No, it failed because making a good game was pushed aside in favor of making a game with a messageāand not even a very good one.
I see! So there was some kind of explicit order, or at least concerted effort with explicit goal, to make a game with āa messageā. And I assume we have all the evidence to look at to see the day-to-day chain of events that led to the market failure.
No?
Seriously though, there were many reasons why DAV failed, and āhaving a Messageā was not even in the top 100. Every piece of media has a message.
It makes no sense to have nonbinary people in The Veilguard!
ā¦This is literally just the āhistorical accuracyā argument.
Youāre misrepresenting my point. I never claimed there was an explicit directive to prioritize āa messageā over game qualityāI said it feels like thatās what happened. Thatās a critique of execution, not a conspiracy theory.
Yes, every piece of media has a message, but thereās a difference between a theme that naturally emerges from storytelling and one that feels forced or out of place. The issue isnāt that the game has a messageāitās how it delivers it.
Claiming messaging wasnāt in the ātop 100ā reasons for failure is just hand-waving. You provide no evidence for that, and even if itās not the primary reason, that doesnāt mean it wasnāt a factor.
Finally, comparing this to the āhistorical accuracyā argument is a bad-faith deflection. Dragon Age isnāt real history, but it does have established lore and internal consistency. When a game introduces elements that contradict its own worldbuilding, it breaks immersion. Thatās the issue.
Youāre deflecting the real issue here. The issue isnāt whether thatās factual or just your personal feels. The issue is that youāre saying that was the definitive cause of its failure:
it failed because making a good game was pushed aside in favor of making a game with a message".
And what I was saying was, well, no, it wasnāt the definitive cause. Far from it. Thereās a lot of reasons for the gameās failure.
Claiming messaging wasnāt in the ātop 100ā reasons for failure is just hand-waving. You provide no evidence for that, and even if itās not the primary reason, that doesnāt mean it wasnāt a factor.
I fail to see how you refute my point by saying that. I never said it wasnāt a factor, I said it was insignificant compared to bigger problems.
You know, I didnāt list the reasons because I thought they would be obvious to anyone whoās actually following whatās going on. Buuuut how about the oversaturation of the AAA game publishing space? (People have giant backlogs of great games to play, and thereās no end to this stuff.) Rising game prices? (Big game publishers are getting pretty greedy.) Increasing standards of quality from consumers? (Canāt release a meh game these days, if people are paying $70+ for games, they have to be beyond excellent.)
Most importantly: people actually want games that were made by studios that give a damn about the end product. Bioware is just EAās puppet, they make product chunks. In my opinion, the biggest reason DAV failed commercially because it was a game nobody was asking for, made by a developer thatās a shadow of its former self and everyone knows that. People had scepticism, and rightfully so.
See? I didnāt even get into whatās in the game. Thatās what I meant when I said the Message isnāt even in the top 100 problems.
Finally, comparing this to the āhistorical accuracyā argument is a bad-faith deflection.
No, perhaps I was being unclear. What I meant by that is that itās in the same category as āhistorical accuracyā whinging. Itās a fictional setting, so arguing that it has to match some real world facts and logic is utterly pointless.
Dragon Age isnāt real history, but it does have established lore and internal consistency. When a game introduces elements that contradict its own worldbuilding, it breaks immersion. Thatās the issue.
So how exactly did it contradict the worldbuilding? Was it specifically established in DA lore that all nb/trans people will use polymorph magic? Iām genuinely curious here.
Or did you mean that this particular logic doesnāt make sense to you personally? Thatās not āloreā. Thatās not a worldbuilding issue. Thatās projecting your own assumptions.
Besides: Even if it was specifically earlier established in DA lore that all nb/trans characters will just use polymorph stuff, who cares? The writers are well within their rights to retcon their stuff. Worldbuilding is not dogma.
Youāre shifting the goalposts. My argument wasnāt that messaging was the sole reason for failure, but that it was a major factorāone that contributed to the game feeling like a product with priorities misaligned from what players actually wanted. Saying there were āmany reasonsā doesnāt refute that.
