Well said. The bigger problem, socially speaking, is that we all deal with economy in real life. Wanting to deal with an "economy" in a game has always been a bit of a friction point. If you look at it cynically, it's a ridiculous problem that people put themselves into. That's not me saying players are to blame. I'm talking about the base mechanics of what it means to have an "economy" and why exactly players want to incorporate this aspect of reality into a game experience. If we go by real-world definitions, you can't truly balance an economy where the player could, at least in principle, get an infinite amount of money. Money gets created essentially from "nothing" (again, in a strict economic sense). So balancing the possibility of infinite money, you have to look at schemes of finite money. Now couple this with you can't control free will. (But you can limit or narrow agency, as you aptly put it.) So you can assume the player is using various money sinks, but what if they rarely do? Can you force them? Maybe. But only if they can't get money in some other, even if very tedious, way. Gamers tend to want a fully functioning, believable economy but that is also "fun" or "enjoyable." But the better question is: why? People complain about capitalism all the time in the "real world" but seem to enjoy partaking in the aspects of it in a game world when, really, it is nothing more than fake money being used to play a game. And it seems, particularly in an MMO context, no one is ever satisfied. Sometimes matching how they feel about an economy in the real world! Economies function off change. There's demand, supply, factors, outputs, efficiency, and various other factors. So the question for some gamers is how much do you want an economics simulation at the heart of your game? Apologies for a derailing post to your thread; it's just this has been a fascinating area of game design for a long time. I am eager to hear the thoughts of other players on your proposed ideas.

A lot of what you suggest would be relatively easy to implement but some aspects can be tricky. As Steve indicated, this isn't always as easy as it might seem. There are a lot of factors that can go into this because the model you see on the character creator is, in fact, what is rendered in game. You might say, "Well, yeah, obviously. What would be the use otherwise?" But here's the issue. For your game engine, you create a base model. And you have what are sometimes called "shape keys." Different engines use different names but it's all the same thing. There is logic that situates the character mesh towards the various shape keys you have set up. (So your Cathar ears, as one example.) This is how the model is stored: a series of vertices in different positions. The challenge is you have to preserve those vertices on your mesh and those are related to the aforementioned shape keys. And those shape keys are what are used in character creators behind sliders or value setters. I know: boring, right? But this is what makes it tricky to get even simple changes correct because those simple changes have to apply to any animations that are relevant to the base model of the character in question. This is why games tend to have relatively few base models. HeroEngine, which this game is based on, has basically the same mechanics that I described above. I would link you to some of the documentation the developers of the engine had made available, but HeroEngine is now dead and gone entirely; as in site closed down, engine no longer available. (Although their HEWiki is available on the Wayback Machine, albeit a little painful to traverse.) Certain things you mention, such as coloring for eyes, is much easier, of course. That's why they've offered packs in the past accommodating eye color changes. Different colored eyes (the heterochromia) is in that same bucket. It's probably just something no one was really thinking about. The hair, however, does fall a bit into the above category. It's (relatively) easy to add a mesh for a hair style. It's harder to have it situate itself well in terms of clipping or animations due to facial movement. It also has to situate in terms of cybernetic enhancements, some that wrap around the head, some that situate "in front of" the hair and so on. Skin coloring can be equally interesting because while it sounds simple -- add a different overlay to the mesh -- you do have to factor in how that color is displayed relative to various lighting effects. Case in point: we already know the "lighting" in SWTOR's character creator can give slightly different appearances when you actually get in the game, such as with certain skin tones. It can be subtle, and thus not terribly distracting, when it's just a case of "not as pale as I thought" or "a bit darker than I thought." It can be much less subtle when getting into purples, blues, and so on. When all is said and done, it's tricky to get this stuff right and you are limited by the engine you are running on. Examples of character creators done extremely well are that of Elden Ring and Hogwarts: Legacy. But also notice the high level of fidelity. It's questionable whether such work would be all that valuable in a SWTOR context given that, in the end, your character would really look pretty much the same, just with a slightly different shade of coloring.

Definitely! But in that case it would probably be easier to just level up a new character with the spec you want. If you really want to try it, waiting ninety days versus creating a new character right now doesn't seem enticing. Granted, if you really want that particular character, then yeah, the wait idea could certainly be tenable. I agree that if they could monetize it a bit, it would potentially be more attractive to them. The question is the audience: established players already know -- or at least should know -- what most of the disciplines play like. So they (should?) generally know what choice they want to make based on that experience. Newer players, however, do not have that experience. This is another example of something we were all chatting about in General Discussion regarding catering to new players but also providing for established players. Yep, entirely true. That was entirely due to how conditional flags about advanced discipline were coupled with other points of data about the character. Regression surface for that kind of thing is a nightmare from a testing perspective. Think: fundamental schema change along with nullability changes along with some new foreign key introductions along with some trigger and event association changes. (I think I read somewhere that you worked in software development, as I do. That's why I risked going down the rabbit hole a bit there!)

