Dragon Age: The Veilguard - A woke disaster? Yep!

[Peaches the Wonder Cat]

With Bioware Microsoft would just look at the fact they haven't produced a profitable game in the last decade and go "You want money for this?"

They bought Doublefine and Obsidian which only existed because of Kickstarter grifting and some lingering brand loyalty from their glory days.

 

[Mettaur]

They bought Doublefine and Obsidian which only existed because of Kickstarter grifting and some lingering brand loyalty from their glory days.

With Obsidian and Double Fine it was mainly out of convenience. Both studios were independent and most likely had lots of debt. With Double Fine Microsoft already agreed to publish Psychonauts 2 previously, and most likely the conversation was "You want more money? Okay but sell us the studio and we'll do it". With Obsidian they made Fallout New Vegas, so they could essentially own everything around Bethesda's orbit. It was also done before they released The Outer Worlds. Which was still a commercial success for its budget.

 

[Tanner Glass]

They bought Doublefine and Obsidian which only existed because of Kickstarter grifting and some lingering brand loyalty from their glory days.

Obsidian Entertainment was rumored to have a market cap of roughly $10,000,000 - which is really not a lot (and why they kickstarted so much).

Electronic Arts has a market cap of roughly $30,000,000,000 - meaning that if you would need 3,000 Obsidian Studios to make up a single Electronic Arts. Even if the numbers aren't exact (they're rarely disclosed) - Electronic Arts is massive compared to nearly any other studio. There's a 0% chance that Microsoft purchases them until Phil Spencer is able to turn around the ActivionBlizzardKing acquisition.

There's also the issue that EA doesn't have a lot of valuable IPs left. A lot of their popular titles are licenses (NFL, CFL, NHL, F1, (formerly) FIFA, PGA, WRC) and not IPs, Microsoft could just try and work out individual deals instead. If you take out Sports Games - you have a Star Wars Licensed Game (Jedi - Fallen Order), Dragon Age (dead, LOL), Mass Effect (dead, LOL), Command and Conquer (dead, LOL), and so on.

I can't see any real reason to buy EA for Microsoft (or anyone).

 

[Snekposter]

(Jedi - Fallen Order)

Respawn is probably the only thing of value left aside form those sports games, especially since they've also got Apex: Legends, the least terrible of all those hero shooters.

 

[Kane Lives]

There's also the issue that EA doesn't have a lot of valuable IPs left. A lot of their popular titles are licenses (NFL, CFL, NHL, F1, (formerly) FIFA, PGA, WRC)

IIRC, wasn't this why EA wanted to pivot to original IPs? To save on having to pay probably ludicrous amount of money just to maintain the licenses (as FIFA demonstrated). Too bad they really have a reverse midas touch when it come to these.

 

[p1138]

Obsidian Entertainment was rumored to have a market cap of roughly $10,000,000 - which is really not a lot (and why they kickstarted so much).

Electronic Arts has a market cap of roughly $30,000,000,000 - meaning that if you would need 3,000 Obsidian Studios to make up a single Electronic Arts. Even if the numbers aren't exact (they're rarely disclosed) - Electronic Arts is massive compared to nearly any other studio. There's a 0% chance that Microsoft purchases them until Phil Spencer is able to turn around the ActivionBlizzardKing acquisition.

There's also the issue that EA doesn't have a lot of valuable IPs left. A lot of their popular titles are licenses (NFL, CFL, NHL, F1, (formerly) FIFA, PGA, WRC) and not IPs, Microsoft could just try and work out individual deals instead. If you take out Sports Games - you have a Star Wars Licensed Game (Jedi - Fallen Order), Dragon Age (dead, LOL), Mass Effect (dead, LOL), Command and Conquer (dead, LOL), and so on.

I can't see any real reason to buy EA for Microsoft (or anyone).

Aww come on. They've also got Need for Speed(smaller niche than most), Sims(had to turn it into f2p garbage), Sim City/Farm/Animals/etc. (dead), Battlefield(they keep trying to kill it but it survives somehow), Dead Space(dead), Burnout(dead), Titanfall(may as well be dead since Apex Legends is technically in universe or whatever but they aren't even close to being similar to eachother), Bejeweled and Plants Vs Zombies(I have no idea how well these are or aren't doing), Ultima(long dead, lol).

IIRC, wasn't this why EA wanted to pivot to original IPs? To save on having to pay probably ludicrous amount of money just to maintain the licenses (as FIFA demonstrated). Too bad they really have a reverse midas touch when it come to these.

Yes. Remember, they cancelled half of the star wars games they have in development when they had the exclusivity deal for that decade or however long that was too, and that's before considering how poorly some of the games they actually did release managed to do.

