Bioware, what happened to you?

[KeithTalent]

So full of win. :thumbsup:

KT

 

[AlgaeEater]

Glad to see I'm still in the minority then

 

[pmv]

Lots of amusement in this thread. If you believe that strongly in an RPG in the style of Baldur's Gate, why not start your own development company? According to this thread, you'd have a few dozen customers at the very least (and I'd be one of them, if it looked good).

Bioware doesn't owe you guys anything. If you didn't like the combat in ME2 that much and aren't looking forward to a multiplayer version, don't buy it. If you aren't looking forward to DA2 or ToR, don't buy them either. Bioware has the exact same responsibility to make a 2D RPG that you do.

You are correct of course. But there's a difference between being angry and being unhappy. Bioware has no responsibility to do anything other than go where the money is, but one can still consider it a shame that casual gamers seem to be killing gaming as we knew it.

The 'market' sometimes seems to have the same 'tyranny of the majority' that democracy does. See also cars - when everyone in your neighbourhood gets a car, they all drive to distant hypermarkets and all the local shops close from lack of business, then it becomes compulsory to drive even if you didn't want to. Or the way employers now _expect_ you to have a mobile phone, because everyone else does,

Not that there's much one can do about it, but I reserve the right to moan, bitch and complain to no effect. No-one can take that away from me.

 

[JoshGuru7]

Not that there's much one can do about it, but I reserve the right to moan, bitch and complain to no effect. No-one can take that away from me.

Fair enough, and it sounds like we agree that the target of your complaints should be the consumers who won't pay for the 2D RPGs with tons of text, not the companies that don't produce games that won't sell.

one can still consider it a shame that casual gamers seem to be killing gaming as we knew it

The issue that seems easy to overlook is that niche products can still succeed if there is demand for them. Bioware is not the only chance for a classic style RPG to be created, every single development company (and all the people who could be developers but are currently not) could be a potential classic RPG maker if they thought there was a market for them.

Has the popularity of Kraft american cheese killed Swiss cheese? You can still find Swiss at every supermarket because there is a demand for it.

I think a more likely explanation is that a lot of gamers who used to buy 2D RPGs with lots of text now prefer 3D RPGs with voice acting. Decreasing demand explains the lack of products.

 

[nyker96]

the COD franchise cannot be stopped, mark my word, there will be armies of clones of the clones of the clones of this game coming your way ... I only wish someone would clone COH soon, love that game.

 

[Nintendesert]

I actually want Blizzard to clone CoD and make us a fun multiplayer Starcraft FPS!

 

[minmaster]

I actually want Blizzard to clone CoD and make us a fun multiplayer Starcraft FPS!

next COD game from them (activision) is set in space, so maybe it's what you're asking for.

 

[KAZANI]

ITT: Nerds upset because times change.

You are no longer the target market, get used to it.

If Bioware did nothing but release super in-depth, long, engaging RPGs all day, there probably wouldn't be much of a Bioware to speak of because those games are so resource intensive to develop, write, and test and only have niche appeal. And even then all they'd get is flak from nerds because it's an RPG that isnt Baldurs Gate so they declare that it obviously a dumbed down, consolized, throwaway that simply can't be saved after after a single press release.

Bioware is simply doing what's natural, looking for ways to bring their franchises to new audiences and not bothering to pander to people who can't (eg: refuse to be) pleased.

I think your view summarises what's fundamentally wrong with the RPG developers' philosophy to this day: They have decided to offer games that only cater to the trigger-happy crowd because this is what makes sense financially. However in opting for the allienation of the story-oriented market segment they have done a disservice to the RPG genre, eventually constraining it to a mere FPS with a veneer of character management system that causes no radical changes to gameplay. As a player, your options are essentially limited to how nasty you want to be while you follow a more or less linear destructive path to the final stand-off. You don't have a choice to take a non violent path, which would be driven by dialogue rather than incessant battle. To me, the only RPG that trully achieved that, was Planescape: Torment. Baldur's Gate was only just passable in this regard. I understand developing such a deep gameworld that would serve all audiences is very costly, but I reject the accusation of stubbornly refusing to be pleased.