The main rationale here is not technical but rather they didn't want players just sticking to one character and changing styles all the time. They wanted an impetus for players to have to make a choice and then stick with that for that character. And if said players wanted to try another choice, they needed to create another character. In a "game of alts", keeping alts useful is of at least some importance. This is a balance between flexibility (choose between two combat styles) but without discouraging the creation of new characters to try out new things. It's a general perception in game design that "alt friendliness," for lack of a better term, encourages more social play in more varying conditions. There are plenty of studies in game science journals that at least seem to back up the idea that long-term engagement with an MMO is correlated strongly with how "alt-friendly" it is.

This framing doesn't help, though, right? Because then someone else can claim that it's "whiners and crybabies" who only want to focus on Republic versus Empire. It's a pity gamers tend not to learn that polarizing statements really don't do much to help a conversation. Yet if gamers keep falling into these traps, then you can start to see how studios have a hard time navigating difference of opinion. Somewhat of a side note, but tangentially related, there's a great book called The Secret Science of Games. Two key topics of this book are the following: How to give feedback to game designers that they’ll actually listen to. Why asking players if a game is fun isn’t all that useful. Speaking to the more relevant topic, the book Fatal Alliance, which originally came out in June of 2010, was meant to show the Republic and Empire teaming up against a common foe and was used to gauge some fan response to the idea. This was specifically billed as an "Old Republic" book. It had nothing to do with KOTFE or KOTET but, as I've explained elsewhere, the idea of KOTFE / KOTET was actually established well before we actually got it. The Disney acquisition of Lucasfilm and, more particularly the announcement of Episode 7 coming out, required an immediate need for story content and thus the push for a KOTFE / KOTET tied back to the main story. My only point here is decisions about KOTFE / KOTET and then returning to something more similar to the vanilla class story structure was long in the planning. It had nothing to do with "whiners and crybabies" at the time. In fact, it's the opposite. It's why SWTOR has trouble moving in response to any story feedback, because so much was laid out beforehand. I think what we're seeing now is the issue: the previous material that was laid out and planned has run out. So they have to make up new stuff -- and that seems to be of variable quality.

Very much agreed on this. One of the issues, as BioWare admitted in various interviews over time, people "raced through the content." What they mean is they created an MMO and weren't prepared for the idea of "endgame." They just really didn't get that part of it. This stems in part from SWTOR originally having been KOTOR 3 and then moved into an MMO format. They also, perhaps oddly, didn't anticipate, how much people would group or try to play content together given that it was an MMO. So queues were incredibly bad and servers were not optimized. So notice two trends there: people raced through content (in BioWare's view) and they played together. It may sound odd to say it, but BioWare wasn't ready for that? Why? Because the overriding mentality was still a "single player game in a world shared with other players" which is a subtle (or perhaps subtle) difference from an MMO in some people's eyes. Now, oddly enough, with servers not optimized, one of the reasons for that was because they anticipated so many players and so had a lot of servers. A whole lot. So the population they did have became distributed. But keep in mind they were still thinking of these players are largely "single players who might group up for story." So then you merge everyone into fewer servers -- and all the sudden those poor optimizations become clear quickly. And the queuing strategy that was a bit of an afterthought (if we're being honest) showed the chinks in its armor. And let's even forget about the MMO parts for a second. Consider the story itself. BioWare realized people were, again in their terms, "racing through the content." Thus fully voice-acted content with huge story narrative and interconnections, plus companion interactions, plus decisions were "finished" by players much quicker than anticipated. BioWare originally planned on a much longer time for players to get through content. But lots of players were "done" with the so-called vanilla story. Yikes! Now what? You have set expectations around deep story, interconnections, and full voice-acting. But ... you have no new content. And even if you did, you certainly don't have content that matches the scope of the first three chapters. And this truly does go back (at least in my mind) to what I mentioned way upthread and a few of us have discussed: a conflicted and conflicting identity for the game from the start. That conflict at the studio level ultimately reflected itself in the broader community who had to navigate exactly what SWTOR was and how to engage with it, balancing the ideas of pre-existing games that were inspirations to it (Star Wars: Galaxies, KOTOR 1, KOTOR 2) and pre-existing games that it was a reaction to (World of Warcraft).

There can be a decline in population and many still sticking around. Those are not mutually exclusive statements. It just means not as many are sticking around. But nobody is arguing that. Catering to new players does not mean I was saying new players are the main source of their income. So there was no "arguing the opposite." Any game based on longevity wants its players to stick around. This is obvious. Barring having as many people as possible retained, your primary goal is to retain enough to meet your operating budget (bare minimum revenue) and then some more (to profit and be able to actually reinvest). Sometimes you get that through existing players; sometimes you get that through new players. It sounds to me like this isn't the game for you for the reasons you stated. And understandable reasons; many would agree with you. You came back even though you were expecting nothing better; as you said "not that this did surprise me in any way." So you had expectation of badness, came back anyway, and are still here posting about it. I'm not saying that's a bad thing. What I'm saying is many do what you do -- but also keep their subscription. Others cancel it but then come back. So it's hard for a studio to cater to audiences like that, particularly when (arguably) the studio has caused that audience fluctuation by their content strategy. Soon you get into a chicken-and-egg situation. They can't get more budget because they can't meet projections because player volatility. They can't ease that volatility because enough people don't trust the product and development team to deliver. So that's where you start to cater to newer audiences that don't have the same history and expectations and/or disappointments. Whether that works is highly debatable. It's worked for some games; not for others. Since SWTOR is still here, the overall strategy is working well enough to at least not shelve the game entirely.

