General Gaming How Anthem Went Wrong (Jason Schreier/Kotaku)

[TwinIon]

Kotaku has a lengthy feature on the making of Anthem, and how it went wrong. Among some of the good bits:

-Some blame Dragon Age: Inquisition's success, because it was created under such incredible crunch time, but still turned out well.

-It was originally called Beyond, but Bioware had to change it days before the reveal

-Flying was added to and removed from the game repeatedly.

-Frostbite sucks to work with. They had to build things like camera, inventory, and save systems from scratch.

-The best Frostbite folks from Dragon Age were sent to work on FIFA when that game switched to Frostbite.

-Even as they stole ideas from Destiny, it was a taboo word to say. The prefered point of reference was Diablo 3. Since Destiny was taboo to discuss, they couldn't have open conversations about what that game did well or poorly.

-The E3 Demo was (like many others) mostly fake, taking the game in a different direction than many of the devs thought they were going.

-The game concept (RPG or loot shooter? Open world or not?) wasn't nailed down, even long into production.

-Most of the game was built in the final 16 months of development hell.

-The game was evolving so much at the end, and performance capture was so expensive, that much of it was cut or doesn't make sense.

 

 

 

[SaysWho?]

4 minutes ago, TwinIon said:

Kotaku has a lengthy feature on the making of Anthem, and how it went wrong. Among some of the good bits:

-Some blame Dragon Age: Inquisition's success, because it was created under such incredible crunch time, but still turned out well.

-It was originally called Beyond, but Bioware had to change it days before the reveal

-Flying was added to and removed from the game repeatedly.

-Frostbite sucks to work with. They had to build things like camera, inventory, and save systems from scratch.

-The best Frostbite folks from Dragon Age were sent to work on FIFA when that game switched to Frostbite.

-Even as they stole ideas from Destiny, it was a taboo word to say. The prefered point of reference was Diablo 3. Since Destiny was taboo to discuss, they couldn't have open conversations about what that game did well or poorly.

-The E3 Demo was (like many others) mostly fake, taking the game in a different direction than many of the devs thought they were going.

-The game concept (RPG or loot shooter? Open world or not?) wasn't nailed down, even long into production.

-Most of the game was built in the final 16 months of development hell.

-The game was evolving so much at the end, and performance capture was so expensive, that much of it was cut or doesn't make sense.

 

 

 

 

Thanks for sharing. Gonna read this soon!

[Mercury33]

I can see a lot of that contributing.  But regarless of how many times flying was taken or added, it turned out phenomenal.  I'll fight and die on this hill but the game play in Anthem is not the problem.  It is one of the most fun games I've ever played.  It's all the polish and literally almost everything else that doesn't work right.

[Chris-]

At this point Schreier's next book will be, "Why This Particular EA Game Failed", and it will just say, "Frostbite" inside.

[Dre801]

Frostbite  was built for Battlefield type games.  They are apparently doing their devs a disservice by making them use it for anything else.

[TwinIon]

19 minutes ago, Mercury33 said:

I can see a lot of that contributing.  But regarless of how many times flying was taken or added, it turned out phenomenal.  I'll fight and die on this hill but the game play in Anthem is not the problem.  It is one of the most fun games I've ever played.  It's all the polish and literally almost everything else that doesn't work right.

They talk about that at the end of the article.

Quote

At this point, that developer added, it felt like “player-based gameplay” was in a good spot. Combat felt like a strong evolution from Mass Effect: Andromeda, which, despite its flaws, was widely considered to have the best shooting of any Mass Effect game. Now that flying was a permanent fixture in Anthem, it was starting to feel great, too. Other parts of the game were in much worse shape. “It was level design, story, and world-building that got screwed the most, in that things kept changing and they had to rebuild a lot all the time,” the developer said.

 

[Bacon]

I don't even think the RPG games made in Icynibble look good. Like DA:I and ME:A look like poop. They have a high graphical fidelity, but meh style. Not that the other DA or ME games had amazing style. 

