EA Is Learning The Wrong Lessons From Dragon Age The Veilguard - Luke Reacts
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- Опубліковано 5 лют 2025
- 👉🏼 LINKS: linktr.ee/luke... 👈🏼
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Luke Stephens is a Content-Creator and Streamer that co-streams on UA-cam and Twitch. This channel has Live Stream clips and highlights in addition to the streams themselves. Check out Luke's main channel & other content by going to: linktr.ee/luke... !!
GamesRadar's Original Article: www.gamesradar...
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Blaming it on the market not wanting narrative driven stories right after seeing Baldur's Gate 3's success is fucking WILD.
Just like anything and everything else, we don't want BAD narrative driven stories. Same with books, same with Hollywood, same as it's always been since cavemen telling stories around a fire. This hasn't changed for 10s of thousands of years and is such a simple concept to grasp, it's actually unbelievable that the tiny subset of the populace that makes these things their expertise, don't get it.
It's like a mechanic claiming he doesn't know what a spark plug is. It's so unlikely as to be borderline impossible.
Hence, both are lying.
It's the specific kinds of narratives they're pushing people don't want, not no narratives at all.
But even then, the narratives they're pushing don't have to be bad, if they're well written and respectful to the majority of players.
These people are just out of touch
Rebirth is doing pretty well being a sloppy seconds release narrative driven action rpg.
@@Wr41thgu4rd Sloppy thirds thank you very much, Its a remake and a port.
These executives wouldn't know how to pour water out of a cup if the instructions were printed on the bottom of the damn thing.
to be fair, would be pretty difficult to pour a cup if the instructions where at the bottom of the filled cup, just saying
@@MrMclanskey whoosh
@@MrMclanskey What happens when you turn it over to read it.... that's the joke
@@Doc_Cocked_Glock the internet killed satire
@ Satire in written form has been a problem long before the internet. One has to be very skilled to pull it off
EA: “Am I out of touch? No, it’s the gamers who are wrong!”
They weren't "gaymer" enough.
I’d say the irony kills me due to how it’s literally the same reaction from Ubisoft, but it instead kills their sales and player support
It's EA, did you expect them to learn anything at all at this point?"
It's honestly kind of great that I can just write them off entirely at this point. Sounds like EA is having the Bioware skeleton team figure out a way to turn Mass Effect into a live service, which is not what most players want.
Also, Sims 4's DLCs and losing Fifa's certification problems... It seems like EA is in brain drain crisis.
"It didn't resonate with a broad enough audience". Meaning people don't like it.
These guys should go into politics, they already have the dialect down.
They fired all the writers, so someone up there do know the real problem.
@@yogiwp_ A company as big as EA will have the PR department say one thing while HR will do another. Its not hypocrisy; its corporate operations.
It’s more of a being held to account for not meeting earnings projections than an admission of anything. They don’t care that they insulted their fans and alienated customers, just that they lost them money.
I hoped that was the case, but now it's clear they only fired them because they don't want writers anymore.
Who do you think appointed them? The real problem is not the writers per se, it's the leadership. Veilguard went through development hell for a reason. Yes, many of the old writers left but they still maintained a number of veterans by the end of development - there should've been certain standards. How can the same person who wrote Solas also come up with Taash? As Gaider said, the studio does not value writing. That's why he and many others left, that's why there has been a sharp decline in the writing quality since Origins - because the execs at EA and Bioware have been directing them and been replacing the original talents with cheap amateurs so they can chase trends. Hence initial plans for live service, hence the "modern" target audience. Accordingly, the veteran writers had a very different story planned, "Project Joplin," which intended to incorporate player decisions stored in the Keep. This was scraped by the studio because it was "unattainable" (read: not worth their time and money). Under this leadership, Bioware has been reduced to a husk and ME5 has been doomed even before development - it's already going through the same motions as Veilguard. So if you think firing the writers will change a thing...
Who expected EA to learn?? 😂
Exactly...
I am EXCEEDINGLY happy about this. I want EA to go down as quickly as possible and join Ubisoft in the soon-to-be-dead category of publishers. As far as I'm concerned, I hope Andrew Wilson goes through with it.
They get bailed out by sports fans who buy the same game every year and drop hundreds on ultimate team packs. Won’t happen anytime soon
@@keilanlong5198 exactly, literally every vietnamese who owns playstaysion will eat FIFA and pse until they sell out.
@@keilanlong5198 I know, but if you notice they are increasingly dependent on that. EA basically doesn't have much outside their sports games anymore, only Battlefield. All their IPs are on a decline. They have closed all their other studios who make other types of games. Having a diverse catalog is healthy for a publisher, if you put all your eggs in one basket it's sure to go wrong at some point. All we have to do is wait.