In most games, the vast majority of players are the equivalent of a silent majority. You can, as an example, look at some recent YouTube videos posted about "Is SWTOR Worth Playing in 2023" (and now "... in 2024"). Did those bring in new people? Hard to say, but it would be likely that some were enticed to give it a shot. Given that I'm here again -- and I only show up when ludonarrative experiences are being tested and used in classroom settings -- means there has been enough demand for me to be engaged in this way. I didn't talk about population. I just talked about who was being catered to recently in a broad sense. Whether it's working or not is an entirely different question. As a general, and obvious, rule most MMO style games are always trying to get new players, as well as retain existing players and entice former players to return. But a lot of the changes to UI that people wonder about were not for established players, who really didn't need most of that. The move to Steam, to 64-bit and to AWS was an attempt to get the platform more up-to-date so that it could accommodate a wider audience. Sure there are. New players, particularly those who take their time with the game, would have the full vanilla experience to go through. So by the time they get to the recent small updates, there are many small updates available. Now, again, whether that works is a different matter. But it's not hard to see that there is a sensible way. What's harder to cater to with the smaller updates are the established players. For the people who feel this way, and I can entirely understand why, the question then becomes how long are they going to stick around and complain about it? Mind you, I'm not against critiquing. I think it's crucial for a playerbase to be a critical one. But when said complaints are consistent over years and when the situation doesn't seem to be changing, whether due to budget or apathy, then clearly established players are no longer being catered to. Yet ... many of them apparently stick around. If that's the case even for those who seem miserable, imagine how much easier it is for a newer player who doesn't have that full experience yet.

I really like this sentiment. Entertainment is subjective. It always has been, always will be. What one person hates, another likes. And vice versa. I'm one of those that saw what this could have been when it was originally framed as KOTOR 3 and there's a large part of me that can't escape the disappointment of what might have been. But, that being said, I have to judge SWTOR on its own merits, not on something that doesn't exist. (Caveat to what I say next: I'm often paid to be here; not by Bioware / Broadsword, but rather as part of my work on narrative and story experience testing, which I periodically write about. SWTOR is often used in case and classroom studies for ludonarrative thinking and design.) SWTOR has been in existence since the end of 2011, so roughly twelve years. That's not a bad run for a game. Yes, there have been mis-steps but notice that most of the people actively complaining about the mis-steps are still here. I'm not suggesting people shouldn't voice criticism. They should. But at some point, if said criticism has been coming for years and seems to infuse a person's thinking, perhaps they're just playing the wrong game. Or maybe the right game, but at the wrong time. The lack of people leaving, even when unhappy, is what the game industry, and MMOs in particular, count on: people will complain, but in the end they will still pay with their time and their dollars. An interesting take on all of this is usually that if SWTOR was an MMO without the Star Wars branding, it would have failed long ago. Perhaps. People say the same thing about Star Trek Online. But the fact is SWTOR is an MMO with Star Wars branding and has to be judged on that criteria. It's really the only expansive Star Wars game at the moment. The Jedi: Fallen Order series, for all its merits, is still relatively self-contained as a once-and-done experience. I think it's possible to hold both views in mind. There is a whole lot of lost potential in this game, not just in what it could have originally been, but in how it has evolved. There is also a whole lot to engage with in this game, particularly if you take your time and just roll with the experience. SWTOR is in a position of trying to cater more to newer players -- of which there can be a steady stream -- rather than catering to the "old guard," as it were. That causes friction and division. And hence we see exactly your sentiment: far from perfect, needs improving, but can still be enjoyed.

We probably won't agree on all details (which is fine of course!) so I just picked out this statement. I know it's one you're not alone in having. But then the question comes up: if people truly feel this way -- that they're being lied to and trust is being broken -- and further that this has been happening for years, why are those people still here? You could argue many aren't and that may be true. But for the people who are here and seem to feel this way: what's the draw for sticking around? As far your salient points, I agree with most of what you say. I said much earlier upthread SWTOR always had an identity problem. It still does. That problem has led to decisions that have drastically impacted the ability to perform projectable revenue. That shows most obviously in content or lack thereof. Equally true that voice acting is a luxury. That said, it's now become a luxury that's an expectation of something that sets the game apart. My only point was that if you do some analysis, you see voice was absolutely not what led to the original issues with the game not meeting monetary expectations. (Case in point: the game made its profit, but it missed its projections. And as I said upthread, just as in Hollywood, projections are everything.) And, for the most part (actor strikes notwithstanding), voice hasn't been massively impactful overall compared to other mitigating factors. It has been impactful, without doubt. But it's not the primary impactor. The fact that some parts have reverted to KOTOR style conversation menus is a parallax effect for the wider issues, one of which was bloated staff.

