Command and Conquer Junkie

Stop the press! Kane’s Wrath was not developed by EALA, instead it’s development was outsourced to another developer called BreakAway Games. This has actually been known for many months but a lot of people aren’t really aware of this fact. So on the subject of outsourcing, CNC Generals World have posted a new article that takes a close look at this. Was outsourcing the development of Kane’s Wrath the reason for the long delay of the recently released 1.01 patch? The article is well written and researched. Here is a quick sample.

As I’ve said, putting people in roles where they can do the most good is certainly not a bad thing, so long as you get good people to take their old jobs. The results are the bottom line. This is where things look bad for Kane’s Wrath. As they did with Battle for Middle Earth II: Rise of the Witch King and Command and Conquer: The First Decade, EA decided to outsource development of much of Kane’s Wrath to another company, with poor results.
Breakaway Games Credits in Kane’s Wrath

Their company of choice was BreakAway Games, based in Hunt Valley, Maryland (BreakAway had previously done the development of Rise of the Witch King). BreakAway did more than pitch in once in a while for Kane’s Wrath; they had a large hand in developing the game. According to BreakAway, “BreakAway was contracted by Electronic Arts to develop Kane’s Wrath.” Indeed, this is borne out in the credits of the game, as BreakAway is given its own section and extensive credit. For example, every position listed above (and many many more) was filled by at least one BreakAway person (sometimes working with an EA affiliate, often not). None of these fill-ins had ever worked on a C&C game before. None.

That’s not to say there was no one connected to C&C on the team. Indeed, it appears a lot of the macrodesign was done by folks at EALA. A few EALA people, such as Sam Bass, moved up to take on larger roles than they had in C&C 3, mostly in things like storytelling. But on the whole, there’s no doubt that BreakAway Games, a company that is also known for making simulations mostly (almost all of its media presence is with regards to simulations, not games for entertainment) and with no one affiliated with C&C, took on a huge role. This approach represented a radical shift from C&C 3’s development.

Click here for the full article.

Answer: Breakaway Games. Not EALA.

In truth, that’s a bit of an oversimplification. EA’s Los Angeles studio certainly had oversight over the development process and provided guidance, but it seems the majority of the work was actually outsourced to a company called BreakAway Games. We are not the first ones to observe this, but in light of the Kane’s Wrath 3+ month lack-of-patch debacle, we felt that it warranted additional investigation.

Generals World staff member Blbpaws has thus written an article investigating the effects of outsourced game development at EALA:

Looking in general across the board, RTS games that are outsourced by EA generally score in the 70s—that’s 6 to 7 points lower than their counterparts developed at EALA. Looking in specific at two of the biggest game review sites, GameSpot and IGN, we can see that the effect still exists, with the average drop-off between an in-house game and its outsourced expansion almost nine points. Nor are these rankings easily dismissed. In a meeting with Wall Street analysts in February, Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello is quoted as saying, "our core game titles are accurately measured and summarized by these assessments [metacritic scores], and that is a very big deal." Obviously, the head decision makers at Electronic Arts find there to be some legitimacy to these scores.

Indeed, a simple glance at the games’ MetaCritic scores highlights the curious pattern.

These statistics aren’t perfect (they’re averages of various reviewers’ scores, compared across games developed at different times by a varying group of individuals), but they do seem to reflect the general anecdotal consensus that I’ve found around the community. (Namely, that the development of The First Decade, the Rise of the Witch King expansion, and Kane’s Wrath were all sub-par.)

Blbpaws’ article delves into further detail, taking a look at the roles key Tiberium Wars developers had in Kane’s Wrath’s development (hint: little-to-none) and providing additional analysis.  I encourage you all to read through it.

• Article: An Investigation into Outsourced Development

To what extent does the outsourcing of Kane’s Wrath explain the numerous desync bugs the game shipped with?  To what extent does it explain the balance issues?  And to what extent did it contribute to EA’s inability to release a patch in a timely fashion?  These are the questions that you, concerned C&C fan, should ask.