@@kaylemain2006 the gaming to strictly gambling pipeline. Konami really paved the path
What I'm worried about the most is that Bioware had to fight to make Veilguard as a single player RPG, as it was originally supposed to be a multiplayer MMO type of game. But with Veilguards failure I'm worried EA might use this as an excuse to make their next game (likely Mass Effect) a multiplayer or Live Service saying that "We tried doing this your way and players didn't like it, now we do this MY way".
If that’s the case then BioWare will have to assume some responsibility because although we the gamers WANT single player story based rpgs from them rather than the live service stuff those dorks at EA are pushing, said single player games need to actually be written well which veilguard certainly wasn’t
Don’t worry. EA won’t be making any more bioware games. They really shouldn’t be in the business of making those type of games anyway. When BioWare has to fight to make single player games, and ea pushes them into action games anyway, what’s the point. The products will be compromised. So let them make their sports games and their shooters. The sooner bioware is closed the better. Let’s hope they don’t buy anymore single player studios.
@@apollodingo3583 Well I also don't want Bioware shut down either. I may not have any love for Veilguard but I don't want all those people to lose their jobs either. I'm content just not buying their games anymore unless they improve, I don't need them to be shut down to do that.
@@hamzahmohammed5491 yes but how many players are going to fault Bioware entirely and completely ignore EA? I'd imagine most of them will and EA can use that as a shield.
@ yeah and I agree that would suck especially for how EA would probably use that to legitimise they’re endlessly infuriating lack of awareness over what it is gamers want
My wife and I were viscerally angry when we saw this article, we both played through veilguard and her being a bigger fan of DA2 and DAI and myself only liking DAO, we both hated veilguard. Making it a multiplayer game would've just made it worse.
If EA really believed in live service games THAT strongly then why didn't they allow the anthem team to rework and relaunch the game as they promised?
There was something extremely odd about the glowing reviews by the Journos. They all had the same wording, a return to form, as if they were given direction of what to say.
They were. It's a long standing fact that good reviews are traded for favors
It's called a marketing tips sheet. the journalists all would have received one.
They're idiots. It's actually a huge plus for me if the next Mass Effect is made by fewer people. I don't know if it will or should make it out though.
u shouldn't play Mass Effect if u want things to change
@@khal7702All they need to do is not inject their garbage politics into it, and that will win them back so much goodwill alone.
@@khal7702 or in the very least wait a week and see what people say
ME5 is fucked
That's an impressive level of self-delusion even for gaming executives.
It was also HATED by many who played. Several friends who couldnt/wouldn't finish it because it was a boring and painful slog.
Ea doesn't give a fuck about dragon age the veilguard failing when they literally say dragon age the veilguard failed because it wasn't a live service
I played the entire game but I wouldn't say I was "engaged"
HOW did you get to the end? here I am in KCD2 spending hours doing alchemy because its so engaging lol.
@@ravenheartwraith ocd. when i start a game i have to finish it. i try not to start games im sure ill hate these days.
Pam Piscitello, the former _Director of Marketing and Operations of Concord_ is now a senior product marketing manager for the Halo franchise. lol
"Competitive Market"? LMAO. Make an rpg that people like and looks at BG3 and Witcher 3 sales, dont call the market "competitive". This market buys EVERY good game which is given to use. Failguard wasnt one.
Would EA say the reason the game underperformed is because the writing sucks though? Public facing bs doesn't necessarily reflect internal thoughts.
The animations, changes on races design, the way your party members didn't even have their own health bar or he fact that they removed so many abilities to use and then said well you get these "cool" combine abilities that were just awful. Not to mention all their backers who were reviewing the game were manipulating scores to make it seem like it was game of the year scores. Once that happens, I don't even wanna get close to anything they make.
The irony is that EA could have lost less or actually made money by pursuing the Anthem rework instead of releasing Veilguard.
Players engaged means nothing and that EA only expected 3 million copys sold, is a joke that won't get old.
Mass Effect 3 had Day 1 DLC, EA knew Veilguard was a disaster. If they thought for a second it was good or even "okay" they would have milked it for every penny.
It proves time and time and time and again that these big companies are out of touch with their customers. Stop pre ordering and buying triple A slop...
As one of "those who played" Dragon Age Valaha, I did not love it. I really wanted to, but the writing and lack of any interaction was terrible.
It was loved by those that loved it but UTTERLY ALIENATED AT LEAST HALF OF THE DRAGON AGE FANBASE!!! That is not good!!!
Half? I'ld say 75%.
