In response to Mark Darrah's Tweet On Anthem

[ethansito]

We could agonize about whether or not we should pre-order Anthem, or we could wait for it to be finished and get reviewed. A quote from a favorite comedian of mine comes to mind in situations like these: "Don't be a hero."

Why be the guy who buys an unfinished product? That is just asking to be let down, punished for your good faith in the developers.

Instead, be the guy who buys the finished product, who knows exactly what he is getting. (I also like to wait for steam sales on games that are good :P )

This post goes against the grain of the thread, but I feel that this is an option that should be pointed out.

[Lehran]

A game where you unlock cosmetics as a reward for accomplishing things in game? What are you talking about? Oh, you mean Anthem? Because you're describing Anthem.

Again, you are claiming EA will deliberately contradict what Bioware said and change the microtransaction or DLC structure of the game post launch. Can you give ONE example of this showing there's at least a precedent for this kind of behavior?

Nearly $90 for Goldeneye would have included a 10% sales tax and that was at Walmart - not a trunk. Even so, if it were $69.99 that's the equivalent of $100 today and about 1/10th the content of a modern big game release.

This isn't a single player game. It's a live service game with free content updates and DLC. God forbid they sell some in-game skins to offset some of that maintenance cost.

Yeah EA needs to plead poverty for server costs. Get out of here with that argument, they're selling a AAA game at full price, and you know what I meant by accomplishing things in game and are playing dumb. You used to unlock skins in game from completing the sidequests, gathering collectables hidden across the map, or completing difficult tasks in the game. All that does now is give you achievements for a virtual measuring contest now. If you want to unlock cosmetics in a modern game you need to painfully grind some sort of virtual currency by playing the game longer then you work your job to get one thing.

Also using the N64 game as an example still after I explained why that is misleading is just dumb. Not to mention if you want to count for inflation you can apply that to literally anything you can buy and the price will be wildly different.

[Lehran]

Whooshh

I think the point went over your head. It's the equivalent of saying Doom Eternal will suck because Bethesda made Fallout 76...

Fallout 76 was clearly a failure on the development side, not the publisher. The Bethesda studios dev team and the Doom team are completely different groups.

How exactly does a publisher that looms over your shoulder questioning everything you do and demanding gameplay changes not affect the game according to your logic?
It's the equivalent of saying why doesn't Rareware just stop making bad kinect games.

[Kashimi]

Let's not do this, please. I was hoping this topic wouldn't get brought over here from The Quartering. It was a clickbait outrage video that was poorly informed at best. I don't think this is the proper platform to make direct responses to The Quartering.

About Anthem, I'm definitely going to try the demo. But I will be waiting to see how the player reception is before purchasing. If it has a decent endgame and good grinding, I'll probably get it.

I don't think some people are keeping a clear separation from The Quartering to the content that this website is supposed to deliver, but I do feel that this would generally be equivalent to people posting about any youtuber making content about gaming related news.

[isturbo1984]

Honestly, there is little point to buying a "Games as a service" title on day one. Would it kill people to wait a few weeks after the game is released? I feel no remorse for a man, women or child who buys these things on day one and then cries about it. shitty publishers making broken devs make shitty games is one issue... morons flocking to buy these games is a completely separate one.

[Spect3r]

Wow, a person who good sense... amazing!

[Zoltor]

Yea exactly. What really gets me, is people keep pre-ordering games from the most untrusted publishers in the entire industry, and then they wonder why they got burned. They get burned all the damn time, yet they still pre-order games from the same companies, it makes no sense.

[fenrif]

EA have spent years proving to everyone that they are greedy, lying, manipulative, lazy and creatively bankrupt. Bioware have spent about a decade pissing all over what made their games good and calling anyone who doesn't like their trashheaps bigots and nazis.

But this time will be different... I'm sure of it. EA and Bioware said so. Right? RIGHT?!

[JackofTears]

Yeah, Anthem is the first Bioware game I won't be buying since.

[JackBurton]

Personally i wont give a cent to EA no matter how good the games is......i always seeing the bigger picture of not suporting scumbags companys i realize that kids these days dont give a flying fk and just want to play cus its ME ME ME NOW NOW NOW generation.Btw mark my words Bioware gnna get shut down in 2019 its just how EA is.