Your claim that messaging wasnāt even in the ātop 100ā is still unsupported. Listing industry-wide problems like oversaturation and rising prices is fine, but none of that explains why The Veilguard failed specifically. Plenty of games thrive under these conditions. The difference? They connect with their audience. DAV didnāt.
As for lore consistencyāyes, Dragon Age has established magic that lets people change their gender at will. If that exists, then the idea of medical transition (and scars from it) doesnāt naturally fit within the world. Thatās not a personal assumption; itās a logical question based on the rules the setting has already established. If a game contradicts its own internal logic without explanation, thatās bad writing.
And no, āretconsā donāt excuse anything. A writer can change their worldbuilding, but doing so in a way that breaks immersion, alienates players, or makes the setting feel incoherent is bad storytelling. Just because you can rewrite lore doesnāt mean you shouldāespecially if it weakens the internal consistency of the world.
No, weāre having a simple disagreement over whether this was a major reason why the game failed commercially or not. Youāre the one whoās making this complicated.
My argument wasnāt that messaging was the sole reason for failure, but that it was a major factorāone that contributed to the game feeling like a product with priorities misaligned from what players actually wanted. Saying there were āmany reasonsā doesnāt refute that.
Insisting that the game having a message is the most major reason the game failed doesnāt refute any of what I said either. Weāre still having a disagreement, nothing more. Youāve not proven your claim either.
Your claim that messaging wasnāt even in the ātop 100ā is still unsupported. Listing industry-wide problems like oversaturation and rising prices is fine, but none of that explains why The Veilguard failed specifically. Plenty of games thrive under these conditions. The difference? They connect with their audience. DAV didnāt.
OK, so you continue to be the one whoās making the extraordinary claim here, that DAV specifically failed because the game didnāt connect with the message, and that it was specifically because it was the message.
There are still plenty of reasons why a game wouldnāt connect with the audience, as I said. Youāve not exactly proven why and how this was the definitive reason. Thatās the claim that needs to be proven, yet youāve not done that.
Whether or not youāre acknowledging it or not, youāre acting as if as you think the game having a message is the sole reason why the game failed commercially. You acknowledge that it was a āmajorā reason, but then, above, youāre also specifically saying that industry-wide problems arenāt affecting the gameās situation at all. Why? Why isnāt the industry downturn affecting this game specifically? Why canāt we explain this gameās failure in large part with the incompetence and greed of major publishers?
Dragon Age has established magic that lets people change their gender at will. If that exists, then the idea of medical transition (and scars from it) doesnāt naturally fit within the world.
You didnāt answer my question. I didnāt ask if it ānaturallyā fits the world. I asked if it was established that this is what is actually happening in the lore.
Because youāre still projecting your own assumptions on how the world should work on the work. Youāre not criticising the gameās writing on its own merits. Youāre complaining that the game writers didnāt write the game the way you wanted. In other words, this is still the āmy historical accuracy in my fantasy gameā argument.
Besides, thereās plenty of reason why, in a fantasy setting, you could have trans/nb characters who donāt get to use polymorph magic. Cost. Class gap. Haves and have-nots. The class divide is a pretty common topic that is often explored in fantasy literature and people being denied this kind of magic treatment, for whatever reason, is a valid catalyst for a story. Itād make an excellent fantasy plotline. But thatās not relevant to DA specifically.
Youāre asking me to prove that the gameās messaging and story issues were a major reason for its failure, but youāre not holding yourself to the same standard. You claim that industry-wide issues like oversaturation, pricing, and publisher greed were the real reasons, yet youāve provided no evidence that these factors impacted The Veilguard more than any other game.
The backlash against DAV wasnāt primarily about price, oversaturation, or competition. The loudest complaints were about the gameās tone, character writing, and perceived prioritization of messaging over deep storytelling. If industry trends were the dominant factor, weād expect similar pushback against every game in this spaceānot just DAV.
The Dragon Age series once had strong audience trust, but that eroded over time, largely due to shifting priorities in writing and design. The skepticism around DAV didnāt just appear out of nowhereāit was a reaction to a pattern of changes fans disliked.
