This month marks the two year anniversary of Anthem, EA and BioWare’s ambitious flop that was meant to be a Destiny-killer. On the surface, the game had everything going for it and some pretty nifty ideas as you stepped into your own personal Iron Man armour and spent the day turning horrible alien monsters and humanoid organisms into a fine paste with your arsenal.
Unfortunately, Anthem had very little else going for it. A beautiful mess in every sense of the word, Anthem has spent the last two years back at the drawing board while a small band of BioWare employees have begun overhauling the experience. With about 30 people working on reviving Anthem, this may be the make or break week for the game which has become a prime example of sunk cost fallacy.
According to a new Bloomberg report, EA executives will gather to see how the game is currently shaping up and decide if it’s worth throwing more resources at it or if it’s time to finally pull the plug on Anthem. BioWare apparently needs to bump the Anthem rescue team up to 90 people so that new content can be created for the game, and EA needs to decide if it’s worth investing further in Anthem or finally calling it a day.
It’s a tough decision to make, because even if Anthem shapes up there’ll be no guarantee that it’ll regain its audience and maintain it in an industry where established live service games are vying for your attention. Just look at Fortnite, Apex Legends, and Destiny 2 which not only have legions of dedicated players but also happen to be free to play.
A presumably premium-priced product looking to grab some of that pie after having served fans a bitter slice of disappointment in the past? Good luck trying to justify that expense. On the plus side, BioWare’s 2021 does look better with the upcoming release of Mass Effect Legendary Edition. Even if that remaster is in need of more butts.
Last Updated: February 9, 2021
Iskape
February 9, 2021 at 00:43
I enjoyed for a while, but it never managed to keep a hold of me. Pity really. I feel it did have potential. For me, this is one of these situations where making it F2P could work. Destiny IMHO did a good job of turning the success around, and maybe EA should take a page out of their book!
Mandalorian Jim
February 9, 2021 at 04:49
It’s actually a game that should have just been a single player game, the whole games-as-a-service addon really didn’t add anything to it. And, if it really needed to, it could have just added 4-player co-op which incidentally is all the world can handle in any case.
So what was the point of going “games as a service”? This was just EA trying to emulate Activision, like the bloody sheep they are.
Mandalorian Jim
February 9, 2021 at 00:57
Press F! I really can’t see them not pulling the plug on this one. I kind of enjoyed it, even went to platinum the game. But, out of principle, I got a second hand copy at BT games for R40.
Bioware itself must be hanging on by a thread. By rights, the studio should have been drowned in a bucket years ago, because it’s shameful what such a (once great) studio has become.
Hopefully, they won’t just pull the plug on Anthem but Bioware as well. “He’s dead, Jim”
Insomnia is fun
February 9, 2021 at 01:30
Bioware like Eskom, is only a shell of its former self. All the good people left.
Mandalorian Jim
February 9, 2021 at 01:33
Yeah, it’s just the name that exists now, the talent jumped ship probably soon after EA acquired them (which is roughly when their last good game, Dragon Age Origins came out). Mass Effect 2 may have benefitted from a residual effect of the talent leaving their input as they sailed off, but thereafter, Bioware became a joke.
Insomnia is fun
February 9, 2021 at 01:26
The game is boring as listening to my fellow South Africans but slowed down to a quarter of the speed. Traded it in after a day.
Mandalorian Jim
February 9, 2021 at 01:31
It had it’s moments, the world building was actually superb, and you could see as you play the game that a lot of thought went into the backstory, the different factions and even your supporting characters were actually fairly well-fleshed out.
But… and here’s the big butt… I think Agony-Aunt-for-Overpayed-Developers, Jason Schreier may have been wrong about Anthem in that I think they actually did work on the backstory yoinks ago, but actually making the game is where he’s definitely right. They were banking on that “Bioware-magic” – which never materialised because the original talent of Bioware (the guys and gals who actually made their games worthwhile) had long since left the company.
Insomnia is fun
February 9, 2021 at 01:57
That’s a Miranda sized butt ?
Gr8_Balls_o_Fire
February 9, 2021 at 02:17
They need to pull the plug on their overaching business practices in the first place.
How many studios have died because of their silly decisions?
Mandalorian Jim
February 9, 2021 at 04:46
Far too many… 🙁 I still shed a tear for Westwood, Bullfrog, Mythic and even Maxis. There are others, but I can’t remember many of them now.
Gr8_Balls_o_Fire
February 9, 2021 at 07:45
We are going to add two more soon, Bioware, and Codemasters :(((
Insomnia is fun
February 9, 2021 at 07:07
The list is so long they asked Oskar Schindler to keep track.