[Overloaded_Wolf]

It's really a wait and see scenario. While I respect your belief to not purchase an EA produced product, you should at the very least acknowledge the game as being good, if it is legitimately good at the time of release. It just seems a little jaded to hate a game if it was made/produced by X company. Ubisoft was hated a lot more than it is now. For Honor (problematic as it may be) is a great game, Division while rocky in the beginning is a fun looter shooter and getting a second title, and biggest of all is Rainbow Six: Siege. That game came out as dog shit before it was even remotely great today. Ubisoft is a slow roast of a company when they release games. All I'm saying is, you can hate the publisher, just don't hate the game quite yet. Goes back to the phrase "innocent until proven guilty".

[Dub-Z]

I already knew I didn't want it because it reminds me of games like Haze and Fuze where creative control was entirely dictated by executives and focus testing, and the suits give me this "Bionicles going through puberty" vibe.

Someone said on twitter during last E3 that it looks like one of the fake games you see on the screen in PC monitor advertisements. Savage. Ether.

Never really had any interest in Mass Effect, not feeling EA (apart from A Way Out last year), not that big on Bioware usually, and I already don't play Destiny 'cause it's not my bag. The almost guaranteed prospect of being a half-baked, greedy lifestyle game compounds with all that to = ZERO interest.

So I pretty much just watch youtuber vids about it to see if there's a trainwreck to watch and am not influenced to do something I already wasn't interested in.

[DJFlare84]

I think CleanPrinceGaming said it best. Well, he said a COUPLE of things I really agree with.

1. EA has motivation not to fuck up Anthem. It has "this is literally their last chance or they are fucking DEAD" motivation. This is their Final Fantasy and I believe that.
2. Anthem deserves a shot, but it also deserves any scrutiny of ANY severity leveled on it by ANYONE, including people like Jeremy. It's just a hurdle they have to deal with.

[Merlin]

I think CleanPrinceGaming said it best. Well, he said a COUPLE of things I really agree with.

1. EA has motivation not to fuck up Anthem. It has "this is literally their last chance or they are fucking DEAD" motivation. This is their Final Fantasy and I believe that.
2. Anthem deserves a shot, but it also deserves any scrutiny of ANY severity leveled on it by ANYONE, including people like Jeremy. It's just a hurdle they have to deal with.

the problem is that with how publishers work, and seeing BLOPS4 adding MTX later, people are not going to give the game a chance until maybe 1-3 months on once it is clear they aren't going to be adding stuff to ruin the game for them. This is still EA, and people are more weary of EA than any of the Giants.

While I agree, this is pretty much the only chance EA has to salvage their reputation, it is perhaps too late even if the game were top tier. Sadly from all the video I've seen of the demo, it isn't very appealing. It just looks like they tried to take borderlands, and strip away what made it exciting, and then just threw you into Halo Master Chief armor and said "and you can fly!". Its not a common genre, the FPSRPG and for good reason. It mashes together two genres that generally are not even close, one that is about quick reactions and your skill while the other is about planning, strategy and long dramatic encounters with some degree of grinding. It was amazing that Borderlands did it well, and when people compared Anthem to Warframe I knew this game was toast. You can't compete with free and free that has a head start of years in terms of content.

I can see us all looking back on this game in another 5 years and shaking our heads. I remember the first time I heard of the game it sounded like the best thing since sliced bread, but then the real thing has left me deflated. The demo shows us that even with the supposed changes that will be in the final build, it can't change the core of the game. The core of "meh". I think Jim Sterling's video had the right vibe. It doesn't look awful, it doesn't look bad, but it doesn't look amazing. You can't float a boat on anything less than amazing when all your resources are on that ship weighing it down.

Also the Trilogy from our boy Charlie on his inability to log in was hilarious. That bad PR won't do the game any favors. Even if the servers run perfectly day 1, the damage is done, you couldn't even play the "demo". A demo mind you that you had to pay the whole game for, so IMO it was a pre-order bonus.

This game will be the least bad thing from EA in a while, but once it only sells like 8 million instead of 30 million, they will close bioware. They always do.

