Dragon Age Central

Quote: Posted 09/17/07 00:29 (GMT) by Shoofly
I don't understand why they just don't put the estimated release quarter on the web site with the qualifier that it will likely change. What's the BFD with doing that and occasionally updating it?

Well, we have millions of dollars and a world-wide professional reputation to uphold, for one. And there is a definite art to marketing, for another. For yet another thing, the general public doesn't understand that corporations are made up of human beings who have to juggle multiple schedules and sometimes hundreds of people in order to devise, let alone stick to, any estimated date of completion.

The general public, which is who you want us to release information to, doesn't understand that release dates slip all the time. All they understand is that they want to know all the information, right now, and it had better be the information they want to hear. Look at the release date threads leading up to the official announcement on Mass Effect. No matter how many times we told the community that an official release date would come from us, and that all retailer dates were estimates only, we still got several threads a day asking if a certain retailer date was the right one.

This is also why we don't seriously comment on rumours, by the way. Control of information and consistency of message is the mainstay of any marketing.

Quote: On the other hand, Bioware is very image conscious, so they may instruct these guys to keep quiet on anything potentially juicy so that Bioware's PR department can feed it to the game journalists when their games are being previewed, etc.

That's precisely it. Replace "BioWare" in that paragraph with "every single company in the world" and you have the basic psychology of marketing.

Quote: Posted 09/11/07 16:11 (GMT) by DeathnightF1

HAH, is stan also into marketing as well as QA? I wish he did the marketing on the back of the game box.

By the comment that it will have a beginning middle and an end, are you firmy stating there will be no expansion pack? Woe be upon us.

Did you play Baldur's Gate II? Beginning, middle, end. Also, the Throne of Bhaal expansion.

Or the original Baldur's Gate, which had Tales of the Sword Coast?

How about Neverwinter Nights? That game had two sequels, even though the game had a beginning, middle, and end.

So, no, saying a game will have a beginning, middle, and end does not mean there will be no expansion pack.

Quote: Posted 09/11/07 15:02 (GMT) by Elof Valantor

Here's a question you should be able to answer devies, because it requires no date.

Are you on target for your current internal deadline? If not by how much are you behind?

Um... having a "current internal deadline" would imply that we haven't surpassed it yet, wouldn't it? If we went past it, we'd have to have a new "current internal deadline."

So the answer is yes, we're still well within our "current internal deadline" for whatever part of the game you were asking about.

No, it's more like Plan A to finish sometime around x date.

Further in development, Plan A gets refined into Plan B, which we hope to finish around y date.

Once a publisher gets involved, Plan B gets incorporated into Plan C to get the game out around z date.

It's all about how much information you have and how well your schedule was made two (or more) years ago. As with any large-scale project (and combat), plans don't necessarily survive contact with the enemy.

It's a generalization, as in a normal game's development cycle, there will be Plans A-ZZZZ, and dates x-zzzz.

Every game I've ever worked on has a timetable and a deadline. Making a game is a massive cooperative enterprise filled with many unknown elements and constant revisions. It varies from project to project how far that deadline gets pushed as you go (I've yet to have worked on a project that hit it's original deadline).

As you move forward you get a better idea of how long it takes to make the elements of your game - the writing, creating a level, creature, etc. So you get a better sense of when you'll be on store shelves as you go. Usually in development I'm more curious than any fan on the forums of when the game is actually going to be done. Hopefully that provides some insight on why devs sometimes say, "It'll be done when it's done" or something like it.

We have not annouced a publisher yet and since they decide these things I am shutting this down.

You can head over to Off Topic to discuss various activation methods.

thx

We will announce it when we think we are ready and can make the date that we set, no sooner, no later.

As with all the other threads regarding the release date, this one gets locked as well.

Stay tuned, thx

Quote: Posted 08/15/07 21:45 (GMT) by markor8
is there any chance bw guys going to show da?

Of course we will.

Just not yet.

When we do, you'll be the first to know. Trust me.

Until then, the only possible reason for us denying you more info is clearly because we hate you.

Quote: The time doesn't fare well to competitors either. NwN and morrowwind were released in the same year and the sequal to morrowind is already out over a year ago while dragon age is perhaps over 2 years away.

As has already been pointed out, the sequel to NWN has already come out. Dragon Age is not NWN2, as we've said many times, nor did the NWN team just all go over to DA when they were done. Things don't work like that.