[Bacon]

http://blog.bioware.com/2019/04/02/anthem-game-development/
 

Quote

 

We’d like to take a moment to address an article published this morning about BioWare, and Anthem’s development. First and foremost, we wholeheartedly stand behind every current and former member of our team that worked on the game, including leadership. It takes a massive amount of effort, energy and dedication to make any game, and making Anthem would not have been possible without every single one of their efforts. We chose not to comment or participate in this story because we felt there was an unfair focus on specific team members and leaders, who did their absolute best to bring this totally new idea to fans. We didn’t want to be part of something that was attempting to bring them down as individuals. We respect them all, and we built this game as a team.

We put a great emphasis on our workplace culture in our studios. The health and well-being of our team members is something we take very seriously. We have built a new leadership team over the last couple of years, starting with Casey Hudson as our GM in 2017, which has helped us make big steps to improve studio culture and our creative focus. We hear the criticisms that were raised by the people in the piece today, and we’re looking at that alongside feedback that we receive in our internal team surveys. We put a lot of focus on better planning to avoid “crunch time,” and it was not a major topic of feedback in our internal postmortems. Making games, especially new IP, will always be one of the hardest entertainment challenges. We do everything we can to try and make it healthy and stress-free, but we also know there is always room to improve.

As a studio and a team, we accept all criticisms that will come our way for the games we make, especially from our players. The creative process is often difficult. The struggles and challenges of making video games are very real. But the reward of putting something we created into the hands of our players is amazing. People in this industry put so much passion and energy into making something fun. We don’t see the value in tearing down one another, or one another’s work. We don’t believe articles that do that are making our industry and craft better.

Our full focus is on our players and continuing to make Anthem everything it can be for our community. Thank you to our fans for your support – we do what we do for you.

 

 

[atom631]

the world and gameplay are fantastic in anthem. its too bad everything else around was sub -par. 

 

i really wish we could take The Division 2 systems and merge it with Anthem's gameplay and world. That would be an absolutely amazing game. 

[PaladinSolo]

I've abandoned this game, like honestly they'd be better off just making another game cause Anthem is going to take years of work to make it decent.  If its not the long ass load times even with an SSD, its the complete nonsensical loot system, and even if you get the loot you want/need theres nothing to really do with it.

[JPDunks4]

4 minutes ago, PaladinSolo said:

I've abandoned this game, like honestly they'd be better off just making another game cause Anthem is going to take years of work to make it decent.

 

A lot said the same about the Division when it first released and Massive and Ubisoft stuck with it for years, it wasnt until a year or two later people finally started to say it was in a good place.  

 

When you beat the first Division, all there was to do was go into the Dark Zone or do the daily Challenging Mission, then the Incursion which was terrible.  It was in a terrible place, and they stuck with it.  

 

The core gameplay in Anthem I still feel is amazing, the world it beautiful and fun to fly around in.  There is a lot to fix for sure, but I hope they stick with it and can get it to a good place.

[Paperclyp]

Sounds somewhat similar to Mass Effect: A.

 

Lot of talent at BioWare, but it’s not a studio that seems to have any sort of cohesive vision that they seemed to use to have. 

 

Ive also been through this “core gameplay is awesome” song and dance with destiny twice now. That shit isn’t enough for me. 

[SaysWho?]

54 minutes ago, Chris- said:

At this point Schreier's next book will be, "Why This Particular EA Game Failed", and it will just say, "Frostbite" inside.

 

[crispy4000]

25 minutes ago, Paperclyp said:

Sounds somewhat similar to Mass Effect: A.

 

Lot of talent at BioWare, but it’s not a studio that seems to have any sort of cohesive vision that they seemed to use to have. 

 

Ive also been through this “core gameplay is awesome” song and dance with destiny twice now. That shit isn’t enough for me. 

 

Sounds like it was the creative director's departure that hurt them the worst.

