oh my
It really feels like at last minute they realized "shit our faces can't work because of a technical reason" and they then had to remake everything with the CC and had no motion cap for those NPCs.
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Former BioWare Emloyee Review of company sheds distuburing light on MEA's development
- Thread starter MasterMenace
- Start date
It really feels like at last minute they realized "shit our faces can't work because of a technical reason" and they then had to remake everything with the CC and had no motion cap for those NPCs.
SolicitorPirate
Member
While I get the ridiculousness of asking an individual to speak on behalf of a whole industry, or to comment on a studio I presume you haven't worked for, from your experience, does the employee review in question sound potentially real?
Mammoth Jones
Member
Yup. Do not regret giving up on that. Toxic as fuck.
Fantastical
Death Prophet
The video game industry sounds so fucking brutal. I had interest but there is no way I'm subjecting myself to that.
Paracelsus
Member
The videogame industry sounds like the wrestling industry of silicon valley
Ur childhood dream will cum tru
And then they exploit this by treating you like a piece of shit.
Ur childhood dream will cum tru
And then they exploit this by treating you like a piece of shit.
Night.Ninja
Banned
Video game industry sounds like a job
Dental Plan
Member
"Renaming crunch to Finaling mode. Which means company pays for your lunch but you have only 30 minutes to eat and then getting back on the keyboard. Was lasting for over 2 months and was a real catastrophy."
As someone who works in the game industry this is the biggest load of crap. Seriously? 30 minutes is nothing.
As someone who works in the game industry this is the biggest load of crap. Seriously? 30 minutes is nothing.
Felsparrow
Neo Member
Anyone saying it sounds just like a job fails to realize it's a job where you're paying a bunch of highly skilled individuals to produce works of amazing work.
Stymieing them like this is not efficient business, especially when you're business is to create stunning artwork that basically feeds into itself.
Ruin the art by ruining the process results in diminished returns.
Stymieing them like this is not efficient business, especially when you're business is to create stunning artwork that basically feeds into itself.
Ruin the art by ruining the process results in diminished returns.
That leaked video looking so much better is one of the craziest game development things I've ever seen.
They clearly 1) removed the facial animation data and 2) redid a lot of the assets and replaced them with lower quality assets (see the metal grate on the floor). Effects and lighting are also worse but that's less surprising.
What possible turn of events would lead them to take out facial animations and redo models and textures? Was the game in crisis, performance-wise? But taking out the facial animations altogether rather than just reducing other things? It just seems bizarre.
They clearly 1) removed the facial animation data and 2) redid a lot of the assets and replaced them with lower quality assets (see the metal grate on the floor). Effects and lighting are also worse but that's less surprising.
What possible turn of events would lead them to take out facial animations and redo models and textures? Was the game in crisis, performance-wise? But taking out the facial animations altogether rather than just reducing other things? It just seems bizarre.
What sucks is that I remember when that came out about how Bioware was a great employer, giving paid vacations for when game development concluded and other stuff as I recall.
Then a few years later they get bought by EA.
There is much more than just the smoke...
I think this explanation is the obvious possibility:
But the sheer number of differences in the models and scenery is pretty impressive. I mean, these sorts of downgrades will always exist (hey, Witcher 3) but I don't think I've seen such a drastic change in such a short period of time either.
It is a job but it is one of those "passion jobs" from my experience and I have had this happen, you are underpayed, overworked, not a lot of room to move up and they hang the "why are you unhappy this is your dream job" and "if you don't want to do it there are tons of people who will" over your head.
This isn't every job though obviously I only had one that was like this.
RedlineRonin
Member
Yeah? People hound you on twitter endlessly and give you death threats if you do something someone doesn't like at your job?
Something went very, very wrong.
Cant wait for more info to come out of this trainwreck.
Shpeshal Nick
aka Collingwood
Performance Improvement Plans are pretty normal in most large organisations.
1/2 hour lunch breaks are also pretty normal in any big organisation.
The rest sounds a bit fucked up.
1/2 hour lunch breaks are also pretty normal in any big organisation.
The rest sounds a bit fucked up.
EatChildren
Currently polling second in Australia's federal election (first in the Gold Coast), this feral may one day be your Bogan King.
Theory: the test footage uses an exclusive head and face model fully rigged with a decent complexity of nodes for a wide range of expressions and animations. The intent was always to use a complex character creator tool for NPC and player character construction, as in one of the very earliest leaks from PAX the test media shown specifically highlighted intent for complex, diverse character faces on both humans and aliens, exceeding facial diversity in any other BioWare game and supported by new facial construction tools. Somewhere along the lines in development these plans fell apart, likely due to technical constraints, either Frostbite 3 or current generation hardware unable to keep up with the intention to have complex facial construction and rigged nodes adaptable to a large quantity of character models being rendered at any one time. Or a solution to scale and stream rigging complexity across the huge assortment of characters, while keeping nodes consistent and accurate regardless of complex facial struggles, could not be found in time.
Given limited production time and major technical issues, the only immediate solution was to seek a consistent but far limited character editor with reduced facial rigging complexity, leading to many NPCs looking very, very similar, a character editor lacking options, and heavily simplified face rigging that had an additional impact on facial animations (either reducing existing animation complexity, or breaking existing animations forcing them all to be remade under strict time constraints).
oh my
This is so bizarre. I just don't understand how something like this happens. I can get a couple of downgrades here and there but outside of the skeletal animation every single thing in that scene is a massive downgrade from the alpha footage. It just doesn't make any sense.