This kind of reminds me of the idea behind Mass Effect 2, where your character could show more visible scaring as a result of taking a renegade path. The challenge would be the "selectable level of detail." A lot of times these "corruption style" effects are modeled as a progression and if you want to halt the progression, stop doing "dark side / renegade" things. And if you want to reverse the progression, do more "light side / paragon" things. Selectable would have to be based on the number of discrete settings and that would likely lead to the developers just choosing a minimum number to keep the test permutations manageable. Another "problem" can be that none of the dialogue or story really recognizes this. So imagine you could become some hideous creature of the night by persistent use of dark side choices. But then some NPC in the game refers to you as "pretty" (for a female) or in some other way indicates they are hitting on you. It would be faintly ridiculous if you looked like a zombie vampire. (Then again, you can make a hideously scarred cyborg character now and still hit on people or be hit on.) So I guess a point here is: why have the massive cosmetic change to a character if that's all it is: cosmetic. I realize that's an argument that could be made about the system as it is now. Which is sort of my point. Without any story impact, I've always found the dark side / light side corruption to be worth very little.

Exactly and entirely this. It's just like all the hoopla we see about the recent Star Wars movies. What Disney has to worry about is not the people who get on YouTube to talk about how much Disney has crushed their childhood memories and bastardized the franchise. (Just as they can't rest on their laurels with those who will love anything Star Wars no matter what.) They have to worry about the more "casual" (for lack of a better term) consumer who will or won't engage with the product but who also won't really care enough to say why in some public venue. What you say here is spot on: "A small section will keep doing it no matter what and it may just be enough to keep a game alive, but it doesn't really work on a larger scale." Indeed. And consider that in a game like SWTOR, you are often counting on people will keep their subscriptions simply because it's easier than cancelling and who think they may come back anyway. Just like someone may keep Amazon Prime and barely really use it. Or someone who keeps Netflix and Disney+ and Peacock and whatever else even though they only watch a fraction of what any one of them offer. I bring that up because game studios really count on that. (For example, "People will stay subscribed if we promise exclusive content if they are subscribed. Or they get in-game 'money' if they stay subscribed.") They don't want people to do any sort of mental calculus, like "Hmm, I pay for this for six months but I only play on the weekends." Game studio business (generally) is predicated on predicting A sales at B price with C margins running at D burn rate. Subscriptions are just like someone buying your game again at some interval (say, every six months). So you have A subscriptions at B cost to cover C percent of D burn rate. For the former, you have to calculate that until the release of your next game. (Think Rockstar with GTA 5 and GTA 6 or, in the case of Ubisoft, the "downtime" between Assassin's Creed titles.) With the latter, you have to calculate that based on the content you can keep providing for the same game. So put yourself in the shoes of the SWTOR product team. (Not the development team; they do the work that the product team indicates is necessary.) You have a game that you need to keep people subscribed to and/or have a healthy number of people who will buy things like Cartel Coins. Short of external cost center allocations, this is the only way to sustain your development. Yet some segment of those same people are saying the content seems to be lacking across the board. It's there, it's just not very substantive. But you have different people saying different things: PvP folks may have one focus, whereas the story-driven folks may have another. And some may demand both. It's an interesting dilemma. One thing I didn't bring up but along the lines of the "treadmill gamer," there is another industry insider term used called the "no-lifeing," which is a horrible term. The idea being that some people "no-life content" so fast -- because they have "no life" -- and that impacts the ability to produce content, particularly if that content was meant to be consumed at a more leisurely rate. (Interviews from the SWTOR design team early after its release indicated this very problem.)

In the gaming industry, there is an internal term used: "treadmill gamers." By that is meant the gamers who will most often complain about some form of "grind," or really any entirely repetitive activity, but will actually do it the most in spite of all their complaining. That isn't a statement directed at you; I'm speaking broadly of a concept used in the internal game industry to refer to certain classes of player. You ask: "How many times the devs can repeat the exact same mistakes every few years." By the same logic, if the discussion comes up a lot "in the past 20 years or so", as you indicate, the better question might be: why do players keep doing it? Why do they keep hopping on the treadmill? In the end, the question is really: why do people think even a "good" payoff matters if, in reality, all you've been doing is the same thing over and over (and over and over) in the same game for a long time? It would be like reading a book a thousand times just to keep getting to that ending ("payoff") that you know is there. But, an argument could be made: maybe you should just move on to some other books? But the game industry as a whole largely now has the idea of capturing players ("keep reading the book") and so they come up with ways to keep capturing those players. The treadmill. And players keep hopping on it, even when they claim to hate it or at least are tired of it. And for games to keep supporting that, they need a way to monetize or it becomes impossible to keep the treadmill going. I apologize to the OP for what was clearly a derailing on my part but this is an area that has long been fascinating to me from a sociological perspective in gaming. Speaking to at least the OP's point, the idea of having KOKTOR-style dialogue and a relative lack of cutscenes becomes interesting. How much, and to what extent, are players willing to tolerate a perceived degradation in what came before? Game studios that have to monetize are always asking this question. And it does lead to an interesting dynamic that the OP brings up: "it's better this what we got than nothing". Game studios will often see how far they can push that sentiment!

