On
Tuesday, last week, gaming news site Kotaku published a long article
by Jason Schreier concerning BioWare's latest game; Anthem. He talked
to 19 current and former employees and their tale is both sad and
baffling.
Following
Anthem's development was weird for me, personally. From the footage
shown, you flew around in futuristic combat armors, sort of like Iron
Man, and you fought some type of enemy, but that was it, that was all
I could puzzle out. Was it an RPG? A Mass Effect style action RPG? A
Battle Royale? No one knew and the only answers BioWare gave were
even more confusing.
Thanks to
Jason Schreier's article, it has now come to light that BioWare
didn't really know either. Reading the article (and fair warning,
it's long) was almost surreal. For fifteen years, the name BioWare
stood for quality and excellence. They made games like Knights of the
Old Republic (Kotor), Jade Empire, Mass Effect 1-3, Dragon Age 1-3...
Not exactly small potatoes, you know?
But now?
Mediocre performance to hot garbage, depending on who you ask.
The
amazing talent that made the games I just listed are no longer with
the company, they have in fact been hemorrhaging talent over the last
few years. Management is in shambles, with executives believing in
“BioWare magic” instead of listening to their developers. A toxic
work environment and since they sold out to Electronic Arts, dumb
decisions from above. It's actually kind of amazing that they produce
anything at all, really.
If someone
wants to make a sitcom about a dysfunctional game company in the vein
of The Office, all they have to do is use Jason's article as a
foundation for the script. It's that mind-boggling.
I highly
urge you to read the article in full, but here are some highlights:
Anthem was
in development since 2012 but it was actually made in a mere 18
months, as they kept floundering about, playing with concepts,
designing by committee and constantly starting over.
Two weeks
before E3 2017 the game was still called Beyond. They had shirts
printed up and all. Then EA told them to change the name as they
couldn't get the trademarks to work. They changed the name two weeks
before they announced it to the world... Wow...
BioWare's
main studio in Edmonton refused to listen to their studio in Austin,
because they are inferior, somehow.
EA
demanded that they would use the Frostbite engine, even though it's
not an engine suited for this kind of game. Even though no one at
BioWare really knew how to use Frostbite. Even though they were
supposed to get lots of technical support and never really got it.
The list of horror goes on...
At this
point I'm sure you're starting to get the point and still it's
actually worse. As I said, read it. Here's the link:
Well
that's that. Until next time, have a great week!
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