I'm not happy at this, I'm just being honest about how it looks. I hope the game is actually good, but I think the sands of time will claim this game. RIP Bioware.

[Agolf_Hiller]

Well how about we just don't pre-order anything anyway and just wait out reviews from trusted sources? it's not like they can run out of digital copies.

I also don't think Jeremy's distrust of Anthem precisly because of the publisher behind it is to far fetched, if anything everything that starts to smell and has to do with publishers like this should almost never get the benefit of the doubt since they have pulled alot of fast ones before.

I say again wait and see, there should be no rush to get the game.

PS: no such thing as "free DLC" exists, getting out content patches is/should be normal for any type of game in the genre unless they want the game to die within a year

[Overloaded_Wolf]

Well how about we just don't pre-order anything anyway and just wait out reviews from trusted sources? it's not like they can run out of digital copies.

I also don't think Jeremy's distrust of Anthem precisly because of the publisher behind it is to far fetched, if anything everything that starts to smell and has to do with publishers like this should almost never get the benefit of the doubt since they have pulled alot of fast ones before.

I say again wait and see, there should be no rush to get the game.

PS: no such thing as "free DLC" exists, getting out content patches is/should be normal for any type of game in the genre unless they want the game to die within a year

While there isn't a problem generally with waiting, it's that first week of sales that really matter to the publisher and company associated with it. If it doesn't sell well on release, shareholders will see that as the company unable to maintain the playerbase and make a profit. Thus, more falls in stock and EA going down the gutter. While this is a little bit more simplified of an explanation, its does show that AAA game companies live and breath off early release and pre-orders. It would take a massive immediate shift to assure shareholders are still getting their money's worth. The expected outcome would have to be the sales would grow over time, not have a major spike in purchases in the first week and slowly go down as time goes on.

[Merlin]

While there isn't a problem generally with waiting, it's that first week of sales that really matter to the publisher and company associated with it. If it doesn't sell well on release, shareholders will see that as the company unable to maintain the playerbase and make a profit. Thus, more falls in stock and EA going down the gutter. While this is a little bit more simplified of an explanation, its does show that AAA game companies live and breath off early release and pre-orders. It would take a massive immediate shift to assure shareholders are still getting their money's worth. The expected outcome would have to be the sales would grow over time, not have a major spike in purchases in the first week and slowly go down as time goes on.

honestly screw the shareholders of EA, they are the worst. This is why once EA and actiblizzard bottom out I'm going to probably buy some stock. It is the ultimate form of "vote with your wallet". If you buy enough stocks to have a vote in the company then you are able to fix the failings of these publishers in a more realistic way. I don't know if gamers will ever care about stock outside of laughing at the idea however, so I don't know. To an extent I do feel that you really have to put your money where your mouth is in these situations. I'm the type to tell people who preorder and complain to suck an egg and lie in the bed they made for themselves.

As you said, they focus way to hard on short term success, and that is what has led to the crash. Just pump enough propaganda into brains and create preorder FOMO to sell people a product before they can see a review where all the god awful bugs and boring gameplay are shown off. I hate to say it, but unless they see profit as the result of thinking long term, I doubt we will ever see truly good AAA games again. Its just really gone off the rails in the past decade.

[DJFlare84]

This game will be the least bad thing from EA in a while, but once it only sells like 8 million instead of 30 million, they will close bioware. They always do.

I'm not happy at this, I'm just being honest about how it looks. I hope the game is actually good, but I think the sands of time will claim this game. RIP Bioware.

Well, I hope at least that if Anthem dies, EA will ALSO die with it.

... then hopefully some other company can pick up the license for it and make it good. The game has so much potential. I actually enjoyed the VIP Demo when it wasn't crashing or freezing on me...

[Overloaded_Wolf]

Well, I hope at least that if Anthem dies, EA will ALSO die with it.

... then hopefully some other company can pick up the license for it and make it good. The game has so much potential. I actually enjoyed the VIP Demo when it wasn't crashing or freezing on me...

Unfortunately, I don't see EA falling from this as they can always give Bioware the boot if it doesn't succeed with pre-order sales, day one sales, or week one sales. If after week one they haven't met their projected earnings rate, they will call it a failure and that will be the end of it.