Schreier says that EA is deciding whether or not to actually try and revive Anthem or let it die

His reporting is up at Bloomberg.

Personally I think that the right business decision is to let it die. Not necessarily pull all support (keep fixing bugs and maybe do some cheap seasonal stuff) but don't try to revamp it because there's no way that's going to work. Final Fantasy XIV's revamp worked because it was Final Fantasy and the sequel to the still popular Final Fantasy XI.

Basically no other revamps have worked and certainly not this late in a game's cycle.

You can't relaunch a game once it falls out of gamer consciousness. If it has problems at launch but retains a core playerbase then you can fix it and get momentum and get it back on track, but not two years later. Who's going to buy it again? Who's going to buy it for the first time? You can make it F2P (and it already kind of is via EA's sub service) but then the only way to monetize it is through aggressive microtransactions and that gets in the way of fixing it.

They arguably have a moral obligation to make good on all their promises, but even if they did that the vast majority of people who relied on those promises won't go back and play, so it would be pointless.

The time to fix Anthem was in 2019. In 2021 with new consoles it's time to move on.

For similar reasons I don't think Avengers can be fixed, but at least that has the big shiny license, is more recent, and will have a natural soft relaunch with the XBSXS and PS5 versions.

One might argue that the time to fix Anthem was about a year before they shipped Anthem. From everything I read on the matter the game has fundamentally strayed so far from the original vision that trying to bootstrap a whole different gameplay model onto this existing base is not going to be either easy or a good solution. You win some you lose some EA. In this case you lose a couple of million dollars and several years worth of development time.

Anthem is dead, long live Anthem.

Or... just keep it dead. At this point, it's just a money pit.

@humanity: "Make the game good to begin with" is a valid plan, but the issue is what you do when a game launches with problems, and the answer is not spin your wheels for a couple years and then try to fix it.

Games like No Man's Sky and even something like Sea of Thieves have managed to overcome rocky launches to find some measure of success, but they started building on what they had as soon as they launched and had a clear plan and reasons for players to stick with the games.

You can't really revive a game once it's actually dead. At least not that we've seen. And if you are going to revive a game then it helps to have an IP that there's a strong attachment to behind it, and Bioware no longer carries the weight it once did.

Honestly I don't think Anthem is a terrible game and I don't know that it would necessarily be that big of an undertaking to build on it even more.

But the perception of Anthem seems impenetrable.

There are enough comeback stories with games that people can turn something around, although Anthem seems too little too late. I'm sure there is somebody out there excited for a return to Anthem, but how big is that demographic? When they do bring it back, will it be for that same environment? The same suits? The same story? How much are they realistically going to change with this?

All of those reasons aside, I can't help but compare it to Destiny and other successful live service games. Destiny and a few others like Warframe and The Division have been trucking along for years now. EA's sole mission is probably not to go after that Destiny money, but they are competing against a game that is regularly getting new content and a lot of backlog for new players. And while Destiny has hit rough patches, there is an expansion or a new season to address some of those complaints. Games like Destiny have been out longer and have had more support than Anthem, so how appealing is resurrecting an old game going to be for people?

Final Fantasy XIV shows that miracles can happen, but it seems like most games have a year to turn things around. And to your point, Final Fantasy XIV also had the benefit of being A) a Final Fantasy, and B) the sequel to Final Fantasy XI. Even if they massively rework / remake Anthem--which it doesn't seem like they are--I don't know who will care. It was a lukewarm / badly received game in 2019, and the only thing I think really changed is that now it's 2 years older. They should probably cut their loses.

@efesell: This is the crux of the problem.

The issue isn't whether Anthem can be made good or not, the issue is whether people can be brought back.

At this point they'd almost be better with just an Anthem 2. There are examples of franchises where the first game was kind of a dud but the second game still did well and launched the franchise.

Shutter this project. Put the idea on the shelf, reboot, and try again in a few years. I just don't what value a "fixed' Anthem has at this point. At best, you achieve 'thanks, you made the game you promised half a generation ago." But if the salvage attempt stumbles at all, it only underscores the game's real and perceived failures.

If enough of the actual boots on the ground dev team have the drive and desire to make the effort, then it's at least worthwhile for them. But Bioware is already being dragged through the mud as it is, if the effort to save it is some exec's attempt to pull off a AAA No Man's Sky story at the cost of an already struggle dev team... that sucks.

It really just seems like there are more positive outcomes from moving on, at least for now, than continuing to beat their heads against this wall.

