Schmooples' Den! The DA News Discussion Thread

Shepard: "I was dead. Get on my level."

whatever

I don't think they'd be even teasing the game if it wasn't greenlit. DA4 is clearly in production - may even be charging full speed ahead, given that more and more devs mention being on DA team now.

It's just that there's some sort of technical difference between teasing the title and officially announcing it. It's probably something that is related to the 'revenue recognition' thing Mark Darrah patiently explained years ago, rather than 'we may or may not be making that game'.

More likely it goes back to what I've always maintained is the case:

If Anthem fails, then EA shutters Bioware. If Anthem succeeds overwhelmingly, then EA dedicates BioWare solely to Anthem. Thus, Dragon Age 4 is "unannounced" because its survival depends entirely on Anthem's reception.

I find this very doubtful since DAI made the most money for a BioWare game to date. EA wouldn't want to miss out on making money off more DA stuff.

ETA: Also, BioWare is moving out of its old office in Edmonton to a new, expensive office building soon. That likely involved lease agreements and such - moves are generally EXPENSIVE. I can't fathom why EA would agree to move a whole studio to newer, shinier digs if they thought that studio was about to fail.

All games are duds then, yet companies keep making them. 

How mysterious, it’s almost as if all public companies eventually lose their goddamn minds. Almost as if the problem is not individual companies, but the system that incentivizes shareholders to demand ever increasing growth despite a finite population of possible users. Almost as if there might be some sort of issue with the policy environment they exist in.

No. It’s definitely the individual companies that are to blame. I bet if we convince them to change, nothing identical will spring up in their place.

Just to get away from the whole "how much of a threat is Anthem" discussion, which is kind of played out --- am I the only guy who never heard any of the Solas-Bull chess game before now?

I've never heard it in-game, but then I didn't really use Solas and The Iron Bull together. I have only heard it in a banter video.

Did my previous post convey an... anti-regulation stance?

Loot box regulations change the incentive structure, because now videogame companies won’t have to compete with other companies that use them. In the current unrestricted landscape, there’s some ability to exist without resorting to those tactics, but only if you’re targeting certain audiences.

The key thing that’s happened in most AAA developers is that they’ve passed the shareholder honeymoon phase. Shareholders are extremely forgiving about results... up to a point. Once they switch, nothing will satisfy them except infinite growth. When that happens, and you need to expand into “audiences who are susceptible to gambling mechanics”, you’re not going to get much of their money if you don’t play to their addictions. They’ll just dump it into some other game that does.

Obviously this is a gross manipulation of Skinner’s Box-type behavior in humans, but without regulation you’re always going to be competing with some other companies that are using it. Regulating them out frees up the audience that was previously locked up by them, allowing companies to compete for them on a less all-or-nothing basis.

For that reason, regulation is generally much more effective than complaining about specific companies hoping they’ll change their ways. We need to target the system that produces certain behaviors, not the end results of that system.

I think you and I were aiming at the same general goal, but I came off as too critical of EA specifically and you thought I was just advocating for its demise.

No, I agree that the problem is a spiral of escalating shareholder expectations, and the solution is regulation. Tear down EA and another publisher just takes their place.

I’m just trying to stress to people that “X game sold well” is no longer a guarantee of a sequel. Not in the current market.