From the start, Anthem has had a rough go of it. Beginning with a very mixed response from fans after the game's announcement to Anthem's latest 1.1.1 update adding a disheartening bug that affects dropped loot from a significant boss, Anthem has not exactly offered a seamless live service experience. Anthem publisher Electronic Arts is keenly aware of this, as EA CEO Andrew Wilson spoke out on the missteps of Anthem's launch and its lessons moving forward.

When speaking out on the subject, Wilson discussed the old method of launching live service games. However, he prefaced the discussion by calling this an "industry-wide challenge" involving a transition from players consuming "40 and 80 hours" worth of offline content "plus 100 or 200, 300 hours of elder game that happens with millions of other players at scale, online." Due to this, Wilson indicated that EA will be adjusting its approach to future development of live service games following the launch of Anthem.

According to Wilson, developers take different approaches to live service games in Asia and in the West. In Asia, there is a mobile game-esque approach to live service games, where a game initially experiences a soft launch. Then, parts of the game's community are allowed to test updates and future updates in the style of The Division 2's PC player base's ability to do so. Finally, the game goes live. In the West, the EA CEO describes an opposite approach where excitement is generated for games by ample marketing, succeeded by a full release, and is devoid of much prior testing.

The growing size of games like Anthem, says Wilson, is a large component of the rising issue. As such, while Wilson states that the development and QA processes are "being changed dramatically inside our organization," the resolution ultimately "comes down to changing how we launch games." At this point, Wilson claims that not only will EA "start to test things like soft launches," but also that EA's "entire marketing organization now is moving out of presentation mode and into conversation mode," suggesting a more direct approach of producing excitement and improving player experiences.

Ending on an optimistic note, Wilson says that he prides EA's conducive position to this approach, and hopes EA will lead the charge in it. While there is still hope for Anthem, as Anthem developer BioWare remains committed to new content and improvements, it might be better for BioWare to focus its energy on making any of its future launches like Dragon Age 4 more faultless. Hopefully, this new strategy produces effective results for EA and its subsidiaries moving forward.

Anthem is available for PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.

Source: PC Gamer