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Tag: Anthem
Anthem Finally Getting That Overhaul We’ve Heart Rumors About
It’s been a while since we last heard from Anthem.
Hard to believe Anthem launched nearly a year ago next week but it’s been pretty quiet on the western front with Bioware not doing a whole lot of updating to the game. It’s been so quiet in fact that people noticed Bioware hasn’t taken down the Christmas decorations, despite being nearly Valentine’s Day. Speculation has run rampant over the past few months, with signs pointing to Bioware working on an overhaul for Anthem that would address many of the bigger gripes of the player base.
Well that overhaul has been confirmed in case you didn’t read the title of this article. Bioware has posted an updated blog confirming that the team is still alive and working on Anthem and will be focusing on a long term redesign, with attention being paid to the core gameplay loop.
“Over the coming months we will be focusing on a longer-term redesign of the experience, specifically working to reinvent the core gameplay loop with clear goals, motivating challenges and progression with meaningful rewards – while preserving the fun of flying and fighting in a vast science-fantasy setting. And to do that properly we’ll be doing something we’d like to have done more of the first time around – giving a focused team the time to test and iterate, focusing on gameplay first.”
There will be updates for Anthem as the team works toward the redesign, with events and store refreshes coming but the game moving away from seasons for the time being.
Source: Anthem
[NM] Kotaku Investigates Bioware, Bioware Makes It Worse
The only constants in life are death and taxes. The only constants in the gaming industry are EA (or a subsidiary) creating its own PR nightmare and then making the situation worse in response.
If you’ve been following the tale of Anthem and its alleged six year development cycle, today’s investigative piece by Kotaku’s Jason Schreier may not be that surprising to you. Titled “How Bioware’s Anthem Went Wrong,” Schreier talks to no less than 19 ex-Bioware employees who had been involved in the development of the game. The story is a tale of ineffective leadership, understaffed teams, and various departments either unwilling or unable to work together to put a cohesive and thought out plan together. While EA may tout that the game has been in the works for six years, according to employees the majority of the game was built in the last 12-16 months.
Bioware responded with a very stern letter to the public addressing the article. The response is quite baffling as the developer hides behind its declared passion for its customers, concluding with a thinly veiled attack at Kotaku that the article exposing Bioware’s poor working conditions and indifferent management is somehow a detriment to the industry and craft.
“People in this industry put so much passion and energy into making something fun. We don’t see the value in tearing down one another, or one another’s work. We don’t believe articles that do that are making our industry and craft better.”
And here’s the kicker; You may notice that the letter from Bioware doesn’t actually address any of the specific statements made in Kotaku’s article. That’s because Bioware’s response went up mere minutes after Kotaku published their piece. The folks responding to the article didn’t even bother to read it, and it also means that they had this pre-written and ready to go.
How fitting that a company accused of being tone deaf would be so tone deaf as to so blatantly not read the article that they are dismissively responding to. The management at Bioware either naively thinks that this response is going to pull the public to their side, or they are so deep in denial that they don’t see how bizarre the response comes off as.
Source: Kotaku
Falling Out #5: The Best Laid Plans
And they would have gotten away with it if it weren’t for you pesky Reddit nerds.
Anthem Is Hard-Crashing On Playstation 4
Anthem on PS4 may be more of a hazard than previously known.
A growing number of users on the official Reddit have begun reporting issues regarding Anthem not just crashing, but completely shutting down their Playstation 4. The thread has garnered a number of confirmations from other players noting that the system treats the shutdown as though the player had pulled the power cable.
“When encountering a crash or game error, sometimes I get booted to the main menu or out of the game completely to the PS4 dashboard. But twice now when trying to matchmake my PS4 has completely turned off. Don’t worry about the loot patch ffs, sort the bugs out first please”
For their part, Sony is apparently still denying refunds to a large portion of people despite the game being broken, possibly to the extent of risking damage to consoles. EA/Bioware are apparently aware of the problem but have not released a statement.
Source: Reddit
Bad Press: The Curious Case Of Anthem And Stream Bans
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ox_jqLsH8g8
For today’s bad press, I’m going to single out a certain Youtuber who goes by The Quartering even though he isn’t the only offender here.
In case you haven’t been paying attention to Youtube drama news over the past couple of days, an incident occurred last week after a user began streaming alpha footage of Anthem, the upcoming game by Electronic Arts. Anthem is still under a nondisclosure agreement, meaning anyone playing it is not allowed to talk about it or show it to the general public. These NDAs are very common in the gaming industry both for official testers and members of the press. I am personally under at least one NDA at any given time, usually in regards to timed press releases.
In this specific case, a number of Twitch users clipped a stream in which the user is booted from Anthem only to find that not only has EA revoked his copy of Anthem, but that his entire library is just gone. More interesting, it didn’t seem that the user’s account was banned, but just that his library was emptied by EA.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tLaf-SjpeA
Cue the outrage, dial up the EA hate squad, and tell my wife I won’t be coming home for dinner. An unknown user has posted video of an unverified story with unfounded accusations and generally no real evidence to back up the claim. When has anyone ever lied on the internet? Why wouldn’t it make sense for EA to just wipe an account with no warning or notification, instead of simply banning the player? Did anyone receive confirmation that the guy even owned any games on the account? Did anyone follow up with the streamer? Did anyone follow up with Electronic Arts? Did anyone do any critical thinking or investigation whatsoever?
But the pesky concept of facts and evidence didn’t stop Youtube channels like The Quartering and the internet’s dramasphere from jumping on the drama with an overblown and arguably reckless disregard for the truth, with the headline “EA STEALS Players Entire Collection Over Anthem Alpha Stream!” What games did the user lose? I’m sure Jeremy can’t tell you and hasn’t performed any actual research outside of reading an article he found online. He even reads in the video that it is possible that Anthem was the sole item in the user’s library but continues regardless with the baseless accusation that EA STOLE from him.
I’m singling out The Quartering mostly because of Jeremy’s consistent advertisement of an Indiegogo campaign for Exclusively Games, a service that he is launching in order to get the politics out of games and focus on the games journalism. The campaign claims to be tired of “the same BS Hot Takes from our existing options in terms of video game news,” and yet here’s Jeremy. Making BS Hot Takes, putting out conclusive headlines with no real evidence. Imagine if he had, say, checked the user’s stream and was able to find a clip where it showed prior to entering the game that there were no games in the user’s account?
None of this changes the fact that EA would be within their rights to ban the user’s account for violating the nondisclosure agreement, and that an account ban would be the least of the person’s worries depending on the terms of the contract. But hey, everyone hates EA right now. Why bother putting in the basic amount of research or verifying the facts when few people are going to come to their defense?
Is this the kind of integrity that $68 grand buys?
MMO Fallout 