After EA cancelling Visceral’s Star Wars single-player game, a lot of gamers feared that the big publisher would no longer invest on single-player experiences. And it appears they were right. According to a former Bioware developer, EA is currently interested in games that can be more easily monetized. And from the looks of it, single-player are not among them.
As ex-Bioware gameplay designer Manveer Heir told Waypoint, EA is generally pushing for more open-world games because it can monetise them better.
“The words in there that were used are ‘have them come back again and again’. Why do you care about that at EA? The reason you care about that is because microtransactions: buying card packs in the Mass Effect games, the multiplayer. It’s the same reason we added card packs to Mass Effect 3: how do you get people to keep coming back to a thing instead of ‘just’ playing for 60 to 100 hours?”
Electronic Arts has a reputation of being one of the worst publishers. The company was voted for the worst company in America. Moreover, and according to Ian Bell, it tried to acquire via shady means Slightly Mad Studios. And… well… let’s not forget that it shut down Visceral Games recently.
According to Heir, most publishers – and not just EA – only care about the highest return on investment. As such, they don’t care about what the players want but about what the players will pay for.
“You need to understand the amount of money that’s at play with microtransactions. I’m not allowed to say the number but I can tell you that when Mass Effect 3 multiplayer came out, those card packs we were selling, the amount of money we made just off those card packs was so significant that’s the reason Dragon Age has multiplayer, that’s the reason other EA products started getting multiplayer that hadn’t really had them before, because we nailed it and brought in a ton of money. It’s repeatable income versus one-time income.”
Heir concluded that single-player triple-A games are dead on EA, at least for now.
“Anthem is not a traditional-looking BioWare game, right? If that’s what you’re seeing from a place like BioWare, owned by EA, a place where I worked for seven years; if that’s what you’re seeing from Visceral now closing and going to this other Vancouver studio; what it means is that the linear single-player triple-A game at EA is dead for the time being.”
Thanks Eurogamer
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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Not surprised, not one bit.
Welp, how we are going respond to that…that is just EA…ignoring the other publishers, since Activision…well…you know buying stuff is legit cause it’s 2017
EA being EA. No suprise really……
I would believe this if this ex dev was not in charge of Mass Effect Andromeda and notoriously racist towards white people, even in this interview in vice waypoint yes vice, he said that ea is just hiring people who are useless because they are white and if you take a loook at Glassdoor, EA has really high approval rate by devs as does ubisoft but not cdprojekt.
I hate the investment system and stock value :/This will make the companies do anything to earn money and highest return on investment….
And, of course, ignorant people support microtransactions…I can’t believe someone spend 15000$ on Mass Effect MP*_*
“This will make the companies do anything to earn money and highest return on investment”
welcome to the real world :p
>This will make the companies do anything to earn money and highest return on investment
That’s the point of literally every business, as it should be. The great thing is that the limit companies have is that they have to coerce us to VOLUNTARILY give them our money.
You sound like a 13yo that doesn’t understand basic economics of supply and demand.
Without “the investment system and stock value” you wouldn’t have any consumer products in your life that you either need or want. Someone had to invest in companies that produce the things we consume and the stock market is a way to both fund and determine the health of individual companies and entire sectors.
That’s like saying you hate “the supermarket system” because you eat too many pies and are now fat. It’s not the system’s fault.
WB doing the same thing
I know some players who aren’t rich that spend 100s in FIFA games every year.
Shoutout to all the utter bellends who paid for micro-transactions, still do and will continue to do so despite all this sh*t.
This is your doing.
How times have changed. Games used to have tons of content bundled in them so players can spend their time and skill to unlock. Now, games are designed to make players to endlessly pay for every little content.
I always chuckled whenever publishers/dev said they’re adding microtransaction/lootcrates to help gamers who doesn’t have time to grind through their games. Really? Gamers now have to pay for Easy Difficulty? I wouldn’t be surprised if the next Dark Souls or Cuphead will have cards/gems/lootcrates to “help” casual games avoid grinding altogether.
>I wouldn’t be surprised if the next Dark Souls or Cuphead will have cards/gems/lootcrates to “help” casual games avoid grinding altogether.
If gamers show a willingness to want them, you can be certain publishers/developers will. It’s their responsibility to serve the consumer, even when consumers like us wish other fellow gamers would be more conscientious. It’s a different generation of gamer, man.
Is just the opposite. Devs creating needs that people do not have and making the people believe they actually need it
lol WRONG. Producers don’t CREATE needs; they address them. It’s called demand discovery. Products are produced and put on the market and CONSUMERS, based on their behavior, determine what producers should make more of or serve more of. Full stop.