Having one man at the top can lead to bad decisions if unchecked.  But not as bad as having the team meander for years working on a game without a direction.

[JPDunks4]

Ultimately it sounds like Casey Hudson left at the worst possible time, and his replacement just wasn't up for the job of leading a brand new project.

[Man_of_X]

How does he know they didn't read it?  Did Bioware's response come out before the article did?

 

Also, who the fuck is being defensive here?  Schreier basically cries poor me like they're slinging personal attacks and then calls them cowards.  Super professional.

 

I'm on break from Anthem right now for obvious reasons.  A big part of that is the Division 2 which is excellent.  I will echo above that the world and gameplay in Anthem are fantastic.  They need to sort out their loot situation and quick and they need to work overtime making more loot as well as more content/activities to do.  If they stick with this, which I see no reason why you wouldn't, this will be an excellent game at some point.

[Moa]

27 minutes ago, Man_of_X said:

How does he know they didn't read it?  Did Bioware's response come out before the article did?

 

Also, who the fuck is being defensive here?  Schreier basically cries poor me like they're slinging personal attacks and then calls them cowards.  Super professional.

 

I'm on break from Anthem right now for obvious reasons.  A big part of that is the Division 2 which is excellent.  I will echo above that the world and gameplay in Anthem are fantastic.  They need to sort out their loot situation and quick and they need to work overtime making more loot as well as more content/activities to do.  If they stick with this, which I see no reason why you wouldn't, this will be an excellent game at some point.

 

Jason Schreier does good work but also is totally incapable of looking in the mirror or handling criticism. Their response is basically saying, we know Anthem has problems but please don't dismiss the people and effort that went into making it, and he calls them defensive and later cowards without an ounce of irony. It seems like he is incapable of handling any response to his work other than you're so smart and right and we're all going to buy your book. 

[JPDunks4]

Yeah I read their response, it was as cookie cutter mundane just basically saying, we are looking at what we did wrong, know we can always improve as a company, but don't want to partake or comment on things that are putting the blame at certain peoples feet.  What else would you expect them to say, yeah the Director that took over was garbage and ruined this game.  

 

I feel like I didn't really learn anything much reading that though, as most of those things were fairly easy to assume were issues just by playing the game.  Hell they don't even have cosmetics to sell yet probably cause they are just trying to get the game working as intended.

[TwinIon]

I don't think the article does, as Bioware contends, put "an unfair focus on specific team members and leaders." I also would be surprised if crunch time wasn't a real issue. Still, I think the Bioware response is about what I'd expect them to say.

[Zaku3]

With all those issues I am happy it turned out so well. I just want more content and fixing the loot. 

[JPDunks4]

8 minutes ago, Zaku3 said:

With all those issues I am happy it turned out so well. I just want more content and fixing the loot. 

 

Thats kinda where I'm at.  As I said before, Division and Destiny at launch I'd argue were in a worse state.   Now Bioware had those learnings to work with so Anthem shouldn't have repeated those mistakes, but I think Anthem could make some basic fixes and get more content out and be a drastically improved game.

[Kal-El814]

4 hours ago, Man_of_X said:

How does he know they didn't read it?  Did Bioware's response come out before the article did?

 

EA’s response took time to write and it was posted 16 minutes after the article went up. There’s no way they consumed the content of the article and wrote their response in that amount of time.

 

4 hours ago, Moa said:

Jason Schreier does good work but also is totally incapable of looking in the mirror or handling criticism. Their response is basically saying, we know Anthem has problems but please don't dismiss the people and effort that went into making it, and he calls them defensive and later cowards without an ounce of irony. It seems like he is incapable of handling any response to his work other than you're so smart and right and we're all going to buy your book. 

 

I’m sorry, EA saying “We don’t see the value in tearing down one another, or one another’s work. We don’t believe articles that do that are making our industry and craft better,” to this particular article is 100% undiluted and disingenuous bullshit and should absolutely be called out for the ridiculous nonsense that it is.