If DAVās failure was mostly about the industry downturn, weād expect all comparable RPGs to be struggling just as much. Yet, games that focus on strong player-driven storytelling (Baldurās Gate 3, for example) have thrived. The key difference? They gave players what they wanted.
The burden of proof goes both ways. If youāre going to claim story issues and messaging werenāt significant reasons for DAVās failure, you need to prove that too. Just pointing at industry-wide problems doesnāt explain why this game failed more than others.
Youāre asking me to prove that the gameās messaging and story issues were a major reason for its failure, but youāre not holding yourself to the same standard.
This isnāt true. Iām perfectly willing to prove my viewpoints. Youāre continuing to jump the gun here. Iām about to explain my viewpoint, eventually. I was just hoping you would prove your viewpoints first. Weāre having a conversation online, we have all the time in the world. Everything in due time, right?
(Itās as if youāre engaging in this kind of complaints as a stalling tactic. This conversation would go so much smoother if youād just address the points. Furthermore, youāre repeating yourself a lot, it makes the comments hard to read. So please, address the points. Iām cutting this down for brevity.)
The Dragon Age series once had strong audience trust, but that eroded over time, largely due to shifting priorities in writing and design.
Are you absolutely sure it had nothing to do with several key players in Bioware leaving over the years and EA quietly gutting the studio, replacing the talent and increasing their meddling? Because, as I said before, that raises the fanbaseās eyebrows. The Bioware that made DAV simply isnāt the same company that made DAO. Bioware hasnāt really been independent of EAās meddling since 2016 at least - Mass Effect Andromeda was the clearest example of what happened when EA decided to assume more direct control of the process. Fans have had every reason to be suspicious of Biowareās output ever since. Itās frankly a miracle Dragon Age Inquisition was anywhere near as good as it was.
Bioware doesnāt exist in vacuum, theyāre not the only ones who are making decisions here.
Who exactly made the shifting writing decisions here? Can you give me concrete examples? Iāve not played DAV so itās harder for me to compare the things.
Iāve seen EA put this same kind of ruin on a lot of studios over time. Many classic game series - including celebrated RPG series - have been ruined by EAās meddling. What happened to Origin Systems has been happening to Bioware for over a decade now.
That is part of provable history. I would link to sources, but I suggest you read up on the history of EA and their studios (in particular Origin) on yourself - the information isnāt hard to find, the ones in Wikipedia are a very good start.
If industry trends were the dominant factor, weād expect similar pushback against every game in this spaceānot just DAV.
Just reminded me: Are you seriously saying DAV is unique in this regard? This kind of pushback is levied against a lot of games these days. Thereās so much of this kind of cries aimed at a lot of games these days. As long as people keep making lists about āwokeā games on Steam, I donāt think DAV was a special case at all.
[Sources]
These sources appear to confirm that Dragon Age Veilguard was not as great success commercially as EA hoped. This was not part of our dispute, and I was never even claiming that DAV was a financial success story. The opposite, in fact.
These sources do not, however, appear to support your particular claims about the message being the primary reason why the game failed commercially.
Also, I see you did not respond to the more interesing questions I asked earlier, so allow me to reiterate: Was the whole polymorph magic issue ever addressed in the Dragon Age lore? And allow me to expand on that - what did you think of the narrative ideas I presented? Iām just curious about that.
The primary focus of this exchange is how the gameās story was a major factor in its poor sales performance.
I am asserting that the story significantly contributed to this lack of success, and I have provided sources to support this claim.
For further illustration, the game lacked meaningful moral choices and consequences, a defining feature of previous entries. Additionally, the gameplay was linear and unremarkable, with simplistic mechanics that failed to stand out.
I find it difficult to recall the exact point of our discussion, as you continue to introduce minutiae and nuance that, while relevant, stray from the core argument.
I have kept my points clear and concise, consistently attempting to keep the discussion focused on the central issue. However, much like Sean Hannity, you have managed to fill an entire comment section with excessive verbiage while ultimately saying very little.
I have no doubt that you will now argue this with an even longer response with more quotes for my comment but I donāt think Iām going to respond to it moving forward Iām going to let you have the last word. Sorry. Iām tired.
