BioWare: Are they entering the "Shyamalan Effect"?

BioWare must be careful now and in the future or they may fall into what I call the "Shyamalan Effect". This effect influences decisions to have an opposite effect of the producer's desired outcome. For example, M. Night Shyamalan (the director/screenplay writer) had made several good films ("The Sixth Sense" and "Unbreakable") early in his career and was unanimous for a certain style and genre of film. Producers and Shyamalan blatantly attach his name to a title to have the desired outcome of influencing thoughts and judgments about material before an audience has seen it. Now, when he makes a film or producers attach his name to films to promote said film ("Devil") it still has the desired effect of evoking predeterminations about the material, but is now a deterrent, for me, to see anything he has made or is associated with because of now having a much longer history of very bad movies.

I believe that BioWare is on the verge of becoming a mockery despite the weight they carry in the RPG community because of greed and the abuse of their name or simply because they are for the first time not under their own leadership (they’ve been absorbed by EA). After years and years of delivering "best in class" RPG titles BioWare has become unanimous for a certain style and genre of game, The Role-playing Game. But as of late have been falling flat.

Do not read into this wrongly, I admittedly do say it is unfair to "bash" them just yet. If you look up a list of the top 100 RPGs ever made either BioWare, a rebranded subsidiary of, or normal subsidiary of Bioware usually has several in the top 10 alone. I cannot condemn their work of the past 15 years based off of 2/15 of their game making experience. I am afraid though in the past couple of years that they are getting too comfortable and becoming part of a "formula gaming".

Formula gaming is in a way like "going Hollywood". Bioware has discovered something that a more massive audience will take part in and instead of making works of art and changing people's perspectives and lives through the power of storytelling and content with epics that can withstand the test known as time...Hollywood only cares about how many asses are in theater seats. In turn, doing so creates a more successful game (moneywise) to a broader audience, but by retrofitting these games to suit the needs of a "dumbed down" audience is not respecting the gamers that have been supporting them for all these years. I just don't want to see BioWare or all videogame developers in general trying to appease a larger audience by changing their Intellectual Properties into something it was never intended to be. Changing successful Intellectual Properties seems counterproductive and can ruin IPs for people who have appreciated the game from the beginning. By doing so, videogames try to appease an audience that did not support them or their developers through some harder times in BioWare's and videogaming’s history. Hopefully this is not the case for Bioware, but I do fear it could become like this if they don't change their act immediately.

If this mentality of "profits over product" doesn’t change soon we are going to have Justin Beibers in games and shirtless Twilight Jacobs handing out videogame cases from a dispenser in his abs.

I do fear for the future of BioWare’s upcoming games like Mass Effect and Dragon Age. BioWare has sent out word of a multi-player based version of Dragon Age in a game that was originally about micromanagement of multiple characters by a single player and has been taking every step since “DA: Origins” blindly in the wrong direction continuously. In my review of Dragon Age 2 I did say, jokingly, that they should add a multi-player aspect to the game because I believed it would bring its fun factor up…but that was only a prologue to my next point stating that that is because the game seems to be missing the mark and not delivering what should be expected. I never thought they would actually do it.

Mass Effect being my favorite story in gaming, but part two feeling more like a shooter with RPG elements rather than an RPG with shooter elements makes me hesitate for the future of the IP after the third rendition. Regardless, I still have high hopes for the Mass Effect intellectual property and I hope it continues the path it is on with making amazing entries into the franchise.

All of that being said, I do not think it is very presumptuous of me to speak for many people when I say this, but I think a lot of people out there have BioWare under a very scrupulous magnifying glass right now and over the next couple of game releases. If BioWare doesn't deliver they will be shunned by the community that first loved them. It will be a sad but true betrayal story in which they turned their back on us.

What do you think?

Do you share my concerns or have you been pleased with BioWare's current game development directions?

BioWare must be careful now and in the future or they may fall into what I call the "Shyamalan Effect". This effect influences decisions to have an opposite effect of the producer's desired outcome. For example, M. Night Shyamalan (the director/screenplay writer) had made several good films ("The Sixth Sense" and "Unbreakable") early in his career and was unanimous for a certain style and genre of film. Producers and Shyamalan blatantly attach his name to a title to have the desired outcome of influencing thoughts and judgments about material before an audience has seen it. Now, when he makes a film or producers attach his name to films to promote said film ("Devil") it still has the desired effect of evoking predeterminations about the material, but is now a deterrent, for me, to see anything he has made or is associated with because of now having a much longer history of very bad movies.

