One of the notable ways BioWare pushed the industry forward was the ability for the player to initiate a romance storyline with any one of a variety of in game characters. That often included the option of romancing characters of the same gender. I point this out because the Saudi Investment Fund bought EA a couple months back and they obviously have very strong opinions on those sorts of relationships. Are these two connected? I don't know, there are plenty of other potential reasons to close a studio, so probably not. But these are now the sort of questions we have to ask ourselves anytime EA makes a decision like this.

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taurath 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Though I think that will absolutely be a factor in future releases for EA for the reason you describe, I think the larger factor was that Bioware wasn't able to succeed in pushing out games that sold well enough, and that is not necessarily entirely on the studio.

AAA games in general have been having massive problems with over-management, where you have hundreds of stakeholders for a game. The second there is proven money in a franchise, massive structures of managers start to meddle in everything, demand day and date release promises, and get involved in everything from creative direction to engineering to resourcing. You end up with thousands of people in the credits for games made by a team of 100 artists and programmers.

The same thing has been happening to big budget movies and prestige TV shows, to the point that everything becomes this sort of neoliberal corporate soup that reflects the culture of the company. Game studios become victims of their own success. In the same way enterprise software becomes consultant feature slop soup, media becomes focus grouped appeals-to-no-one ultra high production value shovelware.

Creative studios stop producing art or meaningful experiences and start producing content.

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flumpcakes 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I'm going to hazard a guess and suggest that the Saudi Investment Fund is invested in many things that would not be considered polite in Saudi society.

	▲	slg 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Sure, but when one of these investments makes moves that, perhaps coincidentally, make them more polite in Saudi society, it brings up questions regarding the motivation in a way it wouldn't for some other owner.

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pinevale 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

BioWare hasn't published a successful game in a very long time. Their last releases were Anthem (2019) and DA: Veilguard (2024), both of which tapped into the studio's reputation but underperformed in the long haul. Veilguard was also so "meh" against the backdrop of Baldur's Gate 3 that it probably harmed the brand and the franchise more than if it never came out.

They basically used to make amazing games in the 2000s and never quite lived up to that reputation again. Whether the acquisition by EA was the cause or the symptom of the decline, I don't know.

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santoshalper 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Don't forget ME:Andromeda (2017). The truth is that it has been almost 15 years since Bioware made an even arguably great game.

	▲	dudeinhawaii 4 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		I think Andromeda was actually more of a victim of modern "outrage" culture. A few bugs, memes, and suddenly a game is "trash". The game wasn't terrible and I recall enjoying playing it at the time. Sure, some of the animations were stiff and the main character design wasn't stellar but those were _really_ blown out of proportion in games media at the time. Nowadays if your game has even one thing wrong and the wrong influencer makes fun of it, suddenly it's trash. At the same time, your game can be trash and if an influencer laughs their ass off at the bugs (in a good way), everyone wants it. It's a sad culture. /rant

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kzz102 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Yeah, while it's sad they are gone, the reality is that they have been zombies for a long time.

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ToucanLoucan 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Andromeda had a lot of good in it, tbf. Their big mistake there IMO was hard-resetting the universe the way they did. Like I was excited for more mass effect but I fell off that game so hard. Mechanically it was solid but I just… didn’t care.

Anthem frankly killed them. A live service looter shooter which were already out of vogue by the time it was released. Obviously made by marketing entirely, no soul whatsoever. They never recovered from it.

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krabizzwainch 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I will always defend Andromeda as not being as bad as everyone said. I enjoy going back and playing it, and they were a few better writers away from having a really good game. I cared more about the Irish redhead copilot than about any one of the actual companions.

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pepperoni_pizza 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Yeah, Andromeda has some cool ideas (the whole Remnant thing felt like a very classic Scifi mistery) but it was stuck in classing BioWare cliches with companions loyalty quests and romances, the main character being weird chosen one, the main plot was dumb and it was barely a Mass Effect because of the disconnect from the main universe and missing some of the favorite Mass Effect things (like the Geth).

It might have been successful if it weren't a Mass Effect. Or maybe not, who knows.

	▲	keyringlight 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I think a large part of the issue is that the sum total of ME trilogy is a hard act to follow, without aiming to sound hyperbolic it's a very bright light that outshines a lot. Anything trying to be a sequel has a difficult balancing act of being familiar versus being different and bringing new ideas in.

