Anthem is the Last Straw, EA; it’s Time to Scrap Frostbite

Author "As you’d expect, Anthem's spectacular failure is not owed to one single issue. The employees at BioWare speak of shaky leadership, a lack of focus in Anthem’s core design, and a myriad of technical problems.

Yet one major complaint stands out above the rest, one that should give people that have been paying attention to BioWare’s problems over the last few years a major case of deja vu."

[LordoftheCritics]

The TRUTH IS OUT

https://kotaku.com/how-biow...

https://www.youtube.com/wat...

[Nitrowolf2]

Frostbite is only a good engine when it comes to graphics. I don’t think there’s no denying that, but everything else accompanying it isn’t worth the trouble.

All their frostbite engine titles have exhibit the same issues over and and over. Poor animations, rubber banding, physics that aren’t up to par. The list goes on.

I feel EA feel for its own trap, announcing the engine as the main developer engine for their studio in a time where everyone was so focused on the visuals, thinking that’d be enough to get them through.

Dice created the engine tet look how long it took them to finally get it down. Their games still show issues related to the engine though

[81BX]

The battlefield games are doing great

[john of the dead]

so is battlefront 2.

[rainslacker]

Animations and rubber banding physics aren't an issue of the game engine, but the actual quality of the animations, and the algorithms used to create the physics. More often than not, if you read the licenses the games use in the credits, you'll see they usually have a 3rd party physics engine, as well as several animation processing tools, as do most game engines. Only Unreal Engine really has a good base animation engine, and even then, it's usually tweaked or other tools used to do such things.

So, in the case of Frostbite, the issue is that not as much time is being used to make those things better.

For the most part, a game engine is a program that handles the rendering process, and controls the game loop as well as the things that go along with it. But many things can be added or removed based on the need of the game or the dev. A game engine doesn't even need to have a front end, or have anything that will handle complex animations.

Not saying that they shouldn't upgrade, or get a new engine, just that blaming the game engine is usually the last thing in the process to blame.

[Unspoken]

Frostbite was the least of their problems and getting rid of it instead of managing it better seems to not tackle the core issue.

[UltraNova]

My understanding is that the engine is ok, who else produces that level of visuals @60fps(BFV) - the issues arise from the lack of documentation and internal support. EA should have expanded their Frostbite engine team to 3 big fully funded departments 1) Engine R&D (upgrades), 2) QA and 3) Internal Studio Training and support. From what I've read so far the latter team is understaffed and are proportionally allocated to the biggest money maker IPs like FIFA (this was mentioned in the Kotaku article). Another youtuber with a access to Dice said that any major upgrades to the engine are made by Dice, based on their needs, not by Team FB, so it makes sense to see other devs straggling with the Engine when working on different genres.

There seems to be major misscommunication within EA when it comes to handling their engine simply because development and support for it is decentralized.

[PapaBop]

It's a shame this came to light now really. Would have really dragged EA through the mud if this lingered over EA and their E3 stream. I'd have loved to see them squirm.

[Fluttershy77]

The truth is finally out. Now where are all those "defenders" of this gigantic piece of corporate crap?... silence... hiding... trying to pretend they never said what they've said...

[PoopsMcGee]

Great article. It really shows how the corporate culture sucks the life out of games and the programmers and developers that make them.

The general rule in life is: The less suits that are involved in something - the better that something is...

[Gamist2dot0]

EA Execs: How do we cut cost and make more money? Lets require all devs to use Frostbite engine. Doesn't matter, train them all. Problem solved.

Devs: we'll try but we're screwed.

[IanTH]

In theory it made sense - save money on requiring the use of an external tool, and also be able to take the best parts of their shooters or driving mechanics or traversal or whatever from each game that focuses on them so they can add in quality mechanics whenever they need them to other properties.

This has *clearly* not come to pass, and if it hasn't yet, I simply can't see how it ever will. Especially with the devs indicating it is poorly documented and they have insufficient support to be able to figure things out when needed. Issues everytime this engine is used means that support is always needed, and it is always in short supply - snake eating its own tail here. Not to mention it means that if you need extra devs to triage as time goes on, you don't have extra contractors who could come in if you were working in UE4/Unity/etc.

I really thought it was a good idea way back when, but the results speak for themselves. They need to end this and let the devs use whatever tools let them iterate quickly and get the job done.

[SlagWolf]

This is why I mainly play indies only now a days. They feel like Gabe’s where passion and love went into making it unlike pretty much every AAA game which feels like a hollow shell that just looks nice and it’s onky purpose is to try and suck my wallet dry

[rainslacker]

Depends on the suit. Some are actually quite skilled at understanding what it takes to make a good game, and can often offer insight that the dev may not think about on how to make the game better. Not all producers working for a publisher are bad. When I was working with their indie branch, the producer handling our games was amazing, and suggested changes which ultimately made the game better.

But, those were indie games, not a multi-million dollar budget AAA games where the investors want to return as much as possible, would have millions of players where they could take advantage of the less than 1% who will spend extra, and so on and so forth. So, I don't think that it's because these suits aren't capable of understanding or even knowing what makes a good game, it's that they care more about maximizing the return, so insist that things be put in that more often than not, the dev probably didn't originally design the game for.

