Anthem was the ultimate product of EA’s mandate. EA was thoroughly convinced for a long time that single-player games were not profitable. What resulted was an increased focus on multiplayer experiences and live service games.
Mass Effect 3 was probably the first sign. Mass Effect 1 and 2 had been exclusively single-player games. And massive successes at that. Despite this, EA saw fit to include a huge multiplayer focus in Mass Effect 3.
Without really any reason, Mass Effect 3’s single-player suddenly relied on you doing missions in multiplayer to improve your chances. In addition, the multiplayer was heavily filled with microtransactions and repetitive missions that mostly relied on shooting increasingly difficult waves of enemies. Sure it was fun but hardly substantial. Despite this, EA definitely seemed to think multiplayer was the future.
“Nobody Plays Single Player Games”
Titanfall was the first real sign of things to come. Despite being sold as a full $60 game, it had no single-player component. Instead, the entire game was multiplayer only. It also relied heavily on DLC to add more content for players, meaning that the $60 price tag was only for the base game.
What ended up happening was that one of the core criticisms of Titanfall was its lack of a single-player campaign. Titanfall 2 actually was given a full single-player campaign but ended up doing poorly because it was released at the wrong time. Of course, EA’s executives saw this as further evidence that single-player experiences were not popular enough.
EA also saw the success of Bungie’s Destiny and Destiny 2 as cementing the fact that live service games were the way of the future. Which of course completely ignored the success of several single-player games such as The Last Of Us and The Witcher 3. Anthem seems born out of their desire to have a success story like Destiny on their hands. A live service game that could bring in profits for years to come.
The Beginning Of The Fall
The development of Mass Effect Andromeda had been hell. A relatively new team was tasked with making the new Mass Effect game, which they stressed would not be Mass Effect 4. But even without being compared to the earlier Mass Effect games, Andromeda was a massive disappointment.
Andromeda did a lot of things right. In terms of combat, it was a lot of fun. But then you had the stuff that wasn’t so fun. Like the multiplayer making a comeback with more microtransactions. The stilted voice acting and horrible facial animation didn’t help things either.
Things got worse when stories about its development came to light. Apparently, the game had trouble even getting past the conceptual stage, and when it did, most of the planned features were cut. People apparently worked long hours on the game too, something that shows in parts of the game. Honestly, Andromeda is not a bad game, but it is a disappointment nonetheless.
BioWare Magic
Anthem’s entire existence, from development to its eventual death has been a constant tragedy. Development was particularly harsh on the team, with executives believing the game would make itself because of what they called “BioWare Magic”. In reality, the staff was crunched so hard, some of them ended up having breakdowns.
It kinda shows in the final product. Anthem feels like a game made by an AI, based entirely on what can bring the company money. It’s a completely soulless corporate product that has some really cool ideas but ultimately doesn’t know how to actually take those ideas anywhere. The story feels like a cobbled-together mess. Barely cohesive and with an ending that makes absolutely no sense.
Initially, I was really hooked on the game. To the point where I gave it an 8/10, and shamelessly defended it. In hindsight, I am not proud of this, and regretting how blinded I was by my love for the game. I simply refused to see the problems, something that definitely has changed over time.
Despite being a loot-driven shooter, it somehow also manages to make looting feel pointless. Being something crucial to post-ending gameplay, the game felt entirely pointless to play once you’d finished the main campaign. A roadmap was made for the game, only to be abandoned entirely by the team. Eventually, the game itself was abandoned.
EA apparently assembled a small team to work on revamping the game entirely. Anthem Next was going to be a complete reworking of the game from the ground up. Unfortunately, this project would never see any conclusion as EA canceled development recently.
A Change For EA
EA has stated that they will focus more on single-player experiences going forward. Gotta say it took them long enough to realize single-player games were profitable. In the end, it doesn’t matter whether a game is online or not, only that it’s a good game. Anthem was not a good game, but not because it was a live service game.
So EA focusing more on single-player games isn’t really solving anything, nor is it necessarily a good thing. It just means they’ve lost faith in live service games, but this is still EA we’re talking about. If they can find a way to greedily monetize something, we’ve been shown time and time again that they’re perfectly capable of it.
In the end, the executives only care about money. When something is no longer profitable, they will find some other way to make something else profitable. Anthem proved one thing, and that was that rushed development, extreme crunch, and belief in “magic” results in a bad game. It is a lesson that executives seem unwilling to learn, given how much they love releasing things and patching them later.
I have serious doubts EA is going to learn anything from this beyond “live service games doesn’t give us money anymore”. We will most likely continue to see rushed games from them. With Dragon Age 4 on the horizon, and with its live service component removed, the only hope we can have is that it will at least not require an online connection to play.
… yeah right.