BioWare - To Be Acquired by EA

EA's corporation machine will suck Bioware dry then move on towards it's next victim. Their touch is like with Midas expect everything they touch seems to turn into a pile of medicore trash. I hope they prove me wrong this time...

Besides why does every dev-studio nowdays need to expand rapidly. Why couldn't Bioware just keep doing what they were good at, in other words making wonderfull rpg-games which gamers all over the globe loved. For example take a look at ID. They are still an independet company and a very successfull one. I read some interview a while ago where John Carmack stated how ID could easily expand if they wanted, but they don't want to. According to Carmack, he wants ID to stay a smaller company because he doesn't like anyone bossing them around.

Regarding Bioware I thought they were doing good business, not having financial troubles at all. Almost every bioware game so far has been a huge success, not to mention that their reputation has increased by every game... Jumping in bed with EA, its the last thing i'd have expected. EA is famous for one thing: they don't take risks and the most orginal ideas are always risky.

Gallifrey said:

So, you think BioWare would have entered into this business arrangement without exploring EA's thoughts on current projects in development, not to mention future ones that they no doubt have planned and are in various stages of contractual and design conditions, as well as without discussion about the future of the BioWare brand and company?
And, if they did indeed discuss this, you'd think BioWare would willingly abandon a project that's been in development for years?

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The way I read it, Galli, it wasn't BioWare's decision to make. It was VG Holdings. EA bought VG. VG may have asked for input from BioWare, but that would all. So, DA may very well still be in peril. Along those lines, did anyone else catch the reference in the press release to BioWare being "in the early development stages of a massively multiplayer online game"? My doomsday scenario is that EA sees the money Blizzard is just drowning in with WoW and said to themselves, "Damn!! I want soma dat!" They looked around and saw BioWare with an unrivaled RPG pedigree and a MMO already in the pipeline and figured this was as good a bet as any. So now, all resources will be turned to that, effectively bringing work on DA to a halt. Of course, the CEO lining his VC buddies' pockets with tons of cash could have played a part as well...

Cm said:

I am afraid of all the side changes we may and most likely will suffer in time. Is the NWN fault going to stay open? Will patches and fixes for NWN2 continue so that new mods can be made that work for MP? And will those have a home to grab them from? EA just doesn't impress me as one to keep these player based sites going for more than a year past the purchase. One new game out from then and all the past stuff will get the ax. That is just my fear, but why would they support any of it if they can't sell it.

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NWVault is part of IGN and has nothing to do with Bioware. It runs independent of the company and has even run afoul of it on occaision (the Star Wars mod).

NWN2 was not made by Bioware but Obsidian. They licensed the Aurora engine from Bio to build the game and added their own graphics engine to it called Electron. Atari publishes the game not EA so it is Atari that funds any future patches.

Bioware has been funding patches for NWN1 independent of Atari for years now and you might say there's bad blood between them. Things came to a head with imminent release of NWN2 and Atari exercises its perogative not to approve certain Digital Download modules.

At the very least this could put the kebosh on Patch 1.69 which has been going on and off for a year. However, I believe Brian Chung would have a complete fit if they do that.

It could still happen - why does VG/Bio/Pandemic need a quick infusion of $35 million in cash. Could Brian's $40k+? salary be justified if this is all he's doing? ($40k was around the industry standard said EASpouse. There's a lot of competition in the job market for game programmers. I make more than that in a less appealing job).

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Since we know DA is currently playable now and this is the sort of reason EA is buying the company I can't see them not watning to cash in on something that is already complete, even if it is just working on PC.

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I'm curious where this arrangement with "rpg layer" on Unreal will lead. I haven't heard about that in a long time and hoped to maybe move on to it from the Aurora toolset. I think Mass Effect might have been made with it.

possibly the only good thing that could come of this is maybe bioware could make a game in the system shock universe. though it is probably more likely that mystech will be found on mars...

The Drs were stakeholders in VG Holdings together with Elevation Partners, which was the holding company created to purchase BioWare/Pandemic.

IIRC, Elevation had the major holding but the Drs (and Pandemic) most certainly agreed and wanted this - as Gorath said in the beginning, you don't sell your company to venture capitalists and settle down for 20 years of slow growth. They buy companies to pump them up and turn them around for (relatively) fast gains, so this was always the game plan.

On EA games...um...Black & White, which I hate? I think. Maybe System Shock 2 before that? Not many, that's for sure.

Dhruin said:

On EA games...um...Black & White, which I hate? I think. Maybe System Shock 2 before that? Not many, that's for sure.

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Bard's Tale

Was BT EA? SS2 and U9 would be my only purchases!!

Corwin said:

Was BT EA? SS2 and U9 would be my only purchases!!

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Yep, the orginal Bards Tale was by EA. EA has been around for a looonnnggg time. I remember seeing their games back when I used to subscribe to RUN magazine for the commodore 64. Back then I liked what they made like Archon, The Seven Cities of Gold, Mail Order Monster, Skate or Die! and in my opinion THE best "non-linear" space trading/exploring game Starflight. These were great games but in later years they stopped publishing creative/innovative games to just rehashing old garbage and making sports games that I have no interest in at all.