[chris235]

those suits as you call them would be half as bad if you, the consumer, drew a line somewhere. but as long as you‘re swallowing everything up without thinking two minutes ahead (as in buying a bad product and afterwards complaining about it) you are very much empowering their ways.

[PoopsMcGee]

I didn't buy their product though...

[FTLmaster]

Really good article. Lots of great points.

[NarutoFox]

EA is garbage

[Alek83]

Well said.

[Mirdus]

That is disrespectful for garbage

[Father__Merrin]

What's with the hate for ea. They've made amongst the best franchises ever

[pietro1212]

Keyword is "made" past tense. EA isn't the publisher they once was.

[BioShockGX]

It's Bioware's fault too.

[Shikoku]

EA makes nothing they publish their devs team make games but as a publisher they are amount the worst in the industry.

[pietro1212]

BioShockGX
That is true as well. Bioware just isn't the developer they once were. The studio went started going downhill after DA2 and ME3

[rainslacker]

Hate comes from how they managed to make many of those franchises into sub-par games coupled with terrible monetization paradigms for the release of those franchises.

[Shikoku]

Don't have to scrap frostbite just stop trying to make every game with it. It's meant for FP military shooters so use it for that and either create a new engine for RPGs and sports titles or license a better engine for those specific games. It comes down to greed on the lowest level.

[rainslacker]

And Unreal Engine was made to run Unreal. Doesn't mean it can't run other games perfectly fine. A camera is a camera and displays in any perspective. Wether or not they throw in an animated avatar or not to make it a TPS, or whatever, is not something that will make or break a game, and not something the game engine can't handle. Physics aren't a direct product of the game engine, and the basic physics it may use natively are exactly the same as you see across all engines.

I see a lot of people who don't really understand what a game engine actually does. All it does is handle the rendering process, memory management, and the game loop. It doesn't even have to natively compile the game into machine code, as you can do that with something like Visual Studio. For instance, Unity uses a form of Mono, and you can code directly in the SDK, and the SDK compiles the game using some third party compiler with the Mono API attached, uses it's rendering pipeline attached to that, and the game loop processes into machine code through the same means. Bigger engines are no different, although they often can do their own compiling.

[mastershredder]

It’s not the engine, it’s who is using it. Straight up. When you know your tools and have a great team and production staff and it shines. EA’s issues stem from leadership and business practices. Let’s not make it about the engine, because you are flat out wrong on this one.

[pecorre]

The engine may be a problem, but a bad game is a bad game, whatever the tools you used to make it.

[Dragonscale]

EA should be scrapped.

[OC_MurphysLaw]

Frostbite overall has been a great game engine. Trying to blame the woes of Anthem and EA on Frostbite is ridiculous. Yes some of the Bioware devs claimed to have had a hard time with Frostbite but reading that article the game engine was not at the core of what went wrong.

[EdMcGlone]

I'd disagree I think it was the stress of working with Frosbite is what led to all of the internal strife.

[RangerWalk267]

Switch to Unreal

[quenomamen]

Crappy mechanics blame the tools they use.

[HaVoK308]

I been saying the Frostbite engine is garbage since it’s debut. I should find old threads where people thought I was nuts. Claiming it to be the best game engine ever created. I always thought the visuals were a contrast and brightness mess, and it produced games riddled with bugs not capable of being corrected. It’s nice to see people are finally realizing how horrendous it actually is.

[Tzuno]

it's funny how these kind of corporations are ruled by people that have no passion for games, they are out of context so big, they only see numbers, well...the wheels spin.

[JesusBuiltmyHotrod]

You cannot blame this just on EA and frostbite...I know it is easy to lok at EA, biowares management is a mess "Bioware Magic" is one of the most diluded things I have read in awhile. Lots of blame to go around EA and Bioware.

[eamonn79]

What’s going to happen with Fallen Order? Isn’t it made on the Frostbite engine, slowly losing faith now......

[Inzo]

Its time for EA to be scrapped!

[bmf7364]

Frostbite has always been hell to develop on. It's why Danger Close(now DICE LA) received developers from the Engine Team to work on Medal of Honor: Warfighter. The only people capable of using the engine are DICE Stockholm themselves. The results, while impressive as ever, are not worth forcing the rest of EA's developer suite to utilize the engine.

[Godmars290]

Last straw. Right.

Unless there's petition that;s more a direct statement that the signed will buy or rent no EA game - as in none currently on the market - until Frostbite is dumped, *AND* those who sign it either numbers in the millions and/or known to directly by EA to be a significant amount of their current customer base, you got nothin'.

[AK91]

Frostbite should only be used by DICE and no one else same way the id tech engine should be used by id only.