I believe that BioWare is on the verge of becoming a mockery despite the weight they carry in the RPG community because of greed and the abuse of their name or simply because they are for the first time not under their own leadership (they’ve been absorbed by EA). After years and years of delivering "best in class" RPG titles BioWare has become unanimous for a certain style and genre of game, The Role-playing Game. But as of late have been falling flat.

Do not read into this wrongly, I admittedly do say it is unfair to "bash" them just yet. If you look up a list of the top 100 RPGs ever made either BioWare, a rebranded subsidiary of, or normal subsidiary of Bioware usually has several in the top 10 alone. I cannot condemn their work of the past 15 years based off of 2/15 of their game making experience. I am afraid though in the past couple of years that they are getting too comfortable and becoming part of a "formula gaming".

Formula gaming is in a way like "going Hollywood". Bioware has discovered something that a more massive audience will take part in and instead of making works of art and changing people's perspectives and lives through the power of storytelling and content with epics that can withstand the test known as time...Hollywood only cares about how many asses are in theater seats. In turn, doing so creates a more successful game (moneywise) to a broader audience, but by retrofitting these games to suit the needs of a "dumbed down" audience is not respecting the gamers that have been supporting them for all these years. I just don't want to see BioWare or all videogame developers in general trying to appease a larger audience by changing their Intellectual Properties into something it was never intended to be. Changing successful Intellectual Properties seems counterproductive and can ruin IPs for people who have appreciated the game from the beginning. By doing so, videogames try to appease an audience that did not support them or their developers through some harder times in BioWare's and videogaming’s history. Hopefully this is not the case for Bioware, but I do fear it could become like this if they don't change their act immediately.

If this mentality of "profits over product" doesn’t change soon we are going to have Justin Beibers in games and shirtless Twilight Jacobs handing out videogame cases from a dispenser in his abs.

I do fear for the future of BioWare’s upcoming games like Mass Effect and Dragon Age. BioWare has sent out word of a multi-player based version of Dragon Age in a game that was originally about micromanagement of multiple characters by a single player and has been taking every step since “DA: Origins” blindly in the wrong direction continuously. In my review of Dragon Age 2 I did say, jokingly, that they should add a multi-player aspect to the game because I believed it would bring its fun factor up…but that was only a prologue to my next point stating that that is because the game seems to be missing the mark and not delivering what should be expected. I never thought they would actually do it.

Mass Effect being my favorite story in gaming, but part two feeling more like a shooter with RPG elements rather than an RPG with shooter elements makes me hesitate for the future of the IP after the third rendition. Regardless, I still have high hopes for the Mass Effect intellectual property and I hope it continues the path it is on with making amazing entries into the franchise.

All of that being said, I do not think it is very presumptuous of me to speak for many people when I say this, but I think a lot of people out there have BioWare under a very scrupulous magnifying glass right now and over the next couple of game releases. If BioWare doesn't deliver they will be shunned by the community that first loved them. It will be a sad but true betrayal story in which they turned their back on us.

What do you think?

Do you share my concerns or have you been pleased with BioWare's current game development directions?

@PlasmaBeam44 said:

To be fair, that Mass Effect 2 hair is atrocious.

@PlasmaBeam44: I don't see the problem

I would say Bioware dropped the ball with Neverwinter nights and went downhill after that and never picked it up again. I did enjoy KoTOR a bit when it was released but in hindsight it's p poor both in storytelling and it's gameplay and rpg mechanics.

I would certainly say tho that they are a company that lives on former glories which people still remember fondly so some people will give them a chance while for others they will represent a developer gone stale.

@PlasmaBeam44 said:

To be fair, that Mass Effect 2 hair is atrocious.

BioWare set out to tell BioWare stories, not make number crunching combat simulators.  But in 1998, the only kind of game that actually allowed any kind of role playing was the Western-style computer RPG.  Now we have first person shooters with loot and critical hits, we got third person shooters with experience bars and magic missile. 
 