Consumers aren’t helpless robots that will buy literally anything. That’s ludicrous. If that was the case, every company would be successful.
Blame gamers, not publishers or developers, for the state of gaming if you don’t like it.
I have to agree and blame gamers for the current state of gaming. Gaming Youtubers have been calling for gamers to vote with their wallets for stuff like this and unfortunately gamers voted for more lootboxes. It’s a free market after all and the ones with the most money to spend are calling the shots.
The triple-AAA studios and games may have gone lootbox-crazy or drunk with games-as-a-service mentality but their shift of direction could open up the door for the other devs who couldn’t afford such expensive long-term plan to cater the non-gambling gamers. Hopefully, they don’t get a bad deal with some publishers and got gobbled up like Visceral Games.
It’s like this, the way I see it. I hate the lottery. I think it’s silly. My mom wasted thousands of dollars on scratch-offs and lotto tickets over the last 20 years or so, but all of those transactions are voluntary. It’s gambling, but people like to gamble.
As I see it, no voluntary transaction between producer and consumer can be deemed bad for the parties involved. Now, WE may disagree, but in the end, a deal between the two parties is their business.
In the end, producers make stuff and shove it out into the wild and just have to wait and see how consumers respond. I’m a superhero/comic book movie fan and when people complain about how many are being made, all you have to do is look at the grosses. It’s what masses of people want. I hate reality TV, but it’s what people want, based on the ratings.
For me personally, when a game like Shadow of War(which I was previously SUPER-HYPED for) integrates stuff like loot boxes and an overabundance of DLC that strips content from the game, I lose all interest and the publisher and developer lost a sale. I don’t play that game, figuratively and literally, but I can’t complain if millions of fellow gamers don’t follow my lead but follow their own self-interests. I respect them as fellow consumers but won’t follow their example.
I think nobody asked for lootboxes or for unlockables being paid instead of free.
Conumers aren’t robots, but are incredibly dumd, they will buy anything related with their favourite brand attached on it because they can not show any judgment
Publishers made them, consumers accepted and now are mandatory.
yup, so many things we never wanted but they decided we do and the media backed them on it.
“I always chuckled whenever publishers/dev said they’re adding microtransaction/lootcrates to help gamers who doesn’t have time to grind through their games.”
Things have definitely changed and Publishers are flat out lying when they say that they are putting in microtransactions and loot boxes to help players in single player games. They are putting microtransactions and loot boxes in single player games to help themselves to more money. It used to be that single player games had cheat codes for people who didn’t have much time to spend in a game, lacked experience/skill, had a disability such that it made it nearly impossible to get through some tough spots in a game but now some Developers are trying to sell cheats.
Funny you should say they are trying to sell cheats. Just before replying I watched some video about disappointing game reboots and one of the games mentioned is Shadowrun FPS reboot. If I’m not mistaken when the game first came out PC Gamer magazine(the good old paper one) said some of the special abilities in the game are just cheat codes disguised as cool gameplay features.
Now, they are just straight out selling them.
I remember reading somewhere that ea said they could charge people per bullet fired in battlefield
I’ll give it couple years to see if this is the universal AAA direction, if it is I might just check out of video gaming, PC or otherwise, I don’t wanna but I didn’t sign up for this casino nickel and dime sh it.
As long as their are indie devs we will keep on making rad games for gamers, don’t worry we have your back.
I do agree though that if this is what AAA becomes it will suck and I want no part of it either.
ellex is good, has no microtransctions or dlc and wont have.
I’ll read the article once I’ve stopped laughing at the demise of NeoGAF.
Oh, I see that it’s quoting the unashamed racist and cretinous SJW that is Manveer Heir, formerly of the since defunct BioWare Montreal. So I won’t be reading it after all.
the gaming industry is going downhill each generation…last gen was DLC’s now micro-transactions and death of proper single player games…whats next? paying to graphics settings unlocked…ads ingame like mobile? where is the limit and why there is none?!?!
games with crypto mining are the future. i bet EA is already fapping to the idea. imagine those cpu and gpu problems. cant w8 for the shtshow, got a popcorn bag already
Today’s satire is tomorrows reality, I could just imagine whale AAA sycophants defending game crypto mining on forums.
shhhhh keep quiet dont give em ideas.
FF XV is basically a very big ad of certain noodles and camping equipment brands
Late stage capitalism.
No, just gamers pursuing their own self-interest. Don’t blame Capitalism. Capitalism gives us choice. With Capitalism, we fight on Black Friday over cheap flat-screen 4K TVs. In collectivist economies, people kill each other in bread lines over government hand-outs.
We’re EXTREMELY privileged when our big concerns involve microtransactions in video games.