[Al_Simmons]

Regardless of if frostbite has it flaws. It's not separating the fact that EA rushes it's developers into developmental hell. Not giving then the good amount of time to polish demanding games. EA is ridiculously out of touch. For me the nail in the coffin was when they said single player games don't matter. Just as single player games are outselling all of their 3rd party, multiplayer based game. Bye EA

[Gwiz]

Mostly because you can't lootbox a single-player game (well when it requires constant online connectivity it might)
This is why I do not trust games having an internet requirement,as a whole it's only going to lead to big profits for the companies and you as a customer will be treated as a criminal,that's basically what it comes down to.

[Al_Simmons]

And I agree!

[Gwiz]

EA,What's really in the game? (probably powered by Frostbite)

Tales of developers struggling with Frostbite aren't new. Back when Visceral's Star Warsgame - codenamed Ragtag - was shut down, a former employee told Kotaku that the engine was lacking basic functionality in Uncharted 1's toolset:

"It was missing a lot of tools, a lot of stuff that was in Uncharted 1 ... It was going to be a year, or a year and a half’s work just to get the engine to do things that are assumed and taken for granted." According to Amy Hennig

Just imagine,Uncharted 1 came out in 2007,which means that engine was build long before that.
This is the result of what EA themselves warned us about: Less spending on development higher profits.
IDK where these budgets are being spend but it isn't R&D.

[Profchaos]

I remember earlier iterations of the frostbite engine just blowing me away it was like nothing i had ever seen before and is was running on last gen hardware but now not so much.

I just don't think that frostbite games look that good anymore. The environments have a slightly plastic look to them and the shine is always present lighting is always way over exaggerated they all still look like early ps4 titles outside of the battlefield titles (which is unsurprising since DICE built it for their needs).

And in most titles (again outside of Dices efforts) objects don't seem to interact to much with each other making things look static like turrets in anthem and the way they turn. or shooting a mud surface won't get the nearby characters dirty or walking through mud won't stay on the character it's those little details that are missing but present in other games like rdr2, tomb raider etc which break immersion
In frostbite games I've noticed that enemies in particular react poorly and don't seem to have awareness of their environments like in battlefront 2's single player campaign they run out in the open stand still and shoot then die in a canned animation that is the same as the last 500 enemies before them. Mirrors edge / MEA are also similar to this however MEA actually makes the enemies take cover a little more.

Still there's just something that doesn't feel right with frostbite games things like animations and npc expresion always look poor.

[Tazzy]

Frostbite doesn't need to be scrapped its about how the developers use the engine Battlefield 4, 1, and 5 look amazing Battlefield Hardline looked a game on the original Xbox when I played it on Xbox One.

[william_cade]

Frostbite tearing people up.

[lio_convoy]

The last straw? Wasn't that like 2-3 years ago when the whole microtransactions fiasco happened? It was for me. Haven't bought a single EA game since, and won't ever again. I've been burned by them too many times in the past and I won't again. You guys are way too forgiving.

[CertifiedGamer]

Time for EA to make the frostbite 4

[Jrios355]

The only developers who should be allowed to use Frostbite should be DICE. They created that engine, it's obviously the best idea if they were the only ones using it. They may have had stinkers like the Battlefront games and Battlefield 5, but they also made Battlefield 3, 1, and the Bad Company games, which were highly praised, and Battlefield 4, which had a very rocky start, but eventually picked up the pace.

[2ndhandcorn]

It is just not vesatile like unreal engine , all driving and rpg games are awful maybe one day it will get up to par tool wise but for now the should just use it for BF and SWBF.

[KomaRising]

Honestly just use Frostbite for Battlefield. Cause that's all it can be used for.

[Yui_Suzumiya]

At least give the option to use whatever engine they wish to use.. Plus Frostbite is only good for FPS's

[Blu3_Berry]

Wow, I have no words and I'm just feeling so many things right now. EA needs to stop forcing the Frostbite engine and Bioware is no longer the same, just a former of their shell (literally). I cannot trust EA or Bioware at all now with any game in the future.

[NeodeosX]

Unreal started out as a very limited engine, made for FPS. The same goes for Frostbite and many other excellent engines in this industry which were conceived to answer specific needs in a specific genre. It's not about "scrapping" it, it's about EA deploying the necessary development and R&D efforts to make it more versatile before imposing it to all their studios like they did, which was a mistake.
What happened with Anthem and ME:Andromeda should not be a reason to blame Frostbite, it's an incredibly powerful engine. It would be the same as saying "it's time to scrap Naughty Dog engine" in the case Sony would have imposed it to all of their 1st party studios, developing very different types of games, after it would have caused issues in their production process.
Stupid way of reasoning, especially when we have DICE games like latest Battlefield episodes which are an impressive showcase of what this engine is capable of. As mentioned before, with the proper development and R&D efforts, this engine could become the biggest asset in EA productions. This article completely ignores how much work is invested in building such engines, and the fact studios will most of the time iterate on existing engines rather than start from scratch. Naughty Dog's current engine is an iteration from their PS3 engine, for instance.

[NickAwesome]

I Agree

[windblowsagain]

Frostbite isn't the problem.

It's E.A pushing everyone to use it when it was designed for Battlefield games.

Anthem would be crap regardless, just like destiny. Because they are crap games.

I wonder why BFV doesn't use Havok physics engine.