Mass Effect News Thread

You have to put more salt in the wound... 

But instead of trying to do things to build the player base up a bit they just kill the game.  I don't get it either.  They made it sound like it didn't do too terribly money-wise, so I can't imagine why they couldn't at least keep a small team for dlc/mp stuff.  Obviously stuff went on that we didn't see.

Since it's EA's decision, it could be about more than just Mass Effect.

Exactly...If EA wants to end support there is not much BioWare can do at this point.  

Dunno about hitch, but supposedly the codename for the game was "Dylan" because BW wants to create something that will be positively talked about for years to come. With such ambitions, they'd be throwing everything they have regardless of what happened to MEA.

I'd say that it isn't the logical decision, not when you factor in Anthem. Quite often you're only as good as your last game/book/whatever. Anthem is an MP game that is apparently going to have a story, it has a 10 year plan, which means that Anthem relies on the customer supporting them through the years as they add more content. Andromeda should've been supported, if for no other reason than to be a demonstration of the kind of post-launch expansions that Anthem will surely aim to have. Andromeda is the last game before Anthem to be released by Bioware, and Bioware fans don't forget when they've been shafted. For that alone it astounds me that they wouldn't support it to shore up support for Anthem.

The number one gripe people had with MEA was that it could use more time to bake in the oven. So I think they're taking extra steps to make Anthem (and probably DA) as good as they can. But that takes resources and as big as EA is, I don't think they have infinite pockets - not with all other studios working on games they're putting high hopes in, like Star Wars Battlefront 2, on which at least some devs from BW Montreal are now working on. Who knows what else have made them make decisions they did, it could be the above and much more. All we know is that there were reports that BW MOntreal was ready to support the game, but the folks above them made the decision.

I like how "normal" this post sounds...

I dunno, how expensive (% wise for EA) is a single 3 hour DLC like Arrival to make? I can't imagine it would be that much money for them. I know a DLC takes time and money away from other projects, but EA is rolling in money, and 3 hours of content shouldn't take much time overall, since lots of stuff would be recycled...

I recently went to Yelp to review my (amazing, now 3000 mile away) mechanic and noticed there were several reviews that say he didn't charge them for X Y or Z service, time, or part, either because no fix was actually necessary or because the fix was so small. Just little things here and there that no doubt add up for the shop in both time and dollars. Those people then come and write a great review on Yelp or Google, for similar reasons that I came to write a great review, and word spreads and the shop is busy as hell. And likely whatever shop they'd previously gone to that tried to swindle them out of money for unneeded services got negative reviews after my mechanic told them their car was actually fine. It doesn't make fiscal sense for anyone to give away time or service for free, technically--but it does make fiscal sense to care about your customers, because if you do they will return to you, and if you fuck them over they won't.

Continuing support of the game and/or a short DLC may not have turned great profits compared to other games, but there may be residual effects for BioWare. BioWare fans who hated Andromeda are of course skeptical because it was a bit of a mess, and now people who loved Andromeda despite its flaws are also skeptical due to this news. I was somewhere in the middle of the road--didn't love the game but don't totally hate it--and I'm also skeptical and won't be buying Dragon Age at full price, after they not only botched (imo) this game I bought at launch, but also then just gave up on it completely merely 5 months into its life. At least give the fans a year of support ffs. The message is that people who bought something from you don't matter to you as customers, and if you, a multibillion dollar corp, stop supporting that (still unfinished) product just to pinch the equivalent of mere pennies and minutes for your company, you won't keep them. They'll buy your games at half price at best because they can't expect you to follow through. Qolz said it well: our money doesn't require patches to be good (paraphrasing).

honestly other than a dlc what is left that needs to be fixed? With the patching all the major bugs are crushed and the game looks beautiful. It sucks we aren't getting DLC but i'm more then satisfied with the product we got.

Not even that. Server-side updates only.

Some [rough back-of-the envelop math] is that it costs about $20,000 - $35,000 / Sprint (2 weeks) to run an average-sized Agile software development team (~7 people). That's *just* in dev team salary and not counting costs for software, hardware nor any other part of your company like marketing, legal, HR, finance that supports the product.



So your "cheap and easy DLC" that takes 6 Sprints to make is going to cost your company $120,000 - $210,000 just in salary. Let's double that to account for non-salary costs and you're now looking at an investment of almost a quarter-million dollars on the low end.

That also means your dev team is *not* working on whatever else they could've been working on -- a big opportunity cost.