When EA bought Bioware in 2007, people said they'd run the studio into the ground. It took two decades for that to happen and they released some pretty awesome games in that time. However, a studio that used to hit everything out of the park did become one that missed a lot in recent years.
Going forward, I hope Bioware's people land great new jobs, and here's hoping some of their IP gets picked up by other studios. Mass Effect in particular is a fantastic creation that a lot of people would love to spend more time in.
> It took two decades for that to happen
I think 2 decades is a bit generous considering the state of Bioware recently. When was their latest game that was well-received? Dragon Age Inquisition?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BioWare#Games_developed
The last two games listed are "Mass Effect Legendary Edition (2021)", which was incredibly popular, "Dragon Age: Veilguard (2024)" which seems to have been widely panned, so still hitting 50/50 at the end of it?
Going back further, "Mass Effect: Andromeda" was unpopular with fans but found a fairly solid cult following, and "Dragon Age: Inquisition" is the one you mentioned as well-received, so still batting 50/50
Admittedly, "Mass Effect Legendary Edition" is more of a well-done cash grab, and even Mass Effect 3 was a bit controversial on release due to the bad ending (but I think it's agreed the rest of the game was solid?)
Given EA bought them in 2007, it's clear they released some solid games even years after being acquired
it's a little complicated. a lot of blizzard and riot execs who left to start game studios took a ton of money and have been developing games for years. nearly all of those games will not be commercial successes. so who really knows the meaning of talent nowadays?
on the flip side, studio owners, through no effort of their own, have been practically gifted a solution (hint: it's two letters) to nearly all of the problems relating to their actual risks, which are all focused on production and the nimbleness to respond to player feedback. the real question is whether or not EA still has distribution channels that no one else has.
It's actually a little bit ironic that today's AI has capabilities that closely match what Bioware was looking for quite desperately a decade or so ago. For several of their games, they tried to get procedural dungeon/world generators working so they could have a hand-made main quest-line and generated environments for side-quest content. Their attempts at procedural generation typically didn't work very well, so several Bioware games feature dozens of hours of side-quests in monotonously repetitive environments.
It's an interesting conundrum for players. Some of us, when we play great game, just can't let go. We want to spend more time in that game's world even after we've exhausted the lovingly hand-crafted content. So, many developers throw us a bone and include side-content that is occasionally brilliant but frequently very low effort. Bioware did this in many of their games. You could easily tell when you were on the main story's track and when you were off in low-effort-land.
I think you underestimate how much of a game’s success comes from innate appeal that you can’t simply pivot into with AI boosted workforce, high profile failures like Concord and Highguard didn’t lack production value they lacked the appeal to millions it takes to fuel a live service game of that scale not everyone can be Fortnite and make the switch at the perfect time to hop on a new trend.