I think game devs should stop favoring the waste of millions into developing 3D engines for unengaging duds likes Oblivion and NWN2, over creating an universe that is fascinating to explore and its many stories will stay with you many years after you've played, even though it's done in isometric. Also, they should stop dwelling on the same-old Forgotten Realms rehashes and instead turn their attention into other, vastly underutilised and brimming with adventure potential, campaign settings, like Planescape. If they did that then perhaps afford to make some well balanced and really interesting games, that everyone will be willing to get.

 

[zinfamous]

did you see that Jeep has a pimped out jeep-COD blops edition.....next thing they will have BLoPs condoms...blops shampoo...etc..

lol. that Ad is HILARIOUS. I'm assuming there is some un-lockable COD Black edition Jeep in the game, and it's all pimped-out?

or probably DC...

 

[JoshGuru7]

If they did that then perhaps afford to make some well balanced and really interesting games, that everyone will be willing to get.

How do you explain the lack of development interest if there is demand for the product that you are describing? We apparently agree that developers like to make money. What is stopping them from making money off another RPG like Planescape Torment?

 

[KAZANI]

How do you explain the lack of development interest if there is demand for the product that you are describing? We apparently agree that developers like to make money. What is stopping them from making money off another RPG like Planescape Torment?

They are caught up in their own business strategy. They shifted all their resources into developing the 3D combat knickknacks that will satisfy the "hack-n-slash/shoot-everything-to-fuck" majority of the market and left the artistic and creative authoring department out in the cold. They have monocropped innovation because of the need to make the sales to an audience, that only gets shallower and shallower as it's being constantly fed unimaginative games. Now, I am not going to dictate to them how to run their business but I'll be damned if I just sit silent while I am being labeled a too much guy for rejecting their half-arsed excuses of RPGs. I offer this advice: Stop making role playing games all about "fun" destructive implementations of the latest DirectX APIs.

 

[shortylickens]

How do you explain the lack of development interest if there is demand for the product that you are describing? We apparently agree that developers like to make money. What is stopping them from making money off another RPG like Planescape Torment?

The devs complained both with the BG series and Planescape that there was WAY too much work put into a game which was only gonna be sold for 40 bucks and not that many copies anyway.
Graphics sell. Scripts do not.

I dont doubt there were more total manhours put in to Mass Effect, but most of those manhours were concerned with things that could later be used as selling points and an excuse to jack up the price. Overall its a bigger win for the bean counters.

 

[frozentundra123456]

First KotOR MMO, then DA2 being an action game, now this?

You used to be my favorite developer Bioware.

I have been very disappointed in Bioware since they turned KOTOR into an MMO. I only hope they finish the Mass Effect series with a real single player game before they ruin that too!!!

 

[frozentundra123456]

How do you explain the lack of development interest if there is demand for the product that you are describing? We apparently agree that developers like to make money. What is stopping them from making money off another RPG like Planescape Torment?

There was a great deal of interest in a KOTOR3 single player game, but they did not develop that game. The only reason I can think of is that they did not want to take away attention from TOR which they thought would make more money.

 

[frozentundra123456]

Haters gonna hate. Bioware is currently deep into their deepest, most intricate RPG ever. And it's going to make megabucks.

As for the ME spinoff, this is "Bioware" Montreal. Translation: a new group related mostly in name to the Edmonton mothership.

(But yeah, DA2, ugh.)

Sorry that I have so many posts on this topic, but i cannot let this comment pass. They ARE NOT making an RPG, the are making an MMO. (I assume you are talking about TOR.) Despite what Bioware says, an MMO will never have the storyline and plot resolution of a single player RPG. Otherwise, how would you keep the game going and get people's subscription fees every month??
I have nothing against MMOs for people that like them, but I want to play by myself at the time of my choosing, not to have to meet with a group and quest or whatever.
So I guess I would not consider myself a "hater" of Bioware, but I am definitely disappointed in the direction they are taking, especially in abandoning the KOTOR single player franchise and the single player RPG franchise in general.

 

[Martimus]

So you feel that a game with great characters and writing, with an engaging, immersive story, offering a hundred hours of gameplay would be a financial failure today? If you were to spend all your funds on voice actors, state of the art engines, and cease support of the game after release, I have no doubt that you'd make a complete financial flop. But, if you were to go with no voice actors, or only minimal voice actors, and devote your resources to polishing your product, your title would be far from a commercial failure.