@efesell: I think this is the real issue. The perception of Anthem can't be fixed at this point.

I always planned to play this with some friends when it got cheap. But I also have an immediate reaction whenever I see news about Anthem, which is that I think, "They should just cancel it and focus on Dragon Age." Intellectually, I know that's a silly sentiment and not at all how game development works. But dammit if Anthem must be sacrificed on the altar of game development so that we can have Dragon Age, so be it.

At this point, if you could turn Anthem into a game good enough to redeem launch Anthem, you'd be better off taking the Anthem name off of it and selling it as another game.

It would take a lot to convince me starting from scratch would save time/money over improving what they already have.

Destiny, Fortnite and others became what they are precisely because developers were open to making dramatic changes post launch. I'm not sure I'd bet against Anthem making such a comeback.

@kunakai: Destiny had a player base and a frequently updated content calendar. Anthem is revisiting the core of the game's systems. I hear what you're saying, but Bioware is in way deeper shit than Bungie or Epic ever were with Destiny and Fortnite, respectively.

@kunakai: It would almost certainly be easier to make the game better from a development standpoint, but from a commercial standpoint how do you bring people back and get them to spend more, or bring new people in?

The games you mentioned were in different situations. Fortnite hadn't even launched to my memory when they created the Battle Royale mode and it took off like a rocket. It was still in beta.

Destiny reviewed well and had a strong core playerbase that they quickly solidified through expansions that people really enjoyed...and they ended up cutting bait and making a sequel anyway.

In neither case were they trying to revive a dead game that people had already moved on from that had a toxic reputation.

so here's the deal- if EA insists upon releasing a ver. 2.0 of Anthem into the world, it's kinda a no-win scenario:

-BioWare fans, in my perception, feel largely tapped-out (i count myself amongst this cadre); between Andromeda and Anthem, they feel like a dev that can't get it together. there's no positive-vibes capital to burn...any residual is going to be soaked up by the ME remaster, and then that well will have truly run dry.

-BioWare dilettantes will see the promo materials/marketing, and will be unable to distinguish this game from Warframe, Destiny, every other space shooter, etc. without major resource investment into crafting unique features- i don't know who they hope to rope in that isn't already playing Destiny or Warframe.

the only way i see they can make it worth their while is if they turn it into a good-looking F2P strip-mine they put on mobile devices...at which point, whatever. even that space is likely over-competitive.

they tried, it wasn't good enough. that's ok- let it die.

Going over the various "revivals" from this past generation:

Destiny was a goofy game that, for whatever reason, I was most hooked on when it was the most simple. But even that is informative; it got me to play 300ish hours of the same content over and over again with no carrot at the end of the stick (I never formed a friend group around the game with which to raid) purely because it felt good to play. When I reinstall Destiny 2, it's still as much because it just feels good as I want to take a shot at the new armor and missions. For anyone even slightly more invested than "I like to pull the L2 and the R2 in this one" it's clear why this game keeps rumbling along despite its missed targets.

Final Fantasy XIV is still so inexplicable that it's almost a poor argument always. Without a name as magnetic to peoples' money as Final Fantasy and a publisher as enthused by the burning of cash as Square Enix, this doesn't happen.

Fortnite, as noted, may have saved itself with a last minute pivot, but I think all we knew prior to the pivot was that Fortnite players weren't quite sure what Fortnite was - and more importantly, whether it was worth learning that lesson over learning what is Firewatch?

Battlefrontis Star Wars, so.

Rainbow Six Siege is endlessly memeable, and as they leaned into that exponentially it grew exponentially.

Anthem never looked like it had any of this going for it. I want to play a game like Anthem but I'm not sure I'll ever want to play Anthem itself.

I agree. If they wanted to fix it, they should've been rolling out transformational changes over the last 2 years like we saw with No Man's Sky. Had they done that, we'd probably be playing Anthem Next by now

Instead, they seem to have made incremental tweaks to a flawed game that few enjoyed--all while promising version 2.0 would happen someday.

They already failed to meet their original promises. Adding more promises to the pile was never a convincing strategy.

I'd much rather they keep Anthem on life support and put the resources towards making sure the next Mass Effect doesn't suffer a similar fate.

There is no way that they will keep plans to revive it. Avengers had trouble doing a similar format. AVENGERS! Yeah, see you, space cowboy.

As far as successful-ish reboots go, Destiny was a problem with content, not core gameplay. The shooting was always really satisfying and what they hinted at of the world in the Grimoire was fascinating. Once they added a coherent narrative onto it and actually got a content pipeline going, it managed to get much better.