Again, the sources you provided did not back up these claims.
I find it difficult to recall the exact point of our discussion, as you continue to introduce minutiae and nuance that, while relevant, stray from the core argument.
So, let me get this straight: You asked me to elaborate on my assertions. When I did so, you then label that as an irrelevant digression.
Thanks, I guess.
I have kept my points clear and concise, consistently attempting to keep the discussion focused on the central issue.
Iā¦ donāt think thatās accurate.
However, much like Sean Hannity, you have managed to fill an entire comment section with excessive verbiage while ultimately saying very little.
Entirely your fault. Iāve done my best to cut down my replies, I canāt say the same about you.
I have no doubt that you will now argue this with an even longer response with more quotes for my comment but I donāt think Iām going to respond to it moving forward Iām going to let you have the last word. Sorry. Iām tired.
See, this is a prime example. 45 words that could have been left out entirely.
I see! So there was some kind of explicit order, or at least concerted effort with explicit goal, to make a game with āa messageā. And I assume we have all the evidence to look at to see the day-to-day chain of events that led to the market failure.
No?
Seriously though, there were many reasons why DAV failed, and āhaving a Messageā was not even in the top 100. Every piece of media has a message.
ā¦This is literally just the āhistorical accuracyā argument.
Youāre misrepresenting my point. I never claimed there was an explicit directive to prioritize āa messageā over game qualityāI said it feels like thatās what happened. Thatās a critique of execution, not a conspiracy theory.
Yes, every piece of media has a message, but thereās a difference between a theme that naturally emerges from storytelling and one that feels forced or out of place. The issue isnāt that the game has a messageāitās how it delivers it.
Claiming messaging wasnāt in the ātop 100ā reasons for failure is just hand-waving. You provide no evidence for that, and even if itās not the primary reason, that doesnāt mean it wasnāt a factor.
Finally, comparing this to the āhistorical accuracyā argument is a bad-faith deflection. Dragon Age isnāt real history, but it does have established lore and internal consistency. When a game introduces elements that contradict its own worldbuilding, it breaks immersion. Thatās the issue.
Youāre deflecting the real issue here. The issue isnāt whether thatās factual or just your personal feels. The issue is that youāre saying that was the definitive cause of its failure:
And what I was saying was, well, no, it wasnāt the definitive cause. Far from it. Thereās a lot of reasons for the gameās failure.
I fail to see how you refute my point by saying that. I never said it wasnāt a factor, I said it was insignificant compared to bigger problems.
You know, I didnāt list the reasons because I thought they would be obvious to anyone whoās actually following whatās going on. Buuuut how about the oversaturation of the AAA game publishing space? (People have giant backlogs of great games to play, and thereās no end to this stuff.) Rising game prices? (Big game publishers are getting pretty greedy.) Increasing standards of quality from consumers? (Canāt release a meh game these days, if people are paying $70+ for games, they have to be beyond excellent.)
Most importantly: people actually want games that were made by studios that give a damn about the end product. Bioware is just EAās puppet, they make product chunks. In my opinion, the biggest reason DAV failed commercially because it was a game nobody was asking for, made by a developer thatās a shadow of its former self and everyone knows that. People had scepticism, and rightfully so.
See? I didnāt even get into whatās in the game. Thatās what I meant when I said the Message isnāt even in the top 100 problems.
No, perhaps I was being unclear. What I meant by that is that itās in the same category as āhistorical accuracyā whinging. Itās a fictional setting, so arguing that it has to match some real world facts and logic is utterly pointless.
So how exactly did it contradict the worldbuilding? Was it specifically established in DA lore that all nb/trans people will use polymorph magic? Iām genuinely curious here.
Or did you mean that this particular logic doesnāt make sense to you personally? Thatās not āloreā. Thatās not a worldbuilding issue. Thatās projecting your own assumptions.
Besides: Even if it was specifically earlier established in DA lore that all nb/trans characters will just use polymorph stuff, who cares? The writers are well within their rights to retcon their stuff. Worldbuilding is not dogma.
