Where do these execs get these ideas from? Seriously. Do they even pay attention to anything? Or do they just look at Fortnite and think "Gee, we can do that for every game" instead of understanding that most service games fail and the investment requirements are extremely high. - ThreadSky

dark1x.bsky.social • 20 days ago

Where do these execs get these ideas from? Seriously. Do they even pay attention to anything? Or do they just look at Fortnite and think "Gee, we can do that for every game" instead of understanding that most service games fail and the investment requirements are extremely high.

Reposted from Eurogamer

"To break out beyond the core audience, games need to directly connect to the evolving demand of players who increasingly seek shared world features and deeper engagement alongside high-quality narratives" EA's CEO has said, post Dragon Age: The Veilguard. bit.ly/3Q52rAP

Comments

extrasnow.bsky.social•20 days ago

I think they're just saying these things to spite us at this point.

spacetalk.bsky.social•20 days ago

Investors. It's always Investors. That's where the ideas (ie marching orders) come from. If the CEOs balk, you end up like Toys R Us.

And, no, they won't understand. They got owned by a random Chinese hedge fund. Most of them just lucked into PayPal shares, it's not exactly meritocratic.

markcasey.bsky.social•20 days ago

It's kind of wild that they looked at Baldur's Gate 3 and went "nah, not like that".

spiral1407.bsky.social•20 days ago

It's really sad how they have no repercussions/accountability for these decisions too. It's the low level devs and unlucky consumers that face the negative aftereffects.

direraven97.bsky.social•20 days ago

It's because that's all Andrew Wilson knows. He fleeced FIFA to death with MT's and because it was successful he's applied the same logic to every EA game going forward. Look what happened to Dead Space 3.

martyfunkhouse.bsky.social•20 days ago

They don't think at all, they're too high on coke

alyxdafennec.bsky.social•20 days ago

They salivate at the idea of continuing to charge consumers constantly after their initial purchase and hopes to snag a couple of whales in the process.

ratchet.bsky.social•20 days ago

it’s insane, most publishers have been jumping off the live service train since 2022, while EA is going in deeper

kazimo.bsky.social•20 days ago

Everyone wants a piece of that Fortnite / Genshin Impact cake.

mcdoogleh.bsky.social•20 days ago

They also completely ignore how many other forms of success that there are, BG3 was one of the best stories to come out of 2023!

leiwaan.bsky.social•20 days ago

Mostly they look at Fortnite, yeah

nightlily.bsky.social•20 days ago

Makes me wonder if he’s cynically trying to rewrite the story on the DA:V development hell to cover his butt from investor wrath. „Look what happens when we trust those business ignorant production staff!“

carltspeak.bsky.social•20 days ago

You looking forward to DF being charged a subscription fee for reviewing games as part of a live service expansion, John?

knurek.bsky.social•20 days ago

Used to be cocaine
I guess it's either ketamine or AI chatbot now

chrisxwright.bsky.social•20 days ago

No they definitely look at Fortnite exactly like that. I mean, ffs look at what they did to Civ VII. Who wants a streamlined 4X? Nobody. But by golly 2K made Civ "accessible" for "more mainstream audiences" anyways because they thought they could sell it to normies

chrisxwright.bsky.social•20 days ago

AND WOW LOOK AT ALL THE BAD CIV REVIEWS, THEY CAN'T BE RELATED CAN THEY?!

dark1x.bsky.social•20 days ago

They did do that before with Civ Revolution and it was awesome. They should have brought that back instead rather than messing with the main Civ games.

chrisxwright.bsky.social•20 days ago

Lemme rephrase that because you're right, Civ Rev on the Xbox was a fun side game! It's a side game for consoles, it inherently has to be a little basic. But the main series, as you said, should have been left alone and kept more, apologies for the elitism, pure

madthinus.bsky.social•20 days ago

Diablo 4, a live service game that most players play as a single player rather than groups, which goes against the intention of the devs that wanted group play.

seszs.bsky.social•20 days ago

I really thought after Concord, XDefiant, Avengers, Suicide Squad and uncountable others even the execs would get that it's a lost cause. Surely they get that it's at an extraordinarily high risk of failing and losing millions of dollars.

thetrulymad.world•20 days ago

It’s literally trying to put a square block in a round hole. 🤦‍♂️

nynsky.bsky.social•20 days ago

"who increasingly seek shared world features and deeper engagement alongside high-quality narratives"
What does that even mean??

scubaprison.bsky.social•19 days ago

At this point I think it's a case of shareholders who don't play let alone care about games and who only see the money in it. The big games are Fortnite and CoD so go and do that is the extent of their thought process.

sarc-master.bsky.social•20 days ago

Could it be that this game launched ten years after the last installment with a big change to the tone and style of the franchise?

