see what they can do with Anthem in a year.
A lot of the crazy crunch BS would get shut down hard by a union. So in a lot of ways it does force management changes because if your work force is tied collectively you can't just use them up and break them one by one or the whole lot go on strike. It may not force them to have more of a clue but it does help prevent them from wrecking the lives of their workers with impunity. This is the same kind of shit manufacturing used to do until unions were formed in response to this exact kind of thing.
 

a c i d.f l y

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Surprised people still play this game. It was fun, but goddamn did they fuck up mechanics, loot, scaling, group play, combat, loading, UI, story, mechanics, stats, drops... OK, I guess if you really want to smash your dick in a grinder for a +20%dmg x2 choad hummering that ultimately doesn't matter because of how damage incurred is scaled, it's amazing.

It is honestly fun to play, handles great, group play is exciting and engaging, just every other aspect results in video game blue balls.

I fully expect this concept to be reinvigorated with an intellectual property license. Like Iron Man. Except they decided to develop a game in house and create a trash Ironman VR "experience".

I wish this game had proper content creators, not BioWare's "more dialog means more content". Which is what ultimately destroyed Star Wars Online and Mass Effect.

That said, I'd play this game into the ground if they had anything to actually do in the game beyond farm loot for no fucking reason.

It's like having a super nice box of sand, but it's a 3'x3' square, you have to wait 30 seconds every time you pick a new plastic shovel, and after digging you get cat turds 99% of the time.

Fuck, it pisses me off how fun this game is, especially with buddies, yet there's literally more depth in a Detroit pothole. It's offensive Bioware even considered themselves comparable to Destiny, the most (popular) looter shooter you can get. But then any variation on the gameplay would be exciting and entertaining, but no, it's incredibly limited. Wait, this game has guns?
 
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Zindan

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A lot of the crazy crunch BS would get shut down hard by a union. So in a lot of ways it does force management changes because if your work force is tied collectively you can't just use them up and break them one by one or the whole lot go on strike. It may not force them to have more of a clue but it does help prevent them from wrecking the lives of their workers with impunity. This is the same kind of shit manufacturing used to do until unions were formed in response to this exact kind of thing.
I kinda agree with you, but I still don't see how a union would help at all, but I just have a very negative view of unions in general (california public employee union... f u), so I'm afraid I just can't have a good discussion with you about how a union would help / hinder a game studio.
 
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spronk

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A lot of the crazy crunch BS would get shut down hard by a union. So in a lot of ways it does force management changes because if your work force is tied collectively you can't just use them up and break them one by one or the whole lot go on strike. It may not force them to have more of a clue but it does help prevent them from wrecking the lives of their workers with impunity. This is the same kind of shit manufacturing used to do until unions were formed in response to this exact kind of thing.

Unions have their pros and cons. As you said, it prevents management abusing workers and thats a plague in the game industry right now and some parts of software, but honestly its mostly just games because outside of that no one really cares much about release dates anymore, no one gives a shit if Brenda in accounting doesn't get her software update by a certain date or not and there aren't release dates for stuff facebook/google/amazon/etc put out.

The problem with unions and game devs will be that it will protect shitty employees. Can't fire person X anymore because they suck at their job. And that tends to have a huge drag in intellectually-driven (vs manual labor) jobs, when you have a ton of crap employees just coasting the good employees won't want to work there anymore. Plus seniority tends to be the thing that drives everything. Airlines, police, and teachers are great examples of industries where unions basically protect crap employees and the entire industry stagnates because of it.

Not really sure there is a great solution for gaming, game features are such now that you tend to need massive teams to create the biggest titles so you go through massive phases of "hire tons" and then shrink down again, which isn't conducive to creating good companies. I think we'll see more and more small companies form to create the core of good games, and other medium size companies become experts at delivering a well defined section of a game. The former can be the ones that trailblaze innovation while the latter get the boring jobs done without drama. It'll work out a lot better with streamed games too.
 
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a_skeleton_05

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The movement towards unions in game dev is co-opted by the SJW movement, so good fucking luck with that idea. There would be more effort towards enforcing ideology than managing reasonable work hours.
 
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Qhue

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Anyone still playing this? Has there been any sign of the 'real bad guys' as part of the Anthem Live Service? For all their talk about a continuingly active live content I haven't seen any sign of it.
 

Jorren

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Anyone still playing this? Has there been any sign of the 'real bad guys' as part of the Anthem Live Service? For all their talk about a continuingly active live content I haven't seen any sign of it.

Probably because they are too busy fixing shit.
 
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Junun

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Newegg has it on sale for $40 right now, and if you use a promo code (EMCTYUB67 ) you can get it half off. Figure might at as well snag a copy for $20 for future fixes.
 

Qhue

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The game is fun enough and the flying around a gorgeous world is top notch. But the overall longevity of the thing is just not there. I haven't logged in since I achieved god-mode via RNG loot to the point where its no longer fun.
 

Alterity

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So Bioware was supposed to do a live stream today of their new stronghold. Ended up cancelling it because "a fiber line was cut to the building"
 
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a c i d.f l y

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So Bioware was supposed to do a live stream today of their new stronghold. Ended up cancelling it because "a fiber line was cut to the building"
e02e5ffb5f980cd8262cf7f0ae00a4a9_press-x-to-doubt-memes-memesuper-la-noire-doubt-meme_419-238.jpg
 
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a c i d.f l y

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Unions have their pros and cons. As you said, it prevents management abusing workers and thats a plague in the game industry right now and some parts of software, but honestly its mostly just games because outside of that no one really cares much about release dates anymore, no one gives a shit if Brenda in accounting doesn't get her software update by a certain date or not and there aren't release dates for stuff facebook/google/amazon/etc put out.

The problem with unions and game devs will be that it will protect shitty employees. Can't fire person X anymore because they suck at their job. And that tends to have a huge drag in intellectually-driven (vs manual labor) jobs, when you have a ton of crap employees just coasting the good employees won't want to work there anymore. Plus seniority tends to be the thing that drives everything. Airlines, police, and teachers are great examples of industries where unions basically protect crap employees and the entire industry stagnates because of it.

Not really sure there is a great solution for gaming, game features are such now that you tend to need massive teams to create the biggest titles so you go through massive phases of "hire tons" and then shrink down again, which isn't conducive to creating good companies. I think we'll see more and more small companies form to create the core of good games, and other medium size companies become experts at delivering a well defined section of a game. The former can be the ones that trailblaze innovation while the latter get the boring jobs done without drama. It'll work out a lot better with streamed games too.
I hate unions and their concept, full stop.

That said, job protections make sense when said job isn't about innovation. There's not a whole lot of tech or design or process improvements around spraying water at a building. First responder medical care on the other hand...

That said, unions would fuck the software industry. If you're not constantly on your game, you are wasted space or we relegate you to menial task mongering like sending out updates (that we'll eventually automate you out of a job), data generation (again, negated by automation), or... I dunno, there's always something a random fuck could do that would take some of the bullshit off my plate. Still, I wouldn't want to pay someone $65k+/yr when they can't even read code for any significant period of time when I can hire 4 coders out of country that can do 20x the work in the same time period. Granted, that code is never pretty, and sucks to work on when it goes legacy, but it's more than the guy who can't code for dick that we're forced to keep because he passed the interview process.

/rant