Out of the around 50 games released by EA since 2020, 24 of them required paying someone for the rights to the name/IP(mostly star wars and sports games). That's damn near half of their games costing them money before they even do anything just so they can use a name in the title. Of course EA has their own IPs, they just fuck them up constantly. Like the time their CCO said "accept it or don't buy the game I'm fine with either" regarding their battlefield franchise. The idea of a C level executive at a multi billion dollar company telling their audience to not buy a fucking product of theirs when their customer base raises issues with it, is insanity. But that's EA for you. They got big publishing games for developers, not even in-house developers. Their idiotic sports game customers are what has propelled them along for the past decade.

 

[Der weiße Teufel]

Just read a German article about the disappointing sales of Veilguard and it's hilarious how people in the comments are in denial that wokeness might have been the issue. Every comment pointing out that it was a woke mess is met with "n-n-no, Hogwarts Legacy/Cyberpunk/Baldur's Gate 3 also have woke stuff and they sold great!" and "noooo, the issue was the lame writing/lack of choices/terrible story/blandness", as if wokeness wasn't the underlying reason for all of that.
On top of that, as mentioned earlier in the thread, the German translation was additionally ruined by using invented grammar for the genderspecials, something you are also not allowed to complain about unless you want to be called a homophobic Nazi.

I find it fascinating how people are unable to admit they are wrong because they are so convinced that this kind of social justice is the ultimate truth. Any criticism that includes the word "woke" triggers them so hard, like it's a personal insult. Are these people really that brainwashed that they think they need to defend this shit till the end, because only Nazis are sick of being lectured about genderspecials?

 

[Oliver Onions]

to be fair, andromeda was produced by bioware montreal, not the main studio edmonton.
it wasn't even really a "bioware" studio, ea just slapped the label on it to fool people.

In a way I think this makes things worse, because it means Bioware have only managed to produce 2 complete flops in the last 10 years instead of 3.

Maybe Microsoft? Phil is stupid enough to buy it, and MS loves the rainbow fag flag.

Microsoft probably would if they could, but I feel like after the BlizzAcc buyout they would get literally torn apart if they tried to buy up another major studio (even one that's complete shit like Bioware).

Then again, given the recent Xbox Direct only had a whopping 4 games to show off maybe something's better than nothing.

 

[FiveStarAce]

Just read a German article about the disappointing sales of Veilguard and it's hilarious how people in the comments are in denial that wokeness might have been the issue. Every comment pointing out that it was a woke mess is met with "n-n-no, Hogwarts Legacy/Cyberpunk/Baldur's Gate 3 also have woke stuff and they sold great!" and "noooo, the issue was the lame writing/lack of choices/terrible story/blandness", as if wokeness wasn't the underlying reason for all of that.
On top of that, as mentioned earlier in the thread, the German translation was additionally ruined by using invented grammar for the genderspecials, something you are also not allowed to complain about unless you want to be called a homophobic Nazi.

I find it fascinating how people are unable to admit they are wrong because they are so convinced that this kind of social justice is the ultimate truth. Any criticism that includes the word "woke" triggers them so hard, like it's a personal insult. Are these people really that brainwashed that they think they need to defend this shit till the end, because only Nazis are sick of being lectured about genderspecials?

Please tell me they use "Abenteurer*innen" in spoken dialogue lmao

 

[Tanner Glass]

Just read a German article about the disappointing sales of Veilguard and it's hilarious how people in the comments are in denial that wokeness might have been the issue. Every comment pointing out that it was a woke mess is met with "n-n-no, Hogwarts Legacy/Cyberpunk/Baldur's Gate 3 also have woke stuff and they sold great!" and "noooo, the issue was the lame writing/lack of choices/terrible story/blandness", as if wokeness wasn't the underlying reason for all of that.

Because, to be fair, that's partially true. Veilguard isn't just a Woke Disaster - it's also a remarkably bad game through and through.

Even if you remove the entire story (or heaven forbid, put in a good one) - it's still arguably the worst Dragon Age game to play from a game design standpoint. Even Dragon Age 2 (20111) felt more like an RPG with party members having more of an impact on gameplay and many regard that game as bad. They gutted a number of systems to try and turn it into something else and have a very bad version of God of War/Wukong/etc.

There are a lot of games that are light on story/have a bad story that are successful because of the gameplay (Call of Duty and Monster Hunter come to mind) and Veilguard doesn't have anything even close to that.

 

[Hermione Granger]

It is done, not much point in polishing a turd.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard Gets Its Last Update

 

[p1138]

Because, to be fair, that's partially true. Veilguard isn't just a Woke Disaster - it's also a remarkably bad game through and through.

Even if you remove the entire story (or heaven forbid, put in a good one) - it's still arguably the worst Dragon Age game to play from a game design standpoint. Even Dragon Age 2 (20111) felt more like an RPG with party members having more of an impact on gameplay and many regard that game as bad. They gutted a number of systems to try and turn it into something else and have a very bad version of God of War/Wukong/etc.

