Mass Effect is Not Dead

joxer said:
LOL
What are EA's primary franchises? Sims maybe?
I assure you Sims Freeplay and Sims Mobile are not "companion" games.
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Sigh. Dead Space is the primary Dead Space franchise - and for a mobile game, you'd make a "Dead Space Light" game.

In fact, they already did that a few years back.
 
Darth Tagnan said:
IIRC, Visceral Studios did all three Dead Space games, they just weren't allowed to do what they wanted to for the last one. Probably not for any of the DS games, but certainly not for the third one.

The first DS was originally meant to be a game closer in line with System Shock - or so I seem to have read somewhere. I can't remember the details - but EA played a pretty big part from the beginning.

AFAIK, there's been no announcement of a DS4 yet.

But even with its modest success, it's got a built-in audience - and EA will get around to it eventually, I have little doubt of that.
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Actually, the devs did pretty much exactly what they wanted with the first Dead Space. EA pushed for more action in DS2, but thankfully the devs were still able to maintain a good balance.

It's pretty obvious what happened with DS3 though.

You're more right than you even know about it originally being closer to System Shock though. In the very early stages, they were actually throwing around the idea of System Shock 3. https://www.pcgamer.com/how-resident-evil-4-turned-system-shock-3-into-dead-space/

Then Resident Evil 4 was released, and the devs at Visceral liked it so much they ended up overhauling the game to be more like it. So, ironically, the single biggest influence for Dead Space was a Resident Evil game.
 
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You grew up with strange kids. Maybe if they had played more mass effect things would have turned out better ?

Darth Tagnan said:
One way I can demonstrate this concept:

Take a look at what happens when a child stumbles and falls over, say, a rock. Apart from crying - one of the most common reactions involve getting angry at the rock. They don't get angry at themselves, they get angry at the rock.

In that same way, if you look at the average human being making a similarly trivial mistake "in public" - you will see a response not entirely unlike the child's.

Their immediate and instinctual reaction is one of ANYTHING except simply acknowledging that they were clumsy or did something that's completely natural for people to do. As in, mess up or not look where you're going.

Now, most adults are raised - or conditioned - to eventually just concede "oops, that was stupid" - but it's not their instinctual reaction, which is one of anger and shame.

So, when we're dealing with public perception - most people will instinctually react to their own mistakes with a defensive response and, very typically, that will include blaming someone or something other than themselves.

The irony is that once they've instinctually blamed another person (which they might not have done if they held their tongue a little), they THEN have to defend that position - because otherwise that would be ANOTHER mistake, compounding the negative instinctual reaction they're going to feel.

It's much the same thing when you witness people arguing on a public forum, such as this one. We're all guilty of such things to some degree.
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you said:
You grew up with strange kids. Maybe if they had played more mass effect things would have turned out better ?
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That's the great thing about using kids when observing human nature. They're mostly the same at the pre-conditioned stage when it comes to immediate reactions ;)

As much as we think we grow and evolve from childhood - there's a lot that stays more or less exactly the same.

Anyway, back to Mass Effect :)
 
No, I'm stating an opinion based on your arguments - which are weak and uninformed. I won't even get into your way of ignoring your own false information and correcting every omission with it being "obvious".
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Sorry, but I was correcting your false and ignorant assumption…"they will make it because they can make more money out of it", while ignoring that it is a much more complex situation given Bioware's leads working on current project, lacking experienced leads, EA shift to MP over SP, etc.
Since your "argument" failed, you, understandably, had no option than to extract your own version out of my own claims.
It's ok, you'll learn how to read..eventually. ;)

But the passionate fans who expose themselves to every facet of all these processes - and who've dabbled in most of them in one way or the other might actually understand something about the bigger picture
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And in which process have you "dabbled" again? Creative or Business? Or both?Again, you're using mental acrobatics to camouflage your own lack of actual experience and plenty of ignorance, despite demonstrating it several times. ( particularly that part on how EA can simply easily hire some other team for it) :)

Yeah, and you said 7+ years

It's called a compromise - and you don't even have to say you're wrong if you are.
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No actually, I did not make any "compromise". You actually changed your own position after mentioning 2-3 years.

I said 7 years until we'll see it, in ideal conditions. That is with Casey Hudson c and strong core of previous Mass Effect team working freely on it, after Anthem is done.
This is taking into account that Bioware, for the first time, has four active IP's, Mass Effect is last one that received a sequel, Anthem is largest in terms of production values and manpower and requires the most post launch support, next Dragon Age is still ( at least from some sources) in pre-production, and potential Mass Effect sequel simply has to be top quality release ( probably 3+ years of full dev cycle).
 
