Metagame 006: Experience Is a Red Flag

Sup gamers. Metagamers? Kill me.

I'm devastated about this BioWare news. We'll get more into it below, but fuck man. I only have hardcore fandom for a couple franchises: Final Fantasy, Earthbound, and Mass Effect. Such a huge part of my college and beyond gaming experience (that hurt me to write... not even high school lol). Mass Effect was literally one of the first things I wrote about for money ("Mass Effect Really is This Generation's Star Wars", I stand by everything in this article still to this day). Running the Mass Effect franchise is like my dream job. I almost impulsively cold emailed Andrew Wilson to be like, what if you let me do it lol. But I stopped myself. Let's show some restraint. But such a fucking bummer man.

Also some admin stuff before we get into it. I'm trying out a new time slot for the newsletter: Sunday evenings. Here's why: when I think about what this newsletter is, it's reactions to the gaming news of the week through a specific lens I'm thinking about that week. It used to be my job - what's the big stuff we're thinking about this week that we need to react to and tackle in our planning - short term and long term. And so, Sunday mornings is a little aggressive. Sunday night - when the scaries are already kicking in, people are starting to switch on their brains, and it meets other time zones better where they're at. I say why not give it a shot?

I've also noticed engagement happens later in the week, I get messages from y'all Sunday through Friday - so let's try this for now. Open to thoughts on when you think a good time to send this bad boy out is. I'm doing this for you - so it's gotta work for you!

Okay, with that out of the way, let's get into it.

1. Is Pedigree Dead?

I've been thinking a lot lately about what makes a studio succeed vs. fail - especially with all the closures, especially on the heels of the BioWare news. And I think something similar is happening to gaming that happens to most traditional entertainment mediums like film.

You have up and coming talent. They pop off. They have these global worldwide hits. But then, because they made these global worldwide hits, they think they are fucking incredible. They then make more things, with more money, but because of their power and track record, they don't take notes.

And it's not that they don't take notes or feedback outwardly. It's actually something much worse.

They SAY they take feedback. They listen to it. But when push comes to shove, they just do things their way. And no one says anything. Because the power imbalance and money makes it a truly fucked situation. And this is what causes them to end up surrounding themselves with people that enable what they actually want to do, not what makes a thing better.

The same thing is happening to the pedigree studio or the pedigree team in gaming. They were successful at one point. How could they not be successful again? But because so much of success is luck, they over-attribute the skill (or privilege) involved to be successful. And so they don't actually listen. They're empowered to "chase their vision". Who cares what other people have to say. WE KNOW WHAT'S RIGHT.

This isn't just me having hot takes for once. Look at the math.

And, what's interesting about the AAA breakouts, it gets even more interesting. Those AAA titles often come from people who have worked at successful studios, but weren't the like, head person in charge. Which again, stops them from having the unrelenting I must be right mentality.

Let's look at some specific examples.

Highguard: former Wildlight developers told Bloomberg that "hubris," and "a belief by the company's leadership that they could emulate what had worked in the past with Apex Legends". And we know how that ended, shutting down after 45 days.
ARC Raiders: Patrick Söderlund (formerly of DICE) told his own team "Guys, this game is not fun" and scrapping years of work. They sold 12.4M copies sold by January, proving that previous experience can be good when you have the ability to actually put your past success aside and listen.
Hytale: Riot cancelled it after more than ten years in development; one of the founders bought it back and relaunched it with about 30 people, to 1M+ players in early access.
A comment from a Chinese publication seeing the same shit:「未来的成功产品只有两种：用品质击穿一切的超级大作，和超小体量的创意作品。」 (rough translation: "Future hits will be only two kinds: mega-productions that smash everything on quality, and ultra-small creative works").
The month's pedigree casualties: Gravity Well (ex-Respawn) laid off most of its staff; Liquid Swords is closing: "Samson did far better on consoles, but it wasn't enough to save the studio"; Arkane Lyon's future is in negotiation.
And the list goes on if you zoom out: Build a Rocket Boy (Rockstar), Dark Outlaw Games (BLOPS), Polyarc (Bungie), Theorycraft (Riot), Gravity Well (Respawn), Midsummer Studios (Firaxis), Frost Giant (Blizzard), Wildlight (Respawn), Fantastic Pixel Castle (Riot), and many more.
The indie breakout winners from tiny teams: Meccha Chameleon made with two people in Japan, How to Fish from a Swedish indie, Mewgenics, Dispatch, and Escape from Duckov - you get the idea from the list.

And so yeah, you start to pull together the pattern. I do think it's right there. The future is a Skydance/Savvy like mega conglomerate that owns everything and independent studios where you can actually work together as a small team, pivot, and create something with real heart and soul.

There's a story that the CEO and Creative Director of Sandfall (Expedition 33) once told me: they moved to a new office space that was two floors. And they fucking hated it. All of the sudden, they couldn't just look over and see what others were doing. They couldn't organically talk about the work. And so they moved out into a smaller, single floor office to be literally on the same level again.

