Is Bioware the biggest tragedy of gaming history?

[TirielWoW]

I fondly remember the old Neverwinter Nights by Bioware. It's still one of my favorite games.

SWTOR sort of ruined the company for me, though.

[Lazy Gecko]

Did anyone feel terrible when Ensemble Studios shut down? People keep saying that these companies that go down the "wrong path" is tragic, but what about companies that actually close down?

Didn't the Ensemble staff just form a new studio right after the closure? I sort of think they were being held back by Microsoft due to their bare minimum commitment to PC gaming. It's probably for the better that they left them behind.

[Wildmoon]

The games I enjoy a lot mostly come from Blizzard and only games from them I think are not really good are Cata and Diablo3. The rest are unmatched in quality especially SC:BW,SC2 and Warcraft 3. I have never played old games of Bioware but I think DA:O was fantastic. One of the best RPG I have played. I think if Bioware really wants to make a great game then they can. I have high hope for DA:I.

[Pachycrocuta]

Ever since studios have been being bought out by the massive conglomos (ea, activision, microsoft, etc), quality has turned to shit. Used to be many studios turning out great quality in games. Now it is all the same shit over and over and over and over by the same few companies. That's the best thing about Steam. It gives some indie developers, who seem to be along the lines of the old studios who were eaten alive by the conglomos, a way to get their games out. Same with Kickstarter and it's like. Until their games do very good and they get eaten alive by the conglomos.

[PACOX]

I don't know what the problem is?

The only two Bioware games that I didn't like were Dragon Age 2 and SWTOR. They had no business doing SWTOR and Dragon Age 2 wasn't so much bad, it was overpriced.

[Dezerte]

Not defending the sorry state Skyrim was in, or the lackluster combat. But they did support modding, very much. And that is very very rare these days among "AAA" developers.

[Rennadrel]

Did anyone feel terrible when Ensemble Studios shut down? People keep saying that these companies that go down the "wrong path" is tragic, but what about companies that actually close down?

They made Age of Empires 1 & 2 if I recall correctly. Microsoft really fucked up the 3rd game though, it was so boring and mediocre. Still, Ensemble Studios made some good games in their day, it's a shame M$ has botched the AoE franchise though.

- - - Updated - - -

Good point, Sierra is actually probably the biggest fall in all of video game history.

God damn I forgot about Sierra, they were legendary on the PC in the 1990's.

[corebit]

Ever since studios have been being bought out by the massive conglomos (ea, activision, microsoft, etc), quality has turned to shit. Used to be many studios turning out great quality in games. Now it is all the same shit over and over and over and over by the same few companies. That's the best thing about Steam. It gives some indie developers, who seem to be along the lines of the old studios who were eaten alive by the conglomos, a way to get their games out. Same with Kickstarter and it's like. Until their games do very good and they get eaten alive by the conglomos.

It's inevitable with the ever rising costs in producing a game.

There is a serious case of rose-colored glasses whenever people talking about the "great games of the past" without taking into account that games were much more simple and cheaper to make.

Back in the 80's all you needed was a guy who understood the principles of VGA graphics, slap some sound on it, and voila you got a game.

Right now people will not even consider your game unless it has monster 3D realistic graphics, quality voiceovers, orchestral music, amazing AI, deep gameplay, beautiful U.I. On top of it, no bugs, no glitches, no server lag, must be responsive 100% all the time, etc.

Most studios cannot survive in this brutal and costly environment. That's why the big companies like EA and Activision happen.

[Sj]

Nothing tops what happened to Sierra.

[theredviola]

The route cause to all of these older gaming companies being bought up and either being remade or out right crashing is due to big business. Business is getting it's claws into the gaming world, it has been over the past decade. It started with some companies switching models to be more "business like," in it to make money and generate revenue instead of making good games. They (businesses and their like minded people) looked at the gaming industry and thought "there's an untapped source of money." And since greed and capitalism go oh so well hand in hand -- BOOM. The VG industry has just become another leg of big business; care more about profit margins and end quarter goals, rather than pleasing a player base.

[Adam Jensen]

Jesus, overdramatic much? Mass Effect 3's ending was lackluster but it didn't "destroy the entire Mass Effect franchise" for christ sake. ME3 is still a great game. Dragon Age II was a flop, but one or two flops does not mean the entire company's gone to shit.

[Teroseth]

Jesus, overdramatic much? Mass Effect 3's ending was lackluster but it didn't "destroy the entire Mass Effect franchise" for christ sake. ME3 is still a great game. Dragon Age II was a flop, but one or two flops does not mean the entire company's gone to shit.

