Time for Bioware to leave EA.

I am indifferent to EA, if I had to "never forgive" any publisher or developer that has done things only for the profit I would have an extremely short list of people I would buy from.

Not sure you can form a proper opinion about EA without having worked for them. Consumers don't have the whole story, because they only see what goes on from the outside.

If you want games like Bioware used to make, you gotta look at indie companies: Obsidian Entertainment, InXile, Stoic Studio, Harebrained Schemes, etc.

And don't expect heavy use of cinematics

Reality is they can't just go and be on their own. Would they be able to support themselves independently? I feel many people don't actually know why developers co-exist with publishers. When ME1 was in the works bioware struggled on that project, funding was an issue, pairing up with EA since has given them the funding needed albeit at the expense of following EAs deadlines and such. Not many developers will pass that up as odds are, if they don't they'll eventually get shut down at some point and certain games would never have existed. Could you imagine ME1 being the only mass effect game had bioware not worked with EA?

Even the best developers out their work with publishers, look at 343 (new halo), bungie (deatiny), the various CoD devs (treyarch, Activision, etc etc). Off the top of my head Bethesda, CDred and naughty dog work independently and they're able to cuz they're able to support themselves and not have the fear of being shutdown, they're to big for that.

If bioware "were" to get out of contract with EA, they'd have to really show they can support themselves(which could be possible however the last few games being so mixed really doesn't give them any momentum if they were to do so), and if they can't they'd just end up with another publisher for people to blame for biowares own problems. In all honesty I feel EA has been pretty good as publishers the last few years, I remember when they were generally ranked #1 as the most hated oublishers. When it comes to Andromeda I put no blame on them, and it amazes me others do. Andromeda got FIVE years of dev time, that's the most time into a mass effect game, can't forget they even managed to get approval to delay the game which is very unlike EA and various companies under EA would love to get the same treatment as bioware. I've said it before and I'll say it again, the blame us t on EA as they were quite generous with what they gave to Andromeda, the blame idea to a bioware team that is so green and inexperienced, mixed along with staff changes(which personally I dislike that excuse as it's literally a natural part if the industry, people leave all the time, it's who you fill in to replace that matters) and testing so many things that they eventually scrapped with equates to wasting time. Supposedly they used up a year on just a no mans sky approach with the planets, a year is quite a bit of time to get things done and unfortunately it seems that one year alone was a waste if true, could you imagine what they could've done with a year working on just the bugs? Or even just putting more quality into side content? I wasn't wanting a hundred planets to explore like NMS, I just need a few very in depth planets with a lot of ground to explore.

In short: they either stick to EA who I feel have actually been pretty good the last few years (they're even getting rid of season passes for some of their games which =me possibly trying them out) or they try to go independent with no momentum and potentially fail, or they go search for a new publisher only for people to blame said publisher rather than bioware themselves as it seems people would rather think the publishers are the ones that make the game. It's why I find blaming publishers as a scapegoat for people.

hah. This type of thread again. It's just precious.

Problem I have always had with that kind of thinking is if sales start to suffer the suits and bean counters won't necessarily see it as "we need to make changes" and will more than likely just pull the plug all together.  Now before someone suggests I am telling them to spend their money in a product they don't believe in I am not so don't imply that.  I just don't think "hitting them where it hurts" is as effective as people think it is.

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Need to add in some hyperbole while trying to sound edgy.

I keep on noticing a pattern here. It seems the same old thread topic keeps on getting recycled again and again. It is like a two week pattern. If you are going to bitch and whine, you can at least alter the subject a little bit to keep things creative.

And as an alternative look at Irrational Games. Any company that grows too big ends up taking less risks and ultimately it starts to hurt them creatively to the point where Ken Levine said "fuck all this" and closed his studio to restart with a skeleton crew.

I wish it weren't so and we could've gotten 3 more ME2s but alas, that's just how industry seems to work. Everything is a bit of a gamble and sometimes it pays off when developers grow big and eventually it doesn't. I'm also suspicious that Rockstar have finally started to reach the point of no return now that their beloved "benz" has left (he was their big QA bug fixer wizard who allegedly stopped Red Dead from shipping broken)

I've never been clear on how this dopey idea is supposed to work. Is this fantasy independent Bioware supposed to have higher budgets, or lower budgets?

Hell, according to the OP Bio staff are dimultaneously underworked and overworked.

Somewhat tangential to the OP, but I can't wait for Dragon Age 4 to come out so people can complain about how awful it is and how it should have been more like Mass Effect: Andromeda, which was amazing and BioWare's best game ever.