The recent shuttering of Dead Space developer Visceral and the planned overhaul of the studio`s Star Wars game paints a rather bleak picture for the future of single-player titles, at least from some major publishers like Electronic Arts. Now, a former BioWare developer has offered some firsthand insight on the reason for EA`s changing priorities.In a recent podcast on Waypoint, Manveer Heir, who was a designer at BioWare for seven years and worked on both Mass Effect 3 and Mass Effect Andromeda, discussed the EA`s seeming shift away from single-player experiences to more open- and shared-world titles like the upcoming Star Wars Battlefront II. Heir says the reason for this is because the publisher `can monetize` those kinds of games better. It`s also this reason that card packs were introduced in Mass Effect 3`s multiplayer.`The words in there that were used are `Have them come back again and again,`` Heir said. `Why do you care about that at EA? The reason you care about that is because microtransactions: buying card packs in the Mass Effect games, the multiplayer. It`s the same reason we added card packs to Mass Effect 3: how do you get people to keep coming back to a thing instead of `just` playing for 60 to 100 hours?`According to Heir, microstransactions have become one of the publisher`s primary concerns thanks to the sheer amount of money they can bring in. `You need to understand the amount of money that`s at play with microtransactions,` he said. `I`m not allowed to say the number but I can tell you that when Mass Effect 3 multiplayer came out, those card packs we were selling, the amount of money we made just off those card packs was so significant--that`s the reason Dragon Age has multiplayer, that`s the reason other EA products started getting multiplayer that hadn`t really had them before, because we nailed it and brought in a ton of money.` He also said he`s `seen people literally spend $15,000 on Mass Effect multiplayer cards.`This move away from ...
|