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swiftcoder 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> I cared more about the Irish redhead copilot than about any one of the actual companions

This squares with Joker being a fan-favourite character in the main trilogy

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LaurensBER 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Mechanically it was solid but I just… didn’t care.

This is a great summary of the entire issue with the game.

I really tried to like it but it didn't inspire any enthusiasm. I didn't really care for the plot, the stakes seemed so low compared to the previous title and none of the races/planets really scratched that explore itch.

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asanineassasin 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

They where by than "owing the don" as in there existence was company internally subsidized and you do not recover creative control from that. And those external management initiated "next shiny thing" chases kill you.

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pixelpoet 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I got married in Ultima 7.

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slg 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

There's a reason I used the admittedly nebulous phrase "pushed the industry forward" rather than a simpler "introduced" or "invented". BioWare was certainly not the first with this sort of thing, but they popularized it and it was clearly impactful to a bunch of people. For example, you can hear about the impact directly from the mouths of some of BioWare's former employees. [1]

[1] - https://blog.bioware.com/2022/07/15/bioware-developer-story-...

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Razengan 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Richard Garriott is getting Ultima back next year btw: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2El7VtPuSzs

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pixelpoet 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Yes, I heard about that too! I really hope he does at least one more truly great Ultima, and he can name his price as long as it really is a proper spiritual Ultima 7 / Ultima Online successor.

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idrathernotsay 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Garriott is a crypto bro, all in on genAI and (IMO) has done nothing noteworthy since selling off the IP. I wouldn't get your hopes up

	▲	HWR_14 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		He was the first high net worth individual to pioneer space tourism.

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deadbabe 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

People got married in Ultima Online to real people.

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m4rtink 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Japanese games very often have this - IIRC in Harvest Moon you even die if you don't get married i0 IIRC 3 yearse. Not to mention dating sims being mainly about this.

	▲	robinson7d 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		None of the old Natsume Harvest Moon games allowed same-sex marriage or romance. The more recent Story of Seasons games do: the Friends of Mineral Town remake (2019/2020) does, and pioneers of olive town does. Both are more recent than the BioWare examples, and of course more recent than Stardew Valley, which is more in line with the Harvest Moon genre.

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nailer 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> I point this out because the Saudi Investment Fund bought EA a couple months back and they obviously have very strong opinions on those sorts of relationships.

They do, but only as a means for controlling the people they rule over. The House of Saud, when outside Saudi Arabia, drink alchohol, wear revealing clothing, and make use of the sex industry.

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AlexandrB 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This is a reach. Not because the Saudis don't want to influence the direction of games, but because Bioware has had such a run of embarrassing flops over the past decade that I'm surprised they stuck around this long. Peak Bioware was probably Mass Effect 2 and it's all been downhill from there.

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cherrychon 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

>pushed the industry forward Yeah... And Dice pushed le Industry forward when they stole Desert Combat, made a shitty Engine & called it 'BF2'. Great game nj but they literally hired that mod team & ripped them off harder than any skiddie on a carding board could...

>romancing characters of the same gender You mean yuri action? Otherwise, nobody wants that. And yes. I'm talking solely out of a feminine perspective here.^^

Otherwise, I once was teh mastermind behind a FemDom/FLR Megamod 4 Sims 3. To unite them all was a kinda scummy affair but the monies that stuff generated, man... Yes, it was/is common 4 The Sims mods 2 be paywalled.

	▲	nailer 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> Dice pushed le Industry forward when they stole Desert Combat, made a shitty Engine & called it 'BF2'. Dice acquired the Desert Combat studio, and the same people made BF2. https://giantbomb.com/wiki/Companies/Trauma_Studios

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maxlin 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Forward? Sideways at best. Good game developers focus on universal appeal, but instead these kinds of features are almost always driven by activist developers who don't care what damage they do inside the team itself to push these kinds of things through, they muffle true innovation, take away bandwidth needed for more important things, and break teams.

And all that before those features and how they're pushed often making the games leave a bad taste on one's mouth, most often soiling a whole franchise.

I'm in the process of reshaping my game dev career to avoid contributing to this kind of rot. Don't mind eating noodles if that's what it takes.

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swiftcoder 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

You know, the neutering of same-sex romances in ME: 2 (due to an extended right media campaign), is one of the most universally decried changes, in a game that was otherwise considered an improvement on the formula

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john_strinlai 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

>take away bandwidth needed for more important things

in a game that already has romance options, adding a same sex romance option is not taking away bandwidth. and i cannot imagine how it would "soil" an entire franchise. just don't choose the same sex romance option if you don't want to. easy.