No, it must be the lack of daily quests.

manivelle.bsky.social•20 days ago

And if budget is an issue, maybe forcing a studio to chase trends for half the dev time before letting them do the game they wanted to make since day one with scraps from a canceled GAAS might not help

dlpuia.bsky.social•20 days ago

It's been 10 years without any Dragon Age game. Many others have relased during this time, such as The Witcher 3, Cyberpunk and Baldur's Gate 3. What did he expect?

allanzax.bsky.social•20 days ago

Yea, because Anthem was a big live-service hit for them right? 🤦‍♂️

sen-1k.bsky.social•20 days ago

I don't understand how these people got to their positions when they're so blissfully unaware of very basic concepts of not just how games are made, but also how they're played.
With finite player count and engagement, how exactly do they want to penetrate a market that's fully saturated?

darkwingspartan.bsky.social•20 days ago

I swear, some of these people just fail upwards and upwards…

darkwingspartan.bsky.social•20 days ago

To give him a little bit of credit, I can see what he means about trying to “expand their audience” outside the core BioWare faithful… but going the live service route is just not the way to do it.

ripmcstudly.bsky.social•20 days ago

Can’t wait to see the reaction of the Mass Effect fans who piled on Veilguard for getting in their way when the new ME is a 5v5 extraction shooter with no plot but three battlepass tiers.

n0izy.bsky.social•20 days ago

Didn't they pivot away from making it a GaaS after Anthem flopped?

momchomsky.bsky.social•20 days ago

The larger the economic disconnect between the execs and their target demographic, the harder it is for them to ever understand the world view of regular people. They have hoarded themselves into cluelessness.

tompedalino.bsky.social•20 days ago

I honestly don't think the failures enter their cone of vision. Either because they don't read about stuff that *doesn't* make money or that the payout on a success is so high that their urge to take the gamble overrules rational thought.

sonicsean34.bsky.social•20 days ago

It’s distressing that these ppl get paid vast sums of money due to the delusion that they are indispensable while not having any clue what they are doing and never suffering consequences for their failures.

tapirfortuna.bsky.social•20 days ago

Aren't these just buzzwords that stupid people use to sound important?

pixelpino.bsky.social•20 days ago

More like buzzwords that stupid people use to sound stupid.

kingofshibuya.itch.io•20 days ago

Business people never fail to think they’re geniuses for looking at someone else’s success, thinking it came to those folks easily, and that simply trying to copy will at least yield similar results.

None of them play hockey or soccer. Or they suck because they just go to the ball’s last position.

daniellearmouth.bsky.social•20 days ago

Ah yes, a game that went through several rewrites, identity crises and meddling during development would have been more successful if the devlopers were made to work on yet more stuff for it for the next few years.

Brilliant insight as always, Andrew. How's 'Anthem' treating you?

daniellearmouth.bsky.social•20 days ago

I swear, it feels like publisher CEOs are more addicted to 'live service' games than the people that habitually play them.

swat20.bsky.social•20 days ago

Android Wilson strikes out again

pmrd.net•20 days ago

I fear for Mass Effect

backseatstreams.bsky.social•20 days ago

Studio executives need to give a reason to investors / board members why it didn’t sell super well. The real answer is out there somewhere but it’s likely complicated and requires lots of context. An answer they’ll more easily believe / understand is just “it shoulda been more like Fortnite”.

roydivision.bsky.social•20 days ago

EA is run by fucking idiots..has been for a while.
https://www.gamespot.com/articles/ea-says-people-dont-really-enjoy-linear-games-as-m/1100-6455252/

bubbabenali.bsky.social•20 days ago

Should have had a 100€ price tag, too.

themattluigi.bsky.social•20 days ago

I have no idea why these out of touch execs are able to keep theor positions.

frostagven.bsky.social•20 days ago

This reminds me of how WB said that they would double down on live services after Suicide Squad bombed. Yes, doubling down on the cause of the problem will definitely fix it. Great idea, WB.

mryuntu.bsky.social•20 days ago

I really feel like I am the only one reading that qoute differently.

