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Bioware Gets a New Leader, EA Worldwide Studios Formed - General News
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Bioware Gets a New Leader, EA Worldwide Studios Formed - General News
EA has placed several of its game studios under the banner of EA Worldwide Studios. Maxis and EA Mobile are now the foundation studios in EA Worldwide Studios with Patrick Soderlund taking the helm. In addition, EA announced that EA Senior Vice President Samantha Ryan is taking charge of Bioware.
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Because that worked so well : D
Just the name.
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@blueturtle13 you know that woman that was in charge of Maxis? That monster evil woman with her fake smile ruined SIMCITY. Oh the salt, NEVER FORGET!!!!
I'm still mentally recovering...
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I mean it wasn't her fault, these people are pretty much pretty PR figures over what they really have of impact on the game itself, and EA's move currently seems to be of increasing that.
Now if what lead to the shutdown of Maxis after Simcity to be who's fault... That's more on company direction that while she was the Boss, I would think EA was pulling strings from the very top.
Since Andrew Wilson took over he has worked - with some success I feel - to transform EA's "sorry image". Hopefully this move will lead to great titles that will underscore the achievements so far.
:, (
They mismanaged development of swtor in trying to make a single player vs mmo to the point the engine was not developed properly for its intentions and purposes as an mmo. They were thinking of things like killing companions permanently for an mmo. The level of amateurishness towards their regard for something new seems to have affected them and instead of firing the bad people they chose the easier route and sold out to ea.
had they sold out earlier, swtor would probably have a better mmo engine and may be in that regard make it s better game.
Swtor or is not a bad game, but for an mmo it's not great.
Write bad things that are done to you in sand, but write the good things that happen to you on a piece of marble
What a great game that was. I'm excited about the future of Bioware.
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Actually ESO does not currently use the Hero engine , but instead their own engine.
Link http://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2012/05/25/why-the-elder-scrolls-online-isn-39-t-using-heroengine.aspx
You licensed HeroEngine a long time ago. What role did the Hero Engine play in the development of ESO?
We started ZeniMax Online from scratch, with no employees and no technology. We had to build everything ourselves. It takes a long time to write game engines, especially MMO engines, which are inherently more complicated than typical single-player ones. So, we decided to license the HeroEngine to give us a headstart. It was a useful tool for us to use to prototype areas and game design concepts, and it provided us the ability to get art into the game that was visible, so we could work on the game’s art style. Our plan is for ESO to be a world class MMO, with the most advanced social features found in any MMO to date – so while we were prototyping the game on HeroEngine, we were simultaneously developing our own client, server, and messaging layer that were specifically designed with ESO in mind. Think of HeroEngine as a whiteboard for us – a great tool to get some ideas in the game and start looking at them while the production engine was in development.거북이는 목을 내밀 때 안 움직입니다
The makers of HeroEngine are in such dire financial straits that their company had to shut down for a few months due to insufficient funding at the end of 2015. They somehow managed to find a new investor and resumed business, but it looks like a very shaky proposition.
If I was a MMO developer, I certainly wouldn't risk the future of my game on a engine that is barely surviving in the market. That's not a good bet for future development and enhancements.
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I believe in some of the same aspects as you. I think that the biggest down fall of Bioware was that in the beginning EA pretty much gave them a blank check to develop their games for them and in the case of SWTOR that was their undoing. Because of having large pockets of cash at their disposal for their projects meant they now took bigger risks than they would of normally done had they of been their own company. If it wasn't for having bigger pockets Bioware would not of allowed themselves to be seduced by a demonstration of the untried Hero engine.
But, the engine alone was not the sole reason as to why SWTOR did not meet expectation.Along with that was the artwork, story and class development that was lacking initially. Remember how we all thought that Wouldn't it be great if Bioware made a story driven MMO? And now we know that in hindsight the answer is yes and no. SWTOR did not need to have every single interaction with a NPC done with CGI animation. It made for slow game play when you were in a group of people and actually created a the solo centric aspect of the game . While a lot of us enjoy that kind of story others were just spacebarring right on through it. The only story that needed CGI were the class story and planetary/main type stories. Fetch quest type quests could of been handled with a simple pop up type window like they have now which really is superior to the way it was before. Simply put Bioware could of used the resources that was spent on CGI in other areas of the game instead of wasting it on 100% CGI interactions.
Unfortunately for SWTOR Visceral games under EA is developing a new Star Wars IP and while that does not mean the death of SWTOR it surely wont help it. Biowares future seems to be looking good for f the Dragon Age and the Mass Effect series along with their hopes for their secret IP they have yet to announce since they are pouring more dollars into those projects than they are with SWTOR.
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That's part of why you see Bioware's forays into multiplayer titles pretty spotty as well, like their own Aurora Engine which they built for Neverwinter Nights, while scalable, was a pretty cumbersome engine and did not update well, which saw the removal of the networking layer in the next version of the engine.
To do a good networking layer is pretty hard, and a good networking programmer capable of solving the massive scaling issues that MMOs face even more so. Trying to re-purpose pre-existing and old engines to the task is an added layer of challenge that is generally not worth the effort.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
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EA moved to an internal engine - adding to its capabilities as required - when they realised they could not afford to develop or adapt a new engine for every game. The Hero engine will have added support costs in addition to whatever licence agreement (fees) they have.
And internally would you rather work on a game using Frostbite (EA wide, growing, supported) or ..... the Hero engine. Well someone close to retirement might look at SWTOR but for most it will be seen as as sunset project; old tech, going nowhere, added support costs etc.
So once the new game is out - and since it will be able to use all the assets developed for SW BF and the scripting stuff developed for Dragon Age etc. that should be sooner rather than later (40% reductions in development time on average have been mentioned as a result of Frostbite) I to would expect SWTOR to be wound down.