This is the future.

2. #SaveMassEffect

I don't need to dive into it. If you read this newsletter, there's no way you don't already know the news, but honestly, Kyle Bosman does the best analysis of this I've seen on the topic of BioWare being shut down.

I'm not going to be able to provide any more thoughtful analysis than what others have already said. Although I do find some of the quotes telling - let's look at it in timeline format:

1998: Baldur's Gate
2000: Baldur's Gate II
2002: Neverwinter Nights
2003: Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
2007: Mass Effect 1 and EA buys BioWare and Pandemic Studios for $860 million dollars
2009: Dragon Age: Origins
2010: Mass Effect 2
2011: Star Wars: The Old Republic and Dragon Age II
2012: Mass Effect 3
2014: Dragon Age: Inquisition
2017: Mass Effect: Andromeda
2019: Anthem
2020: Casey Hudson and Mark Darrah leave
2022: Mac Walters leaves
2024: Dragon Age: The Veilguard
2025: EA brings staff to under 100, Corinne Busche leaves
Early 2026: Anthem's severs get taken offline
August 2026: EA sold to PIF
October 2026: BioWare Shutdown

That was insanely depressing to type. BioWare games have been a huge part of my core gaming memories. I used to host LAN parties so my friends and I could play Baldur's Gate together. Who didn't love KotOR? I replayed the fuck out of the first Dragon Age.

And then there's Mass Effect. Sweet, sweet Mass Effect.

To this day, I still think this IP has legs to go toe to toe with Star Wars, especially since uh... Star Wars has seen better days. But I could feel the demise as I was typing out the timeline. These comment on a YouTube video say it better than I could:

And yeah, I think this is how most people feel about BioWare's history, taken from a Polish article (roughly translated): "EA closed BioWare yesterday. I said goodbye to it in 2012."

I know this is dumb. But I've been getting kinda emotional doing the research for this story and reading comments like this:

It's just like, the fall from grace of one of the most high potential studios in the world.

And so what happened? I'm not close enough to it to know, but I do have enough experience to take some guesses.

Someone once gave me this observation about successful game studios, and most likely, the same is true for most creative things.

The original people or creators who make something great - a thing scales. It's crazy. You're just trying to keep up with all the up and to the right energy. But to do that, you need to organize. You need to run a larger group of people. Which is most likely not what some of the original creative forces were passionate about.

But because they aren't passionate about that kind of work, they also get slowly pushed out by the people who do love that work. And then those people leave. They feel like they can't contribute anymore. Your makers and creators feel it happening under their feet.

But then the people who were kinda there when it happened, are now in charge because the original makers left - revise history in their favor. They revise the story as they seem to remember it. And they keep running the same playbook over and over again - because they didn't invent it. They just inherited it. But they don't actually understand the original strategy or decisions that were made. Or the why. They can tell you what the legend says the strategy was. The legend they wrote and edited. But they don't actually understand it.

And over time it gets worse and worse. Tension rises. People feel it. They leave. But the people still running things can't let the studio fall apart. And so they lean in even harder. Try harder. And sure, they find talented people to take over. But they also don't know the original strategy. They don't get why it worked. And it keeps drifting away more and more from what made the thing special in the first place.

Like I said, I wasn't there at BioWare. I don't know. But I've heard this story more times than I can count. And it relates to the first story. Which is, it's easy to lean on the "feeling" of success. It's easy to say "I was there" and "I was an important part of their success" while also, perhaps, not actually ever being a key part of the original work.

I remember doing an interview once for a brand strategist who worked at W+K, and I failed them on the interview because when I dug into their knowledge of strategy, they could tell me all the strategy lines they read on the whiteboard at W+K - but they weren't able to actually tell me their own thinking or develop their own strategies.

This is the problem. It's easy to fool people. In a world with less and less makers. More and more talkers. It's easy to fool someone into thinking that you know what you were talking about. And that you were there. But there's difference being AROUND it and being IN it.

Anyway. I'm excited for the eventual Jason Schreier book on the downfall of BioWare. I'll be first in line to read it. But what a fucking blow to the heart.

I'm not the only one who feels that way though.

Players started flooding positive reviews to show their support of this incredible franchise. Mass Effect Legendary Edition's daily positive reviews went from 13 to 175 in like a day.

And for all the negative feelings. The stupid go woke go broke nonsense. When everything was announced. Players didn't argue for the most part. They went back to the game they loved and said thank you everything.

Fuck man. What's wrong with me. I'm like actually sad typing this. Maybe it's this feeling:

And crazy fact which I didn't know, BioWare was a huge part of CDPR getting off the ground. No Commander Shepard. No Geralt hot tub feet pics?

3. ARC Raiders Asked and the Dads Answered

Emabrk ended its PvE matchmaking test last week after "More than 30 million rounds of PvE were played" with an additional follow-up to come in November.