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@Bobo

*ignoring ego-driven stuff*

I said 2-3 years - you said 7+ years until they GET BACK TO IT.

The compromise between
those two
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= 5 years.

Get it? :)

Anyway, if you can't take that fair deal, I'll have to suggest we agree to disagree and leave it at that.

We'll certainly see either way.
 
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Oh, and for more clarity:

You said:

I think they'll go back to it, 7+ years from now, Anthem sort of has muffled reception.

As in, they will revisit it 7+ years from now. That doesn't mean a fully developed game in 7 years.

That's why I said 2-3 years until we HEAR about it in an official capacity - as in it being announced as being in development.

I have absolutely no idea when it would release. That would entirely depend on the ambition and scope of it. It could very well take 3-5 years to develop - or it could come out a year after the announcement.
 
Anyway, if they do ever a new Mass Effect, they probably would if someone comes with a way, it will be a connected experience, with live services and subscriptions and every little trick they can crank in there.
So not sure it will be a Shepard or MEA like experience.

EA has to communicate to its shareholders, so everything is quite public on this topic, and what it says is pretty clear:

On a trailing 12 Months, full games sales are down 6%. Live service (subscriptions, cards, buying stuff in game etc..) is up 31% and actually represents nearly 60% of the income (2,196 $ millions for Live service, 683 for games themselves and 659 for Mobile).
Data here: http://investor.ea.com/common/download/download.cfm?companyid=ERTS&fileid=979735&filekey=50B6AA2F-AC27-448A-8DAF-FD3C58C3749A&filename=Q4_FY18_Earnings_Release_-_Final.pdf

They do not say than their games will never be SP anymore, they just say than their games will be connected and have to engage with the "amazing community". Just corporate jingo to not close any door for if in case.
The financial idea behind is than EA has to leave the shock/burst model with peaks at each launch and a lot of uncertainties on the success/failure of a game. So revenue must be recurring.
Shareholders talkie talkie is here:
http://investor.ea.com/common/downl...filename=Q4_FY18_Prepared_Remarks_-_Final.pdf

You know what is not working well with that kind of model? Games with a personal story complete at launch. Is ME this kind of games? ..
Would EA want to invest to create a model or try to found a solution? Right now, I doubt.
Bethesda, who is more dependent on few kind of games and who has already invested in MMO (recurring revenue) and is expanding to the Game as a Service with FO76 could give it a try. Maybe they are already working on that kind with their Starfield game, supposed to bring innovations?
 
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All ready said this in another thread last week.:nod:

If we're talking about Indie developers for CRPG's then we have no problem, but if we take a look at Triple AAA developers we have a lot to worry about search google.

I'll summarize it briefly.
Traditional model Single-player games is fading, and the rise of the GaaS Model.
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Just look at theses comments from a recent interview with Amy Hennig.

“There was quite a dilemma a few months ago about EA and this question of whether single-player games are “dead.” What do you think about that?”

“To be fair, they didn’t actually say that. I think that, like everything in our world today, the bad versions get around the world before the truth can get its pants on. Did Churchill say that? I think so. It’s really tough. Shawn talked about that in relation to Sony. God bless Sony for supporting these kinds of games, because they’re terrifying to make. They’re very expensive, and it doesn’t suit the model of having a massive open world or hours and hours of gameplay or running a live service, which is what everybody is shooting for these days.”

“It’s not that we’re looking at the death of single-player games, or that players don’t want that. Some publishers are going to fall on one end of that spectrum or another based on their business plan. Fair enough. It’s just that the traditional ways we’ve done that are getting harder and harder to support. That’s why I’ve talked in the past about feeling like we’re in an inflection point in the industry. We’ve talked about this for a long time. How do we keep on making games like this when they’re getting prohibitively expensive? We don’t want to break the single-player experience, but there’s pressure to provide more and more at the same price point games have always been.”

“That isn’t sustainable, I believe. I think it breaks the purpose of a single-player game. I was saying to some people here, I play games because I want to finish them. I want to see the story. I like the arc of a story. I don’t see the ends of most games. How crazy is it that we say it’s about narrative, but we make games where a fraction of the audience sees the end of the game? That’s heartbreaking.

I hope that we see more shakeup in the industry. We’ll open up the portfolios — maybe with a subscription model — so we can see that there can be story games that are four hours long at an appropriate price point. We have digital distribution. That should be possible. We shouldn’t be stuck at this brick and mortar price point and trying to make more and more content, breaking the spirit of these games.”