As far as FXIV goes, after watching the NoClip documentary on it, it's pretty clear what they released wasn't so much of an update as it was a completely different game. What was there got taken down to the studs and built back up again. The only reason they could do that was because it was Square, and it was Final Fantasy, and that's literally a product they can't afford to fail because they don't have much else. I'd also point out that they had a very successful MMO in FFXI, so it wasn't like they didn't know how to make a good MMO.

Anthem . . . doesn't have any of those advantages. Unlike Destiny, there wasn't a satisfying gameplay loop in place. Outside of the flying, there really wasn't anything good about it. The world map was extremely same-y and the shooting was terrible. Also unlike Destiny, I at least found the world to be terminally uninteresting. Destiny's universe was a place you could see cool stories being told if Bungie ever got it together, with Anthem I couldn't care less.

Unlike FF, Anthem doesn't have any legacy with a built-in fan-base behind it. EA just looks at it like just another product, so they don't have any compelling reason to keep it alive. And also like FF, BioWare doesn't have any super-successful MMOs under their belt. I suppose The Old Republic might count, but the original Schreier article was pretty clear the Anthem team had no interest in even listening to The Old Republic team about how to put together an MMO, so it seem unlikely they'd start now.

Really, the smart move is to kill it. Even if they could show a market for an improved version of Anthem, I don't think BioWare is the studio to do that. Their recent track record is (1) a badly received MMO that is now on life support (2) a badly received attempt to continue a beloved series that had its DLC cancelled basically at launch (3) a remaster of a beloved series that, from what I've seen, seems to little more than the bare minimum amount of effort being put into it and (4) a couple of long-time executives from the golden years leaving the company at the same time in a move that all but screamed "board room fight losers" followed by one of them getting into a Tweet fight with a voice actor on his way out the door.

Not exactly a record to inspire confidence.

I've been hating on Anthem since its first reveal trailer, just because it looks so generic and dull. Coming from a talented studio like Bioware, that's a disappointment. I'm sure they have a ton of talented writers who could come up with all sorts of unique and interesting settings, why don't they let 'em loose with something really wild and interesting instead of this standard sci-fi nonsense? It seems like a game designed by a committee based on the success of Destiny, and not a labor of love. And so I say, let it die.

I doubt there's much incentive to do anything but pull the plug.

We're not just talking about paying a dev team for a revamp, this is an MMO with constant maintenance costs. Plus, if you're going to do a soft relaunch there's marketing money that would have to be spent to lure new players.

I suppose only EA knows how big the player base actually is for this thing, or what direction that number is trending in at the moment. Anecdotally, I sure haven't heard of any diehard Anthem fans.

@everybody in this thread: No Mans Sky.

Also, I think EA will just can the rework, because of how little progress they've apparently made. Unless they just worked on a lot of stuff in secret? If they are deciding whether to staff up or not NOW, does that mean the game will be in development for another year and a half?

Even if Anthem had been a better game, it may have failed regardless, at least to me it just looks like a generic Destiny close and we know how those "World of Warcraft killers" have fared in the past. I can't recall anyone being hyped for this game even before launch. All of these successful re-launches that are cited in this thread have at least been original game ideas.

I really want things to work out for Anthem. There's a lot of fun in the Ironman aspect of it for me and who knows when we'll get anything like that again. The revival was set to fail from the start though with how small that team is and the pandemic on top of that. Seemed more like PR move to lessen the blows, instead of EA actually putting the needed resources into it.

I think part of the problem is the baseline of Anthem's gameplay loop isn't random enough. No Man's Sky is interesting because of the possibly of what you might encounter that's been randomly generated. Fortnite and Rainbow Six are random because of the competitive multiplayer modes.

Destiny and Final Fantasy 14 are less random compared to the above games but are (perceived at least to me as) more MMO-like than Anthem. Anthem sort of exists in a weird void where there's no real reason to be interested so the premise of somehow correcting that seems incredibly difficult. You'd essentially be making Anthem 2 using what is there as the template and hope it somehow fares better than the first time around.

Other than putting out the update that small team been working on, I don't know who at Bioware could take it on with both Mass Effect and Dragon Age in development.

Yeah, at best I think they can salvage some assets and tech from it for some other project, but I don't think EA is willing to put the time or manpower behind a Real Reborn type of save, which honestly even if they really tried I just don't think they would be able to pull off. That was one and a thousand thing and nobody else has really been able to pull it off(I'd consider No Man's Sky a different thing since they didn't so much as remake the game as just actually make it after conning everybody for a 60 dollar tech demo).

