Jason Schreier @jasonschreier BioWare held a long all-hands meeting for staff on Wednesday to talk about various issues raised both internally and in Kotaku's reporting (production practices, Frostbite, etc). Couple of people I've talked to are optimistic about changes; others are far more skeptical.
Squidly @squuuidly It must be very interesting to get an update directly in response to your article
Jason Schreier @jasonschreier EA/BioWare still haven't officially talked to me, but it sounds like their internal response has been far, far more serious than their blog post last week made it seem
Prinny @talesofaprinny I doubt that they can flush Frostbite down the toilet now that it's in production. Maybe the next Anthem sequel, if there's any. (next year?)
Jason Schreier @jasonschreier I believe the response to that question was that it'd take much longer to start from scratch on Unreal for DA4 than it would to stick with what they've got
Alex Johnson @alexmjohnson573 If this gets Bioware back to their glory days, the gaming world owes you a debt of gratitude
Jason Schreier @jasonschreier As someone who has loved BioWare games since I first got the five-CD set for Baldur's Gate 1, I honestly just hope everyone working there can feel healthy and happy. (The bonus is: that'd lead to better games!)
Ben Irving @benirvo Had a great bloke come to my place to fix a couple of things. Turns out he is a huge BioWare fan and wanted to chat about Dragon Age. Super nice person and a gamer to his core. Love that passion.
John Epler @eplerjc Being a good lead is actually a skillset in and of itself! As an industry we're kind of bad about assuming 'best content creator = best lead!' but it's rarely that simple. A good lead listens. A good lead wants to see you succeed. A good lead will trust their experts.
I've said it before, but a good lead is like an umbrella - open when it's raining, closed when it's sunny. You should want your team to succeed and get credit for their successes, and you should be the first stop for blame when failures occur.
Being a lead is about caring about your team as people. It's about wanting the best for them. But it's also about not being afraid to disagree, and provide direction and vision! You just need to be consistent.
And yes, sometimes, you need to course-correct, to give them that hard feedback. But it needs to come from you, and it needs to be timely. If you ever find yourself saying 'that's not my fault, that's because of X', when X is someone on your team, that's a failure.
Anyways. I've worked for bad and good leads across the 16 years I've been a paid employee of some place or another. The bad ones are in it for themselves. The good ones are in it for you.
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Mr. Nobody @generalcanadas @jasonschreier Hi Jason, I've read your article on DA4, and I'd like to ask a question: can you tell us how recent is the information on Morrison from your sources; is it relatively recent (6-12 months) or is it older than that, closer to the reboot time?
Thanks in advance!
Jason Schreier @jasonschreier I've talked to people who were on Morrison in the past and people who are on it now, if that helps. Lots of decisions still being made
The CPU is based on the third generation of AMD’s Ryzen line and contains eight cores of the company’s new 7nm Zen 2 microarchitecture. The GPU, a custom variant of Radeon’s Navi family, will support ray tracing, a technique that models the travel of light to simulate complex interactions in 3D environments. While ray tracing is a staple of Hollywood visual effects and is beginning to worm its way into $10,000 high-end processors, no game console has been able to manage it. Yet.
Ray tracing’s immediate benefits are largely visual. Because it mimics the way light bounces from object to object in a scene, reflective surfaces and refractions through glass or liquid can be rendered much more accurately, even in real-time, leading to heightened realism. According to Cerny, the applications go beyond graphic implications. “If you wanted to run tests to see if the player can hear certain audio sources or if the enemies can hear the players’ footsteps, ray tracing is useful for that,” he says. “It's all the same thing as taking a ray through the environment.”
The AMD chip also includes a custom unit for 3D audio that Cerny thinks will redefine what sound can do in a videogame. “As a gamer,” he says, “it's been a little bit of a frustration that audio did not change too much between PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4. With the next console the dream is to show how dramatically different the audio experience can be when we apply significant amounts of hardware horsepower to it.”
So. New CPU, new GPU, the ability to deliver unprecedented visual and audio effects in a game (and maybe a PSVR sequel at some point). That’s all great, but there’s something else that excites Cerny even more. Something that he calls “a true game changer,” something that more than anything else is “the key to the next generation.” It’s a hard drive.
Solid-state drives have been available in budget laptops for more than a decade, and the Xbox One and PS4 both offer external SSDs that claim to improve load times. But not all SSDs are created alike. As Cerny points out, “I have an SSD in my laptop, and when I want to change from Excel to Word I can wait 15 seconds.” What’s built into Sony’s next-gen console is something a little more specialized.
To demonstrate, Cerny fires up a PS4 Pro playing Spider-Man, a 2018 PS4 exclusive that he worked on alongside Insomniac Games. (He’s not just an systems architect; Cerny created arcade classic Marble Madness when he was all of 19 and was heavily involved with PlayStation and PS2 franchises like Crash Bandicoot, Spyro the Dragon, and Ratchet and Clank.) On the TV, Spidey stands in a small plaza. Cerny presses a button on the controller, initiating a fast-travel interstitial screen. When Spidey reappears in a totally different spot in Manhattan, 15 seconds have elapsed. Then Cerny does the same thing on a next-gen devkit connected to a different TV. (The devkit, an early “low-speed” version, is concealed in a big silver tower, with no visible componentry.) What took 15 seconds now takes less than one: 0.8 seconds, to be exact.
David Mergele @elegrem TFW you drive home feeling good about closing a bug. Just to think about 5 other things you should double check tomorrow. #GameDevLife
Loki Pokey @lokiatemybaby So awesome to see the Weekes’ again at @havencontx. @patrickweekes was nice enough to sign my Iron Bull statue’s head. #HornsUp
Patrick Weekes @patrickweekes “Badass. But also pensive.”
and my glock @apostatemages Mr @patrickweekes I don’t have the physical version of Masked Empire yet but it’s my favorite.... could you sign my kindle instead
Patrick Weekes @patrickweekes It would be my honor.
s @allaloam Y'all @patrickweekes and @karinweekes signed my hand 😂😂😂😂😂 @havencontx #HavenCon5 #havencon #havencontx Morrigan: @orlesian Solas: me Mahariel: @sylaise Lavellan: @rowansrose
Karin 🔜 @havencontx @karinweekes This is legit the most amazing thing I have ever had the honour of being asked to sign. #talktotheglowinghand
John Epler @eplerjc Today, I remember us nailing down a major question, and for the life of me I could not tell you what it was. My brain has failed me.
James Berg @jamesbergcanada That's what producers are for
Kit Stark @kittales95 @davidgaider @patrickweekes a friend and I are having a debate. Idk if it's been asked/confirmed, but if Alistair is made king, would he have had a kid before the start of DAI or after? No kid at all? We've literally been discussing this for an hour. #Sendhelp 😂
David Gaider @davidgaider As a Grey Warden, the chances he could have a child are pretty remote - particularly with another Grey Warden. But... who knows?
Kit Stark @kittales95 (First, thanks so much for responding!! Made my day!) Ah, right, cuz of the darkspawn taint the Grey Wardens take on. Makes sense. That being said, if he has Kieran with Morrigan, would make Kieran heir to the throne of Ferelden? (If Alistair has no other true born heirs.) 🤔
David Gaider @davidgaider Seems unlikely, considering Alistair would never have acknowledged him and the Fereldan monarch is elected. But, again, who knows?