There are a lot of games that are light on story/have a bad story that are successful because of the gameplay (Call of Duty and Monster Hunter come to mind) and Veilguard doesn't have anything even close to that.

Exactly. Even if the game weren't written by redditors wanting updoots "and then they pulled a bharv and everyone clapped!" the simple fact is that the game part of the videogame is shit. The puzzles are dumb, the combat is idiotic, there's little roleplaying, barely anything you could consider exploration. It doesn't matter if better models and text get tacked on, if the game is garbage at its most fundamental level.

It is done, not much point in polishing a turd.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard Gets Its Last Update

Hmm. So there's been layoffs, leadership at the studio leaving, grossly missed targets, not getting any DLC, last patch announced, and the studio isn't working on ME5 yet.

Yeah... that smells like a studio about to be shut down if they can't come up with some miracle in powerpoint to appease the execs at EA.

 

[Jace on ice]

ME5 allegedly hasn't even entered pre production yet.

Given the typical 5-6 year dev cycle this means if it gets made Bioware will have gone almost 11 years without developing a game that made a profit.

EA isn't going to allow that shit.

 

[Ishtar]

When it comes to woke stuff, it’s important to remember that many people are deeply invested in owning the chuds.

When the chuds say x game is going to fail because gay romance-they get overjoyed and feel utterly triumphant when the game does well. Like-you have to remember that the sort of audience BioWare cultivated isn’t pro woke(they are by default) as much as they are “own and humiliate the chuds however you can”.

I’ve seen this a lot with DAV-people who were deeply emotionally invested in the game’s success, because “the bad people” didn’t like it. If the chuds were indifferent or were glad to see the game-they wouldn’t be going out of their way to defend it. These are almost always trannies, tumblr feminists, soy male libtards and the like. They NEEDED the game to succeed.

And now they are blaming the chuds for it failing.

 

[SmugAutist]

ME5 allegedly hasn't even entered pre production yet.

Given the typical 5-6 year dev cycle this means if it gets made Bioware will have gone almost 11 years without developing a game that made a profit.

EA isn't going to allow that shit.

Back in the 2010s, EA could afford some studios to fail because they could always rely on niggercattle to consistently buy their FIFA, NBA, and Madden games every single year en masse. But that has changed recently. FIFA and NBA are gone and Madden no longer sells as well. If anything, I think the fact that their soccer game failed is an even bigger reason for the stock drop than Veilguard. EA now needs everyone to start pulling their weight, and Bioware is incapable of doing that.

 

[The Penultimate Warrior]

Back in the 2010s, EA could afford some studios to fail because they could always rely on niggercattle to consistently buy their FIFA, NBA, and Madden games every single year en masse. But that has changed recently. FIFA and NBA are gone and Madden no longer sells as well. If anything, I think the fact that their soccer game failed is an even bigger reason for the stock drop than Veilguard. EA now needs everyone to start pulling their weight, and Bioware is incapable of doing that.

College Football 25 is the highest selling sports game by revenue ever in the USA and EA Sports FC is still a top seller. They will always make money no matter how bad they are, not just because they appeal to the casuals but there's no other competition. and you can pump them out annually.

 

[SouthernBitchBob]

There's no chance this changes EA's direction at all. Andrew Wilson is so pozzed and delusional that he's been transparently courting the likes Microsoft and Disney for years while denying it, but they keep turning him down because he obviously expects to retain his CEO job after any kind of merger. Of Microsoft or Disney. Batshit.

 

[Leave_Fargut]

Veilguard unceremoniously being given the bullet like Andromeda is beautiful. Now EA, do us one last favour and kill choke the next ME while it's still in the womb

 

[Observotron]

Has anyone else noticed the amount of cope surrounding Bioware and Mass Effect lately? I keep seeing social media posts and youtube videos saying that "Bioware needs to nail Mass Effect to sruvive".

Really? People think a new Mass Effect is actually going to happen (at least made by Bioware)? Surly that means we're getting a DS 2 remake as well, right?

Let's not forget that the past two installments were mired in controversy, one of them being only slightly less of a financial failure than DAV.

"Oh, the Legendary Edition sold well".

Okay, the Legendary edition is a collection of games made almost 20 years ago by people who are no longer at Bioware or in the industry.

As a massive Mass Effect Fan, I don't want to see what they have to make. Anyone new working on the project are all trannies, and the returning veterans are brain melted political activists. No thanks.

 

[LazyLizard]

Veilguard unceremoniously being given the bullet like Andromeda is beautiful. Now EA, do us one last favour and kill choke the next ME while it's still in the womb

i got bored and quit Andromeda the first time and only finished it years later, a very mediocre game but still 100x better then veilguard which is just sad, how fucking far bioware has fallen.