Over a decade in the making, Dragon Age: Veilguard turned out to be a huge disappointment. There are a lot of things that went wrong with the game, including the writing, gameplay, and almost everything that there is within a game.
However, EA’s CEO, Andrew Wilson, thinks otherwise. In an interview with PC Gamer, he said Dragon Age: Veilguard’s failure is attributed to it not being a live-service title.
Why it matters: Live-service models are highly controversial and are a bandwagon that has long sailed. There are more failures than successes when referring to live service games. Moreover, there is no reason a single-player game should be designed around such a framework.
In order to break beyond the core audience, games need to directly connect to the evolving demands of players who increasingly seek shared-world features and deeper engagement alongside high-quality narratives in this beloved category.
The EA CEO thinks that Dragon Age: Veilguad didn’t resonate well with a broad enough audience in this highly competitive market.
Moreover, Wilson thinks Dragon Age: Veilguard had a high-quality launch following strong critic impressions. This is highly contradictory to gamers’ voting for the title, the most disappointing release of last year.
Perhaps the CEO thinks of this because the game originally started development as a live-service MMO. However, EA decided to ditch this element following Anthem’s failure.
Mass Effect 5 is still in development from Bioware, but it seems that another legendary EA franchise might be discontinued. EA might make Mass Effect a live-service title following the CEO’s statement.