The reason I wanna bring this story up is it's the opposite of the hubris pedigree approach. A studio led by veterans made a significant new mode that changes the core gameplay loop because players asked, published how much players were engaging with it, and is seeking feedback to make sure they get it right.

And the dads and moms came out in full force.

I love both the enthusiasm of this comment, along with the 'NOT RECOMMEND':

Or this comment:

And Embark has a pretty good track record. They issued permanent cheat bans after players kept asking for it, and the PvE tests came, again, out of players asking for it. Imagine. LISTENING TO YOUR PLAYERS!

Don't take the following chart as like a something is wrong thing. Take it as a, wow, players really loved something so much, they hope it comes back. Which, you know, is an interesting love language:

I'm just keeping this story in here as a antidote to the downer news to this point. It is in fact possible to use your experience for good!

4. Demos Are So Fucking Back

What better way to put your money where your mouth is than to say, here, damn, just play the game.

Football Manager 27 is running a Launch Preview for FREE on PC and Mac for five days from October 29th to November 3rd. "All saves started during the free play period can be continued through to both the paid Launch Preview and full launch." I fucking love this. Full access. Try it before you buy it. And if you like it and pre-order it before launch, you save 10% off and get to keep your game saves. FM26 already had a regular demo, which only let you play for six in-game months, but this is taking it to another level.

Why are they doing it? Beyond it generate great headlines? There's a rough track record here. FM25 was cancelled in February 2025 because "we're too far away from the standards you deserve" and FM26 launched with 38% positive reviews and a Metacritic score of 3.0. Despite this by the way, FM26 still did numbers and had its biggest first week in sales since 2017.

And players are reading it the same way, getting them into the game early:

This is the most negative take I could find, which even then it's like, yeah. Crazy. Why would we want to help them fix a bunch of bugs before launch. That's nuts.

I think it points to a larger trend, which is, DEMOS ARE SO FUCKING BACK BABY.

Steam Next Fest is about to wrap up with an astonishing 7,200 demos(!!) - nearly 1.7 times last time. Team Ninja published a feedback report after their Wo Long 2 alpha, Monster Hunter Wilds got a Switch 2 demo, Pragmata hit "two million wishlists, and two million demo downloads" and I anecdotally know a bunch of folks who bought Final Fantasy Resonance because of the demo.

And yeah, in a world of a lack of trust in the quality of games coming from studios. When pedigree is actually a warning flag instead of a positive. And game cinematics have been misleading for years, demos are the best way players have to "check the work" and see if that shit is actually good.

And despite the flood of AI games ramping up that demo number for Next Fest, I do think things like it push forward the idea that try before you buy is really good.

Thanks to a reader for putting the FM27 story on my radar!

5. Stop Fixing Our Game

That pedigree hubris gap isn't just about new games launching. It can happen on live service titles as well.

Arrowhead swapped GameGuard for Easy Anti-Cheat on October 20th with update 7.2, warning that "some non-malicious cosmetic mods may require updates". And with it, scripted mods stopped working, including Custom Galactic War, which is "down for the foreseeable future".

And as is the story with most modding communities, modders were fixing things that players thought were broken and had been asking Arrowhead to get fixed for two years. It's honestly this type of sentiment:

But once the bad vibes sentiment starts in this way, it's really fucking hard to recover.

The problem is, you don't make the sentiment better by basically giving everyone the middle finger who devotes this much energy and love to your game. It's, again, the same pride and pedigree issue coming to bear in a different way.

Arrowhead's response was: “mods are part of the DNA of PC gaming,” but using them is “at your own discretion,” and they’ll go after mods that “create unfair advantages or negatively impact others.”

There's no promise of any official mod support fix coming. And honestly, I do think that this is also a tale as old as time, that mods are going to break at times when a game is updated. The issue is that, mods were a stopgap for the studio not having to implement popular community feedback. And so, when you take away players' ability to have the things they want, and also say, nah, we're also not going to give it to you ourselves, that's when you really kick the hornet's nest.

That's why you get the takeaway being this:

Ego won over modesty and humility is perhaps the thesis of this week's newsletter.

6. The Pokemon Rave

And to end on something completely different, Pokemon threw their first 16+ rave. And as someone that used to lead a team that loved throwing raves for their community, I have extreme FOMO.

I WANT TO BE THERE.

Although I do agree with a lot of the comments. The audience looks, no offense, lame as fuck lol. Which, yeah, you probably get a lot of folks who have never been to a rave before.

This is honestly a pretty good summary (also thanks to a reader for this tip), I'd actually recommend reading the whole tweet for the full breakdown:

That's all for this week! Let me know what you think about the new time slot or, of course, any other thoughts you have about the newsletter this week. This is mega corny, but also, it was really nice that I got messages from a handful of you asking "WHERE'S THE NEWSLETTER" when it didn't come Sunday morning. Further proof that the best way to receive love is to disappear from people's lives.

Hit reply with your thoughts and hot takes.

See you next Sunday?