“I don’t fault EA for that decision, as hard as it was personally for me. I understand the challenge. We have to come at this in different ways. I think it’s about portfolios of games at different price points that allow us to do more than just PUBGs and Fortnites and Destiny clones.”
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EA like other Publishers love the GaaS model. It's the new trend that allows them to get revenue all year round. It doesn't work with strong Single-Player Story's though.

I foresee most Triple A developers & publishers going the GaaS model. This doesn't mean a few non-GaaS games wont be released but they will become rare.

So as I said earlier Indie games will probably be where SP RPGs will remain. As the budgets are smaller, and so are the risks. Not a bright future for SP RPGs games.
 
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EA/Bioware tried twice compete with the big badass RPG selling A LOT, and failed twice, at least at communication level, and you can bet at sells level too, or both IP wouldn't have been buried.

For now the RPG market shows no evidence that it can welcome with big sells any RPG that isn't huge in size. Not only EA/Bioware failed twice try do huge RPG, but they had to face a lot of causticity, releases after releases since at least a decade.

How the hell on this base EA/Bioware would want try make another RPG? The only reason is Bioware trademark, but now it's since about a decade that this trademark is generating a lot of causticity. So nope Bioware isn't even a reason to come back to RPG, perhaps a few people want it, but it's hardly something significant.

Looks like the guy who made this video in OP has just no clue on the real world. For sure someone who participated to ME first trilogy is expecting that the IP will come back. But that means NOTHING, the best bet is only:
- Anthem is a selling/popular/critic success then Bioware switch ,o other game genres, mainly Multiplayer, at least everything but RPG.
- Anthem results aren't satisfying, EA buries a trademark that brings more negative than positive.

You can argue it's dreamland, but it's a logic based on some realistic and concrete facts. That's OP who lives in dreamland.

But there's even more, common I enjoyed MEA, but it's no way in the lineage of Mass Effect first trilogy, it's much more a spinoff. But the problem is nobody can sell very well RPG made on a similar blueprint. How in that context Mass Effect can come back? Never, alas.
 
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Well all I can say is witcher 3 did pretty well as did skyrim. These were not party based games like da:i and me:a and (imho) skyrim really doesn't compete against witcher 3 when it comes to rpg quality but it sure did well. There is another issue that EA faces and that is public companies want to 'grow'. They are never happy with 'profitable'. This causes them to target game markets where the profitability is order of magnitude different and each time they have success they have to do 'better' the next year. This doesn't mean a single game has to do better but they keep upping the target point for revenue/profitability and small games just don't contribute.
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Anyway private companies have more flexibility in this department but i worry that cdprojek will eventually get caught in this 'grow' requirement.
 
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Sure, all those points are rights, but I'll temper one with an element.

Perception is relative and is hugely influenced by comparison. If you take Morrowind (not modded version) it's a bunch of incredibly awful graphics. But in its time it was something because not many game, even less RPG, was looking better.

That's all the problem, it's big budget arena, it's about competing with games selling twice more, so a budget more or less twice bigger. EA/Bioware already tried twice, and failed, no point to try again. Plan an AAA RPG with a budget 1/4 of big ones, it can't work because of comparison making perception relative.

Anyway let face it, along history, many of those able to make AAA games didn't bother do any single RPG, which is certainly the hardest of all genres.
 
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I'd say that's surprising news if it wasn't coming from that same YouTuber again that Couchpotato loves to link to for some reason.

"Mr Speculation", as I like to call him, is very good at conjuring up faux news based on passing comments that could be interpreted multiple ways. :)
 
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Well, there are never any guarentees, but this quote from Casey Hudson himself is pretty hard to take as anything but confirmation that ME is still alive:

"We hear loud and clear the interest in BioWare doing more Dragon Age and Mass Effect, so rest assured that we have some teams hidden away working on some secret stuff that I think you'll really like," writes Hudson in BioWare's Mid-Summer Update. "We're just not ready to talk about any of it for a little while…"
 
Oh I'm not saying Mass Effect isn't "alive". I just think the title of the video is somewhat misleading.

There might very well be a ME game in the early planning phase, but I'd be quite surprised if any real development had started yet. If there's any significant work happening outside of Anthem, my guess would be it's on the next DA title.
 
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I don't really think we have any way of knowing. If teams are working on something related "in secret" - then "hinting that Mass Effect is development" would seem an appropriate title.

Then again, I don't think development needs to mean "full production". It sounds like early design stages - or just brainstorming shit around a table.

Still, that's where most games start the development process.
 
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