What I really wonder is that when sidescrolling platformers became unfeasible for major developers to produce, the indie community took hold and started building their own.  Where are the indie developed Baldur's Gate games?  It's not like you can make a combat system worse than 2nd Edition D&D.

You people are crazy. Mass Effect 1 and 2 are two of the best games I have ever played. I thought the setting and story telling in Jade Empire were awesome. I don't see the new Star Wars MMO being up my ally, but it certainly has a great deal of quality as a game.

I will keep giving them my trust until I see them abusing their name, but so far, that hasn't happened.

@MrRedwine said:

You people are crazy. Mass Effect 1 and 2 are two of the best games I have ever played. I thought the setting and story telling in Jade Empire were awesome. I don't see the new Star Wars MMO being up my ally, but it certainly has a great deal of quality as a game.

I will keep giving them my trust until I see them abusing their name, but so far, that hasn't happened.

Dragon Age II.

People are great at freaking out at nothing.

They're doing fine. ME3 is worrisome, and DA2 was a major misstep (but still a great game in its own right... if it were DA1, I think it'd have gone over quite well), but their good-to-bad ratio is more than good enough to earn a couple bad games' worth of trust.

@Hailinel said:

@MrRedwine said:

You people are crazy. Mass Effect 1 and 2 are two of the best games I have ever played. I thought the setting and story telling in Jade Empire were awesome. I don't see the new Star Wars MMO being up my ally, but it certainly has a great deal of quality as a game.

I will keep giving them my trust until I see them abusing their name, but so far, that hasn't happened.

Dragon Age II.

Yet that game has a better more well grounded story to it and is EXACTLY the same as dragon age origins only twice as fast. only problem with it was the locations. That is IT.

Besides, around every year there NEEDS to be a game to bitch about for the next 10K years. last year was FF13, this years was Dragon age 2.

@CrimsonNoir said:

@Hailinel said:

@PlasmaBeam44 said:

To be fair, that Mass Effect 2 hair is atrocious.

It's not the hair, the ME3 version of Ashley looks like she used to be a man.

Funny how dorky looking nerds on the internet are always the most vocal about a woman appearance isn't it?

A lot of their decisions recently just feel like they're being made by some business analyst looking at a chart somewhere, rather than by people who have a feel for the industry.  'These games that sell 5+ million copies have Feature X so we must have Feature X too!'  
 
I can't fault them for chasing more sales, but they seem to be very blasé about the fact that they are risking their relatively safe (and perfectly healthy) 2-3m sales in a sub-genre which basically belongs (or belonged) to them, in order to chase 5+ million sales in genres they really have no business being in.  They don't have a God given right to those 2-3m sales just because of their reputation -as was shown by Dragon Age 2- and I think if they insist on following their current course (make everything Xtreme, Actiony and Multiplayer) they're just going to lose their fanbase AND get their ass handed to them by developers who are MUCH better at those things than Bioware are.
 
I still don't understand how they haven't decided that it's actually Bethesda who they should be looking at and being influenced by if they want to get their sales up, rather than Gears of God of War of Duty or whatever it is they're chasing at the moment. They should be capable of ripping off Bethesda (because Beth are pretty mediocre at action etc. too), but I really don't think they're good enough to make mass-appeal action / multiplayer games.

@MrRedwine said:

You people are crazy. Mass Effect 1 and 2 are two of the best games I have ever played. I thought the setting and story telling in Jade Empire were awesome. I don't see the new Star Wars MMO being up my ally, but it certainly has a great deal of quality as a game.

I will keep giving them my trust until I see them abusing their name, but so far, that hasn't happened.

Did you even read the blog? I say that Mass Effect is my favorite story in gaming and i hope they CONTINUE in the great direction the franchise has been headed in. Jade Empire...really?

I will keep giving them my trust until I see them abusing their name, but so far, that hasn't happened.

You must have missed Dragon Age 2. It was a rush job, half-fast, same environment over and over and over and over, polygon-exploding-gorefest-from-a-dagger-stab piece of bleh. It basically solely took a ride on the the coattails of "Origins" success. If that isn't abusing their name i don't know what is.

@Jimbo said:

@PlasmaBeam44 said:

To be fair they have only changed the entire structure of her face and all of the features on it.