Fortnite launched at a cost prior to implementing BR as a F2P element. The game people refer to as Fortnite isn't what Fortnite was planned to be. Destiny didn't review well. In so far as I remember GS gave it 6/10 (same as Anthem) and most in games media had a pretty negative perception. Granted, a different case with different circumstances but aren't they all?

Most people who play games likely haven't tried Anthem, it's a large market and most people don't touch most games, AAA or otherwise. The belief that Gamers(TM) need to be conscious of a games existence or have a positive perception of something in order for success is simply a flawed perception of the industry/market.

A question in response to your question about attracting attention: If you were to watch a GB QL of a re-released Anthem, and it looked better, wouldn't you feel an urge to look further into it?

@kunakai: My memory is that Fortnite was in early access selling founders packs (so still building a base of players who expected the game to be expanded and iterated on) when it made the pivot. It wasn't a game that had a lot of people try and abandon it, it was a game still on the build. People are understandably a lot more forgiving of early access projects because they know the game isn't finished. So it's not comparable. The game promised it would get better and build out more and then it did. It didn't sell a finished version that flopped.

Destiny reviewed not great but had a lot people who thought the shooting was fantastic and were into it. The playerbase never dwindled like it did for Anthem, and again the game was "fixed" pretty early. It didn't take 2 years. If this conversation were taking place in early 2020 I might have a different view of things. Destiny also had first mover's advantage (it was the first major game structured like this) AND gameplay that people loved even if they had issues with stuff like the loot and story.

The issue isn't that "Gamers" (which are the target audience for something like Anthem, which is a deep and complicated action game not some Candy Crush thing that moms will love, not that there's anything wrong with the latter) need to be conscious of games, it's that you need to draw attention to the game to get people to sink money into it. Launch is the time that happens generally. If you build a community they can draw new people in, but nobody has ever rebuilt a community from scratch except arguably FF XIV, which is a totally different thing for a bunch of reasons AND has a built in monetization angle in subscription fees.

You would have to essentially relaunch Anthem as a brand new game, except with a lot of baggage AND the added issue that a lot of people already own it AND it's in the EA vault so everyone with EA Play OR Gamepass already has a free version.

So to answer your question yes I would try it...because I am a Gamepass subscriber. If it were still $60 I probably would not because I'm not looking to spend $60 on gen 8 games anymore, and especially not 2 year old gen 8 games.

Being on Gamepass and EA Play does make it easier to rebuild a playerbase, for sure, but where do you go from there? Start launching paid expansions 3 years after the game launch? Aggressive microtransactions that would sabotage the playerbase you just rebuilt?

It's just too late for any of this stuff.

And most importantly and something you haven't dealt with is the fact that the people who were most interested in Anthem have already tried and abandoned it and are going to be much harder to bring back because they've already seen the content and been burned once. You say that you don't need "Gamers" to be aware of the game for it to succeed, but the people who are most likely to be into it were already exposed and gave it a shot. If you made the game much better you might bring some portion of them back to try it again 3 years after launch, but they already own their copies so that's not actually new sales.

It's really hard to relaunch a product once it has flopped in any business. Even harder years after the fact. In games it seems to be nearly impossible.

At this point the ship has sailed on Anthem, it’s time to move on.

BUT

Please iterate on the game’s combat system in a new game. If the next Mass Effect has javelin equivalents with the ability to rocket through environments, I would be very happy.

I don't know, is there a big enough fanbase out there that wants to keep it alive? I feel like they might be able to cobble some ideas and tech from the development of the game together and use it on a new project.

Like i have heard no one be impassioned about the world, the story or it's characters. People like mechs, and some like the combat system. I believe you put a lot of minor damage effects on a target and then 'trigger' it with another ability or something? People seemed pretty into that idea.

"So it's not comparable" - "Granted, a different case with different circumstances but aren't they all?"

"something you haven't dealt with is the fact that the people who were most interested in Anthem have already tried and abandoned it" - "Most people who play games likely haven't tried Anthem"

"gameplay that people loved even if they had issues with stuff like the loot and story." - "not comparable"?

"different thing for a bunch of reasons" - I'd already conceeded that point.

"where do you go from there? Start launching paid expansions 3 years after the game launch? Aggressive microtransactions that would sabotage the playerbase you just rebuilt?" - Isn't your entire argument based on the belief that they shouldn't do what's in the customers interests because it's not viable "from a commercial standpoint"? There's a sensible middle ground but you don't seem to want to meet there.