This potentially explains the facial animation changes but why the texture quality drop, alpha particle reduction, geometry downgrade and bizarre palette swap? Nothing about that initial video seems impossible on the HW we have given what's already released.
If we're going in that direction, the word from Suda51 regarding his observations of EA during development of Shadows of the Damned was that they had a "masculine culture" about the place.
He never delved into specifics outside of mentioning that EA approached narratives like elevator pitches, you had to summarise your story in the length of an elevator ride. If it's true than it's not hard to see why Bioware's narrative strengths would/have suffered working under EA.
TetraGenesis
Member
To those who think a 30 minute paid lunch is nothing to scoff at (and while it isn't, inherently), remember that we're talking crunch. Often 12+ hour work days, seven days a week. Getting half an hour's pay while you scarf down shit from the vending machine doesn't make up for it.
People looked for more reviews and found similar ones.
joecanada
Member
As someone who's worked in all other industries this is normal lol .
Not always but pretty common.
Edit - yeah sux for 12 hr shifts though
Really? I'm not doubting you, but source??
And yeah, I'm a paid applications developer (intern) and our job is reaaallllyyy chill. Gaming is awesome and my goal is to eventually publish some games on my own I've been kicking around but I have no interest in working for like EA or anything like that. Being part of a giant meat grinder is not cool.
Interficium
Banned
Stay tuned for next week, where gamers search through every BioWare employee's facebook wall to find out the disturbing truth about why gamers don't get the quality animations they so richly deserve in their games!
joecanada
Member
I work for the government. . No way in hell we'd ever even make a Twitter account in our department.
Game development still sounds shitty at times though
SpiceMelange
Member
Them entitled gamers, am I right? They expect a good product out of something they pay for. What a travesty. /s
Interficium
Banned
Most salaried jobs have an hour-long lunch. 30 minute lunch is retail.
His point is dirt-digging and the resulting projections.
Predwolf
Member
TBH a lot of those gripes seem like somebody who has little experience in the workforce bitching about their first real job.
A lot of those things are standard across various industries. The whole "two months of having lunches paid for but only 30 minutes to eat" just comes off as pure entitlement. I'm a salaried employee who doesn't get lunch breaks most days and works an hour of unpaid OT almost every day. I'd kill to my lunch paid for AND get time to eat it without having to work.
A lot of those things are standard across various industries. The whole "two months of having lunches paid for but only 30 minutes to eat" just comes off as pure entitlement. I'm a salaried employee who doesn't get lunch breaks most days and works an hour of unpaid OT almost every day. I'd kill to my lunch paid for AND get time to eat it without having to work.
SpiceMelange
Member
I'm referring to the second part of his sentence, not the facebook digging part. People are, indeed, entitled to quality animations. They pay for a product and are entitled to a good one.
"they so richly deserve!" smh
dat smoke! The textures...where u go.
the finger animation seems to be gone, too
the fingers don't move at all in the left footage
in the right footage (which you can see better in the mp4 version), the krogan clearly squeezes whatever that thing is, with the fingers moving in and then back out
Interficium
Banned
You can always like, not pay for the product after seeing that it doesn't have "quality animations."
miller.skippins
Banned
I don't know about you guys but this game's development and the resulting game that's been released seems to remind me of Destiny.
SpiceMelange
Member
That has nothing to do with making fun of a sentiment of entitlement.
Alpha Phoenix
Member
This is correct. I personally met a developer at PAX Prime who worked in the Edmonton office but has been part of the Andromeda team since day one.
Wishmaster92
Member
Get out of here with this apologetic crap. We want the quality of graphics Bioware is known to put out. ME in 2007 had revolutionary graphics, this game just looks plain bad.
12+ hour days were rough for me even in my low stress old job where I had to go out of my way to really fuck up, I couldn't imagine how terrible it must be when you're near the end of a huge project like this.
AlexFlame116
Member
It this "childish" thing bothers you so much, kindly either ignore it or move on by leaving the issue like an adult would.
They're not even up to previous games standards. Doing a quick playthrough of Inquisition to get to the DLC that I just bought. Animations aren't amazing but they're not distracting like Andromeda's. Couldn't even get that.
Lactose_Intolerant
Member
You think Bioware had bad crunch..... yet praise CD Projekt Red
ROUGE_BLOCK
Member
Yeah didnt one of the devs make a thread giving their grievances over being in crunch time for a year to finish Witcher 3?
That game is crazy massive, and full of detail I don't even want to think of the crunch time that went into that game
potatohead
Member
I don't get official lunch any day of the week not sure what that bitching is about but the rest of the work culture stuff sounds like shit
But not many workplaces are a lot better many are terrible in their own unique ways the key is to find a way or get lucky to thrive in those situations
Definitely doesn't serve the brand or quality of games at Bioware though but their worsening quality is nothing new
But not many workplaces are a lot better many are terrible in their own unique ways the key is to find a way or get lucky to thrive in those situations
Definitely doesn't serve the brand or quality of games at Bioware though but their worsening quality is nothing new
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