Obviously she left the Alliance to seek fame and fortune in the future porn industry and decided to have some work done. Also this is a future where Shepard could look completely different from game to game, why not the NPC's? Plastic surgery and insecurities don't exist in the future?

@big_jon said:

@CrimsonNoir said:

@Hailinel said:

@PlasmaBeam44 said:

To be fair, that Mass Effect 2 hair is atrocious.

It's not the hair, the ME3 version of Ashley looks like she used to be a man.

Funny how dorky looking nerds on the internet are always the most vocal about a woman appearance isn't it?

There just really was no need for change... She looked fine, they didn't need to change her entire bone structure.

EDIT: Btw, were you at the pineapple hotel at PAX this year? Cause that's where I saw Vinnie.

I dont think their situation is that grim just yet, I still have faith. But they need: 
- A new IP. 
- To get their shit together.

@Synaptic said:

@big_jon said:

@CrimsonNoir said:

@Hailinel said:

@PlasmaBeam44 said:

To be fair, that Mass Effect 2 hair is atrocious.

It's not the hair, the ME3 version of Ashley looks like she used to be a man.

Funny how dorky looking nerds on the internet are always the most vocal about a woman appearance isn't it?

There just really was no need for change... She looked fine, they didn't need to change her entire bone structure.

EDIT: Btw, were you at the pineapple hotel at PAX this year? Cause that's where I saw Vinnie.

Last I recalled I picked her as romatic option for my second character in ME1 only to find out she looked kind of weird in ME2 and was a total bitch.So I'm glad I sticked with Liara for my other guy.Besides who honestly picks Ashley as the main love option?It's like the most boring generic thing you can do/pick.I just picked her to see what her side was like and she seemed nice in ME1.

@Brodehouse said:

BioWare set out to tell BioWare stories, not make number crunching combat simulators. But in 1998, the only kind of game that actually allowed any kind of role playing was the Western-style computer RPG. Now we have first person shooters with loot and critical hits, we got third person shooters with experience bars and magic missile. What I really wonder is that when sidescrolling platformers became unfeasible for major developers to produce, the indie community took hold and started building their own. Where are the indie developed Baldur's Gate games? It's not like you can make a combat system worse than 2nd Edition D&D.

Side scrollers take very little time to produce relative to a full-blown Bioware sized RPG.

@Jay444111 said:

@Hailinel said:

@MrRedwine said:

You people are crazy. Mass Effect 1 and 2 are two of the best games I have ever played. I thought the setting and story telling in Jade Empire were awesome. I don't see the new Star Wars MMO being up my ally, but it certainly has a great deal of quality as a game.

I will keep giving them my trust until I see them abusing their name, but so far, that hasn't happened.

Dragon Age II.

Yet that game has a better more well grounded story to it and is EXACTLY the same as dragon age origins only twice as fast. only problem with it was the locations. That is IT.

Besides, around every year there NEEDS to be a game to bitch about for the next 10K years. last year was FF13, this years was Dragon age 2.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA

Yeah, right.

@PlasmaBeam44 said:

so i guess she also has an important operation at the start of the next game

in which case this should be flagged as a spoiler

@PlasmaBeam44 said:

I bet they didnt get the likness rights from the model they based Ashley on. so they mad a crappy retcon and shit all over 3d studio max instead of doing the smart thing and, you know, getting someone else.

@Jay444111 said:

@Hailinel said:

@MrRedwine said:

You people are crazy. Mass Effect 1 and 2 are two of the best games I have ever played. I thought the setting and story telling in Jade Empire were awesome. I don't see the new Star Wars MMO being up my ally, but it certainly has a great deal of quality as a game.

I will keep giving them my trust until I see them abusing their name, but so far, that hasn't happened.

Dragon Age II.

Yet that game has a better more well grounded story to it and is EXACTLY the same as dragon age origins only twice as fast. only problem with it was the locations. That is IT.

Besides, around every year there NEEDS to be a game to bitch about for the next 10K years. last year was FF13, this years was Dragon age 2.

I would agree that DA2 seems more "grounded" with reality than DA:O because of its political nuances and bigotry through the narrative of the social strife between the templars and mages, BUT Origins had that as well. It had a political betrayal of a king and Roman-esque political backstabbings and coups. It just also had a large over arching fantasy story niche' with the blight and Archdemon.