[Zaku3]

https://thehardtimes.net/harddrive/ea-assures-gamers-bioware-not-dead-just-going-upstate-to-live-on-video-game-farm/

 

Lol

[ShreddieMercury]

I think both things are true.  EA's response is disingenuous AND Jason Shreier comes across as a smug, self-satisfied asshole.  Read any of his responses to commenters on almost any article; he can't handle anything dispassionately, and immediately reverts to angry internet video game nerd anytime somebody criticizes one of his pieces.

[Xbob42]

Jason is a little bitch crybaby when interacting with anyone who is talking about his work, but he's right in this case. Issuing a response before even reading the article is blatant and obvious damage control that will only have the opposite of the intended effect; in other words: a very fitting response.

[johnny]

They need to go back to Mass Effect 

[Spawn_of_Apathy]

47 minutes ago, johnny said:

They need to go back to Mass Effect 

They need to be allowed to use Unreal Engine. 

[Dre801]

1 hour ago, Spawn_of_Apathy said:

They need to be allowed to use Unreal Engine. 

 

[Keyser_Soze]

10 hours ago, TwinIon said:

-It was originally called Beyond, but Bioware had to change it days before the reveal 

 

I don't see how this would affect the game's quality one way or the other.

[Xbob42]

18 minutes ago, Keyser_Soze said:

 

I don't see how this would affect the game's quality one way or the other.

I think it's just a little tidbit that's emblematic of the game's development troubles.

[JPDunks4]

He mentioned they gave BioWare a bulletpoint breakdown of what would be in the article do the response was probably based on that.

 

I agree though they should have read through the article before issuing any response, but I still feel the response was generally pretty generic and tame, probably because they were responding to generalized billet points.  

 

The line regarding feeling articles like his don’t help the industry probably wasn’t needed or could’ve been put better.  Its always easy to find a few unhappy people in any project that can probably paint any project to sound as a disaster and terrible.  It’s ultimately always a he said/she said.  

 

 

[Keyser_Soze]

55 minutes ago, Xbob42 said:

I think it's just a little tidbit that's emblematic of the game's development troubles.

 

Both are dumb names. So in the end it didn't matter.

[Xbob42]

19 minutes ago, JPDunks4 said:

He mentioned they gave BioWare a bulletpoint breakdown of what would be in the article do the response was probably based on that.

 

I agree though they should have read through the article before issuing any response, but I still feel the response was generally pretty generic and tame, probably because they were responding to generalized billet points.  

 

The line regarding feeling articles like his don’t help the industry probably wasn’t needed or could’ve been put better.  Its always easy to find a few unhappy people in any project that can probably paint any project to sound as a disaster and terrible.  It’s ultimately always a he said/she said.  

 

 

I just think it would've been a better look if they let the article come out, they read it, then they gave themselves a day or two to formulate a response. Posting it like 15 minutes later just rubs me the wrong way, not that I particularly care all that much. I just think it would look more genuine if it seemed like Bioware took a little while to reflect before giving any sort of response.

[TwinIon]

13 hours ago, Keyser_Soze said:

I don't see how this would affect the game's quality one way or the other.

 

12 hours ago, Xbob42 said:

I think it's just a little tidbit that's emblematic of the game's development troubles.

Mostly that, but also they then had to build the story around what  "Anthem" meant. 

 

14 hours ago, Spawn_of_Apathy said:

They need to be allowed to use Unreal Engine. 

It's kind of impossible math to do, but there must be some exec in the company examining going back to Unreal. It just seems like the X% fee, whatever it is, has got to be worth it for these titles.

[AbsolutSurgen]

I frequently don't see eye-to-eye with Jason.  And personally, I don't believe unionization is practical for the VG industry -- which I know is something he strongly advocates.

 

However, shining a bright light on the problems of game development is something that has inherent value.  Clearly, there are a lot of current/former game devs that are sharing inside information with him.  So a number of "insiders" seem to find value in his reporting.