But that's like anything, right? We can all doubt. But you have to do so knowing that you are (1) doubting people who were actually there and know more than you about it and (2) doubting people like me who have worked in the industry for many years and who also know about it. Now, granted, point (2) is entirely anecdotal to you and you are absolutely right to question it. That's why I try to be as data-focused and evidence-focused as I can. You're certainly right to doubt anything and be skeptical. But there are also tons of other references out there that back up what I'm saying for other game studios. So it's not like there's some lack of evidence for you to investigate. Now you can doubt all of that, of course, but you then have to realize this doubt probably stems from a pre-conceived belief rather than anything based on actual evidence. Which means you likely wouldn't be convinced by anything. And, in the end, it really doesn't matter because of this point you mention: "and it simply did not pay off the way they wanted it, whether you like VA or not there is no denying that." Yes, the game, in some ways, did not pay off as desired. No doubt. The game not paying off had nothing to do with the voice acting. It had everything to do with expectations of a core audience (who wanted a non-MMO KOTOR 3) and the intense focus on trying to be a "WoW-killer" combined with a focus on being a part of Star Wars history that had no relevance to Star Wars that the casual fan was aware of. You mention: "I simply don't trust anything any of the devs of this game say." Most times you are not hearing from "the devs." You are hearing from product managers and community managers. If you could hear from the developers at most studios -- and sometimes you do after their NDAs expire or they get laid off -- you would hear a very different side to many stories of how things work. Not all of it bad, but certainly not all of it rosy. (Even here many developers have non-disparagement clauses so they have to be careful even without an NDA and even after lay offs.) This isn't me disagreeing with your point, rather just saying that you have to realize the people doing the actual grunt work are often not the people you are hearing from. And when you are truly hearing from those people, it's a calibrated response that has been vetted by a community team. (Witness what happens when that is not held to, such as many of the developer tweets we see out there about games like Baldur's Gate 3 or Starfield.) One more point if I may ... No one (I hope) seriously doubts that voice acting is expensive. And obviously we don't have actual budget figures for the current development team. But consider in SWTOR we've seen some of the KOTOR-style conversations. You could take any non-voiced dialogue and do some back-of-the-envelope calculations, including taking the current size of the dev team (as determined on LinkedIn), and factor in what the extra budget would have been to voice all of the stuff that was unvoiced, given the data we've all been talking about and making some assumptions. Obviously there's a crap-ton of wiggle room here but you can get a reasonable feel for the scale of what costs are being mitigated and, from that, you can start to form some ideas of what budget likely is. (Investors, like myself, often do this kind of "scenario analysis" when you lack internal information. It's a kind of black box "reverse engineering" that's done as part of financial modeling. It's how you get beyond the earnings reports and try to make decisions about likelihoods.)

Indeed, the basis of the game was established around the idea of a story-driven narrative that was fully voice-acted. Now, I'll refer to something else I said before: keep in mind how the identity of the game switched (early on) from KOTOR 3 to SWTOR. Keep in mind that the KOTOR 3 story was originally just two: Jedi and Sith. (And the "Knight" and "Consular" stories were wrapped into one, as was the "Inquisitor" and "Warrior".) So far, so good. A story-driven, voice-acted game would match KOTOR 1 and KOTOR 2 and be a direct continuation. But then you get an MMO focus. And an MMO can't really just have "Sith" and "Jedi." You need options and choices for characters to play and you need PvP. So bare minimum you have to break those two out into four. But even that's not really enough. Consider what World of Warcraft had at the time (nine), which SWTOR was in part responding to. One of the most common questions circulating at the time this was first announced -- and we're going back here to 2006/7 - was "Why does this have to be an MMO?" A lot of people thought KOTOR 3 was going to be the defining Star Wars experience and there was a lot of concern about creating a so-called "WoW-killer." So one possible interpretation of history is that they shifted a game idea (SD-RPG) to another (MMO-RPG), the latter of which should not have been subject to the same vision. But -- 💲💲💲, right? Everyone was hankering for a piece of that WoW-action.