Youāre shifting the goalposts. My argument wasnāt that messaging was the sole reason for failure, but that it was a major factorāone that contributed to the game feeling like a product with priorities misaligned from what players actually wanted. Saying there were āmany reasonsā doesnāt refute that.
Your claim that messaging wasnāt even in the ātop 100ā is still unsupported. Listing industry-wide problems like oversaturation and rising prices is fine, but none of that explains why The Veilguard failed specifically. Plenty of games thrive under these conditions. The difference? They connect with their audience. DAV didnāt.
As for lore consistencyāyes, Dragon Age has established magic that lets people change their gender at will. If that exists, then the idea of medical transition (and scars from it) doesnāt naturally fit within the world. Thatās not a personal assumption; itās a logical question based on the rules the setting has already established. If a game contradicts its own internal logic without explanation, thatās bad writing.
And no, āretconsā donāt excuse anything. A writer can change their worldbuilding, but doing so in a way that breaks immersion, alienates players, or makes the setting feel incoherent is bad storytelling. Just because you can rewrite lore doesnāt mean you shouldāespecially if it weakens the internal consistency of the world.
No, weāre having a simple disagreement over whether this was a major reason why the game failed commercially or not. Youāre the one whoās making this complicated.
Insisting that the game having a message is the most major reason the game failed doesnāt refute any of what I said either. Weāre still having a disagreement, nothing more. Youāve not proven your claim either.
OK, so you continue to be the one whoās making the extraordinary claim here, that DAV specifically failed because the game didnāt connect with the message, and that it was specifically because it was the message.
There are still plenty of reasons why a game wouldnāt connect with the audience, as I said. Youāve not exactly proven why and how this was the definitive reason. Thatās the claim that needs to be proven, yet youāve not done that.
Whether or not youāre acknowledging it or not, youāre acting as if as you think the game having a message is the sole reason why the game failed commercially. You acknowledge that it was a āmajorā reason, but then, above, youāre also specifically saying that industry-wide problems arenāt affecting the gameās situation at all. Why? Why isnāt the industry downturn affecting this game specifically? Why canāt we explain this gameās failure in large part with the incompetence and greed of major publishers?
You didnāt answer my question. I didnāt ask if it ānaturallyā fits the world. I asked if it was established that this is what is actually happening in the lore.
Because youāre still projecting your own assumptions on how the world should work on the work. Youāre not criticising the gameās writing on its own merits. Youāre complaining that the game writers didnāt write the game the way you wanted. In other words, this is still the āmy historical accuracy in my fantasy gameā argument.
Besides, thereās plenty of reason why, in a fantasy setting, you could have trans/nb characters who donāt get to use polymorph magic. Cost. Class gap. Haves and have-nots. The class divide is a pretty common topic that is often explored in fantasy literature and people being denied this kind of magic treatment, for whatever reason, is a valid catalyst for a story. Itād make an excellent fantasy plotline. But thatās not relevant to DA specifically.
Youāre asking me to prove that the gameās messaging and story issues were a major reason for its failure, but youāre not holding yourself to the same standard. You claim that industry-wide issues like oversaturation, pricing, and publisher greed were the real reasons, yet youāve provided no evidence that these factors impacted The Veilguard more than any other game.
The backlash against DAV wasnāt primarily about price, oversaturation, or competition. The loudest complaints were about the gameās tone, character writing, and perceived prioritization of messaging over deep storytelling. If industry trends were the dominant factor, weād expect similar pushback against every game in this spaceānot just DAV.
The Dragon Age series once had strong audience trust, but that eroded over time, largely due to shifting priorities in writing and design. The skepticism around DAV didnāt just appear out of nowhereāit was a reaction to a pattern of changes fans disliked.
If DAVās failure was mostly about the industry downturn, weād expect all comparable RPGs to be struggling just as much. Yet, games that focus on strong player-driven storytelling (Baldurās Gate 3, for example) have thrived. The key difference? They gave players what they wanted.