@@lupolinar thats why I said at least half - I agree with you, probably more like 75%
They expected 3 million in sales and they got 1.5 impressions so their actual sales missed by more than 50%. They are fudging numbers to make it seem better for investors.
This has been EA's MO for like a decade, each time a SP game fails the only thing they learn is: ''It failed because it wasn't live service'' then a SP game makes millions and they allow another SP game to be developed (That's the exact reason why they allowed BioWare to change Veilgurad from a live service to a SP game) and now that Veilguard failed they're back at square 1.
HOLD UP, wtf did they say at 10:10
are they using Veilguard as an excuse to say story games aren't profitable...again?
*EA:* Yeah, we added a shit-sandwich to the menu, but nobody bought it for some reason.
So we'll only do water soup from now on
They didn't give the review codes out because they knew the game was a dud and wanted to hide it - but at some point you have to sell the thing to justify its existence, but nobody knows how to make stuff that's not a dud anymore. It used to be that people made games because they were passionate creative visionaries. Now everybody just wants to do it as a day job, and it shows. The same number of good games are being made as was the case 20 years ago, there's just a lot of garbage games being made now unlike back then.
63% positive steam reviews doesn't sound "liked by the ones who played"
EA this, EA that, but how did that blue mug not fall down?
What blue mug?
I rather listen to a guy who talks honestly about the pros and the cons of a game than some corporate media who has lied straight into my face and thought I was stupid enough to believe that 💀
A twist on an old Bond villian quote.. "You don't have to learn, EA.... You just have to DIE.."😂
I wonder how many gamers EA consulted as to why they did or did not "engage" with Veilguard before giving they're verdict as to why the game failed.
Honestly I think EA has decide ai writing is no worse than the current available talent pool.
"Engaged" also includes those who played (w/o purchase) on EA Play...
Who would have guessed the back to back worst company on earth didn’t learn from their mistakes.
Having writing be the failing aspect of your AAA VIDEOGAME(!!!) is wild. Like how does any game writing team mess up that badly!?
Theyre not entirely wrong. The modern audience is an incredibly tiny, niche audience. While the general "evil" gamers are the broad audience.
11:26 I honestly don’t know who’s more delusional - the executives who think they should have made a live service Dragon Age game, or the gaming outlets who refuse to acknowledge that Veilguard was shitty in many different ways and NOT the “return to form” they tried to exalt it as.
I'll buy KCD2, i happily bought BG3 and would do it 3 times over. I never even considered buying veilguard, nor will i ever - hell, i wouldn't have it for free.
They didn't need a 'broad audience'. They needed the Dragon Age audience. And they couldn't wrangle them up.
My friend enjoyed past Dragon Age games like Origins and Inquisition. He doesn’t follow online discussions or drama and bought Veilguard solely based on the franchise name. However, after a few days, he returned the game, feeling that it was completely different from the classic Dragon Age and had little in common with the older titles.
Once i heard "broad enough", i lost all hope in mass effect 5 but i want to be wrong
Everyone should've officially lost all hope in Bioware for good after Veilguard.
These are the same execs who look at Concord and think "Oh, gamers must not want new IPs since they didn't buy this new IP. Greenlight more remakes!"
They aren't interested in learning a lesson that doesn't help them secure their funding.
I would agree with them that people do not want narrative driven games that come from corporate culture studios where corporate culture compatible people do the writing for them, which is the only product they can make.
I love that they’re keeping the same agenda, I really want to see them struggle . In a couple of years they will have lost so much money we won’t have to hear from them as often.
I would not jump to conclusions so fast. Even if EA knew what is the problem, they can'T admit it to their investors and shareholders. The fact that Bioware fired the entire writing team leaves me somewhat hopeful
I keep hearing a phrase that fits into several studios. A ship of Theseus. Time to stop thinking the old writers are around.
Now the veilguard writers are being hired to write ghost of yotei...
I can't wait to see how USAID affects the game industry. Disney+ suddenly lost over 700K "accounts" the day after if was exposed.
I was JUST WAITING for this video / stream. As soon as I saw the story, I couldn’t wait for your take. We live in a world of delusion!!
I think a reasonable executive would see the amount of engagement Veilguard had and use that as a baseline for expectations going forward. The industry as a whole is rather saturated and is not seeing the growth seen in years past. Not to mention the global economy and people's purchasing power shifting, resulting in the average individual being more selective in their purchasing decisions. They need to look at their actual sales from Veilguard and set cost perimeters around that number for their next project. Perhaps they need to reel it in a little and build up a sturdier foundation before leaping for the stars. As a gamer, I'm sick of seeing all of these titanic projects from AAA companies crash and burn. It wasn't always this way and I think the leaders of these corporations need to reflect on that.