"it was the first major game structured like this" - Not really. Boarderlands was (depending on what you mean by structured like this, I'd actually argue the only real mechanical difference between destiny and Halo is the loot part). Destiny also incorperates "Aggressive microtransactions". Arguably.

"nobody has ever rebuilt a community from scratch" - APB would be one example. You make the statement as though there have been many attempts when it doesn't seem evident though.

What is the point in fixing a game no one is playing?

@mrgreenman: A very significant portion of the game dev costs are assets and the underlying engine. If it is "just" balancing and new missions then it is a lot cheaper than making a new game.

And it wouldn't be the first time a more or less dead game became super popular. A great example is Fortnite going from a game comparatively nobody played in PVE to one of the biggest things on the planet once they added a PVP mode.

From the first announcement the plan for the game was pretty much "it's Destiny", which to me meant it would be lacking in meaningful content and be a mostly shallow experience, flying looked cool, but that seemed to be the only real inspiration that went into the game... besides the inspiration to make money on microtransactions... VERY cool...
It was a hard pass for me on day one, then it came out and i was 100% correct, if they really want to fix it in a way that i would be even a little bit interested in it needs to be a different game, so they really shouldn't bother trying.

I still can't get over the idea of making a pseudo-mmo game with an open world and a player cap of 4. Just make a single player game if that's the best you can do.

@kunakai: It's true that most people who play games haven't tried Anthem, but your target audience is never "most people who play games" because most people who play games don't play anything. With Anthem your target audience is shooter fans, Destiny game fans, and Bioware fans. Most of those people have tried Anthem or at least have actively decided not to try it given how cheap it has been.

My central belief is, in fact, that at this point it's too late to satisfy anyone. EA won't make money, and most of the people disappointed by Anthem aren't coming back no matter what you do, so you can't really make good to them by fixing the game. It's all too late. If this were a year ago or, better, 18 months ago, I might feel differently, but I think it's dead.

Destiny is very different from Borderlands because of its always online shared world structure. Borderlands is just an FPS version of Diablo, but Destiny is sort of half MMO half FPS Diablo and meant to be more social, with randomly encountering players in the field and larger groups for raids. Anthem didn't draw on all of those things but it drew on the outlines of that structure, which a lot of people found compelling beyond just the looter shooter aspect. Borderlands can be played as a single player game. Destiny literally cannot be, and Anthem wasn't meant to be. The Division is another example of this structure. It's not just Diablo with guns.

APB has a tiny community according to Steamcharts. The peak players in the last 30 days were under 1000. Anthem has boasted similar numbers. APB only 'bounced back' as a cheapo product that doesn't cost much to run.

Game resurrections have been attempted. Anthem itself sort of tried it. Nobody wants to cut bait on something that cost tens of millions to produce. The problem is that while you can build on a game that had a rocky launch but still found a footing if you do it quickly (Sea of Thieves, Street Fighter V are other examples) too much time has passed here. Nobody has ever Frankensteined a game back to life.

EA should just kill themselves and let better publishers handle their IPs.

Reviving Anthem is pure sunk cost fallacy and they're mistakenly thinking the name has any cache with people at this point. If EA is trying (and failing) to figure out how to raise the dead it's because someone at the top keeps quoting how much they spent on marketing a new IP to the rest of the organisation.

All the revivals people have mentioned have one thing in common and that's a solid foundation in either an existing property or the design of the original product. Anthem has neither. Nobody wants it to be good at this point, they wanted a traditional BioWare game then and they still want it now.

Have you seen how horny people are for the Resident Evil 8 lady? They used to be in BioWare's pocket and EA pissed that all away because they thought they could make a cut-price Destiny. Abandon the BioWare and they'll go eat somewhere else is all I'm saying.

Anthem might be too far gone at this point. However, there are examples of games that have come back from the dead. For example, Ubisoft has proven that you can usually end up getting some sort of value, if you're willing to put in real resources and be honest with the community. Like, For Honor, Rainbow Six Siege, Ghost Recon Breakpoint -- all games that started terribly, but managed to turn things around and survive, if not thrive, within their niches.

I would love a tell-all book on WTF happened at Bioware between the end of ME3 and Anthem.

They should try and fix it for the people who stuck with it, and if it's good people will join because people like good games. Maybe even do a sequel and move all the updates to that like Destiny and Division etc.