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you killed the game BioWare

hapycamper

By hapycamper
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IanArgent

IanArgent

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Generally, the two go somewhat hand in hand. They get planned annually, and revisited/revised quarterly.

 

The parent company probably gives them revenue goals and a corresponding cost budget to go with it. How that is determined each year.... probably a series of sessions where they present analytics, and plans based on analytics for what they invest their cost budget on.

 

There would certainly be a lot of haggling back and forth, with the studio stating what they can do in the form of revenue upside for any additional cost budget the parent company might be interested in providing.

 

As for anything having killed the game... if this studio has proven anything at all... it's that this MMO has at least as many lives as a cat. Many other MMOs have cratered in their first year in the modern era. Some shift their business model and focus and recover, some don't. This particular one has found ways to reinvent itself and recover from the usual 70%+ attrition that new MMOs encounter in their first year these days.

 

The lower income is my guess. This game hemorrhaged players pretty early on, and never really recovered as well as a Star Wars related game should have. While it has recover some of the players, a Budget of $200 millon+ needed a lot longer to make back when so many people dropped so early in. Given the current development of one story for all classes (instead of one for each), solo only contacts for the DLCs, and the slow whittling down of the game, I'd say they're definitely suffering from a much smaller budget as well, but it just took longer for us to be hit in game after things like server closures, layoffs, Daniel Erickson's abs no longer being a fringe benefit, things like that.

 

 

Given how much they put into this game, I doubt they would have cut the budget had it been as big as they were hoping it to be. This was Bioware's first MMO, so I think they'd have kept the money pumping into the game as long as it was coming in from players.

 

My points, expanded and clarified. Both Occam's Razor and Hanlon's Razor point towards the studio ding what they can with an (unexpectedly, at the beginning) low subscriber base. SWTOR had the misfortune of being the prime exhibit of "WoW can't be duplicated."

 

Which is why I try and keep within the evident limitations the studio is working under when I suggest they do something differently.

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Andryah

Andryah

Posted
Posted (edited)
My points, expanded and clarified. Both Occam's Razor and Hanlon's Razor point towards the studio ding what they can with an (unexpectedly, at the beginning) low subscriber base. SWTOR had the misfortune of being the prime exhibit of "WoW can't be duplicated."

 

Which is why I try and keep within the evident limitations the studio is working under when I suggest they do something differently.

 

True... but context is important.

 

It's not as simple for a company as--- revenue went down by X so they cut expenses by Y. That is a death spiral approach.

 

Yes, they clearly went with a massive re-plan in summer of 2012, which resulted in changing their operations cost to what they projected it would be moving forward (based on actual game play data, rather then marketing projections based on boxed sales and some flawed retention calculation).

 

What they did not do is simply shutter the game, like some companies do, or allow it to wither and die. Instead they not only re-planned revenue and expense... (because they do go hand in hand) but they also re-engineered their business model as well.. and pulled out of the early tail spin and moved forward.

Edited by Andryah
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CrazyCT

CrazyCT

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Posted (edited)
I still don't see any actual numbers there though...am I missing them?

 

Nope, no numbers, just a list.

 

EDIT: It's ok, we're into April now, so it won't be long till the release of the End of Year results from EA, then everyone can say "The next couple of quarterly results will tell" again, like they've been saying for the last 16 quarters ;)

Edited by CrazyCT
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Thoronmir

Thoronmir

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BioWare killed SWTOR?

 

This is news to me. I mean, I knew that video killed the radio star. And I'm sure we all knew that I shot the sheriff. And there was time when someone was killing me softly. But BioWare killed SWTOR? Can you hum it for me?

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TUXs

TUXs

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EDIT: It's ok, we're into April now, so it won't be long till the release of the End of Year results from EA, then everyone can say "The next couple of quarterly results will tell" again, like they've been saying for the last 16 quarters ;)

I very sincerely hope that SWTOR is mentioned many times in that report. There's nothing I would like more with SWTOR than for it to succeed.

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CrazyCT

CrazyCT

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OK....I have no issue believing their list, I just wish we saw some of their data...otherwise, how are we to know it's factual?

 

I know, but like I said, we'll get the end of year results soon (that we'll have to guess at the numbers anyway ;) )

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Jedi_riches

Jedi_riches

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I very sincerely hope that SWTOR is mentioned many times in that report. There's nothing I would like more with SWTOR than for it to succeed.

 

I suspect that you will get little more information other than the game still turning a profit. I mean EA is a big company at the end of the day that's all they care about, not subscriber numbers or long term player happiness while the money still keeps coming in.

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IanArgent

IanArgent

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True... but context is important.

 

It's not as simple for a company as--- revenue went down by X so they cut expenses by Y. That is a death spiral approach.

 

Yes, they clearly went with a massive re-plan in summer of 2012, which resulted in changing their operations cost to what they projected it would be moving forward (based on actual game play data, rather then marketing projections based on boxed sales and some flawed retention calculation).

 

What they did not do is simply shutter the game, like some companies do, or allow it to wither and die. Instead they not only re-planned revenue and expense... (because they do go hand in hand) but they also re-engineered their business model as well.. and pulled out of the early tail spin and moved forward.

 

Emphasis mine. SWTOR very nearly crashed on launch, apparently due to misestimation of their attainable market share. If you set your expectations that they would be able to continue to provide the same density of content as they did at launch, when they built it and the customers did not come, you're doomed to disappointment.

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kasanth

kasanth

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I agree, and those make up a majority of the "Star Wars" part, which is awesome.

 

the PVP, raids etc are just reskinned WOW, and get old fast.

 

 

 

The story line while leveling is the main reason my brother and I play.

You are correct about the rest. But it isnt just this game.

Every MMORPG is just a copy of others with different looks.

They all repeat everything over and over again. The difference is how fun the other parts

of the game, such as story while leveling, are. As well as how many times players want to do

the same thing over again before they leave.

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xkcurtisx

xkcurtisx

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Yeah, says you. And your data doesn't have a cool website and charge companies about $4000 to download the reports, such as Payment Preferences of Gamers, Top Games Revenues and Metrics, or the 2015 MMO Market Report

 

thank you for linking 3 unrelated websites that provide no data to back up yours or any of the earlier websites claim regarding the leader boards.

Edited by Xcurtx
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CrazyCT

CrazyCT

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Better than your hand-written note that totally proves that these reports are falsified.:rolleyes:

 

And I wasn't trying to prove the accuracy of any reports. If you learned to read the entire thread instead of picking and choosing to try to make yourself seem intellectually superior, you might have noticed that I was replying to a question someone had. A comment was made that SWTOR was the 4th biggest grossing P2P MMO, and it was asked where that was stated. I supplied the website that gave the list, and between the two of us we also discussed the fact that no hard figures were given, and a hope that the end of year results from EA would contain some.

 

But then you wouldn't be able to "win the internet" today.

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xkcurtisx

xkcurtisx

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Better than your hand-written note that totally proves that these reports are falsified.:rolleyes:

 

And I wasn't trying to prove the accuracy of any reports. If you learned to read the entire thread instead of picking and choosing to try to make yourself seem intellectually superior, you might have noticed that I was replying to a question someone had. A comment was made that SWTOR was the 4th biggest grossing P2P MMO, and it was asked where that was stated. I supplied the website that gave the list, and between the two of us we also discussed the fact that no hard figures were given, and a hope that the end of year results from EA would contain some.

 

But then you wouldn't be able to "win the internet" today.

 

mhmmm

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