BioWare lays off senior writing staff as part of its recent job cuts
BioWare lays off senior writing staff as part of its recent job cuts

BioWare lays off senior writing staff as part of its recent job cuts

Guess story is not a priority at Bioeare anymore
They've really lost the right to be called bioware at this point. Almost all of actual bioware has left or been canned.
It really is a ship of Theseus question at this point, huh.
If you replace the quality parts with manure bricks, at what point has it become the shit of Theseus?
At least with the ship of theseus it's an inanimate object. You could replace any board or sail and still consider it the ship in question. Is it still in fact the ship of theseus? That's debatable but you could say that it still represents the ship.
In this case BioWare is made up of thinking human beings all that are motivated by different factors. You can't replace one person with another and expect the same of them even if you got someone who followed the initial person's logic as closely as possible, they'd still end up with different results to the first.
That is if EA even cares enough to replace the previous developers with like minded individuals which I highly doubt. BioWare of old, make great games while telling the best stories possible. After modern day EA's influence? Make as much money as you can while puppeteering as the BioWare of old.
That's how I see it anyways.
I think just using % solves the silly Theseus question entirely. It is 30% original. Bam, no confusion
That's the story of almost all EA studios. Respawn afaik has kept their senior staff but also have expanded too much for me to believe there's a "Respawn identity" anymore.
What's funny that happened with Bioware and Criterion, too.
Respawn has only made like, five games? Two of which are licensed IP and not any good. They have one great game in TF2. There was never a "respawn identity". Hell the company was started by old Infinity Ward people.
Seems sadly on point. Their M.O. since at least as far back as Westwood (RIP Command & Conquer) has been to acquire a name brand, sap it for short term nostalgic profit, then dismantle usable assets. I love Dragon Age: Origins... and to some extent Inquisition, but damn if she ain't what she used to be.
Even playing through Mass Effect 1 2 3 back to back has been a challenge for me. The games just get simpler as you go along and it is so frustrating.
And I'm not talking about just the talent systems and looting etc, the fucking dialog gets to a point where sometimes 2-3 of the options will give the same result, and ugh. Ruins so much of it for me.
You make a good point. Is there a life-tree of devs that shows their companies and games? It'd love to see those art directors names we know across the different devs and publishers they worked for but also the lesser known names that really make great games what they are.
Hmm. It'd be interesting to go through game credit screens and build a database to try to predict good games.
There's MobyGames, but it's often out of date or missing information.