To me that headline is misleading. Because he wasnt just talking about DA.

iiotenki.bsky.social•20 days ago

Now, I'm no accountant nor the CEO of a company too dependent on digital cards for its own good, but I have a wild hunch that if Veilguard hadn't undergone multiple iterations and just released as a single-player game soon, maybe, just maybe, it'd have had an easier time hitting its sales targets.

stupidhoroscope.bsky.social•20 days ago

I swear CEOs just say stuff they wish was true like it was fact

stupidhoroscope.bsky.social•20 days ago

"Our customers like giving us money and calling me a special little guy"

pc2000s.bsky.social•20 days ago

"To drive engagement, we're adding a feature where players can pat my head while feeding me a handful of oats."

retrogamerje.bsky.social•20 days ago

To me it feels like he’d done no homework and was asked to comment so he quickly said “what did WB say when suicide squad failed?” And copied that (insane) response

danatheelf.bsky.social•20 days ago

These Suits are incapable of rational thought; they only see numbers on a spreadsheet - Fortnite makes all the money,so if they make their thing a Fortnite, they can ALSO have all the money!

They're incapable of understanding that games aren't inherently interchangeable products. Or how time works.

baxin-da-cabecona.bsky.social•20 days ago

Working from a great company(not game related) I feel like most exec are dumb, they like good big numbers, but don't want drill into numbers do see more detail ou try better understanding why something failed.

Is just copy and paste, and what you said: wow, look the Fortnite.

baxin-da-cabecona.bsky.social•20 days ago

And because and don't like understand why something fail, let's just fire people to calm down stakeholders and say that we are focusing in optimizing efforts.

gundroog.bsky.social•20 days ago

I think it's entirely an attempt to control the narrative. Trying to convince someone that "the right thing would be to do the wrong thing" instead of the messier conclusion of "when you fuck over the devs, it's hard for them to deliver a great game."

santics.bsky.social•20 days ago

A CEO never makes a statement without an intention behind it.

santics.bsky.social•20 days ago

In this case, the intention is, I have no doubt, to spread the idea that investing in creating games as a service is a very good idea (and is aimed at investors).

santics.bsky.social•20 days ago

The only thing we (consumers) can do to defend the industry from this greed, besides not buying, is to spread the idea on social media that doing #GaaS is a crazy idea.

ltrapman.bsky.social•20 days ago

Fortnite and cocaine I guess.

On a more serious note I could imagine they say stuff like that to keep the investors happy. It's like a mediocre start-up that tries to get its next funding round.

soulscreme.bsky.social•20 days ago

leeroyjanky.bsky.social•20 days ago

Unless it's a real MMO, what's the point. (And even then...)

So tired of monetization machines that have decent gameplay as a secondary objective, if at all

ernestsheptalo.bsky.social•20 days ago

They're incredibly out of touch. I enjoyed this game so much, and it's such a shame that they had to downscale the studio. Especially considering that they re-did the game from being a service-based one. If anything, they should be praised and given another go.

lazygecko.bsky.social•20 days ago

These CEOs really just want to play lottery with entire studios at stake. In the event that they do end up with their own Fortnite or Helldivers 2, then in their eyes it will be worth the sacrifice of all the other studios they shut down after having them make failed attempts at GAAS games.

nickthien.bsky.social•20 days ago

What's worse is that these CEOs face zero consequence if they fail. They might even get a golden parachute to float to their next appointment. They are playing checkers with people's lives and they couldn't take it any less seriously.

sgtmus.bsky.social•20 days ago

Execs chasing trends, venture capitalist, no financial responsibilities. Pressure on the Dev team to make a success, if not, kick the dev team, close the studio and fire everyone. Write a statement with the words : The bottom of our heavy hearts/fork in the road.
Rinse and repeat and do again.

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