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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   1074 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for October 23, 2026

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Anyone interesting in talking about BioWare going kaput? It’s very much a culture war item. I have to think any honest broker would see this is a clear case of go woke/go broke. Andromeda, Anthem, and Veilgard were total disasters. Even if Anthem wasn’t overtly political like the other two, it’s clear that the company started hiring people that were not good at developing video games. It’s really remarkable since market theory should incentivize the exact opposite. But perhaps this closure is the market correcting and other developers will take note.

Separately, I couldn’t help but check in on Jason Schrier’s coverage. He released a YouTube video this week going over the closure. Early in the video he reminds the viewer that EA was recently taken private by Saudi Arabia and Jared Kushner. Ah hah! I said to myself, that’s how he will spin this! And sure enough he gives a nuts and bolts overview of the poor sales over the years. And he spends an awful lot of time getting into the nitty gritty on leveraged buyouts and unreasonable meddling publishers.

I’ll remind everyone that when Veilgard came out, Jason posted “Go woke / go to the top of the charts?”. What a hilarious turn of events. The game literally killed the company. It would be funny except for the fact that I think a very large part of the blame for the state of the games industry can be laid at Mr Schriers feet. This guy does nothing but launder the industries perspective as fact and add credibility to the party line.

One thing you will see a lot on Reddit is people blaming publishers and corporate executives for bad releases that are total failures. I’m not one to defend these mercenary executives, but I think the actual rank and file game developers deserve the lions share of the blame. The executives can be blamed insofar as they are the ones making hiring decisions. But the actual developer and artist talent is bad. I’m glad they’re out of a job.

While it's certainly true that Veilguard had some atrocious writing which was just there to advocate for the right politics, I don't think Bioware's fall is as simple as "get woke, go broke". Bioware has been sucking for over a decade at this point. ME3 was a disaster, and so was every game since (with the possible exception of DA:I, which seems to have been pretty positively received). But ME3 was released in 2012, years before there was a general trend of game devs making artistic decisions based on politics rather than what made for a better game. Bioware's games may have suffered from political activism (Veilguard certainly did), but they had already gotten bad at making games even before that.

Why do you think they got bad at making games though? I’m going to guess it’s because the guys who made kotor and ME1 were a bunch of Gen X computer guys who loved early pc games and were incredibly talented. As the commercial success came and they grew exponentially, they hired a bunch of diverse young millennials and women that wanted to instagram their first day at BioWare. Then trump 2016 happened and it became a moral imperative to use their positions to fight the culture war.

This likely comes across as terribly racist and sexist. So be it. I’d love to hear other people theorize why suddenly all these great developers suddenly became bad at making video games.

I also agree it’s not just the politics that make these games suck. In fact it’s not even the primary thing that makes them suck. But I still blame politics since I suspect whatever is making them suck is downstream of politics.

My only other theory is that “video game designer” became a thing that people went to university to learn how to do right around this time. And all of a sudden there was a “right way” to design all these different game elements. And shockingly, this supposed “right way to do it” actually sucks.

they hired a bunch of diverse young millennials and women that wanted to instagram their first day at BioWare

Less that they hired minorities and women, and more they explicitly discriminated against applicants with wrong politics. As confirmed by Chris Avellone.

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