I'll have to add SS2 to my list. I didn't see that it was published by EA.

Heh, true EA has indeed been around forever which led me to check out the list of game made or published by them. Its quite long http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Electronic_Arts_games

Didnt realise I had bought that many EA titles over the years like:
Earth&Beyond, Chuck Yeager's Air Combat, Ultima Online, Clive Barkers Undying, Dungeon Keeper serie, Freedom Force(never really got into this one but it received great reviews), General Chaos (on Sega Genesis), Populous, Road Rash, Sid Meiers Alpha Centauri, Medal of Honor AA, Theme Park, Most of the Wing Commander... And Ultima 9 (although I would rather forget that last one..

And I probably forgot one or two here and there... I used to consider myself a Blizzard and Bioware fan and never much liked EA.. Obviously most of those were only published by EA but still, it seems Ive been a customer of theirs way more often than I thought at first . Im sure im not the only one out there heh.

didn't ea used to be called Electronic Computer Arts (ECA) back in the bard's tale era?

When Sirtek, Canada closed its doors most of the staff went to Strategy First I remember then most those folks got recruited by EA when they opened their studios in Montreal.

Wouldn't it be great if all those combined RPG talents were under one roof? Let's get Garriot back too. I think him and EA are on speaking terms again. Maybe Brian Fargo and him can patch things up since their dispute on BT3.

Seriously, if Bioware makes a good game without objectionable material I'm not going to not buy it because its made by EA and I hate their policies? Who makes your shoes? Sometimes I don't wanna know because I paid $50 for them. If I'm not going to buy something out of distaste for the people that made it I'll save that for Frank Sinatra or that Grimoire dude.

Lucky Day said:

Wouldn't it be great if all those combined RPG talents were under one roof? Let's get Garriot back too. I think him and EA are on speaking terms again. Maybe Brian Fargo and him can patch things up since their dispute on BT3.

Seriously, if Bioware makes a good game without objectionable material I'm not going to not buy it because its made by EA and I hate their policies? Who makes your shoes? Sometimes I don't wanna know because I paid $50 for them. If I'm not going to buy something out of distaste for the people that made it I'll save that for Frank Sinatra or that Grimoire dude.

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I don't think anyone is considering boycotting EA or Bioware. Everyone seems to have the same idea and that is EA will do what it normally does and either start releasing unfinished products or do what they did with Ultima 8 and 9 and try to make the games more "mass" marketable. In the end the Ultima franchise was reduced to a jumper/hack fest for Ultima 8 and I don't know what to call Ultima 9 other than just awful.

As for everyone coming under one roof, I highly doubt that and I wouldn't want that anyways. If that happened then I would only have one game every two or more years to look foreward to.

I won't even go into the "I don't want to know where it came from" because that is your moral choice not to know but I don't think they are as bad as say clothing or shoe companies by hiring slave labour in third world countries.

i'm just curious to all the people who find ultima 9 awful, did you play the game all the way through? sure it wasn't a great ending by any means for the franchise, and i have no problem labeling it as disappointing, though i enjoyed it. i don't think the first couple of ultimas were masterpieces either though.

i'd wear homemade mocassins or go barefoot, but i like my current job so maybe i'll have to wait a few decades 'til retirement.

I was thinking of the latest Bard's Tale, not the original!! U9 was a disaster, if like me you'd played most of the earlier games!! I loathe it. I prefer Dungeon Lords!!!!!

Dez said:

EA's corporation machine will suck Bioware dry then move on towards it's next victim.

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That's *exactly* what I believe myself.

And that's why I called EA an "parasite".

skavenhorde said:

Yep, the orginal Bards Tale was by EA.

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Really ? I thought it was Interplay ?

Alrik Fassbauer said:

Really ? I thought it was Interplay ?

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I just checked Moby Games because my memory and Wikipedia are both unreliable at times

Anyways on the box cover there is both EA and Interplay's logo, so maybe it's both.

Here is the link to the pic
http://www.mobygames.com/game/atari...i-the-bards-tale/cover-art/gameCoverId,18195/

As far as playing Ultima 9 all the way to the end. I couldn't, I gave up shortly after destroying the underwater city of the Gargoyles. After that I kept getting CTDs everytime I cast a fireball spell. That was the last straw, I stopped playing after that. Thanks a lot EA for patching the game so it was at least playable. That brings me to my second gripe with EA. They don't support their products after release. I'm unfamiliar with a lot of EA games but I'm pretty sure that Ultima 9 wasn't the only game that they abandoned once it was shipped.

skavenhorde said:

I'm unfamiliar with a lot of EA games but I'm pretty sure that Ultima 9 wasn't the only game that they abandoned once it was shipped.

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No, that goes for their sportsgames too.

Übereil

They patch their sports games every year; Madden 2006 gets patched to Madden 2007!!

But they don't fix any bugs!

Übereil