I'm an old gamer, and EA has been known by gamers as evil since like 1997... I can't remember the last time I even bought a game from them, I usually go out of my way to not do so.
earlier then that we hated them back in the megadrive/genesis days
Dont care, i gave up on bioware after the empty husk of a game called inquisition. Shouldve stopped buying after ea bought them.
Thanks for your content Luke!!
The fact EA even attempts to make single player games is more than I would expect. They spend 2 weeks a year moving names around on a Madden game and then release at full price as a new game with a ton of card packs. They make 1 billion dollars off minimal effort. I'm sure they're looking for any excuse to drop all single player games
Years of CEOs who were PR men is killing the industry.
I don't think this was a "durr I don't know why Veilguard failed" brain moment from the CEO, this is wilful ignorance and a out-of-ass statement to protect his, ergo the shareholders' stake in the industry. If they thought the game failed due to lack of live service, then they wouldn't have burned the writing team dept to the ground. They knew why, they just cannot say it out loud, and the safe cop to not get yelled at by investor groups and the board, is to say the most board and investor friendly statement.
The moment I read this news I already felt that Mass Effect 5 will not be released or if it is released it will be garbage.
This is excellent. It'll make things quicker.
it's hard to know if they're truly so oblivious or if they're just trying to save face because they can't openly admit what the problem is, normally I'd say they are so clueless but then again they did fire the writers.
the biggest mistake they made is giving shillup a review code. shillup destroyed FF16 discourse as well.
oh yeah, that game insanely well optimised by today's standards i would give it 10/10 on optimization. buttery smooth, even the combat animations lame as the were, they were also smooth. i compared it to CoD gun gameplay from back in the day(dont know if the gun play is still the best in the industry). one thing i would give CoD back in the day is they nailed gun play/fps games, it was just so satisfying in that game, i dont know why, but i came from other games and CoD would feel just right, like fidget spinner satisfying.
Crazy Pill Taking 200 hours player here. It boils down to the same reason people have 500 hours in BG3, exploring all of the paths and romances not taken. It's was never going to reach the heights of Inquisition since most of that team was gutted trying to keep Anthem afloat but I was happy journeying around Thedas again and reading all the codex entries. I never had faith that Bioware would stick the landing but I give them credit where it due, Taking a failed live service game, rebuilding it's core mechanics then being brave enough to navigate the narrative from sparknotes came out better than people realize
Still abysmal writing, boring gameplay and "puzzles" my 5 year old would find insulting. Not a good RPG, by a long shot.
@@lupolinar difference of opinion. Some people will never play BG3 because they don't like the gameplay and find it slow, Some people will never play a telltale game because they can't sit through dialogue. Combat was fine and Bioware has never been known for their puzzles EVER. The sentiment that this was poorly written is widely agreed even in the diehard DA community
I guess we'll find out what happens with this next mass effect if it ever comes out. That'll be their final chance. I pray they learn by then.
95% of those "reached" players probably didn't pay for it through Game Pass.
Anthem could save them if they revamp it like Helldivers 2, maybe, but Execs never look at what their customers respond to.
I don't think you can dismiss the user score so readily. Yes there are downvote campaigns out there that can effect the initial score significantly. But after a while that fervor dies down and the effect is mitigated as more reviews come in. Like you said there was a similar effort made on Black Myth Wukong, but its user rating is at 8.2. If such reviews were so significant then you would expect it to also have a very low score, but enough actual people liked the game to vastly bury any affect of early review bombs. But the same didn't happen w/ DA:VG. It's still very low because the actual reviews from users matched the bombing. At best you could say it might be slightly higher if it didn't get bombed, maybe in the 4.0-4.5 range. but the effect of the initial trolling has long been buried by now.
I liked Deathloop, but not as much as the Dishonored series and Prey. It was a unique concept that was reasonably well executed, even if it got a bit repetitive towards the end. I'll likely do another run or two at some point.
The reason it failed was DUE to how far they were reaching for a "broader" audience.
Honestly, my friend group and I didnt buy the game solely because it WAS NOT Dragon Age. From the art style of the qunari and dark spawn, to the writing of the characters lacking varied nuance that made them believable, to the more family friendly take that removed the blood and grit that we were used to and enjoyed. The game from every look just wasnt what we had come to expect and wanted. For that, it didnt earn a cent from any of us. I imagine a ton of people felt the same way. Making everything dumbed down and family friendly ruined it. It wasnt lgbt inclusion, the series always had that. But making characters one dimensional to where its the entirety of their character? Thats bad writing. And its a shame cause its a series that will likely never come back now.
