Blood, Sweat & Pixels: The DA:I Chapter Summary

EA is a business...if they don't care if one their corporate lawyers uses the term "surprise mechanics" to describe essentially online gambling for youngsters, if they don't care about the flack associated with adding a bunch of intrusive ads in their "UFC" game, and other such nonsense, they aren't going to care about shutting down an underperforming studio, especially if the brand has somewhat eroded after two troubled launches. Fact is BioWare makes money with their products or they wouldn't exist and EA wouldn't keep propping seemingly failed endeavors if the numbers didn't tell them too.

Petrakus gonna Petrakus...

To shareholders or to the stock exchange; yes.

To reporters, not so much. 

The issue - that some - have with DAI and the claims made about its success from what I've observed are around the odd wording.

They (EA) reported - to shareholders - that DAI was the "most successful launch" in Bioware's history.  That then dovetails nicely for them (doubters) into, 'well yes, but then everyone discovered it was garbage and got refunds' or something along those lines.

This is a dance that has been going on for a while.  It doesn't get more interesting with the passage of time.

The statement from the book; that DAI was the bestselling DA game is new, as far as I was aware, but in no way a surprise.  Despite my feelings about it, Multiplayer will undoubtedly have brought new players to the series in significant numbers.

"For other games, they're not as vague as they've been with Bioware ones."

Again, this is your assertion but it doesn't make a lot of sense.  EA has to justify dollars spent both internally and to investors...why does BioWare get such protection?  Their titles aren't these big "COD/Battlefield" successes in terms of units sold or Multiplayer engagement...they're relatively niche in terms of focusing a lot on narrative, animated cut scenes, branched dialogue, character creator, third person perspective, playing as male or female, party banter, player choice, and romance.  Then, you consider both "Mass Effect Andromeda" and "Anthem" didn't end their respective 12 months release windows in the top ten games sold (though both spent a significant amount of months in the top 10) and we're both received as critical and PR failures.  Yet, "Anthem" gets a re-work, "Joplin" gets waived off the books and re-set as "Morrison" and the "Mass Effect Trilogy" gets remastered and a new title is currently in development.  Just taking "Dragon Age 4" - it's the fourth game in a lore-heavy series that has also put out a ton of books/comics just to provide enough context for what is happening in its "world".  How are they anticipating such a lore and context dependent title to justify the amount of money and years spent on development if they are only expecting a meager ROI?  And, according to you, they'd have to be expecting it considering EA has spent years folding BioWare's deficiencies into their overall numbers all the while knowing they were deliberately misleading investors as to the studio's overall lack of success financially compared to other AAA titles.  Also, after the reception "ME:A" and "Anthem", I don't think BioWare is considered a "glamour" studio or one that needs to be protected in order to avoid a PR hit if you closed them.

So, why is BioWare so "special" to EA to justify this much effort is continuing its existence?  Enough to open a new studio space in Edmonton with room for expanding the team?

    

Well, shit, if Angry Joe said that...wow, full retraction then.  But, yeah, no point in continuing to hammer something this nebulous. 

Well, I mean, "good guy EA" has kept a charity case like BioWare open all these years so they definitely appear to be altruistic.  As for Angry Joe, I'm sure the lobby to BioWare's Austin offices were quite empty the Holiday he visited so he's likely "technically" correct.  BioWare has had a ton of postings on their career page for both Austin (TOR and Anthem specified) Edmonton (both Dragon Age specified and unspecified) over the past year that have since been filled...maybe all of this changes in a post-COVID world and if DA4 is poorly received so I guess we'll just have to see...  

I'm in Southern California so our status appears to be in a constant state of flux depending on what county you are located in...I wish there was more certainty for sure.  Regardless of the good-natured sniping back and forth on this topic, my hope that you and others in your area are safe and, if indeed another lockdown happens, it's effective in curtailing the numbers.  Lots of things out of our control at the moment...   

Angry Joe is a reliable source now? I mean it's strange when it comes to Bioware people have to come with all these reasons that their games didn't do well. 

its a particularly annoying habit that I see around...well around...of posting a long arse spiel and then ending with "but I won't respond'...even more so when responses are continued to be made.

In this case it's even more suspicious when the source is a comedy youtuber...who apparently forgot he was a comedy youtuber.

TBF this might've been my misintrepretation of his schtick rather then what his schtick actually was. I always put him in kind of the tongue in cheek 'reviews' more along the lines of Cinema Sins or Honest Trailers...sure he reviewed the stuff but he had so many gimicks and catch phrases and an almost self parody public image that it was hard to take him fully seriously...and even now I don't think he would be a viable source for hard news.

what else are we goingto do for the next 3 years?

You realized now? Why did it take years?