I've serious considered attempting to put a development team together to create an epic RPG, and if I had any programming ability at all . . .I just don't have the aptitude for it.

I felt that the Witcher was an attempt at this, so I don't see it as going away. It just might take start-ups like CD-Projekt to continue doing it. Since the first game took them something like 5-6 years to create, and the second was in development for far less time, I am not sure how deep the next one will be.

 

[exar333]

The devs complained both with the BG series and Planescape that there was WAY too much work put into a game which was only gonna be sold for 40 bucks and not that many copies anyway.
Graphics sell. Scripts do not.
I dont doubt there were more total manhours put in to Mass Effect, but most of those manhours were concerned with things that could later be used as selling points and an excuse to jack up the price. Overall its a bigger win for the bean counters.

That's one of the most ignorant comments I have heard in a while. Both BG and BG2 sold 2 million copies+. Also, because of the work put into the game engine, they used the same engine (plus modifications) for a number of other games as well.

Graphics do sometimes sell, but good games sell because they are good. Look at some of the top sellers of all time for PC. Games like "The Sims", WoW, Diablo2, SC and SC2 did not have amazing graphics. The games were engaging, addictive, and fun.

 

[Zenoth]

They go fishing where the fishes bite, good for them.

As long as I have my HD re-do of MDK2 and Mass Effect 3 I'll be happy.

 

[NYHoustonman]

I have been very disappointed in Bioware since they turned KOTOR into an MMO. I only hope they finish the Mass Effect series with a real single player game before they ruin that too!!!

They haven't ruined anything yet. Be patient.

 

[murphy55d]

That's one of the most ignorant comments I have heard in a while. Both BG and BG2 sold 2 million copies+. Also, because of the work put into the game engine, they used the same engine (plus modifications) for a number of other games as well.

Graphics do sometimes sell, but good games sell because they are good. Look at some of the top sellers of all time for PC. Games like "The Sims", WoW, Diablo2, SC and SC2 did not have amazing graphics. The games were engaging, addictive, and fun.

I'm as big of a BG/BG2/IWD fan as you'll find, but this is not true anymore. In the age of fast twitch ADD FPS, I honestly don't believe BG2 would sell like it did when it came out. Back when games were more substance than style.

Would I buy a game like BG2 now? Absolutely. COuld not care about the graphics. I still play it now. But the market just isn't what it was. Unfortunately.

 

[JoshGuru7]

They are caught up in their own business strategy. They shifted all their resources into developing the 3D combat knickknacks that will satisfy the "hack-n-slash/shoot-everything-to-fuck" majority of the market and left the artistic and creative authoring department out in the cold. They have monocropped innovation because of the need to make the sales to an audience, that only gets shallower and shallower as it's being constantly fed unimaginative games. Now, I am not going to dictate to them how to run their business...

I don't think this explains the lack of 2D RPG's in the marketplace. Even if you are right that Bioware is screwing up and you are right why, they are just one developer. If the games that you envision would in fact be successful, then why isn't anybody making one? There are plenty of programmers who could use the work these days.

Both BG and BG2 sold 2 million copies+. Also, because of the work put into the game engine, they used the same engine (plus modifications) for a number of other games as well.

BG was released in 1998, when VCR's used to sell pretty well too. You simply can't take sales figures from 12 years ago and assume that it would sell well in 2010.

But the market just isn't what it was. Unfortunately.

The devs complained both with the BG series and Planescape that there was WAY too much work put into a game which was only gonna be sold for 40 bucks and not that many copies anyway. Graphics sell. Scripts do not.

Both of these seem like decent explanations for why we don't see 2D RPG's being developed these days.

 

[McWatt]

Murphy:

The market for something like BG2 hasn't shrunk. Very few of the gaming markets have shrunk. Some of them haven't grown as quickly as others. While BG1/2 sold millions of copies, an equivalent now could be expected to sell more. On the other hand, the top-selling FPS today would outsell the top selling FPS titles of that same era (HL1? Quake something?) my a larger ratio. BG1 and 2 made a lot of people very rich. BG3 would make a lot more people very rich. By taking a bigger risk, however, and entering the FPS market which is much more competitive and where they have no foothold, Bioware could have the chance of winning a greater reward. That's their motivation.