But that doesn't apply as directly as you might think it does. For example, you're not referencing the other documents that show how payments are based on unit sales and/or subscriber milestones (when the latter are applicable). You have to start with base first and then work off scale. Let's just be real simple about this for illustrative purposes. So, for SWTOR, we know that each class has two voice actors (male, female). Let's just say (unscaled) that each voice actor is paid $50 per hour. Let's assume each class had 200,000 lines of dialogue. Let's also say the voice actors doing ten sessions take forty hours. Let's say they can get through one hundred lines per hour. Given that, we calculate how many sessions it will take for one actor to do 200,000 lines and it would take fifty sessions. Thus total earnings for a voice actor after completing those sessions given a pay rate of $50 per hour would be $100,000. Now let's keep in mind that we have sixteen voice actors and each do the same fifty sessions at $50 an hour for a total of $100,000. Well, obviously you get $1,600,000 as your cost outlay there. But now let's factor in a rate of $500 per hour. That now jumps up to $16,000,000. GADZOOKS! That sounds like a lot. And it is! But if you factor in a budget of $200 million, it's practically nothing. It's 8%. Again, that sounds like a lot but when you factor in projections, it's really not. Now, given my first number ($1,600,000) and given that the average salary of a senior game developer is $150,000, how many senior game developers would I have to have on staff before their salaries combined were greater than the $1,600,000 for the voice acting? The answer: about eleven. And there were many more then eleven senior developers on the project. And you also have to factor in the costs of product and project managers. Okay, but how about the second number of $16,000,000? That's approximately 107. And in the very early days, SWTOR had budgeted over close to 300 total staff, with the vast majority of that being developers. But, on the other hand, we do also have to account for the fact that it's not just English voice actors. They had voice actors for other languages as well. But, as is said in the article I linked to: This article, while brief, did contain some good details as well. With the above, you also have to factor in that 200,000 was the estimated total number of lines in the game, not those of the main voice actors. You also have to factor in that obviously the cost varies based on the particular voice actor, some of whom might demand greater or lesser hourly rates. (Union factors come into play here, too, of course since you have to factor in their multiplicative pay scale, if it applies. Not all voice actors are part of SAG-AFTRA. Many of the non primary voices in SWTOR were freelancers.) You also have to factor in that this was a big bang cost for ALL dialogue at the time. Obviously smaller, incremental content will have lower overall costs. Whereas your developer costs will not change from base salary (although can go up due to merit increases, bonuses, cost-of-living updates) ... unless, of course, you reduce the size of the team. This article, also brief but a bit more substantive, does a fairly good job of showing the range, which I tried to do above (moving between $50 and $500 an hour, for example). Having worked in this context for a long time, I find voice acting is probably one of the more misunderstood things but that's also because it is nuanced quite a bit.

All the talk of voice actors and costs can actually be mitigated if you've worked in the industry. The cost of voice acting is one of the lowest costs you have. In the case of SWTOR, this was already stated directly many years ago. (You can read that here.) The main cost comes into studio and editing time and even then it often factors around line variations. Lower-end voice acting engagements have the actors reading lines with two variations. Sometimes this can get as high as three or five variations, depending on context. Voice acting is rarely, if ever, a major factor in overall development. The cost to support even a slew of voice actors for a large scale game compared to just the salary of one or two senior game developers is next to nothing. Also, upthread I saw folks talking about GTA 6 and the "$2 billion" cost. You have to keep in mind this is not the cost to make the game. This is about the projections I talked about and the cost to support the game over its putative usable lifetime. So that $2 billion is all of that. If the studio has planned out the game for, say, having ten years of viable life, then the studio is saying that it will cost $2 billion in total to support the game over that lifetime, which includes, of course, initial development. The same applies, by the way, to SWTOR. Its "price tag" in its early days was for that entire putative lifetime and, for an MMO, that can be kind of interesting. (In a non-MMO context, it certainly proved so for GTA 5 with GTA Online.) But this is also where the projections can get really wonky. How do you allocate budget for a game that constantly changes? And thus can have constant turnover of audience?

Very much agreed. But remember: KOTFEET was parceled out to pad the overall content with time. It was entirely written well before all the chapters were released. So when you consider temporality, BioWare was riding on content it had already had baked and ready to go. People mono-focus on the "budget" a lot and that's not the issue. The issue is whether the projections were able to match the budget. So there wasn't so much a higher volume of content as it was just distributed over time. And that's getting to what you're pointing to: story content was not enough to monetize the game based on the projections. Indeed so. Or ... settle on an identity so you don't try to satisfy very disparate audiences with one game that, by necessity, will have to make decisions that disadvantage one or the other style of player at different times and for different reasons. Imagine if, say, Jedi: Fallen Order shifted to become an MMO-like experience after it was developed as a single-player story-driven, narrative-heavy game. Further, it was an experience that had to be continually monetized. Imagining that gives you some idea of the SWTOR development path.

Agreed. But I didn't say it was the sole culprit. I'm saying consider when planning and development for it must have started given the timeline. Then consider what content they had to release prior to that but not conflict with it, in terms of future direction.