In other news: Grass Is green
No point searching for a D. They replaced the D w a V in the final version…
I think it's time for me to accept that AAA gaming is done. They simply cannot understand their customers.
Thing is, I can guarantee EA knows exactly why Veilguard failed. They are just spitting a bunch of PR talk to look good for investors. They are trying to drive the narrative that it failed because it was a single-player game as an excuse to double down on live service.
Its EA saying single player games are dead all over again
Tell me all about that 'blockbuster storytelling strategy', Wilson. I'm interested to know where it went.
If you don't like Metacritic's user score then at least use Steam's user ratings. The *worst* thing you can do is pay any attention whatsoever to the publications. Eurogamer gave Veilguard a 100. And then they gave Kingdom Come 2 a 60. They are telling you, plain as day, that they're not here to be honest but rather to push a narrative.
Maybe 10 percent of skill up audience would have bought the game if he gave a glowing review
Wow there sure are alot of games that have come out lately that "didn't reach a broad enough audience" even though said games were supposed to be all about broadening the audience.
The reason Dragon age failed financially: everyone found out before it was released about the weird writing and sexual preferences being front and centre in a fantasy game. Because we all found out before release, we didn't buy it. Oh, and the MAJOR selling point pre-release was the fkin HAIR FFS. That, that alone, told real DA fans it's not real dragon age at all. And to say it was well reviewed by critics is literally patting yourselves on the back. Congrats.
Also sucker punch just hired one of the writes for the new Ghost Of game lol
So they change the name to Ghost of pronounce 😂
It's a bad omen for sure, but she actually left Bioware in 2022, so who's to say how much of her work made it into the final product of Veilguard. I'll be cautiously optimistic for the game, but I won't be surprised if some bullshit goes down.
>Designs their game to appeal to as broad an audience as possible
>Game flops
>Concludes they didn't make the game broad enough
Any broader of a stretch, and you'll end up with video game goatse!
EA is a baffling company. They will buy up other developers known for making a specific type of game, then proceed to not make the games that their fans always loved and basically be like well, guess we'll stick to micro transaction sports games.
Unifadewalker should learn from this guy. Being abrasive is not the way to deliver a fair point
Exec count on investors not knowing the market which is leading to the dumbest business decisions
Mr MATTY, skill up W. Mr MATTY who I call Mr Positive having a negative review says everything that needs to be said.
Dragon age veilguard could have been an amazing game the gameplay and combat is so fun but the blew it trying to push their narratives in our face. Its really sad when you see how much potential a game has but because of stupid decisions we will never experience such greatness
I guess I'm taking Luke's crazy pills. The gameplay and combat was terrible. Why do people prop up garbage? Do people even remember when games were good?
The gameplay loop was awful and got boring very fast. Have you never played a well made game?
15:41 Yeah, they needed those people.
The ones they marketed to overwhelmingly don't have jobs and/or are anti-capitalist.
I'd bet anything this game didn't even break 700k actual sales
Making it a live service would have brought that down to 700 sales total
Don't buy anything EA anymore...
NOTED
Fantastic point about Game Reviewers. I tend to watch YT creators’ reviews way more than IGN. If like you or Skill Up don’t like it, I usually watch the full review and then pass. If you like it, I’ve got a better chance at picking it up.
I trust reviewers more if they DON'T get a review code, that way i know they ain't playing ball with the big corpos, which means they might actually tell the truth.
I invite this. I want the east to take over our gaming market more than anything. Let these places like EA, BioWare, Ubisoft, insomniac games, naughty dog, guerilla games, sucker punch, rocksteady, and so many more western AAA studios piss off. I couldn’t give two shits because all the talented people are left anyway. They are just the name. All these studios have lost all their talent and they’ve gone to newer Studios. So why are people holding onto these burning studios just because of the name? Support the new Studios that these talented people have moved onto. Support eastern studios and Indy studios. Let these old corporate run western AAA Studios wither away.
Everyone knows the exact reason they didn't by Dragon Age The Veilguard. Something tells me its the same reason as mine. I haven't even been compelled to check out gameplay vids at a minimum.
I trust the guy stitting in his basement ranting about video games over journalists.
Not convinced that it's entirely the fault of the writers for Veilguard's poor narrative decisions. All of these individuals have been capable of better work in the past, I think they're victims to the same type of homogenized HR curation that is evident in the rest of other creative media spaces. In short, I don't think EA wants Dragon Age to be Dragon Age, they want it to be Veilguard.
As someone who played that game, no, it wasn't well received by most fans. Most of us fucking hated it, actually.