 

[WhipperSnapper]

While I'm not a fan of shooters, they're all a race to the bottom now, I'd had no problem with Bioware/EA licensing it out to another studio.

IMHO, FPS gaming died when Epic Games and Id killed off their arena-style online multiplayer FPS franchises. In Id's case, they never released a real sequel to Quake III. In Epic Game's case, they consolized Unreal Tournament, perhaps the greatest online multiplayer FPS of all time, which is a sacrilege.

 

[skace]

I think it is funny that the current gaming generation is being called 'twitch'. BG came out in 1998. 2 years AFTER the biggest twitch FPS game ever released, Quake 1 (1996). In 1998, Quake 1 had a massive following, gigantic community. In 1997, QuakeWorld and TeamFortress came into existence. Ultima Online came out in 1997. Tribes came out in 1998. Unreal Tournament Came out in 1999.

So if I look at the games that came out in that time frame. How the fuck was anyone interested in a slow-paced, text based Baldur's Gate? It didn't even have good graphics for that time period!

Why? Why? Why? The answer is obvious, because people don't want 53 versions of the same exact fucking thing. I've said it before and I'll say it again: people don't want a WoW clone and they don't want a CoD clone. You might think it's an easy cash in but you'd be wrong 99/100 times.

Now if the answer is obvious, why do developers keep doing it? Because it is easy to sell it to producers. "CoD made 32 gajillion dollars, we want to make a game just like it, except here is why ours is better, fund us". It's so much easier than "take a risk on this game that I put my heart and soul into, I have absolutely no financial data for how well it will do". It is very rare that a studio gets to do what they want to do like that, often you only get that kind of love from a small studio that hasn't been bought out and answers to no one. It's one of those reasons I love Id Software so much: not because of how their recent games have gone, but because they do exactly what they want to do for as long as it takes.

Now let's talk Blizzard, "they warped Warcraft into an MMO and look how that turned out". Yea but Blizzard does it right, they always do. Look at the timeline: they came out with an incredibly successful Warcraft 3, giving everyone what they wanted, a revival of the Warcraft series with pretty much 0 faults and a modding community to keep it alive for ages (basically they quenched any nostalgia). Then they turned around and immediately went to work on WoW (possibly sooner). The cool thing about WoW is, yea it was a change of genres, but they did a lot to make it look familiar with the previous setting, so that you could go from WC3 to WoW and a lot of things looked familiar and enticed you, lots of lore was there, meet amazing hero characters from WC3 'in the flesh'. Not only that, they hired an incredible crew of inside developers and raiders alike to make sure they made basically the pen-ultimate mmorpg on the market. In hindsight? fucking flawless execution. And just when the RTS crowd was starting to get hungry for something else? They throw out SC2.

As for where is the current demand for good RPGs? I'd say the Witcher was exactly that. Nobody is making decent RPGs so some Polish studio had to step in and show the industry how it is done. Interestingly enough:

CD Projekt is also known in the Polish gamer community for being the first to publish fully translated international hit games, such as the Baldur's Gate saga (one of the first games fully translated into Polish, an event which became a milestone of computer gaming and publishing in Poland), Planescape: Torment, both Icewind Dale games and many more.

To look at some other current computer RPG devs: Piranha Byte's is in Germany. Ascaron is in Germany. Radon Labs is in Germany. Larian is in Belgium. .... So basically if it wasn't for Germany right now I wouldn't have a single good RPG? Nice.

 

[JoshGuru7]

It is very rare that a studio gets to do what they want to do like that, often you only get that kind of love from a small studio that hasn't been bought out and answers to no one.

I agree, but there are a lot of these small studios and indie developers out there. If there really was high demand for a BG3-type product today surely somebody would be trying it. There are a lot of random titles in this list and I recognize maybe two text-laden RPGs both of questionable merit.

As for where is the current demand for good RPGs? I'd say the Witcher was exactly that. Nobody is making decent RPGs so some Polish studio had to step in and show the industry how it is done.

I liked the Witcher and will probably pick up the second one, but I would say you are in the minority if you consider it a superior RPG to either of Bioware's most recent efforts. Not that there's anything wrong with that.