As for the part where you say "That is IT", here is my answer to my problems with DA2 that supersede the issue of the environment usage and re-usage.

DA2 Criticism and Constructive Criticisms HERE

@Jimbo said:

@PlasmaBeam44 said:

To be fair they have only changed the entire structure of her face and all of the features on it.

Obviously she left the Alliance to seek fame and fortune in the future porn industry and decided to have some work done. Also this is a future where Shepard could look completely different from game to game, why not the NPC's? Plastic surgery and insecurities don't exist in the future?

BioWare will continue making games, and they'll continue sucking. But at the same time they'll continue selling. If you like the "games" BioWare makes nowadays, that's fine. But I'll never buy a BioWare game again unless they return to you know, actually developing RPGs.

@Hailinel said:

@MrRedwine said:

You people are crazy. Mass Effect 1 and 2 are two of the best games I have ever played. I thought the setting and story telling in Jade Empire were awesome. I don't see the new Star Wars MMO being up my ally, but it certainly has a great deal of quality as a game.

I will keep giving them my trust until I see them abusing their name, but so far, that hasn't happened.

Dragon Age II.

DA2 really wasn't that bad, it wasn't as good as the first one but it is still better than moist RPG's that came out this year.

@Hailinel said:

@MrRedwine said:

You people are crazy. Mass Effect 1 and 2 are two of the best games I have ever played. I thought the setting and story telling in Jade Empire were awesome. I don't see the new Star Wars MMO being up my ally, but it certainly has a great deal of quality as a game.

I will keep giving them my trust until I see them abusing their name, but so far, that hasn't happened.

Dragon Age II.

C'mon! I've only played about fourteen-hours, but so far the characters are engaging and the writing is solid. I can only imagine that the game gets way worse for it to deserve the scorn it receives. Is it really that bad?

@mylifeforAiur: If you can handle the extreme repetition in locations by the end and some odd plot choices in the last few hours, it really isn't too bad. Just hard to live up to the amazingness of DA:O.

@TerraMantis: The thing you call Shyamalan effect can't really be applied yet to Bioware because they're actually not a one-trick pony. Shyamalan's initial success was the "twist", something that became a known quantity pretty quickly and the only thing you expected from his movies was that there would eventually be a twist. Some you could see a mile away. Bioware, so far, isn't a one trick pony nor are they poster-boy names for garbage. And I would hesitate to judge before the next Dragon Age and Mass Effect are out because while they are in some areas simplifying their games, they don't seem quite set in their ways just yet so I wouldn't be surprised if the next ones are less simplistic but in a better way than the first outings. It would be foolish for them to ignore their core base, but as with everything, they're also a company in need of money to support their own efforts.

Besides, what would you rather do; make less money and cater to a core group that sticks with you so long as you don't innovate beyond their comfort zone. Or make more money, appeal to a larger audience but alienate some fans in the process? I would always cut some fans if the ratio is better. Artistic integrity never paid any bills.

@Hailinel said:

@MrRedwine said:

You people are crazy. Mass Effect 1 and 2 are two of the best games I have ever played. I thought the setting and story telling in Jade Empire were awesome. I don't see the new Star Wars MMO being up my ally, but it certainly has a great deal of quality as a game.

I will keep giving them my trust until I see them abusing their name, but so far, that hasn't happened.

Dragon Age II.

DA2 really wasn't that bad, it wasn't as good as the first one but it is still better than moist RPG's that came out this year.

They have done nothing wrong to the Mass Effect series to make me concerned. The arbitrary label of "RPG" means nothing to me. All I want is a great game that carries over the core fundamentals that make a mass effect game a mass effect game.

It's not BioWare's fault, it's EA's. You really think BioWare wants to be doing stuff like this, or is it the pressure from EA to bring up sales?

Also,

@PlasmaBeam44 said:

Doesn't effect me, I made the right decision in Mass Effect 1.

I think this is relevant here:

http://www.metacritic.com/company/bioware?page=0

If their lowest average in years is 79 I'd say they are doing pretty amazing work.

ME 2 became a trudge to the finish after the 10 hour mark. No matter the story situation, every fucking mission turned into an hour long shooting fest in arenas with chest-high walls. FUCK THAT.