The burden of proof goes both ways. If youāre going to claim story issues and messaging werenāt significant reasons for DAVās failure, you need to prove that too. Just pointing at industry-wide problems doesnāt explain why this game failed more than others.
https://www.polygon.com/analysis/520290/dragon-age-the-veilguard-sales-ea-bioware-layoffs
https://thatparkplace.com/dragon-age-the-veilguard-sales-lower-than-reported/
https://gameworldobserver.com/2025/01/23/dragon-age-launch-sales-veilguard-vs-previous-games
This isnāt true. Iām perfectly willing to prove my viewpoints. Youāre continuing to jump the gun here. Iām about to explain my viewpoint, eventually. I was just hoping you would prove your viewpoints first. Weāre having a conversation online, we have all the time in the world. Everything in due time, right?
(Itās as if youāre engaging in this kind of complaints as a stalling tactic. This conversation would go so much smoother if youād just address the points. Furthermore, youāre repeating yourself a lot, it makes the comments hard to read. So please, address the points. Iām cutting this down for brevity.)
Are you absolutely sure it had nothing to do with several key players in Bioware leaving over the years and EA quietly gutting the studio, replacing the talent and increasing their meddling? Because, as I said before, that raises the fanbaseās eyebrows. The Bioware that made DAV simply isnāt the same company that made DAO. Bioware hasnāt really been independent of EAās meddling since 2016 at least - Mass Effect Andromeda was the clearest example of what happened when EA decided to assume more direct control of the process. Fans have had every reason to be suspicious of Biowareās output ever since. Itās frankly a miracle Dragon Age Inquisition was anywhere near as good as it was.
Bioware doesnāt exist in vacuum, theyāre not the only ones who are making decisions here.
Who exactly made the shifting writing decisions here? Can you give me concrete examples? Iāve not played DAV so itās harder for me to compare the things.
Iāve seen EA put this same kind of ruin on a lot of studios over time. Many classic game series - including celebrated RPG series - have been ruined by EAās meddling. What happened to Origin Systems has been happening to Bioware for over a decade now.
That is part of provable history. I would link to sources, but I suggest you read up on the history of EA and their studios (in particular Origin) on yourself - the information isnāt hard to find, the ones in Wikipedia are a very good start.
Just reminded me: Are you seriously saying DAV is unique in this regard? This kind of pushback is levied against a lot of games these days. Thereās so much of this kind of cries aimed at a lot of games these days. As long as people keep making lists about āwokeā games on Steam, I donāt think DAV was a special case at all.
These sources appear to confirm that Dragon Age Veilguard was not as great success commercially as EA hoped. This was not part of our dispute, and I was never even claiming that DAV was a financial success story. The opposite, in fact.
These sources do not, however, appear to support your particular claims about the message being the primary reason why the game failed commercially.
Also, I see you did not respond to the more interesing questions I asked earlier, so allow me to reiterate: Was the whole polymorph magic issue ever addressed in the Dragon Age lore? And allow me to expand on that - what did you think of the narrative ideas I presented? Iām just curious about that.
The primary focus of this exchange is how the gameās story was a major factor in its poor sales performance.
I am asserting that the story significantly contributed to this lack of success, and I have provided sources to support this claim.
For further illustration, the game lacked meaningful moral choices and consequences, a defining feature of previous entries. Additionally, the gameplay was linear and unremarkable, with simplistic mechanics that failed to stand out.
I find it difficult to recall the exact point of our discussion, as you continue to introduce minutiae and nuance that, while relevant, stray from the core argument.
I have kept my points clear and concise, consistently attempting to keep the discussion focused on the central issue. However, much like Sean Hannity, you have managed to fill an entire comment section with excessive verbiage while ultimately saying very little.
I have no doubt that you will now argue this with an even longer response with more quotes for my comment but I donāt think Iām going to respond to it moving forward Iām going to let you have the last word. Sorry. Iām tired.
Again, the sources you provided did not back up these claims.
So, let me get this straight: You asked me to elaborate on my assertions. When I did so, you then label that as an irrelevant digression.
Thanks, I guess.
Iā¦ donāt think thatās accurate.
Entirely your fault. Iāve done my best to cut down my replies, I canāt say the same about you.
See, this is a prime example. 45 words that could have been left out entirely.