Quote: Posted 07/18/07 19:36 (GMT) by The brother
The descision was made because if the game had been anounced at a date closer to it's release, i.e. this year then it would have been 5 years between the release of NWN and the confirmation of a new bioware PC game. This would have had a really bad effect on the company, it's pc fanbase would have deserted it and lost faith in it's new direction. The console ports would have sold a lot less and a lot of bioware fans who bought x-box's solely to play jade empire and Knights of the old republic probably wouldn't have either.

Certainly part of the decision was business-based, yes, but I'm not so sure the rest of it exactly follows unless your assumption is that the majority of our console sales for Jade Empire and KotOR came from our PC fans -- fans who, despite their outrage at us not developing another PC game were apparently okay with playing a console game anyhow?

Doesn't quite fit, but I suppose you can assume what you like. As I said, for the most part it was to assure those PC fans who don't play console games that there was, indeed, something new coming eventually for them as well. And there is.

Quote: Posted 07/18/07 19:13 (GMT) by The brother
So NWN started fullscale development in mid 1997 and was released in mid 2002? During which time Bioware completed Shatered steal, Baldurs gate, Tales of the sword coast, Baldurs gate 2, Throne of Bhaal, MDK 2. How long did these games take to Develop? and who exactly was working on nwn all that time?

You're probably right there. It was more like 4 years than 5, despite how often that gets thrown around. Huh. Weird how a span of time can seem like it's so much longer than it actually is.

Quote: I think the development time for Dragon age is quite long, can't help but notice how a few people from Bioware are quite touchy on this subject over the last couple of years.

Perhaps that's because of the vehemence that's involved when people try to throw this in our face. Why they do that, I'm not sure. You seem to be making a lot of assumptions about how we work, or how we should work, and then making accusations that we're... what? Lying? Falling to pieces and just afraid to admit it? A bunch of no-good incompetents working on vapourware? What? What are you trying to prove, exactly?

Bioware is a growing company and is handling multiple projects. The size of the DA team has varied a great deal -- when we say we're working on something, that can vary anywhere from one person working on concepting to a small group of programmers performing a demo to a whole team of 80 people.

All we've said is that we're working on the game -- yes, it is taking a while, but what does that mean, exactly? Does a game that takes less time make it better, necessarily? If we did take 7 years (God help me) to make a game, that would mean exactly... what?

It will come out, and we are working on it -- and when we start doing media for the game you will see all of it and then you can judge the end product all you like. I don't really know what more needs to be said than that.

Ah, yes. Two important things to remember when posting before I have my morning coffee:

1) Sweeping generalizations will be taken personally by everyone.

2) Amused sarcasm should be indicated as such by a clearly marked <amused sarcasm> tags.

Heh. Oh, I know that most of you will just put up with it however long it takes. All I meant to say is that when you get very bitter over the fact that we're not even trying to garner publicity for Dragon Age yet and wax poetic over how you're simply not interested in it any more and how it's surely never coming out at all -- well, that you're aware of the message you're sending. It's not our intention to deliberately frustrate fans, and the setup of this forum was a convenience so that forum-goers didn't need to discuss the game solely in Off Topic (and it's been handy for gathering ideas early on), but if we thought that announcing so early was actively detrimental we would probably simply stop doing it.

Quote: DA was announced in 2002.

Click Here

Sorry, but a press release mentioning that we are working on an unnamed PC RPG is not the same as an announcement. When a game is announced we give its title and generally show something about it to the media. At that point in 2002, Dragon Age was more or less just a gleam in our eyes, practically speaking.

Of course what you're all basically saying is that, next time, we should keep any given title a secret until it's about ready to come out, lest you grow bored with the lack of constant updates and start writing the game off as vapourware. I suppose we'll have to take that into consideration next time.

Quote: Posted 07/17/07 12:14 (GMT) by the-expatriate
Incredible, the length if time that Dragon Age will have been under developement.

How do you get that? When Dragon Age was announced as E3 in 2004 it was only being worked on by a handful of people and was in the early concepting stage still. Full-scale production probably didn't start until later that year if not 2005. Considering that NWN took 5 years to develop, the development time shouldn't be all that surprising -- especially considering that it's a game with a new engine.

If there's anything that's remarkable it's the amount of time that Dragon Age has been public. We don't usually announce a game so early, but the reasons we did so have been mentioned before many times. Even so, please don't get confused about the amount of time that you've known about the game and the amount of time it's been in development.