	▲	collingreen 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		They aren't confused about how difficult it is to avoid same sex options in game. They spelled it out clearly - they decided "mainstream appeal" should not even bring up the option and doing so is probably pressure from people they don't like ("activists"). Karens aren't misunderstanding how to mind their own business or live-and-let-live; they are trying to enforce what they see as (or wish were) social norms and don't give a damn about the perspective of the folks on the receiving end of their chirping.

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ainch 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Not sure what what specific claim you're making. Do you think gay romance 'soiled' Mass Effect?

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DonHopkins an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

maxlin> these kinds of features are almost always driven by activist developers

Guilty as charged! I'm an activist developer who threw down the gauntlet and insisted The Sims support same sex relationships.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43068114

DonHopkins> So from a gameplay, family representation, and storytelling perspective, it was better not to explicitly represent sexual preference, and just let the players and Sims be free to love whoever they want. Like it should be in the real world.

In the June 1998 prototype, when two women tried to kiss, the would-be-kissee slapped the kisser. So I wrote up in my design review that it should support same sex relationships instead of resulting in homophobic violence. The design documents were updated to say heterosexual romance would not be the only kind available, and Patrick J. Barrett III implemented it his own way, which was better than mine: no sexual preference property at all, just relationships, so it was up to you who to love.

https://donhopkins.com/home/TheSims/

Then a lesbian kiss lit the fire at E3 in 1999, right after Columbine, when the press was desperate for a non-violent gender inclusive video game to write about.

The Kiss That Changed Video Games:

https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/the-kiss...

Then the franchise made EA $5 billion.

How EA’s $5 billion Sims empire has become a magnet for female talent in a male-dominated field:

https://fortune.com/2025/01/31/the-sims-25-anniversary/

maxlin> who don't care what damage they do inside the team itself to push these kinds of things through, they muffle true innovation, take away bandwidth needed for more important things, and break teams.

That's unmitigated GamerGate bullshit. Nobody's bandwidth was stolen, no innovation was muffled, and the team didn't break up -- just the opposite: we original Sims team members are great friends and have continued working with each other frequently on different projects over the decades since.

And same sex relationships WERE the innovation, and the lesbian kiss is a big reason it caught fire at E3. Gonzalo Frasca used same sex relationships as the textbook example of procedural rhetoric, because the designers didn't just draw rainbow flags, they built rules into the simulation.

Procedural Rhetoric:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procedural_rhetoric

Here are the design documents and the record, so you don't have to take my word for it, or accuse me of pulling evidence-free bullshit out of my ass like you are:

https://donhopkins.com/home/TheSimsDesignDocuments/

https://github.com/SimHacker/WillWrightShowForFood/blob/main...

maxlin> Good game developers focus on universal appeal

That IS universal appeal. Gays and girls and even boys played it, and it proved there was a huge female audience for games 14 years before GamerGate got it all wrong by attacking women while pretending it was about journalism.

maxlin> most often soiling a whole franchise

Calling same sex romance "rot" that ends up soiling a whole franchise is historically ignorant bigotry, and the claim that inclusion ruins games is the same idiotic argument GamerGate made, which The Sims had already proven wrong starting in 2000, more than a decade before GamerGate, when it shipped and went on to become the best selling PC game of all time.

If that's what soil looks like, every publisher on earth would line up for a shovel.

Mythic Quest: Time To Penis:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_xqyIMwbew

You must be thrilled the Saudi crown prince's sovereign wealth fund bought EA, since it's so aligned with your outdated bigoted opinions on same sex relationships. And since GamerGate was supposedly about ethics in games journalism, how do you feel about EA's new owner, whose chairman, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, approved the operation in which Saudi agents murdered and dismembered journalist Jamal Khashoggi with a bone saw?

Enjoy your noodles, but get used to them!

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rexpop an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[flagged]

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an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

[deleted]

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dyauspitr 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I would attribute any decrease in those sort of interactions 100% to runaway feminism over anything the Saudis are doing

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DonHopkins an hour ago | parent [-]

The Saudis would agree with you that runaway feminism is the root of all evil, not them.

	▲	dyauspitr an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Actually on this issue, it seems like the runaway feminists and the Saudis both agree.