What's basically happening with the Mass Effect series is that Bioware isn't sticking to making strictly RPGs and fans of their older material are flipping their shit. I think their doing a great job too. Say what you will about Mass Effect 2's lack of RPG elements, their combat mechanic should be revered for their execution of what's essentially a magic system in an third person shooter.

Good read.
 
I think we'll find out where BioWare is headed for sure with the release of ME3.

It's threads like these that remind me I'm probably one of the only people that actually enjoyed Dragon Age II. It wasn't that bad - then again, I didn't really like Origins all that much so I can probably see how someone who loved Origins wouldn't like it.

I don't see anything wrong with the direction they've taken Mass Effect in though - from what I've seen of ME3 they've taken the better parts of ME1 and ME2 and combined them. As a fan of cooperative multiplayer I can't say that's an unwelcome addition either.

I like Bioware and I've enjoyed all the games that they've made. I doubt that'll change anytime soon for me.

This is not a good argument. What do you mean by "greed?" Making a game that appeals to more people, particularly given that the story has been so strong, is called good game design, good business, and just good sense. If anything is egregious about Bioware it's that they can't produce much in the way of good DLC (yes Shadow Broker was solid, but that's one plus in the midst of terrible Dragon Age contemt, and poor Mass Effect stuff)

Bioware's "responsibility", if you want to call it that, is to make the best game they can. If the right formula calls for more shooter elements, then so be it. The percentage of gamers who want to micro-manage stats (even among RPG fans like myself) is going down pretty fast. Even looking at Skyrim, the shift towards a more streamlined upgrade system makes sense.

Finally, we're not anywhere close to the area of tasteless product placement within Bioware. Believe me, those guys know their credibility would take a huge hit for say, pulling an Alan Wake

@Vegetable_Side_Dish said:

ME 2 became a trudge to the finish after the 10 hour mark. No matter the story situation, every fucking mission turned into an hour long shooting fest in arenas with chest-high walls. FUCK THAT.

This. (Although I still enjoyed the game... and yeah, I'm just not very good at FPSses)

On another note, reading through this thread actually makes me want to take a stab at DA2. I absolutely loved DAO and was pretty stoked about DA2 until I caught wind of the critical shitstorm... then I kind of avoided all mention of it.

First off, the two Ashleys have a *lot* of similarities in the bone structure, I think you all are fooling yourselves. There is a difference in the eyes, which have become rounder, and obviously her makeup isn't helping anyone out here.

Now, to the topic at hand, I will admit that in my heart I am less confident with what Bioware is doing in this particular period because I think that they are attempting to find ways to cushion the costs of TOR, which is not the surefire hit it must have seemed years ago when it was just a concept on a page. Chances are they will continue making risky or corner-cutting decisions in order to acquire that money in the foreseeable future, which is unfortunate if true. I have to give Bioware credit where credit is due, though, because they are always trying to mix the RPG formula up in interesting ways, and that trend continues right up through DA2.

I don't give a shit what Ashley looks like.

I haven't finished Dragon Age II to truly judge the game for myself but so far I've enjoyed every Bioware game I've played since Knights of the Old Republic. So I am not concerned about the future of Bioware and have full confidence in their talents.

@snowballingblood said:

@Vegetable_Side_Dish said:

ME 2 became a trudge to the finish after the 10 hour mark. No matter the story situation, every fucking mission turned into an hour long shooting fest in arenas with chest-high walls. FUCK THAT.

This. (Although I still enjoyed the game... and yeah, I'm just not very good at FPSses)

On another note, reading through this thread actually makes me want to take a stab at DA2. I absolutely loved DAO and was pretty stoked about DA2 until I caught wind of the critical shitstorm... then I kind of avoided all mention of it.

Mass Effect 2 wasn't an FPS. FPS stands for First Person Shooter.

They lost me after pissing all over Mass Effect 2.

Who cares about Ashley? That cunt is dead anyway if you played it the right way

@Jimbo said:

@PlasmaBeam44 said:

To be fair they have only changed the entire structure of her face and all of the features on it.

Shepard found a new love so she did too - plastic surgery.

@JasonR86 said:

People are great at freaking out at nothing.

Yep.