Indeed, you raise a good point. The notion of "choices matter" is a fraught one in the industry and is subject to a lot of aspects that focus on narratology combined with ludology. As someone who has done a lot of story and narrative experience testing for games, I can say this is probably one of the more contentious aspects. (I say that not to suggest my opinion matters more or for some misplaced hubris; it's just context.) Whether or not a choice "matters" is really up to the player. I can make a choice in a game and regardless of whether that choice somehow comes up again, it may have mattered to me in the act of making it. It allowed me to define my character in some way. The question is often around whether choices have persistent implications and thus consequences that, crucially, are reflected in story, which you are indicating. When defined by that latter criterion, whether "choices matter" is a bit more objective even thought it does nothing to detract from the previous more subjective element. The real question then is how much and to what extent that matters for players. Which is, of course, an individual thing. Here's how I frame it for SWTOR: the whole KOTFE / KOTET thing was kind of like this singularity. Imagine that prior to the singularity (in a black hole sense!) you had all these possibilities and differences and circumstantial and situational stuff, all of which was reflective of the narrative as experienced -- and controlled -- by the player. Then KOTFE / KOTET came along and crushed everything into one stream. The other end of the singularity was rising from that crushing event and seeing what could be disentangled. Now, I take your point: you're saying that was potentially more the issue prior to KOTFE / KOTET. And I would agree. But at the point those other elements were coming up, the path to KOTFE / KOTET was already set. Consider: Rise of the Hutt Cartel was in April of 2013. Shadow of Revan was in December 2014. KOTFE came out in October of 2015. But KOTFE had a whole lot to do with a particular bit of history: in November 2013 (so after RoTHC but before SoR), Lucasfilm/Disney announced that the next film (The Force Awakens) would be released in December 2015. Keep in mind when KOTFE came out then consider the fact that it had to be written and planned well before October of 2015. That leaves a small window (between November 2013 and October 2015) where you can see how the direction radically shifted.

Exactly this. That was my point upstream a bit as well. The identity of the game has always been a bit fragmented. You see this most often in particular design decisions. I think there's truth to this for sure. The challenge is they designed a very particular kind of game: extremely story heavy, with a lot of companion interaction, and with the possibility of persistent consequences for choices made at various points. But then they had to -- or at least chose to -- start "streamlining." Rather than focus on what was arguably their core strength, they tried to be many things to many people, which satisfied some, dissatisfied others, and provided what you might argue is a neutral-casual experience for perhaps the vast majority. What this led to is an extremely variable revenue stream and that, of course, means you can't make product level projections. Which means you have to cut costs where and when you can. I posted some of the history of KOTFE / KOTET before but rather than revisit that I'll just repeat the part that probably mattered: "Now it [KOTFE / KOTET] had to be the entry point for many new players and a continuation point for old players. That's a really key point to realize if you feel disconnects between what SWTOR was (vanilla class stories) and what it become (KOTFE/KOTET)." The reason for this streamlining was fairly obvious on one hand: it reduced some aspects of the need to keep individuating class stories to a great extent. This was an easy sell for product managers because it promised the ability of coming out with more content. Granted, it would be less customized content per class, but more overall content. Yet, we've seen how that played out. It's worth folks considering why that is. It's also worth keeping in mind some historical context here. In November 2013, Lucasfilm/Disney announced that the next film (The Force Awakens) would be released in December 2015. And when did KOTFE come out? October of 2015. I'm not pointing all this out to start any battles or try to get people to come down on one side or the other. But the operative context has always been fascinating to me for a variety of reasons. In many ways, SWTOR was typical BioWare: ambitious. But also ambitious without much of a plan that stretched beyond the immediate. The initial immediate was competing with WoW. The eventual immediate was attempting to latch onto a renewed focus on Star Wars given the Disney acquisition. What this means to me is that SWTOR has always been reactive. Thus that's what contributes to that lack of identity. It always tried to be what it needed to be at the moment -- which usually translated into monetary concerns -- rather than what it could be under a guiding vision. Obviously that's personal opinion and I ask no one to agree but it is informed opinion based on a long history with this game, that reaches back to before it was SWTOR.

It's an interesting idea but consider how cutscenes or dialogue are rendered. You would have to have the cutscene change immediately upon the keypress. We can imagine there certainly wouldn't be the work done to have a specific animation for putting on and removing the headpiece. So that means the rendered cinematics would all have to be updated on the fly to show the change. The challenge is the engine is designed such that the cutscenes always load in your character model fully and thus can't swap out gear mid scene. Simplifying a bit, this is because the textures and shaders are are already baked in. Have you ever seen some of those cutscenes where the screen goes to dark and then pauses for a bit before showing the cutscene? In some cases, you might even hear the voices but not see the cutscene visuals. That's happening because of how the loading can be variable. It's essentially an entirely synchronous operation that is done once. So changing anything in the scene would require that loading process to start over. Which, you might argue, doesn't sound so bad -- as long as its quick enough. Except -- with the engine they use (or at least as it used to be), forcing the reload of the rendering would force a reloading of the entire scene. (This was due to tight coupling of the logic that was initially baked in to their version of the engine.) So you'd have to make sure to press your key quick as the scene is starting. Which implies you know right away which scenes you do and don't want your helmet for.