Iono, Mass Effect 3 wasn't all that great even before the ending...I mean, the stripped out rpg elements (drive by sidequests for example), the character of Vega, weak story hooks (Renegade shepard getting all teary eyed over a kid he didn't know dying?)...don't get me wrong, it had its moment, the mission on Rannoch was one of the greatest sections of a game ever (it kinda shows that different parts of the game were worked on by different teams) but they were few and far between. Add to that that you had to slog through multi-player to get the "best" ending in the game and then the ending itself that was almost completely contradictory to everything preceding it...it didn't destroy the franchise, no, of course not, but its basically crippled it. You mention DA2 as a flop, and yes, it was, they just had to get the story out to set up number 3. You didn't mention SW:TOR though....and that's the thing that's really let them down. It was a bland, insipid by the numbers mmo release pinning its success on the bioware name, the star wars franchise and fans of KOTOR who'd desperately been hoping a third title in the series. That was the moment they sold out. Mass Effect 3 was an arrogance fail, Dragon Age 2 was a fail due to impatience but SW:TOR was a money grabbing exercise, pure and simple. In hindsight that should have been the moment where we should have been wary about what they were going to do with Mass Effect 3.

[Dezerte]

Jesus, overdramatic much? Mass Effect 3's ending was lackluster but it didn't "destroy the entire Mass Effect franchise" for christ sake. ME3 is still a great game. Dragon Age II was a flop, but one or two flops does not mean the entire company's gone to shit.

I think ME3 was more of a flop than DA2 was. But maybe that's because I was a lore-geek for ME, but not for DA.

It's a very personal thing at the end of the day.

[Borfl]

Rare leaving Nintendo to work with Microsoft is like watching your daughter drop out of med school to do porn.

[stumpy]

Why are you praising Bethesda? Are you aware of the state that Skyrim was shipped in with regards to amount of bugs and glitches? The game was rushed badly and the mod community is the only reason for why skyrim is praised as a game as much as it is.

Bethesda have been going downhill since morrowind as well. (read: oblivion and further)

Fun fact: PC Gamer identified "Incomplete Games" as the most negative trend in gaming in 1996. Front and center in that article was Daggerfall, which was impossible to finish out of the box.

[barackopala]

Rare leaving Nintendo to work with Microsoft is like watching your daughter drop out of med school to do porn.

Oh god how I miss rare :'c

[Durandro]

Jesus, overdramatic much? Mass Effect 3's ending was lackluster but it didn't "destroy the entire Mass Effect franchise" for christ sake. ME3 is still a great game. Dragon Age II was a flop, but one or two flops does not mean the entire company's gone to shit.

Actually it depends how you view it. The ending (if you take it at face value at least) essentially tells you the villians weren't villians at all, you were wrong to oppose them, individuality is worthless and basically goes back on everything the trilogy taught us.

But yeah. Not as good as the other two games even without that.

[Felicia]

I love bioware. Dragon Age 2 was my least favorite game (and I still kind of enjoyed it), and I was irked with Mass Effect 3. But felt it was mostly redeemed by the last DLC, and will let bygones be bygones.

SWKOTOR and Dragon Age Origins will always be my favorites, followed by Mass Effect 2. But I'm an avid follower of the Bioware Lonely Hearts Club. (Kaidan, Carth, Alistair. And Garrus...)

[Fkiolaris]

I am not sure if anyone has mentioned them already, but LucasArts takes the cake for me. They used to be the pinnacle of originality (in certain ways at least), all their adventure games up to Grim Fandango (which was their last) had something fresh, funny and entertaining about them. They also started the Dark Forces series where they would constantly show what you could do with the FPS games beyond what was accepted at that point (the first FPS to have jump/look up and down, then the lightsabre combat, the pseudo-RPG elements with the Force powers, the amazing stories instead of the clear-24-random-levels setup etc etc). Finally, they had the X-Wing series, which at it's time was the joint top space simulators with the Wing Commander series. All in all, their games had great gameplay, variety and originality. Then, they decided that the way to go is to only make endless, mostly pathetic Star Wars-based games and eventually they became irrelevant and they were shut down.

For some of the same reasons, special mention goes to Sierra. On the other hand, I do agree that Bioware's fall from grace is quite big and hurting as well, same with Blizzard for my taste, which is a shame because up to certain point I did have practically everything these companies had released on PC. Unfortunately, not anymore.

[Jagoex]

My vote would have to go with the Rare crowd - I'm still holding out for KI3.

Also, losing SNK to Playmore was a bummer, too.