LogFAQs > #912385620

I_Abibde posted...

Option 1, if you ask me. Option 2 is just painful.

I feel like that's my usual stance. It's why I hope Anthem fails and tanks the company - because the BioWare I loved and considered one of my favorite developers ever is effectively dead, and a corpse is walking around wearing their face. If Anthem succeeds then BioWare continues as a company, but they'll just keep making games like Anthem, exploiting old franchises in terrible ways, and generally just serving as a revenue generator for EA.

I don't want EA rewarded for its crimes. I'd rather see BioWare die and the talented minds go to other developers than to see the company continue to shamble along and shit out garbage under the old brand name.

Of course, it's not like we didn't see the writing on the wall for BioWare - I'm old enough to remember Origin as something other than an online service, and C&C as something other than a mobile game.



Zeus posted...

"Never" is an absurd exaggeration, considering that there's always a chance. I'd rather have a slim chance than no chance.

http://wvww.youtube.com/watch?v=wGdhc9k07Ms&t=0m46s

Never may be an exaggeration, but I wouldn't call it absurd. To this point I can think of precisely zero examples of companies absorbed into companies like EA or Activision that ever managed to escape and produce anything worthwhile again. As Wave pointed out, the Squeenix merger essentially destroyed two companies (and has poisoned at least a few other developers as well since). Bungie's about the only major name developer to escape the clutches of a massive publisher - only to rush into the arms of a different one, which proceeded to take a liquid hot shit on them and ruin them themselves. I can't imagine any scenario at this point where Bungie produces another game I care about - even ex-Bungie employees have mentioned that the entire corporate culture of the studio has radically changed to the point where it isn't really the same company anymore.

In the case of Obsidian I worry less about Microsoft than I do EA and its ilk in terms of executive interference or forcing microtransactions into every game, but we've also seen what happened to Rare, so it's not as if Microsoft is a shining beacon either.

And in this particular case, my "never" was referring less to "They'll never make a good game again" as much as it was signifying "I don't PC game and I'm never going to buy a Xbox One, so even if they make the greatest Obsidian game ever I will never be able to play it".

There's always the possibility that Microsoft will release a 9th gen console that is the greatest console ever and I'll wind up buying it (and thus be able to play Obsidian games on it), but Microsoft has been talking about discontinuing the Xbox entirely for years now, and they're pretty clearly pushing the idea of "games as service" and crossover with PC gaming (both concepts I loathe), which implies whatever they come out with next time around isn't likely to be a console I'm happy to buy, as much as it is a cancerous tumor on gaming that I want to scour with cleansing fire.

So yes, I feel kind of justified in the statement that the statistical likelihood of me ever playing another Obsidian game again is REALLY fucking low.


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