Agreed. The challenge has been seen in trying to accommodate different audiences but without a clear vision that defined what the SWTOR identity is. For example, they want to streamline certain things for established players. But often that streamlining makes things quite a bit more discordant for new players. (Established players should really try to step back and look at the game from the new player point of view; it's interesting. Imagine it's your first time coming to the game and you know very little about it.) They have changed the aesthetic numerous times but it's often unclear exactly why. A challenge here is that new players will only be used to the new stuff so won't have a basis to compare. Established players will have trouble looking at it with the eyes of a new player. So much of the discussion around the changes becomes entirely anecdotal. Sometimes the decisions are perceived as good, sometimes bad, sometimes neutral. But in just about all cases, there is often an underlying question of "why do this?" Put another way: given your limited time and budget, why is this the thing you chose to focus on? The same applies to story and narrative. New players may take awhile to get up to the new content, thus not feel the impact of such a slow cadence of story progression. Established players, on the other hand, feel the slow progression of a Malgus story going since 2019. New players may never have experienced some of the Heroic Quest Giver NPCs so are not aware of how those were previously integrated into the world stories whereas established players are. This all may seem trivial but what I think it does is put various audiences at odds with each other. I don't mean this is intentional so much but rather that people have extremely different perceptions and thus expectations because SWTOR is radically different things to different audiences. And the SWTOR's team development vision -- whether that be in gameplay mechanics or story -- seems to have no core identity. And that core identity is what I was talking about upstream: the start of a single-player KOTOR 3 to (very quickly) a multi-player MMO with only some of KOTOR 3 being consistently applied.

Indeed, yes. At the time Star Wars: Galaxies (released in 2003 and then revamped in 2005) was a thing. Of, course KOTOR 1 was in 2003 and KOTOR 2 was in 2004. That's the broad context. You can read a little of the history around KOTOR 3 starting and getting canceled here and here. This was in 2005 and there were varying people vying for control of the development, BioWare being one of them. But BioWare did hit on the formula of MMO -- and that was what swayed the decision, hence what you see in 2006 and originally announced for 2009. Hero Engine was largely chosen because there wasn't time to build an in-house engine and, given projected costs, Hero Engine was deemed an investment that would give enough for a game that was essentially a single-player experience in a multi-player context. Originally -- and by this I mean going back to 2005 -- the idea was two classes: Jedi or Sith. The Jedi Knight and Consular stories were wrapped into one. The Warrior and Inquisitor stories were also wrapped into one. To support an MMO, however, more were needed. Hence the breakout of those plus the additions of others. Development took some time and some of the story elements from the KOTOR 3 idea were framed and eventually incorporated into some novels, all of which came out in 2011: "Revan", "Deceived", "Fatal Alliance." ("Annihilation" didn't come out until 2013.) What's interesting, of course, is that "Revan" was clearly continuing on from KOTOR 1 and KOTOR 2 and was meant to serve as prologue, as it were. I don't want to mischaracterize, however. BioWare was committed to the MMO idea pretty early on. In fact, it's what "won" them the ability to go forward since there was a need to consider how to fit into the space that World of Warcraft (which came out in late 2004) was showing could be very profitable. A lot of people think SWTOR and WOW were separated by enough time, given when SWTOR came out. But the development of SWTOR started as a direct result of (1) wanting a KOTOR 3 and (2) wanting something like WOW.

It's common to blame EA or publishers in general but that's rarely true on games like this and has rarely been true for BioWare. BioWare ran its own cost center, just as many studios do within a publishing umbrella. It's very similar to how movie studios work with production companies. Most things are based on projections. Those projections come from internal teams based on (1) product strategy and (2) assessments from the product team, including developers, on what they can achieve. Key to that is (3) how much it's going to cost which leads to (4) how much do we project to make as a result of all this. Money is spent not based on revenue or profit but on projections. Meaning, money is spent long before product decisions actually reach the public. That's how movie studios can still function even when they have what seem to be bomb after bomb in the box office. It's not quite the same in the game industry, but it isn't wholly dissimilar either. The main point being: publishers go on (1) what projections are made and (2) the history of making those projections. It's nowhere near as simple as just return-on-investment because "investment" is distributed. Which isn't to say funding isn't an issue, of course. It's just to say that how funding works can be a bit complicated, particularly when historical performance is part of what dictates that. And that can be amplified or degraded. Once degradation starts, it can be an uphill climb. It's not just because it's a license intellectual property. After all, if said property is very successful, then it would not be hard to justify investment. (That worked pretty well for the Hogwarts Legacy team, for example.) The question is whether the license holder sees more value than not in what you are doing with the license. SWTOR deals with an era that Disney / LucasArts, at least right now, really doesn't care about at all. It has no significance to their movies and even their latest foray into the High Republic is well after the events in this game. So from that perspective, SWTOR is a bit of a null value. It doesn't really cost them anything but it also doesn't do much to get them anything either and doesn't really help their overall branding. (But also doesn't hurt it.) Right now, if I put my spin on it, SWTOR suffers from a case of always making a series of decisions that reduce or minimize what came before. Think of how much in the game has often been minimized. For awhile, no missions mattered except purple. In fact, exploration missions were turned off by default for a time. Then heroics were made "grab it and turn in" rather than as necessarily being part of the exploration. Even simple things like training for skills, which was part of the story interaction, were removed. Starfighter was added but largely abandoned. Basically lots of things that used to matter as part of the experience no longer do. Now, you can argue that's streamlining and that's what the SWTOR team does in fact argue. And that can be valid, for sure. But SWTOR has always had an issue (at least in my opinion) between streamlining and reducing things to irrelevance. And when you do that, your buying public responds extremely variably. And a variably buying public means projections are really hard to get right. Which leads back to what I started with.