Which will bite them in the end because they’re coming in way late with nothing new to offer while monetizing it.
Companies want to make money…what else is new.
That’s actually the sole responsibility of any company. It’d be irresponsible to all involved for a company to not want to make money.
Responsibility of the company owners and shareholders, The workers don’t give a rats as long as wages are paid for their time, Otherwise they move on to another place!
You seem to think people revolve around a company, It’s just work for x amount of time to pay the bills, Unless you are the owner or shareholder then you give a stuff about what happens.
I didn’t say EMPLOYEES bare the responsibility, only the amorphous concept of “a company”.
My point is that companies exist to continue to exist as any lifeform does. The management is in charge of collecting, retaining and maintaining productive labor that helps in this endeavor. It’s why people are hired and fired; if you can’t get in line and help the company survive and expand, you’re dead weight and cut, as you should be.
What doe ea have to do in order for you to care? Come to your house and stop stealing things?
Wtf? This article is just talking about what EA is already doing.
How is preferring open world for financial reasons “stealing”?
This isn’t about “caring”. Me caring isn’t going to stop EA from making money by milking open world. That’s just what companies do.
how is EA still in business is still a mystery
still the worst company in america
FIFA ultimate team
It’s the worst company with the worst audience, anyone who says they need a yearly copy of fifa and expecting something new is deluded.
well dice is keeping them alive and the occasional sports game.
Dice will definitely have a blunder with $hittyfront 2
as for sports games… can’t do much about them
dumb dudebros buy em every year
Even if they don’t do it,I never buy EA product again…
People wake up stop using micro-transactions you are killing off gaming.
Gamers should start a movement group like a LGBT community and we have to go viral with this and use the media to spread our word. From past decade we are getting shittier games every year and costs are only getting up. Its time to stop it.
Totally agree.
Why Dsog is removing my posts ? it did not contain nothing baaad. 🙂
This thing existed it was called gamergate and it managed to force the game journaist sites to adopt ethics policies and do everything like the FTC told them to do.
You know what happened after that, which was inevitable seeing as how the entire games journalism is filled with corrupt individuals who hide behind a “progressive” political view to hide what kinda of people they are, just like the owner of neogaf.
There isnt any point to even bother starting a movement. If the movement doesnt call games journalism on their wrongdoings, then its a movement backed by games journalists who, lets face it, dont really seem to care about consumers and are buddies with developers, even sleeping together as we saw a few years ago, pc gamer journo with ubisoft emploeyee of all people.
So there isnt any point because if you are not with em, you are against them…and in order to be with em you have to be one of them and join the corrupt clique of game journos.
Also look at Ellex, no preorders, no dlc, none of that, just one solid game.
Like you said only eastern european studios make great games, because they are not part of the clique, same with japan.
He’s also a huge bigot and racist.
The dude is a racist and a clown, but he was responsible for actual shooting gameplay and stuff. It was probably the only decent thing in Andromeda. Writing, animation, idiotic menus and crafting is why the game was horrible.
The EuroGamer article also discloses in an interview with Manveer Heir that players in Mass Effect 3 multiplayer were known to spend upwards $15,000.00 on micro transactions. At this point can you really blame EA for there money incentive practices? The gamer can only blame them self.
Apparently microtransactions are highly addictive with some people. The craziest one I’ve heard of so far is the guy that stole 5 million from his company and spent 1 million dollars of that on microtransactions in Game Of War. Links go to moderation here but anyone interested can easily Google it.
It’s not necessarily hardcore gamers, Star Wars fans will buy anything especially something that’s is rare and collectible. Christmas brings huge sales for companies, most parents don’t even know what they’re buying and give their kid a credit card to play with as well.
“Manveer Heim is a racist POS”
Please give a real world example of how he is a racist
I would believe this if this ex dev was not in charge of Mass Effect Andromeda and notoriously racist towards white people, even in this interview in vice waypoint yes vice, he said that ea is just hiring people who are useless because they are white and if you take a loook at Glassdoor, EA has really high approval rate by devs as does ubisoft but not cdprojekt.
If EA wants to abandon single-player games, they are free to do so. It sucks for us single-player gamers, but there isn’t anything inherently wrong with it. But I just wish that they would sell (or at least license) these properties out to other developers/publishers instead of either abandoning them or turning them into some multiplayer monstrosity that they were never meant to be.
These companies are successful because fans of their properties supported them, so sitting on those properties or bastardising them instead of giving other developers the chance to give those fans what they want just seems disrespectful.
censorship is really petty, i typed f u c k. if people are offend by “swear” words in the 21 century they are pretty sad.
“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.”
? George Orwell, 1984